Digital disruption in the time of COVID-19: learning technologists’ accounts of institutional barriers to online learning, teaching and assessment in UK universities

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article reports on the qualitative findings of a UK-wide survey of learning technologists and their recent struggles of supporting attempts for digital resettlement of learning, teaching and assessment in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, underlining the frailties of universities in the terms of crisis management and cultural and organisational change. We find broad attitude change towards the role and contribution of learning technology and technologists by higher education staff, yet a sense that institutions are neither grasping nor pursuing the potential of digital affordances and remain focused on returning to ‘pre-COVID normality’. Furthermore, despite physical campus closures increasing demand on learning technologists, we see that their attempts for institutional boundary crossing remain frustrated.