Student learning in the midst of the pandemic: the case of the UK
- Kyungmee Lee, Lancaster University
- Ben Williamson, University of Edinburgh
- Naomi Winstone, University of Surrey
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The Covid-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges to course delivery across the higher education world. The move to online education in February-March was achieved more rapidly than many expected, with the sometimes brilliant improvisation of new platforms and local developments, but provision has been inevitably uneven and no higher education system can be confident that it has solved problems of inequality of access to the Internet and online learning devices, especially the unequal distribution of computers. Many systems have moved to hybrid forms of delivery in which enhanced online activity is combined with managed face to face classes, which again has generated creative new approaches. However, in countries where the pandemic continues to be active, provision is subject to sudden changes. Meanwhile teaching and welfare loads have ballooned, and there is considerable concern about particular groups of students who are especially at risk or under provided for under pandemic conditions.
What is happening with teaching and learning in the UK, with a student population of record size in varying circumstances in and out of lock-down, in the most challenging year in the higher education sector that anyone can remember? The webinar brings together three UK-based experts in the provision of, and research on, student learning in the Covid-19 era.
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Kyungmee Lee is a Lecturer in the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University, and co-Director of the Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning. Her research targets the intersection of online education, higher education, and international education. Taking up sociocultural learning theories, she has investigated diverse aspects of online higher education: both discourses and realities. Her current project focuses on the academic and social experiences of the international cohort of online doctoral students and educational professionals in taught PhD programmes. She has recently written an opinion piece on “value for money” debate around online learning for the Conversation.
Dr Ben Williamson is a Chancellor’s Fellow based at the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on digital technologies and education policy, with recent projects on automation in HE and the role of the education technology industry during the Covid-19 pandemic. Ben is the author of Big Data in Education: The digital future of learning, policy and practice, editor of the journal Learning, Media and Technology, and maintains the research blog Code Acts in Education.
Naomi Winstone is a cognitive psychologist specialising in the processing and impact of instructional feedback and the influence of dominant discourses of assessment and feedback in policy and practice on the positioning of educators and students in feedback processes. Naomi is a Reader in Higher Education and Director of the Surrey Institute of Education at the University of Surrey, UK. She is also an Honorary Associate Professor in the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University, Australia. Naomi is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a UK National Teaching Fellow.
