Talking Teaching Under Lockdown

By Angela Daly - Posted on 6 May 2020

The University of Melbourne Faculty of Arts podcast series ‘This Teaching Life’ interviewed me recently and have just published the podcast. It was a pleasure to talk to Dr Wajeehah Aayeshah, researcher and curriculum designer in the University of Melbourne. Wajeehah is also a former colleague and old friend of mine from when we both worked at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.

This Teaching Life is a podcast “where colleagues gather to chat about teaching experiences, discuss innovations, and exchange tips and ideas in their practice”. Unsurprisingly, the novelties and challenges of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic is a major current theme for the podcast. I was asked to share my experiences of working remotely since Strathclyde stopped face-to-face teaching in March. Unlike Australian universities, which started their academic year mid-pandemic, I only had three classes left to teach when the university closed. We have a lot to share about our experiences as staff and students during this unprecedented period and in particular we have a lot to learn from our colleagues’ experiences Down Under in Australia and New Zealand in starting a new academic year online and at a distance.

In the podcast, I talk about how I have found the period and our transition to online teaching and remote working. In particular I talk about the fully online, distance learning LLM in Internet Law & Policy/IT & Telecoms Law which I direct - and which hasn’t changed drastically during this period as it’s already an online degree designed to be delivered at distance. I also speak about my research on privacy, data protection and surveillance, which is highly relevant to governments’ and corporations’ digital responses to COVID-19, such as the controversial NHSX app the UK government plans to roll out while the Scottish Government has announced its own ‘web-based digital tool’ for contact tracing.

You can listen to the episode here: https://player.whooshkaa.com/episode/645948

You can find the This Teaching Life podcast series here: https://player.whooshkaa.com/shows/this-teaching-life