Tell It To Me Straight – Honest Reflections on USW’s Pandemic Transition

At BbWorld 20 a multidisciplinary team from USW spoke about their experiences of online provision three months into lockdown in the UK and the challenges they encountered in the emergency pivot to teaching and learning across the disciplines. Three lockdowns later in Wales the USW team is keen to honestly reflect on how have students, across our provision experienced USW’s Covid-19 response pedagogy. The presentation will combine a mixed methods approach comparing quantitative and qualitative data from USW academics of their experience of ‘lockdown learning’ with recent surveys conducted across the domestic and international higher education sector. Recent surveys both domestic and international reflect a student body more confident and at ease with online provision and keen to share their views on which EdTech tools worked well at the point of blended delivery. The same surveys also reflect a consistent message from some students that they miss the F2F learning environment and physical interaction with their peers and lecturers. Aligning both student demands for F2F and online provision in the next ‘new normal’ will present new challenges as well as the need for creative responses by the sector; learning from the experience of the last 12 months will be important in managing student expectations. The team will reflect upon the full pedagogical mix of lockdown teaching, learning and assessment in their relevant discipline and which EdTech tools supported pedagogical choices. This approach will add value to existing reports that tend to focus at institutional level only by sharing the experiences of staff and students in an institution renowned for its employability and professional accreditation-led curricula. The presentation will focus on three areas. Firstly, the use EdTech tools that were adopted across the university and which of these worked to serve and meet the needs of students in distinct disciplines. Secondly, an honest review at discipline level on how well the USW ‘Digitally Enabled Active Learning’ (DEAL) framework (introduced to streamline and drive a consistent message on adopting blended provision) worked. Finally, a specific review of the challenges encountered in the management and rolling out of DEAL, whether expectations were matched by the reality at the classroom coalface. Student views will also be shared with delegates in relation to the latter discussions. Given the restriction this year on speaker numbers all USW participants will join the session as delegates with an overview of the presentation by three speakers as the preferred mode of delivery. An open Q&A will be facilitated including discussions by this multi-disciplinary team.