Online pedagogy: a changing higher education pedagogy and an emerging lecturer habitus(?)

 

 

Lunga Xolisa Mantashe

University of Fort Hare, South Africa

 

 

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ABSTRACT

This study explored how the shift to online pedagogy has shaped lecturer dispositions and practices for a post-COVID-19 era, including whether their practices during the national lockdowns could be conceptualised as temporary coping mechanisms or as an adoption of new practices related to effective modes of online teaching. Bourdieu's theory of human practices was employed to facilitate the exploration. The theory privileges the weight of past practices on agents while permitting incremental changes in such practices, depending on the flexibility and/or rigidity of a human habitus. Six lecturers were interviewed using semi-structured interviews to collect data. It was found that despite showing flexible and reflective dispositions regarding post-COVID-19 online teaching, participants were still in their exploratory phase in respect of teaching practices with online technology tools. An explicit institutional, reflective training process is suggested to help evolve in lecturers the habitus and cultural capital necessary to facilitate teaching with technology.

Keywords: online pedagogy, lecturer habitus, instant feedback, bodily invisibility

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INTRODUCTION

In 2020, the world changed dramatically due to the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Overnight, COVID-19 and the subsequent global lockdowns forced universities to shift their teaching from face-to-face to online platforms (Blume, 2020). Teaching online offered a solution to lockdowns (Dhawan, 2020) on a temporary basis (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2021). Strictly speaking, the solution became Emergency Remote Teaching [ERT] (Hodges et al., 2020). ERT did not represent a conceptual shift to online platforms per se but a makeshift to save the academic year at the time (Hodges et al., 2020; Cutri, Mena & Whiting, 2020). Such makeshift decisions had implications for lecturer dispositions with regard to teaching strategies.

Bourdieu (2000: 149) theorises that:

the existence of a disposition... is a basis for predicting that, in all conceivable circumstances of a particular type, a particular set of agents will behave in a [regular] way.

On the strength of this theorisation, the change to online teaching practices displaced lecturer pedagogic habitus to a significant extent. This study was concerned with exploring the dispositions of lecturers and the latter's navigation of the change and transition from face-to-face to online teaching strategies. Given that lecturers were obliged to use technology in their teaching practices for two academic calendar periods, the study predicted the possibility of adapting to online pedagogies post-COVID-19 using the data collected. Essentially, this prediction was made on the strength of having explored the following questions:

1. How did the mandatory shift to online pedagogy shape lecturer dispositional schemata for a post-COVID-19 era?

2. How should the involuntary negotiation and navigation of online pedagogy by lecturers be conceptualised:

a. As a temporary coping mechanism by a malleable and creative habitus?

b. Or as an adoption of new notions about what is appropriate and effective modes of teaching and learning?

 

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The study was framed through the work of Pierre Bourdieu. The sociologist, through the use of the concept of 'habitus', is concerned with showing that human practices tend to be repeated, because they have become deeply embedded in the human thought, behaviour, and action (Bourdieu, 2000). He defines habitus as 'embodied history, internalised as second nature and so forgotten as history' (Bourdieu, 1990: 56). It is produced by either 'birth or by a slow process of co-option and initiation which is equivalent to a second birth' (Bourdieu, 1990: 68).

This definition foregrounds quasi-consciousness and imperceptibility of the process of acquisition of a habitus. Indeed, when immersed in the field of its operation, habitus operates below the full conscious, deliberative, and calculative knowledge of an agent (Bourdieu, 1990). For the study, it helps underline the years in which lecturers were immersed in the old practice and the difficulty they faced during the COVID-19 crisis. Bourdieu says that habitus does not radically change when change occurs but evolves over time in response to new situations (Bourdieu, 2000). Given that the lockdowns were temporary, the study explored what was likely to happen to online teaching when lockdowns no longer existed.

Although no fixed timelines are fixed for the emergence of new dispositions, Bourdieu's (1990: 68) notion of 'practical sense' or 'feel of the game' constitutes a prerequisite criterion for immersion of agents in particular practices. However, the period of the lockdowns could not be important in itself, but only insofar as lecturers were willing to overturn weighty, old pedagogic practices and use the critical moment to explore and transition to new practices.

