Abstract

“The good teacher, one who is perceived as having particular personal qualities beyond simply exercising due care, appears to be the effective teacher by virtue of the personal not despite it.” (Clegg & Rowland, 2010, p.729)

This case study will track the development of our PGCert in Teaching for Learning in Higher Education from the first lockdown in April 2020 to the gradual return to face-to-face teaching in September 2021. This will be an open and honest account of our experience as Tutors on the course, challenges we faced, and the gradual steps we took to adapt our practice to the ever changing circumstances, both locally and globally. We will begin by giving a brief outline of the pre-pandemic programme. We will then go into more depth about how we managed online workshop weeks, tutorials, communities of learning, observations and feedback during periods of lockdown, and talk about the emotional, social, pedagogical and psychological ups and downs for us and our students!

In order to illustrate our points, we will select a few specific examples of how we adapted the programme, including rapidly upskilling Tutors to teach fully online, balancing synchronous and asynchronous tasks to best fit the needs of the programme and the students, and targeted support we put in place to enable each individual to succeed on their module within their own personal pandemic parameters.

A particular focus for the talk will be around the centrality of authenticity and personhood in our approach. As Clegg & Rowland highlight in the quotation above, and throughout their 2010 study into kindness in pedagogical practice, “kindness in teaching is both commonplace yet unremarked” (p.719); and having reflected on our experiences as a team, we feel strongly that our flexible, personal approach to the individual needs of our students over the last 18 months was a highly significant factor in the success of the PGCertTLHE. Programmes of this type offer a uniquely metacognitive perspective for all involved, which during this uncertain time resulted in a really positive, friendly and supportive community of practice between Tutors and students, who were frequently learning from one another. Once the initial shock of the emergency pivot to online learning had subsided, this actually felt like a really exciting and democratic space; we were all back to square one in a way, and being open and honest about this made us better teachers.

Finally, we will explain how we went from surviving to thriving, embedded the best practices developed during the pandemic, and reinstating those aspects of the programme we all missed so much when we were unable to see students face-to-face. This final part of the talk will be supported by feedback from students and our External Examiner, highlighting the strengths of the Programme as it now stands, what should be further embedded, and providing a good evidence-base for us to move forward with our new, adapted, more empathetic format and processes, which we are confident provides the best of both worlds - online and offline.

Expected outcomes of this session:

share our experiences in a ‘lessons learned’ format, which attendees can then reflect on in relation to their own context, in order to move forward with their programmes in a positive, empathetic, open-minded way.
by being honest about the challenges and mistakes made during a intensely difficult time for everyone, we hope that attendees will be able to empathise with the ‘journey’ we’ve been on, and join us in identifying the benefits that are starting to come out of this enforced and tumultuous period of pedagogical experimentation!

PowerPoint: Building Back Better, PGCertTLHE, UniofShef, KR.pptx