The emergency pivot to wholly online teaching required by the covid-19 pandemic demonstrated that “needs must” can result in a renaissance of sorts in our approach to balancing tradition with flexibility.
Despite many challenges and a need to accept that done was better than perfect, post-pandemic higher education is arguably more active and inclusive due to a move away from traditional methods of teaching and assessment.
However, the longevity of these hard-won changes in both practice and attitudes is inconsistent. The difficulties of the return to on-campus teaching has for some resulted in a regression to orthodox mainstays of pre-pandemic higher education, particularly regarding the provision of lecture recordings.
In the immediate aftermath of the pivot-to-online, attitudes towards lecture recordings appeared to be moving in a positive direction. However, across the sector, the return to campus has been accompanied by problems with student engagement and photos of empty lecture theatres circulated academic social media. The implicit and explicit suggestion accompanying many of these images was that lecture recordings were the cause of the disengagement, rather than the fact that our students are still recovering from living and learning through a traumatic pandemic and that expectations on both sides of the lectern may have changed.