Hence, this paper entailed the consideration of most lecturers who had no history of teaching online, with technological tools at university. It took an initial view based on the theoretical framework that lecturers would have the tendency to prefer face-to-face teaching and learning. This was largely due to their lack of competence and knowledge (cultural capital) of working with technologies in the past. However, the results show that this was not necessarily the case.

 

LITERATURE REVIEW

The review of literature reveals challenges and opportunities to online pedagogy. It also engages the current empirical results relevant to intricacies involved in a lecturer habitus adapting to the use of technology and online pedagogies.

Challenges to online pedagogy

The key challenge is that higher education institutions in South Africa are not adequately prepared to teach using online platforms (Mashau & Nyawo, 2021; Czerniewicz, 2020). Also, increasing student engagement as demanded by online pedagogy remains a challenge (Dhawan, 2020). This arises from pedagogies that fail, amongst other things, to put the student at the centre of learning (Dlamini & Ndzinisa, 2020), lack of access to verbal cues (see Sathik & Jonathan, 2020) and the integrity of online assessments (Cutri et al., 2020).

Barriers to transition to online pedagogies

The first barrier concerns Instructional Design (ID). Deducing from various definitions, ID is a 'complex process' that integrates 'lesson preparation', pedagogic strategies, and student learning with 'instructional development' (Branch & Dousay, 2015: 15). For design to lead to successful online learning, it should also be a construction of both lecturers and students (Rapanta et al., 2020). ID must be aligned and respond to multivariate, complex educational contexts (Branch & Dousay, 2015).

Context includes, amongst others, student cognitive abilities; student socioeconomic circumstances; available infrastructure and inherent its inherent possibilities; cultural and social capital of students and lecturers to navigate online teaching and learning; and their embodied pedagogic dispositions with regard to the use of online platforms. Thus, the move to online platforms foregrounds careful design of online materials and activities (Rapanta et al., 2020; Dlamini & Ndzinisa, 2020).

In traditional face-to-face teaching, the notion of design does not hold centre stage and general use in higher education (Goodyear, 2015). During lockdowns, ID was neglected due to the speed of the shift to online platforms, thereby affecting proper training on ID principles for online and remote teaching and learning (Dlamini & Ndzinisa, 2020). Apart from design issues, findings from surveyed research studies reveal perceptual and practical barriers to transition to online teaching in that 'many faculty members and students do not see the value of fully online learning' (Hew et al., 2020:2). Despite evidence to the contrary, online learning is perceived to have low quality in comparison to face-to-face (Hodges et al., 2020).

It is said that students do not concentrate and interact with each other sufficiently online (Ulla & Perales, 2021). Lecturers have an impulse to want to go back to face-to-face teaching (Cutri et al., 2020). A large majority of lecturers do not want to exclusively teach online, even when they are happy with the training and technical support received (Pomerantz & Brooks, 2017). Finally, age also plays a crucial role. Older lecturers, for example, would likely prefer face-to-face to which they are accustomed (Pomerantz & Brooks, 2017). However, the claim neither takes account of the historical involvement of old lecturers with technology nor the individual rigidity or flexibility which Bourdieu considers vital for adapting to new circumstances.

Institutional and individual habitus in the changed circumstances

While change of lecturer dispositions can happen, there are difficulties associated with change in pedagogical practices (Feldman & Fataar, 2017). The difficulties can further be associated with the durability of the yet malleable habitus (Bourdieu, 1990). Durability gives weight to past practices; malleability gives credence to creativity of the habitus under new institutional conditions.

During lockdowns, it is reported that lecturers and tutors continued to use outdated pedagogic approaches, failing to adapt to the changing times (Nyawo, 2021). Pedagogic possibilities inherent in the university technological systems were not yet sufficiently tapped into (Dlamini & Ndzinisa, 2020). This was so because navigating online pedagogy requires the development of 'concepts that reflect underlying pedagogic principles' (Blume, 2020: 891) and a shift of lecturer dispositions to multivariate pedagogic practices (Dlamini & Ndzinisa, 2020).

Change has to be implanted in the habitus to ease integration of technological, online tools into pedagogic practices (Tarling & Ng'ambi, 2016). This further implies that lecturers must reflect critically on the assumptions they hold about the pedagogic processes in which they engage (Dlamini & Ndzinisa, 2020). Although useful for reflective purposes, dialogue about classroom practices, suggested by Ulla and Perales (2019), appears to elevate agency over structural and cultural constraints, in neglect of the entrenched nature of lecturers' view of teaching with (and embodying new) online pedagogies.

