A multi-institutional assessment of changes in higher education teaching and learning in the face of COVID-19

COVID-19 has had a profound influence on the conduct of teaching
and learning in higher education. Almost everywhere a sudden shift
occurred as educators transitioned courses from mainly face-to-face
teaching and learning to emergency remote instruction, mostly
conducted online. While details varied for individual faculty members,
institutions, and countries, all confronted new challenges. We
examine the immediate effects of COVID-19 on teaching and learning
in higher education. Our results are based on a sample of 309
courses, and the academic staff who taught them, at eight colleges
and universities varying in size and context across four continents.
We document first how institutions, and their instructors, varied in
their capacity for dealing with the rapidity of the COVID-19 teaching
and learning pivot. We further demonstrate that the suddenness of
the pandemic’s onset, and the quick response this demanded of
instructors, meant that there was little systematic patterning in how
academic staff were able to adapt – save for nimbleness. Rapidity of
response meant differences were far more idiosyncratic than they
were systematic, at least with respect to how individual faculty
responded.