Innovation and adaptation during the COVID-19 pandemic

Covid-19 has had the most significant effect on teachers as ‘change agents’ (Brown et al., 2021) and, in recent years, on their role in the use of educational technology. A large-scale study with 30,383 students from 62 countries by Aristovnik et al. (2020) emphasised the fact that, despite the ubiquitous lockdown, students were satisfied by the support provided by their teaching staff. However, there were concerns about their future careers and particular differences in student satisfaction where computers and internet services were restricted.

The benefits of educational technology and related questions of how to assess and move forward with change and reflect upon change theory (Reinholz & Andrews, 2020) are becoming more real and relevant. Blended learning has been seen to be more beneficial for students who, despite being registered as full-time students, are also working and find recorded lectures help them to juggle the demands on their time, but it is also assisting others, such as those who rely upon video captioning to assist with hearing difficulties.

Innovation and adaptation is the theme of this very international edition of Open Learning Journal and, as Bento et al. (2021) highlight, how a university’s systems resilience assists adaptation which can in turn lead to the emergence of new practices and learning. The first article in this issue, however, highlights how the opposite effect can occur, in this case when educational technology tools were not available pre-pandemic (Shevchenko et al., 2023) and thus the difficulties experienced by Ukrainian universities during the COVID-19 emergency. A survey revealed a lack of distance learning approaches prior to the global pandemic and although the Ukrainian ministry acted to pass legislation to permit distance education, since lockdown ‘there has been no transition to fully-featured distance learning in Ukraine’. This finding is mirrored by many international universities who have also adopted a blended learning approach post-lockdown.

Another Covid-related teaching approach is recounted by Xu and Buckingham (2023) and is a qualitative study of an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) course located in New Zealand. The students were older Chinese learners and the study focussed on the perspectives of the school manager and teachers together with this particular cohort. The researchers were interested in adaptation and how the current systems could be managed to facilitate new pedagogies. Their three recommendations include:

• Teacher training programmes should include online learning or at least a blended learning component;

• Age-related segregated classes for older learners are beneficial when the teaching is informed by cultural heritage;

• Integrating local, out-of-class, language-rich experiences into the curriculum, which was an unexpected finding.

The theme of moving into a digital learning ecosystem and the requisite infrastructure required is further explored by Wright et al. (2023). This qualitative study took place during the 2020–2021 academic year in a school in Hull, a city in the north-east of the UK. Fifteen teachers were interviewed and the findings suggest that the most negatively impacted students were those who did not ‘have access to adequate digital tools’. The authors argue that the lack of device compatibility was the most important theme to emerge and recommend that more effective policies are needed to address this digital deficit.

A more targeted strategic response to the challenges of Covid-19, leading to new policies, is recommended by Ashour (2023) from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). She suggests that embracing technology in higher education, together with maximising the research potential between the public and private education sectors in the UAE, could assist with achieving the country’s goal of creating a knowledge society.

The next paper builds on Ashour’s call for further research into online learning through probing the perceptions of young Caribbean adults in higher education. This study (Greaves, 2023) reports on a comparison of students’ experiences with online and face-to-face teaching. The findings in this context highlight the importance of class structure, interaction and flexible communication tools. The author, in her recommendations, looks ahead to the potential of new ways of thinking to connect course content and real-world activities.

Finally, a broad European perspective is provided by MacDonald et al. (2023) who report on the development of an interactive quality standard framework and evaluation toolkit for digital education across the European Union. This is the result of a 3-year project, initiated in 2019 before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and part of a wider EU action plan recognising the need for flexible educational and training solutions to meet individual and community interests and labour market needs. Even before the pandemic ‘positioned digital education in a new light’, the Digital Initiatives and Timely Solutions (DIG-IT) Project Team was seeking to address inequities in digital higher education provision across the region. The outcome is an open-source framework and toolkit designed with flexibility in mind and intended to be accessible to institutions at all stages in the adoption of online learning.

Policymakers and higher education institutions around the world may benefit from these findings while formulating policy recommendations and strategies to support students during this and any future pandemics. This is also a time to reflect on a multidisciplinary approach to systems and tool development post pandemic as advocated by Whitelock et al. (2021) especially with the advent of Generative AI ‘if pedagogically based, sound educational technologies are to be developed to support personalised learning’.

We conclude this issue with a book review by Arta and Kholis (2023) of ‘Best practices for mentoring in online programs: Supporting faculty and students in Higher Education’ by Susan Ko and Olena Zhadko. The reviewers find in this useful guide a range of insights into the benefits of online mentorship programmes, with examples provided of effective mentoring strategies and multi-faceted mentoring models involving network groups, faculty peers, students and career-oriented approaches among others.