Emergency online teaching during COVID-19: A case study of Australian tertiary students in teacher education and creative arts

Emergency online teaching (EOT) due to COVID19 is different to well-planned online learning. This small-scale qualitative case study explored the impact of EOT upon undergraduate students in a regional university and a metropolitan university in Australia. Each university had some experience in online or distance learning, however, courses in this study were on-campus face-to-face courses in education and performing arts. Differentiating factors considered are location, course of study, year of study and innovations that arose during the EOT period. To assist in the interpretation of findings, this case study utilises the “emergency remote teaching environments'' (ERTE) developed by Whittle, Tiwari, Yan and Williams (2020) as an interpretive lens; and the findings of this study are also compared with the findings in the Australian Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TESQA) November 2020 report. Implications derived from the present case study for consideration in the development of future online learning include technology selected, upskilling tertiary educators and unexpected benefits to students.