Supporting the Move to Post-Pandemic Blended Teaching: Reflections on a Professional Learning Short Course

Abstract

Emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic meant that universities had to reconsider ways of teaching. However, academics and students in South African higher education are still dealing with lingering challenges from the pandemic and are largely unfamiliar with good practices in blended learning and teaching. As learning and teaching support professionals working with academics in a specific faculty, our challenge was to consider how to best support academics to (re)design their courses, aligned to an institutional shift. The purpose of this case study is to critically reflect on the design and offering of a professional learning short course, within a specific faculty, to assist academics in adapting to blended teaching. The research objective is to determine how the professional learning course could support the needs of academics in moving to post-pandemic blended teaching. The paper makes use of a qualitative reflective approach, consisting of the reflections of two faculty learning and teaching support staff and evaluation data from academic staff participants. The paper argues that i) a contextualized and responsive approach to academic professional learning is required to better support academics in embedding different forms of learning and teaching; and ii) that academics require dedicated time and space for course (re)design.