Learning from disruption in the COVID-19 era

Just as it has for educators all over the world, COVID-19 has placed some significant new challenges in our path. Teaching delivery, student learning and the way we build a sense of campus community have all been disrupted by the necessities of ongoing restrictions.

A year and a half in, we’re now in a position to see it hasn’t all been negative. In fact, this forced disruption has produced positive change in many areas. Academics as a group can be risk averse, but the pandemic has forced change and opened our eyes to alternative ways of teaching.

The initial disruption gave us barely a week to make our biggest ever shift in course delivery. Early 2020 was emergency remote teaching, getting things up and running very quickly because we had to. Staff and students played a lot of catch-up over that first semester.

Eighteen months on, we’ve had the chance to reflect on what works and what doesn’t work, structuring our online content to better engage students and involve them in a much more holistic fashion.

We were already in a good position pre-pandemic, having shifted to a teaching model where students were able to access what we call “discovery material” online: working through texts and videos and questions to check their own learning before taking it into the lecture environment. This teaching approach translated well to lockdown, with lectures becoming webinars because in our courses lectures aren’t about imparting wisdom – they’re for looking at how concepts relate to each other.

Our lectures were also already very interactive; students would be given a problem to solve in groups, then report their solution back to the main academic lead. That continues online. And we’ve learned about Zoom fatigue, so we modify the teaching structure, providing more breaks and more interaction.

Not everything can translate easily to digital delivery. Pharmaceutical Science is a laboratory-based science degree, and that has been incredibly hard to replicate. Our academics have done an amazing job of filming and creating resources, so students can dynamically see what happens in the lab, but they can’t engage physically, improve their spatial motor skills, or manipulate instruments and equipment.

One solution has been to create virtual labs where a teaching assistant steps through a process in the lab, guided remotely by the student. That puts crucial decision-making back on the student as an active participant. Pharmacy students have had to adjust to using a telehealth setup for practising therapeutic consultations, for example. But it has also meant that during assessments, we can see whether the student is following the right procedures. For example, during a therapeutic reasoning discussion, we know they are going to the right resources like you would as a working pharmacist, checking the therapeutic guidelines and the Australian Medicines Handbook, finding that information in an efficient and logical manner.

Online learning has surprised us at times, allowing things that we didn’t think were possible. As one example, we thought online classes would reduce the interaction between students. What we actually found was that you get more voices, with a greater range of input from a wider number of students. It allows the class to push on to the next stage of learning, having more accurately determined where the whole cohort’s understanding is, not just the students who always put their hand up.

As another example, the move to video-based interactions has allowed us to involve people from around Melbourne, other states and internationally who would not be able to be physically present. This has allowed students to be exposed to a wider range of expertise and experience.

For our interstate or international students unable to travel, we’ve been able to keep them studying. They can still participate and interact with other students in workshop teams, coaching groups and other small group activities. This keeps them engaged with their fellow students.

The pandemic has also really allowed us to see the diversity of our student group and the challenges that they have. We’ve learnt how important clear communication is, and how important to have students engaging outside the curriculum. An important part of our course planning for the future will be around how we keep building a sense of community if students aren’t spending the same amount of time on campus.

The real silver lining is that post COVID-19 we will have developed some really useful approaches that will continue. We won’t just go back to how things used to be done. A new blended model will combine the best of online and face-to-face learning. Moving forward, we can be more flexible in the way that we offer our units and our courses, while enabling the same or improved learning outcomes. And that can only be a good thing.