Evidently, the shift to online pedagogies demands adequate capacitation of lecturers with Information Communication Technology (ICT) skills (Nyawo, 2021) and the provision of training to help lecturers adapt to the demands of teaching in an online platform (Ulla & Perales, 2019). Knowledge of technology is not sufficient, nor is it synonymous with capacity to teach with it. Lecturers should move beyond using technology to teach in their traditional ways (Dlamini & Ndzinisa, 2020) to its use as a critical instrument that transforms the ways of teaching with it.

 

METHODOLOGY

A qualitative case study was conducted with the use of semi-structured interviews of six purposively chosen lecturers in one university in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Given their flexibility, semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. It allowed the researcher to ask participants probing questions in order to extract rich data (Ruslin et al., 2022). Pseudonyms were used to report findings and discussions to protect the identity of participants.

Data were analysed using an inductive approach and thematic analysis. The analysis technique employed a latent approach to analyse data, focusing also on underlying meanings (Braun & Clarke, 2021; 2012). Thematic analysis is often used to identify and make sense of common, important experiences, behaviours, and actions amongst participants insofar as these are related to the purpose of a research study (ibid.). The study generated themes after a process of transcription, coding, and classification of data. The generation of themes was dependent on the frequency with which certain data sets were found (ibid.). The themes identified were important for illumination of the research question (Braun & Clarke, 2012).

Inductive thematic analysis was used during the identification of themes to avoid rigidly regarding as important only data reflecting exactly the research question; data drove the generation of themes (Varpio et al., 2019) and the researcher's worldview did not stand in the way of themes appearing from data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). While Bourdieu's framework largely featured in the interpretation of data, it was brought to bear without necessarily forcing data to conform to it in any blinkered way instead, data were allowed allow to lead as it was itself led by theory.

 

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

The disjuncture between the old habitus and the demands presented by the lockdowns are summed up thus: 'where there is no other way, you make the way, and you embrace it' (Rachel). 'Lecturers had to 'swim or sink and figure out a way to do it' (Liziwe).

They had to invent and adapt new (and nuanced) online pedagogic practices and strategies to address physical invisibility of students from lectures and the absence of instant feedback from students and overcome student engagement challenges. However, this was not a wholly successful process, as the results and discussion show below.

Reflection and practice

Prior to the pandemic, the department under study had been planning and reflecting on the need to use library 'recording facilities to try and do a few online lectures' (Sarah & Chloe).

This was largely sparked by the South African Institute of Charted Accountants (SAICA). SAICA's 2025 Competency Framework demands that students have digital competencies, thereby implying upskilling lecturers on digital skills (Sarah). This SAICA-induced change perhaps explains why no participant fundamentally opposed online teaching per se.

All reported plans above did not materialise because the uptake of technology use for teaching was completely undeveloped and almost non-existent prior to the lockdowns, consistent with the view that where there is an uptake, existing technologies are not sufficiently exploited during teaching (Bagarukayo & Kalema, 2015; Van de Heyde & Siebrits, 2019; Mashau & Nyawo, 2021; Nyawo, 2021). Blackboard was rather used mainly to deposit and communicate information to students.

Accounting for the above is a habitus-bounded imagination. The latter explains why Laura said that online teaching 'did not seem like something that would happen soon, easy, and quickly' despite characterising herself as 'a technology junkie'. It was her categories of thought that prevented her and others from seeing the possibility of online teaching happening despite reflecting and contemplating about it as departmental academics. Moreover, like many others, she had no history of teaching online and therefore had 'undeveloped' ideas about it; she had been 'toying with the idea of a flipped classroom' and the need for 'embedding multimedia using other available resources' before COVID-19. Interestingly, in the corporate sector Laura worked for, technology was embedded in the work she performed.

Her contemplative disposition and inaction illuminate the difference between familiarity with technology and actual knowledge and application of online pedagogic potentialities inherent in technological tools. The latter requires the possession of the Bourdieuan cultural capital and 'practical sense' peculiar to teaching with technology, which many participants did not have. In other words, dispositions can remain potential if they are not applied in real practice (Bourdieu, 2000).

