Learning how to Teach
Teaching how to Learn

As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, most universities were closed in March 2020. Although many began partially re-opening from September, far-reaching restrictions, and any prediction as to when the situation will end seems to be hardly possible at the moment. The situation now (October 2020) seems to be worsening and in some areas teaching is slowly returning to be online. Teaching staff face significant challenges in adapting to new ways of teaching, maintaining adequate communication with students, supporting students’ learning and development, and assessing their progress.

Research conducted by UniPD during the lockdown (April 2020), using online questionnaires among university teaching staff, has shown a worrying gap between students’ adaptability to the online situation and that of teaching professionals. Most university students are digital natives, born and raised in a digital environment and therefore ready to shift and adapt to the digital context. On the other hand, the great majority of university teaching staff continued teaching as if they were in a classroom, through video and audio conferencing platforms and uploading traditional PDFs of texts and PowerPoints. Very few university professors tried to exploit the pedagogic benefits of online teaching and most complained about the lack of interaction with students, showing little knowledge of the wide number of interactive possibilities of online learning and assessment applications. Although many universities have well-established eLearning support services, most teachers admitted that they never undertook any kind of eLearning course and themselves acknowledged their lack of digital competencies. In addition, most saw the need for digital competence as limited to this specific current situation, rather than a long-term requirement.