Report on COVID-19 experiences

The evaluation is based on a gathering of experiences and practices related to online teaching at Aarhus BSS during the lockdowns. The purpose of this report is to apply the experiences gained in relation to online teaching as guidelines for organising the future development of teaching activities at Aarhus BSS.

Aarhus University, including Aarhus BSS, is a campus university, and online teaching cannot replace in-person interaction between lecturers and students, nor between the students. But based on the experiences with new platforms as well as new forms of learning and collaboration, the faculty management team wishes to continue the development of teaching activities at Aarhus BSS.

This report is based on a gathering of experiences from the respective boards of studies at Aarhus BSS. Guided by a series of central questions, each board of studies has reported their thoughts on perspectives related to students and education. This provides some con-text to the lecturers’ individual experiences, which have been mapped using a survey sent to all lecturers at Aarhus BSS, asking them to evaluate teaching activities during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.

The report can be summarised as follows, clarifying what we have learned about teaching, supervision of student projects, and exams in online formats during the lockdowns.

• Aarhus University is a campus university, and as a general rule, teaching is based on in-person attendance. Online teaching and digital tools for teaching are utilised when these are deemed pedagogically relevant in relation to on-site teaching. A lecturer’s choice of online and on-site teaching reflects the form, content and teaching methods of different courses as well as the lecturer’s assessment of the specific learning situation, including the students’ well-being, learning and formative education as academics.
• Digital tools for teaching have gained ground and can be used as a supplement to conventional teaching formats in connection with in-person attendance, and select courses can be conducted by way of online teaching.
• Most lecturers find the hybrid teaching format, in which some students attend in person while the lesson simultaneously gets streamed to students participating online, less attractive.
• Lecturers find the quality of online teaching during lockdown to be the same or slightly lower. In particular, the quality is considered to be lower for the types of teaching activities which require interaction and dialogue.
• The quality of supervision in an online format is not considered to be lower. This suggests that online supervision processes are likely to become part of the norm.
• The experience of the quality of online exams as well as related opportunities and challenges, e.g. making the students feel comfortable in this situation, varies. There may be potential in using online exams when necessary.
• Dialogue and interaction with colleagues, the technical opportunities at AU and the lecturers’ own skills at using digital tools have had a crucial impact on the ability to conduct good and successful online teaching during lockdown.
• The lecturers generally agree that they have become: better equipped to conduct online teaching, more motivated to develop own on-site teaching with the use of digital tools, and more keen and motivated to conduct online teaching in general.
• Conducting teaching online has required hard work and determination, and the individual lecturers have taken great responsibility for improving the learning situation and the students’ outcome under the given circumstances.