Hamish Smith is an educator at heart who resides in tropical Dunedin. As Team Leader of the IT Certificate Programmes at Otago Polytechnic, his focus is very much on educational pathways and realising potential within learners. He mixes teaching with supporting the journey and is passionate about building a good future for IT Education.
At CITRENZ 2020 we described the experiences of teaching computing education during the Global Covid-19 pandemic.
Tertiary IT educators shared their experiences and approaches through prepared narratives of their teaching experiences and responded to a set of prompts designed to elicit reflection on themes including drivers, opportunities and challenges.
Three themes emerged from the narratives presented - tailoring engagement, pastoral care, and learning for the next disruption.
In this current paper we focus on those changes that have stuck - that have become embedded in practice. We describe a collective reflective process of exploring the themes and practices one year on from the initial disruption and ask “what has stuck?” And what has continued to change as the global pandemic continues to disrupt normal patterns of life and teaching?
Last year we concluded that there needs to be a focus on maintaining a positive approach to learning, even improved outcomes in some instances. We asked the question “how can we translate this positive approach into everyday practice so that relatively minor upsets that might otherwise derail someone’s learning and career can be seen as learning opportunities?” and we revisit this question with more reflection from the lived experience of our educators.
Samuel Mann (with Hamish Smith)