EPIC2020 Presentation: Recognising the Multifaceted Expressions of Knowing

EPIC2020 Presentation: Recognising the Multifaceted Expressions of Knowing

Teaching and learning in COVID times: Recognising the multifaceted expressions of knowing



Educators worldwide were required to shift all teaching online earlier this year in response to global COVID-19 pandemic. While not necessarily having adequate training or prior experience with teaching online, educators were never-the-less required to make this change. From our study of educators in higher education, 105 respondents detailed their experiences of shifting to remote online teaching. This data with respondents from 19 countries including Australia (n=40), USA (n=42), Singapore (n=3) and Japan (n=3) included 85% who had over 10 years teaching experience. Only 10% of respondents were already teaching online with the rest making the move to remote emergency teaching at the beginning of the pandemic.

From the data, two significant themes emerged. Firstly, it was evident that educators used a variety of platforms and technologies in their teaching. From the 105 respondents there were 41 platforms/applications mentioned with 20 applications used by the 40 Australian respondents and 25 used by the 42 respondents in the USA. The most popular applications included Zoom (53%), Blackboard/Collaborate (29%), Moodle (28%) Teams (20%), Canvas (17%) and Google tools (14%). There was a median of two technologies listed by the respondents with a huge variety of tools and technology types used. For some educators with little experience, using Padlet or breakout rooms was considered an ‘innovative’ practice, whilst others were prompted by the shift to extend their knowledge by learning new applications such as Nearpod, Screencast-o-matic, Google Meets, VoiceThread, Camtasia, Snagit, WebEx, Flipgrid, Mentimeter and Dotstorming.

Secondly, it was clear that educators came to a strong realisation that a deeper and more nuanced familiarity with digital tools was needed to replicate the meaningful personal relationships required to fully engage their students. The immediacy of the transition to online teaching highlighted that educators need more than ‘just in time’ training to ensure they are able to use the technologies to remain flexible, adaptable, and resilient, and to deliver both quality educational outcomes and essential emotional support for their students. Many made statements such as “teaching is about relationships, and it is far more difficult to establish relationships in an online environment.” This was particularly important as in many cases, both educators and their students were spending up to 12 hours a day online.

While university responses to support has been varied, open learning and open recognition of these agile pivot skills would be greatly beneficial to educators across the world. We ask, what systems and structures do we need in place for the new COVID-normal? Can we utilise the data generated by university systems to recognise these acquired skills sets? And if so, who recognises and warrants these skills sets?

We know from this study that educators have done something quite amazing whilst teaching during the pandemic, they have developed and designed new learning and teaching opportunities in new spaces, counselled and supported students in need while designing, teaching and learning to learn themselves, gained new skills in the uses of educational technology services and integration in Learning Management Systems and the list goes on. What can we learn from this about the ways to assist educators for the future with recognition of these soft powers? This paper will address some of these questions while reporting on the larger study conducted from May until August on teaching and learning in COVID times.

Chris Campbell, Kathryn Coleman & Melissa Cain

Recognising the Multifaceted Expressions of Knowing https://youtu.be/fMhf67VohR0