No Cover Image

Journal article 1352 views 205 downloads

COVID-19 and digital disruption in UK universities: afflictions and affordances of emergency online migration

Richard Watermeyer, Tom Crick Orcid Logo, Cathryn Knight Orcid Logo, Janet Goodall Orcid Logo

Higher Education, Volume: 81, Pages: 623 - 641

Swansea University Authors: Tom Crick Orcid Logo, Cathryn Knight Orcid Logo, Janet Goodall Orcid Logo

  • 54331VOR.pdf

    PDF | Version of Record

    Released under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY).

    Download (517.44KB)

Abstract

COVID-19 has caused the closure of university campuses around the world and migration of all learning, teaching and assessment into online domains. The impacts of this on the academic community as frontline providers of higher education are profound. In this article we report the findings from a sur...

Full description

Published in: Higher Education
ISSN: 0018-1560 1573-174X
Published: Springer Science and Business Media LLC 2021
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa54331
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Abstract: COVID-19 has caused the closure of university campuses around the world and migration of all learning, teaching and assessment into online domains. The impacts of this on the academic community as frontline providers of higher education are profound. In this article we report the findings from a survey of n=1,148 academics working in universities in the United Kingdom (UK) and representing all the major disciplines and career hierarchy. Respondents report an abundance of what we call 'afflictions' exacted upon their role as educators and in far fewer yet no less visible ways 'affordances' derived from their rapid transition to online provision and early 'entry-level' use of digital pedagogies. Overall, they suggest that online migration is engendering significant dysfunctionality and disturbance to their pedagogical roles and their personal lives. They also signpost online migration as a major challenge for student recruitment, market sustainability, an academic labour-market, and local economies.
Keywords: COVID-19; UK higher education; Online learning, teaching and assessment; Digitalisation of universities; Academic profession
College: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Start Page: 623
End Page: 641