How Covid-19 taught teachers how to teach online– a case study at the Open University of Mauritius

Abstract

Covid-19 marked the next year with unprecedented death tolls, millions of infected people, and the closure of almost all activities, including education. The UN 2020 report highlights that this pandemic has caused the largest disruption of education in history with a near-universal impact on learners and teachers around the world. A total lockdown was enforced in Mauritius from 19th March 2020. On the eve, the Open University of Mauritius academic staff got prepared to adopt online teaching without any time to train its 400 part-time tutors and time to think about tutor and learner coping challenges. Guidelines to conduct classes and access classes online were shared to teachers and learners respectively. The next day, the tutors were performing tasks in which most of them were not competent in. Along with teaching, they were pushed to learn different skills and methods to teach online and acquaint themselves with new tools. Yet, they did it and the syllabus coverage was not disrupted. This research was carried out with some of those part-time teachers, selected using purposive sampling from one particular programme. It adopts the narrative inquiry to gauge the driving forces that enabled teachers to teach under such circumstances, to be resilient, and to emerge as front-liners in education. The main findings indicate that it was a steep learning curve and daunting task leading to a sense of inadequacy as they successfully emerged to reach out to students and make a difference for them.

Keywords

• Resilience
• Online teaching
• Pandemic and online teaching

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