How and why? Technology and practices used by university mathematics lecturers for emergency remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic led to closures of university campuses around the world from March 2020 onwards. With little or no time for preparation, lecturers turned to emergency remote teaching to continue to educate their students. Online mathematics education poses particular challenges in terms of both the hardware and software necessary for effective teaching, due to issues with mathematical symbols and notation, among others. In this paper, we report upon an online survey of 257 university mathematics lecturers across 29 countries, which explores what hardware and software they used for emergency remote teaching, for what purposes they used these and what training and support were made available to them at the time. We also consider what approaches they took to emergency remote teaching and what were their reasons for this.

Using teaching, social and cognitive presences as a lens to reflect on teaching a research module amid COVID-19

“…There is a growing body of research (Zalat, Hamed & Bolbol, 2020;Fihloinn & Fitzmaurice, 2021;Maphalala, Khumalo & Khumalo, 2021 examining how universities and lecturers transitioned to emergency remote teaching during COVID-19 lockdowns. A study conducted in 29 countries (such as Ireland, Spain, Germany and Portugal) exploring the type of hardware and software used for emergency remote teaching for mathematics in universities found that diverse communication systems such as Skype, Microsoft Teams, Blackboard Collaborate, Zoom and pre-recorded sessions were used (Fihloinn & Fitzmaurice, 2021).…”

“…There is a growing body of research (Zalat, Hamed & Bolbol, 2020;Fihloinn & Fitzmaurice, 2021;Maphalala, Khumalo & Khumalo, 2021 examining how universities and lecturers transitioned to emergency remote teaching during COVID-19 lockdowns. A study conducted in 29 countries (such as Ireland, Spain, Germany and Portugal) exploring the type of hardware and software used for emergency remote teaching for mathematics in universities found that diverse communication systems such as Skype, Microsoft Teams, Blackboard Collaborate, Zoom and pre-recorded sessions were used (Fihloinn & Fitzmaurice, 2021). Another study conducted in Egypt by Zalat, Hamed and Bolbol (2020) on the experiences of the academics during the COVID-19 pandemic reveals that synchronous (Zoom and Microsoft Teams) and asynchronous (recorded lectures, supportive videos, external links for recommended websites and electronic books) e-learning were used via a learning management system (LMS).…”

A Survey of Research on the Impact of the COVID-19 Closures on the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics at University Level in Ireland

“…More than 30% of the responses came from mathematicians working in Ireland. The results of the analysis of the survey data have been published in [24], [25], [26] and [27].…”

“…Others made short videos or pre-recorded entire lectures. Three quarters of the respondents to Ní Fhloinn and Fitzmaurice's survey included some form of live online session in their teaching, more than 60% made recordings and over 40% had both [26]. Lecturers who chose to have live sessions said that they did so in order to facilitate students' questions and to try to keep the format as close to that of their regular classes as possible.…”

“…Some of these were technical in nature; the main difficulty seemed to be the problem of replacing the ability to write mathematics on chalkboards or whiteboards during classes [24]. Ní Fhloinn and Fitzmaurice [26] found that the participants in their study were very resourceful in this regard, making use of tablets and stylus pens, visualisers, and even pen and paper recorded using their smartphones. Lecturers found it more difficult to translate other aspects of their teaching to the online setting however, with many reporting that conducting discussions or groupwork was problematic.…”