Higher Education teaching and Covid-19

Written by Dr Lauren England, King's College London

Covid-19 has had a dramatic impact on the HE sector, affecting staff, students and senior leaders and significantly impacting finances, employment and all areas of activity, including teaching and assessments, research, admissions, events and other core operations and services. In this blog this focus is on teaching and learning, particularly the shift to delivering teaching and learning online.
With staff and students now working and studying remotely, some across different time zones, this creates a huge reliance on technology. The shift to online and technology-mediated teaching and learning presents challenges both for educators in delivering their content, and students in effectively engaging with it. These issues have been widely debated, particularly around assessments and accessibility and inclusivity. Radical changes to modes of delivery also take time, energy and engagement, investment and infrastructure to develop effectively, resources which many institutions have not had in abundance when rapidly responding to the evolving crisis. Nevertheless, opportunities for positive change have also been identified, in part reflecting the prominence of discussions across the HE sector about the shift to online education and the growing popularity of online learning prior to the crisis.
While it is important to understand the sector-wide impacts of Covid-19, there is also a need to consider the specific impact of move to remote and online delivery. For example, courses which are heavily reliant on physical spaces and resources such as laboratories, workshops or studio environments, or specialist equipment and materials are likely to face specific challenges in transitioning. Such courses can be found in all university faculties and across STEM and Arts & Humanities subjects.   

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​There has been significant effort to monitor the impact of the crisis on educational institutions. Likewise, creative organisations and representative bodies are seeking to capture and understand the impact of the crisis on the Creative Industries to support advocacy and lobbying. However, what remains underexplored is the crossover between the two sectors and the experiences of educators and students of art, design, and creative higher education. The impact on both sectors will last far longer than the lockdown, but it remains to be seen what long term changes to teaching, learning and assessment will occur as a result of the crisis, particularly for creative degrees and others with restricted capacity for online delivery.

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