Liziwe, on the other hand, had a history of using technology. She used blended learning in her previous university, using technology tools like 'PowerPoint with a voiceover recording' to teach 'complex concepts'. She also taught a Sage Business Cloud course which embedded technology and was completely done using technological material. Unlike Laura, she had practical knowledge and had continued to use technology partly to teach difficult concepts rather than an entire course. She appears to have been dissuaded by the inadequacy of technical infrastructure. In her estimation, even Blackboard had no sufficient space to upload large videos. Besides, the document camera, which all staff members in the department in question received a few months after the start of the lockdowns, was not available to all university lecturers. This validates the view that institutions have a responsibility to embed pedagogical affordances in their online teaching infrastructure (Dlamini & Ndzinisa, 2020).

Lecturer training

Participants, as literature confirms, raised the problem of training in online teaching. Although most participants thought training was enough under the circumstances, Nomsa believed it was too basic and did not delve into different teaching strategies for different courses or modules with online tools. Moreover, there was no standard institutional guidance on 'software to use' and 'how to utilise [those] software' (Sarah), leaving everyone to self-search solutions. Literature confirms the necessity to train staff in ICT skills (Nyawo, 2021), ID related processes (Dlamini & Ndzinisa, 2020), and to help lecturers adapt their teaching strategies to an online context (Ulla & Perales, 2019).

Results show that specific lecturers take personal initiative to train themselves in online teaching when they feel inadequately prepared. However, this seems to be regulated by the individual history and inclination towards the use of technology to teach. Fascinated with online teaching, for example, Rachel decided to complete a course on teaching with technology to enhance her pedagogic practice. She had grown up in an environment that embedded a flexible disposition on her.

In the light of the objective, institutional and individual constraints and inherent abilities above, the actual practices of lecturers were explored.

ID for online teaching

Online teaching was 'still relatively a young thing' (Sarah). Thus, all the lecturers who had a reflective and flexible disposition were not completely successful in either design or delivery of courses online. 'Redesign [of] the material' by Sarah was done in the context of ERT due to the context in which it was taking place. Laura captures the design problem well:

I think we've done a lot of replicating what we did venue based; we have just done it in an online environment - and we haven't necessarily adapted it for an online environment. So, we still teach them, and then we have tutorial, and then they have to hand it in. We have just done it all electronically instead of physically.

Under normal institutional conditions, it takes a year and a half to design and deliver courses online (Hodges et al., 2020). However, the institution in question had not yet engaged 'thoroughly with what it means to have an online course' (Laura). That is why Sarah, projecting the future of online teaching, talked of the need for research on designing material for online teaching, in ways that increase student engagement and interaction. The implication is that left only to the whims of lecturers, design and delivery will continue to take on a fragmented and incremental evolution. This is in line with the never radical but small changes in the lecturer habitus, especially with the university now reverting to only 30% online and 70% face-to-face teaching in 2023 onwards, as opposed to fully or largely online teaching.

Participants reported somewhat significant changes in assessment approaches to avert cheating (Chloe & Sarah). These included continuous assessment, increasing the number of assessments and making them knowledge-application based. Sarah thought this change accounted for low pass rates in her course. However, there were concerns about the integrity of the assessments, a view shared by Cutri et al. (2020). Despite efforts to quell it, participants all agreed that cheating still continued because the university did not have sufficient infrastructure to invigilate assessments at the time of data gathering. The possibility that it may not even be a registered student who is writing the assessment left Nomsa feeling unsure about accepting online teaching. Even final assessment results could not be deemed sufficient evidence of learning because of the possibility of cheating by students (Maqableh, Alzyoud, & Zraquo, 2022).

Online pedagogic practices

Results show that the institution was not ready to offer online teaching (also see Mashau & Nyawo, 2021; Czerniewicz 2020). Consequently, lecturers had to move 'out of [comfort spaces' (Liziwe) and 'embrace the technologies that... were there and that people were slow to adopt' (Laura). Embracing new practices is possible concretely within the constraints of the habitus of lecturers. In relation to practice, Bourdieu does not think of 'the degree to which one can abandon oneself to automatisms of practical sense' in a rigid way. Instead, he foregrounds 'situation..., area of activity, and position occupied in social space' (Bourdieu, 2000: 163). Practices of the lecturers discussed below confirm this theorisation.

