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Staff support during the pandemic and subsequent lockdown: 

Reflections and insights gained from learning and teaching remotely. 

Prof Venicia McGhie is an Academic Development Practitioner in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of the Western Cape. She holds a PhD in Education from the University of Stellenbosch. Her academic disciplines are Education, Linguistics, and Literacy.  She is an expert in student learning, retention, and success, and has sound knowledge of qualitative research methodologies. She is a Fulbright Post-doc Scholar and spent more than a year in the United States of America – first at the University of Missouri-St Louis campus in St Louis, and later as visiting professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky. Prof McGhie is an esteem writer, mentor, and motivational speaker.

Abstract

COVID-19 has unmistakably changed the manner in which learning and teaching was conceptualised, conducted, and executed globally. The result was a move from the traditional face-to-face and contact teaching to online learning and teaching through the use of technology enhanced applications and devices.

The move to online learning and teaching required the students and academics to rapidly adapt to educational technologies and remote learning and teaching. Since then, much research has been conducted and many articles were published in which the impact of the pandemic on students and their families, lecturing and support staff, and education in general, is discussed. 

A such, this presentation focuses on academic staff support, and insights gained from learning and teaching remotely.  Three questions will be discussed, namely:

1. What was the impact of the lockdown on academics?

2. How did they adjust to online learning and teaching?

3. How has support been provided to the academics?

Insights gained and lesson learnt will also be shared in the presentation.  COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown brought one key characteristic of human beings to the fore – the fact that human beings are social beings, and that learning is a socially situated and constructed process.