We close on Friday: a case study pivot to online learning and beyond at a UK higher education institution

In this chapter we focus on our experiences of guiding an institution through the change to online learning and beyond into a major change to the institution’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) during COVID-19. This study is presented in three parts: firstly, how we reacted to the unique challenges of the pandemic; secondly, how we took advantage of the pedagogical disturbance to develop our staff colleagues’ capacity to innovate and develop new pedagogies; thirdly, as part of a change project, to improve pedagogy the implementation of an upgraded VLE. Using data drawn from the three phases, we worked with participants to reflect upon the organisational, personal and pedagogical impact of both pre- and mid-COVID. Findings indicate a need for a flexible approach to experimentation with online pedagogies, a stricter form of evaluation, and finally to find ways to balance out the workload impact on colleagues.