Trial and error

Through trial and error, participants explored different pedagogic aspects of technological tools -integration of videos in the delivery, use of PowerPoint slides with voiceovers, and implementation of more application-based assessments. They developed their own video lectures at first, changed their delivery approaches on the basis of student comments and topics at hand (such as theoretical, calculation-based topics), and students could request a slide presentation on a document camera video presentation (Liziwe). All these new practices came about through a challenging transition and reflect a reflective, flexible disposition on the part of lecturers in question.

In her trial and error, Sarah started by making two hours long lectures and talked too fast during lectures because she was used to not doing the 'talking while writing' on the board, in order to slow her pace down to 'help students... keep up'. After reflectively discovering these pedagogic dynamics, and through her informal chat with her students, she started breaking topics into sub-topics, delivering them in less time, and regulating her delivery pace. Moreover, she would pre-record short videos for students to independently go through and interact with before doing 'live work example' five days later.

Sarah, an 'old school lecturer' who 'likes chalk and talk', was uncomfortable at first because she was 'not a fan' of technology and avoided a computer if she could. But over time, she became comfortable because she had 'done it so often'. She was also scared of making mistakes in recorded lectures, which she thought could not be corrected once put out there for the 'world to see it'. The result confirms the link between repeating similar actions and the possibility of successful transition over the period in which the habitus is itself undergoing transformation and immersion.

But this link also shows that the duration of repetition of practices should be enough to avert the risk of reverting to 'old school' pedagogies for the likes of Sarah. For example, all lecturers interviewed did not favour a completely online teaching approach (see also Pomerantz & Brooks, 2017) for any number of reasons. Sarah started having 'supplemental contact classes' when lockdown rules were relaxed. She was not satisfied with the level of student interaction, not even with the outcome of break-away groups in the Blackboard platform. Student interaction and concentration is inadequate in an online platform (Ulla & Parales, 2021) but with effective use of online tools and creative pedagogies, this can be overcome.

Student feedback

All participants reported that student feedback provided during online teaching did not easily facilitate effective teaching and learning. It was 'difficult... to replicate in the online environment' (Nomsa). There was no 'instant lopper feedback' (Liziwe). Instant feedback helps lecturers instantly adjust their pedagogic processes to the demands of the moment (Liu & Long, 2014), without which some various pedagogic dimensions attached to it get lost. Liziwe captured what other participants shared thus:

You can never replace the magic that happens in the physical venue. There is an instant lopper feedback that happens. I know when the students have missed the concept. I know if they are confused. I can see. there is just a. how do you say it. an environment that is available to us in the physical environment. that is difficult to replicate in the online environment.

A physical classroom appears to be more than a mere site of practice for agents. It is also a field in which multiple pedagogic possibilities inhabit and are found and intuitively exploited to facilitate teaching and learning. But it is evident that they are not easy to articulate in words. Participants call them with words such as energy, magic, light bulb and the like, so that the alternative (virtual, online) space lacks the mystery of the physical classroom. The inability to observe feedback and adjust to feedback in real time begged the question; how did lecturers adapt their pedagogic strategies to gain feedback from students?

Replicative, adjustive pedagogic practices

Since individuals have a creative and malleable habitus (Bourdieu, 2000), participants were asked how they adapted in the online classroom the elements they considered important to facilitate teaching and learning. They reported that they used polls, chat box, quizzes, prompted thumbs-up, and other emoticons. Thumbs-ups were prompted from students to indicate that they understood the content of lectures (Jane) or thumbs-down to indicate the opposite (Chloe). Polls were used to find out who was keeping up or left behind during lectures, to gauge response rates and the rate of correct answers. Emoticons were used to communicate feelings and at times were intentionally prompted by Jane to estimate whether students were keeping up.

There were mixed reactions about the use of chat box. Rachel believed that students were honest in answering her polls. Sarah said that some students sometimes consulted her after online lectures and admitted to having claimed to hear her in the chat box because 'they don't want [their answers] recorded that they don't know what's going on.'

Without being certain, this may be due to differences in class size and levels of study. It may also be that students in the first year (in Rachel's case) feel uncomfortable to admit this as continuing students do, and that the latter students do admit because they exercise their agency in ways, they feel favourable to their learning. The chat box tool was also used to gauge how many students were actively involved during class time (Lunathi). Rachel used them to allow students to engage with her and between and amongst themselves. These new practices reveal that participants adapted new ways of gaining feedback. The emerging question related to the navigation of teaching in the absence of the physical body and implicated theorising the unconscious, communicative body as an entity with pedagogic consequences.

