Reflections on Faculty Responses to Being Required to Teach Online

Abstract

The reluctance of some University lecturers to embrace change in their pedagogy over time is well doc-umented and reported. Academics tend to frame issues relating to learning, teaching and in terms of their own discipline – their own “tribe and territory” and their own experience as learners.. This strong disciplinary focus and past experience can inhibit acceptance of change. Academics work within the dominant discourse about teaching in their discipline and may be antipathetic to staff development, advice, theory and research that are not discipline based. In this paper ten archetypes of responses to this challenge are described together with three significant implications for training, assessment and leadership. The challenge of responding to the need for social distancing has been interpreted by some as “taking my face to face class online” as opposed to designing an engaged learning for an online learning community. Some do want to change and explore new ways of teach-ing and learning and the potential that technology can afford for engaged and authentic student learning. But most do not.