COVID-19 Impact on Undergraduate Teaching: Medical Radiation Science Teaching Team Experience

Currie, Geoffrey; Hewis, Johnathan; Nelson, Tarni; Chandler, Amanda; Nabasenja, Caroline; Spuur, Kelly; Barry, Kym; Frame, Nigel; Kilgour, Andrew

The COVID-19 crisis has caused a number of significant challenges to the higher education sector. Universities worldwide have been forced to rapidly transition to online delivery, working at home, and disruption to research while concurrently facing the longer-term impacts in institution financial reform. Here, the impact of COVID-19 on academic staff in the medical radiation science (MRS) teaching team at Charles Sturt University are explored. While COVID-19 imposes potentially the greatest challenge many of us will experience in our personal and professional lifetimes, it also affords the opportunity to objectively re-evaluate and, where appropriate, re-design learning and teaching in higher education. Technology has allowed rapid assimilation to online learning environments with additional benefits that allows flexible, mobile, agile, sustainable, culturally safe and equitable learning focussed educational environment in the post-COVID-19 “new normal”.