Physical invisibility and pedagogic consequences

During lockdowns, lecturers were mostly speaking to blank screens, leading to the 'loss of human touch' (Laura). This physical invisibility meant that the environment available to assess student personalities and demeanours made it hard to adapt relevant pedagogic approaches during teaching. For example, in physical lectures, lecturers could easily detect students suffering from 'social issues... which they cannot deal with' (Lunathi & Nomsa). However, virtual platforms also provided aspects that affirm humanising pedagogy (Nomsa, Lunathi, Liziwe) - lecturers could have constant chats with students via social media, potentially making room for those shy to talk face-to-face with lecturers during and after lectures. Furthermore, there was a loss of human relations which usually evolves in the physical classroom.

Physical classrooms are critical for developing understanding of lecturer demeanour and the latter's pedagogic dimension. In this context, Lunathi summarised the difference between face-to-face and online teaching:

When you are in a [physical] class environment, because then the students are exposed to you, they know you; they have studied you. So, they know they will know how to approach you, they will know how to kind of interact with you, because they have that experience. They have seen your reaction; they've seen your attitude. They've seen you and they understand even the language that you talk in class. But in online environment, students don't know that. They don't know you; they are like new students to you. So, even if you're joking or you're being hard, but not hard in a bad way, they can't distinguish because they don't know you.

Online space makes misunderstanding and confusion likely in connection to the above. An intended joke with pedagogic intent may be perceived negatively by a student who is not otherwise attuned to a lecturer's demeanour to which Lunathi refers. Thus, bodily visibility appears to create an entry point into the practical knowledge of the mundane but important pedagogic behaviours of a lecturer.

Students learn by their own unconscious effort to 'know' and 'understand' the 'attitude' and 'language' of lecturers through the latter's bodily posture. This is incorporated in and consistent with the language they 'talk in class' or its communicative nuances as implied by Lunathi. It includes its cultural and professional pedagogic value (respect for time, participation, discipline, and the like) and its nuanced strategies (jokes, sarcasm understood as such by students) to elicit student engagement and learning. Since students and lecturers have disproportionate capitals due to their different hierarchical positions in the field, the physical classroom seems to mediate the disproportion in quite useful ways.

The second finding relates to the participants' lack of access to non-verbal cues (bodily gestures) that serve as instant feedback and communicative means. Non-verbal cues, which also communicate student emotions are most frequently used and are crucial to communicating the level of understanding during lectures (Sathik & Jonathan, 2013). Lecturers use students' physical bodies to keep record of who is present. Moreover, they use them to adapt teaching strategies (Maqableh et al., 2022). A lecturer's bodily movement, such as walking around to see students work during 'class activities' (Nomsa), summoning up their attention, and sizing up their expressions through his/her own expressions - which also helps lecturers see 'students at the back [of the classroom] that normally sneak' (Liziwe) -communicates not just lecturer physical presence in class but its meaning to students, that 'there is nowhere to hide' because Liziwe will possibly 'walk right next to me [a student]' to elicit participation.

Chloe even uses the colour of the clothes students are wearing during lectures and clusters them accordingly to elicit participation in her class on particular days. Thus, physical classrooms carry pedagogic possibilities that are discovered by lecturers either intuitively and or reflectively. Through the body and its expressions, student cognition can be instantly evaluated. Lecturers are able to see learning in real time - the 'light bulb' (Jane), 'the magic that happens' (Liziwe), the indescribable 'energy' that drives interaction in class (Sarah) and the extent of attentiveness of students in class.

Liziwe, like all of the participants, thought there was lack of student participation and 'did not know what to do' about it because her pre-lockdown strategies or incentives (giving away chocolates, sweets, etc.) used to elicit student participation could not be practicable. Sarah said that making students engage required serious effort, even in a physical classroom environment, consistent with Dhawan's (2020) assertion that eliciting student engagement is a challenge. On the contrary, Rachel, who teaches a large class of about 300 students, felt that student engagement 'exceeded all [her] expectations', perhaps because they 'feel safer behind the device'.

