The rapid developments of the COVID-19 pandemic bring profoundly life-changing conditions that affect the way we live, socialise, keep fit, celebrate, work – and learn. Teaching and learning has rapidly moved to ‘remote’ learning in ways that are unprecedented. The pace, complexity and uncertainty of how this has unfolded raises challenges for every aspect of how we understand learning and what attributes or qualities are needed – for us and for our students – to manage in these uncertain times, and learn for an unknown future. Through these challenges we are also starting to appreciate the creativity, resilience and agency that is emerging and how people are coming together to support and learn from each other.
‘Learning Through COVID-19’ is a series of webinars, resources and blogs that offer an opportunity to come together and make sense of current experiences. The purpose of the series is to provoke our thinking and research, inform our practice and ways of working, and be used in our teaching to provoke our students’ learning. It invites ideas and contributions about what we are learning from this crisis, as well as the sorts of knowledge and capabilities needed to be able manage now and into the future – which might inform how we teach after and beyond this crisis into uncertain futures.
This series is an evolving one which aims to prompt ongoing collaborations across disciplines around particular topic areas. Themes raised with us, which we invite you to contribute to as well as to add on to, include:
- How might we identify capabilities needed for coping in COVID times and embed these in our practice?
- How is the role of the educator being affected and redefined by the current crisis?
- What are the ways in which learning, teaching and assessing is shifting in the disciplines?
- How is higher education shifting – beyond competition towards social responsibility?
- What emerging pedagogies bring new ways of imagining learning and teaching in times of crisis?
How to contribute ideas
We also invite contributions: your ‘think piece’ can be practical, conceptual, philosophical , research based and /or situated in your practice (teaching) context. Inquiry-based as well as action-oriented ideas are welcome. As part of your contribution, we recommend you:
- Frame your topic as a question to provoke dialogue and inquiry
- Include a short overview of how the topic will be explored
- Include one or two key references
Contact Franziska Trede to discuss your idea.
Register to join the webinars
The series will commence with these two webinars. They are open to all staff – look forward to seeing you there!