Comparative reflections on the transition to online delivery in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an unplanned shift to online teaching and assessment in Higher Education (HE). The chapter commences by highlighting selected results from a survey of comparative research conducted, over an initial short-term period of online course delivery, among the academic staff in two HE institutions in the United Kingdom and South Africa, University of Huddersfield—HUD, and University of KwaZulu-Natal—UKZN. Thereafter, the chapter describes the initiatives that these two institutions implemented to support staff in this sudden shift to online delivery and assessment. Finally, the chapter presents case studies of each of the authors which describe their journey in the forced move to the online space. In order to put the case studies in this chapter into the context of the pandemic emergency online teaching, we refer to the results of the survey conducted among academics at both institutions in May 2020. The case studies blend both technology implementation and the student experience. While our individual journeys echoed some of the sentiments expressed by the general survey, what is clearly highlighted in our individual experiences is that despite being based at two Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), thousands of miles apart, opportunities and challenges the authors faced in the transition to the online environment were fairly similar. Through the description of two case studies, this chapter aims to document a practical journey through the experience of teaching in the past year, in particular, moving from face-to-face to online delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.