Responding to complexity: exploring the concept of the “Digital Educator” during Covid-19 [A-070] Home : ALT's Summer Summit 2020

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Thu, Aug 27 2020, 4:00pm – 5:00pm

Authors: Ana Schalk, Claire McAvinia, and Pauline Rooney

Room: Bell Seminar Room

Type: Parallel Session (30mins)

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Description

Session Description

In this research presentation, we will explore how academics’ conceptualisations of the “Digital Educator” evolved in response to participation in an online professional development module, Digital Education, and the “pivot online” (Weller, 2020) during Covid-19 campus closures. The Digital Education module was designed for staff teaching in higher education, and planned to run online with just two face-to-face sessions at the beginning and end of a six-week schedule. The module aimed to give participants an opportunity to explore key issues currently impacting on teaching and learning, and higher education academic and professional practice more broadly, in a digital world. It was rapidly adjusted to use Covid-19 as a “teachable moment” (Havighurst, 1957), and it also organically became a locus of support and care for lecturers during the early stages of closure due to the pandemic.

Within the module, participants were asked to debate how academic and professional practice have been influenced by digital technologies for learning, teaching and research (Pearce et al., 2010); to reflect on their own digital practices (Cronin, 2017), digital identity and digital footprint; and to use this awareness to inform their effective and ethical use of digital tools for learning and teaching.

Three weeks after the module began, all schools and universities in Ireland were closed owing to the Covid-19 pandemic and the pivot online across the HE sector began. Our participants were not only studying online after that point but rapidly adapting their own teaching and assessment to move online within an organisational context which was also grappling with the complexities involved.

Through a series of semi-structured interviews we have explored participants’ sense of teaching identity, whether they had or have a concept of being a ‘digital educator’, and the extent to which these identities might have shifted during and after the module while the campus closure continued. From analysis of their accounts, we reflect on organisational digital capacity – defined by the National Forum (2018) as “‘the skills, competencies, attitudes, infrastructure and resources that enable people to work, live and learn in a world that is increasingly digital world” – and whether we are equipped to cope with the complex challenges facing us in the near future. For example, the technological university specialises in practice-oriented and applied programmes, some of which could not migrate online in the short term. The values and mission of the institution are challenged, and more practical concerns such as contractual arrangements for teaching are also raised. As measures to end the pandemic are likely to continue, we consider how we might demonstrate leadership at an individual and organisational level in order to prioritise the strategic development of digital capacity that is required within our institutions.

Session content

Online session of 30 mins: initial presentation of work for 20 mins (approx) and inviting questions and discussion for the remaining 10 mins. We will invite participants to reflect on and consider how we are each responding to complexity in relation to the past semester and year ahead.

References

Avidov-Ungar, O. and Forkosh-Baruch, A. (2018) ‘Professional identity of teacher educators in the digital era in light of demands of pedagogical innovation’, In Teaching and Teacher Education, vol. 73, pp. 183-191.

Cronin, C. (2017) ‘Openness and Praxis: Exploring the Use of Open Educational Practices in Higher Education’. In International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, vol. 18, no. 5, pp. 15-34.

Havighurst, R. (1957) Human Development and Education. New York: Longmans Green.

National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (2018) Building Digital Capacity in Irish Higher Education 2013-2018. Available from: https://www.teachingandlearning.ie/publication/building-digital-capacity-in-irish-higher-education-2013-18-national-developments-and-key-perspectives/ (Accessed: 30 April 2020)

Nykvista, S. and Mukherjeea, M. (2016) ‘Who am I? Developing pre-service teacher identity in a digital world’. In Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 217, pp. 851 – 857.

Pearce, N., Weller, M., Scanlon, E. and Kinsley, S. (2010) ‘Digital scholarship considered: how new technologies could transform academic work in education’, In Education, vol. 16, no. 1.

Weller, M. (2020) The Covid-19 Online Pivot, Available at: http://blog.edtechie.net/higher-ed/the-covid-19-online-pivot/ (Accessed: 30 April 2020)

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