Sarah reported a 'loss of peer-to-peer engagement', where students were deprived of the deep learning that occurs while 'debating a point' in a face-to-face space. Rachel tried to use discussion groups in this regard, without success. This could be due to a lack of student historical culture of engagement prior to and once in university. Engagement also arises from embedding student independence and discipline, which all participants agreed was wanting and yet critical for effective online teaching and learning. In hindsight, Rachel thought that in future, marks could be used to incentivise students to engage each other in the discussion board. Her ideas seemed to form as a result of accumulating strategies in practice rather than merely in contemplation. This confirms the vitality of both practice and reflecting about it whilst in it and after it. As they had 'to make a way', lecturers had to find ways to adapt to the situation of bodily absence via, inter alia, verbal prompts to elicit some kind of participation via emoticons.

Prompted bodily behaviour

Effectively, bodily hexis, the site of incorporated history' (Thompson, 1991: 13; see also Bourdieu, 1984: 437), engrossed in the foregoing discussion, manifests behaviour that operates below consciousness. This warrants problematising the distinction between the natural, unprompted student bodily expression and the calling to conscious behaviour a representation of original, now unseen, bodily expression of students which Jane talks about in her adjustive pedagogic practice. The problem is that an original bodily (facial) expression is not called forth by the mind per se because it is automatic (Maqableh et al., 2022). Nor is it therefore recallable in its authentic, original form because it has already passed when prompted by a lecturer.

There are important implications if a bodily expression is theoretically recallable in its authentic sense: students who have a low opinion of themselves, arising from their low cultural capital embedded as part of their social and personal historical trajectory, may not use emoticons or words reflecting confusion or lack of understanding at the prompting of a lecturer, if they deem that to further lower their sense of self and confidence, perhaps because in a normal classroom situation, some students are already reluctant to express themselves (Abdulrahman, Bingol & Kara, 2022), as in an online class (Chloe), leaving a lecturer unsure about their extent of learning. Thus, Jane potentially receives inauthentic feedback, and she has no other mechanism to see the 'light bulb' in its original form as a confirmation of real learning.

 

CONCLUSION

The study reveals an evolving shift of lecturer habitus about how and where learning takes place. However, practices found do not yet reflect highly evolved online pedagogic approaches. To this extent, lecturer practices reflect a habitus with a combination of creative coping during lockdowns and exploratory practices post the lockdowns. The external demand by SAICA for students with digital acumen seems to be playing an additional role in shaping this exploratory habitus into the future. No fundamental, conscious change has taken place in ID in its relation to online teaching.

The institution under study is reverting to largely face-to-face teaching. This has one of the two opposite implications: 1) the possibility of neglecting the online dimension, or 2) allowing lecturers an opportunity, without pressure, to explore inherent pedagogic affordances in technological tools. The reversion also makes institutional training to facilitate the possibility of the latter implication necessary. The results reaffirm the view that training must seek to transform the lecturer habitus in such a way that it eases integration of technological, online tools into pedagogic processes (Tarling & Ng'ambi, 2016).

The focus of the training should be related to the way material is designed and course material split, written, prepared for delivery, and finally delivered (Feldman & Fataar, 2017), followed by reflection in the online pedagogic processes in order to make possible the redesign of the material and pedagogy (Goodyear, 2015) as informed by practice. It must be explorative in nature and be continuous, if online pedagogic practices are to concretise into the optimal use of inherent online pedagogic resources. The training must move beyond basics such as accessing, loading, creating or accessing links to addressing deeper issues raised by Nomsa.

The study shows that lecturers currently rely on various pedagogic tools to elicit participation, and deal with the absence of non-verbal cues. There is no certainty that these pedagogical strategies achieve the objective effectively. More specifically, it has been shown that student bodily invisibility during online classes presents problems for effecting teaching and authenticating lecturer-prompted responses from students. Further research that critically evaluates, specifically, the lecturer-student use of emoticons as an adaptive means to online teaching may shed more light on the extent of the success of these pedagogic devices.

Effectively, this study hints at the need to investigate whether pedagogic devices are embeddable in a way that is replicable of the physical environment in ways that evolve practices reflecting a new way of re-establishing the human touch that is somewhat lost, including new ways of seeing or experiencing the 'lightbulb' otherwise forgone in the online classroom.

 

REFERENCES

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Date of Submission: 27 January 2023
Date of Review Outcome: 16 July 2023
Date of Acceptance: 20 August 2023