Sustaining Higher Education Learning in Australia: A Study of Tertiary Music Teachers During the Pandemic

Introduction

The impact of COVID-19 in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) has seen thousands of students experience significant disruption to their studies affecting “1.6 billion learners in more than 190 countries and all continents” (United Nations, 2020, p. 2). Despite lengthy lockdowns and various government restrictions around the globe HEIs pressed on with business as usual. Universities around the world experienced significant reduction in student enrolments (Marinoni et al., 2020). This was similar in Australia where international students from China, India, Nepal, Vietnam, and Malaysia contributed close to AU$32 billion in revenue to the country’s economy (Australian Government, 2022). The accepted lecture, tutorial/seminar mode of teaching, combined with staff reduction, inability to travel (locally, nationally, and internationally) caused an immediate recalibration in HEIs. To maintain enrolments, HEIs had to provide continuity of remote delivery, offering diverse and flexible learning arrangements (Ng & Renshaw, 2020).

To sustain teaching and learning during the pandemic HEIs in Australia employed a range of digital technologies and Information Communication Technology (ICT) to improve collaboration and facilitate faster information transfer between teaching staff and students. This usage by HEIs resonates with UNESCOs (2021) definition of ICT as a “diverse set of technological tools and resources used to transmit, store, create, share or exchange information”. During this time many staff lacked the necessary guidance or skills to manage the combination of ICT, technologies and online learning during the pandemic (Calderón -Garrido & Gustems-Carnicer, 2021). As classes were taught remotely from March 2020 in Australia, the sudden impact of working from home had a myriad effect on learning and teaching (Hobbs & Hawkins, 2020). HEIs were committed to preparing graduates with digital and social-emotional competencies to meet the demands of an ever changing landscape, reimaging the shape, purpose, and use of physical spaces to offer new ways of digital delivery. Considering this, HEIs were confronted with the sudden change to online teaching in different ways (Merrick, 2020). For some institutions, the shift was substantial, with changes in curriculum design and strategies to enable social connection emerging as graduate programs were reenvisaged (Crawford et al., 2020). It became apparent that many HEIs were underprepared for this rapid shift and the challenge of motivating students to engage online (Marinoni et al., 2020).

The authors are tertiary music educators based in Melbourne, in February 2021 they sought and received ethical approval from Deakin University’s Human Ethics Committee to undertake a wider study Re-imagining the future: Music teaching and learning, and ICT in blended environments in Australia. For the first phase of the study, peak Australian music organisations were emailed the Plain Language Statement (PLS) which informed them of the study. The PLS included an organisational consent form to recruit members for the study. Working with music organisations provided an easy and quick way to collect information from music teachers as they served as a purposive sample in Australia (Gay et al., 2012; Wisker, 2008). Once organisations consented, members were emailed the PLS and a link to participate in the anonymous online survey.

A mixed methodology was employed that allowed participants to respond to a range of quantitative and qualitive survey questions. This was trialled by music educators (early childhood, primary, secondary, and tertiary) and tested for ambiguity (Cohen et al., 2017; Creswell & Clark, 2017). Closed questions included: ticking a box for: teaching location, qualification, age, gender, year level taught, full-time, part-time, permission to teach, various levels of confidence and motivation (using a rating scale), and technology training. Examples of open-ended questions included: