Special Issue ‘COVID-19 and Irish Higher Education’: Call for contributions

PDF of this call here.

The COVID 19 emergency has fundamentally changed the way we live our lives right now and this has had an enormous impact on all sectors of education.  Nationally, and internationally, educators and students are responding with incredible ingenuity, flexibility and most of all, care for each other.  The physical closure of our Higher Education Institutions has forced us to shift almost all learning and teaching activity online in a way that, until very recently, would have been unimaginable.    This poses numerous challenges but also presents opportunities. If nothing, the fact that the country was able to shift to online delivery with little advance warning is a testament to both the technology now at our disposal and the flexibility and dedication of educators and students. Likely this sequence of events will have lasting effects on teaching and learning going forward.

In response to this unprecedented situation, The All Ireland Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (AISHE-J) invites colleagues to share experiences and responses and to reflect on the immediate and longer-term impacts of these changes.

We are seeking:

1. Rapid Responses – short articles (1,000-2,000 words) that share practices developed in response to the COVID 19 situation OR present short case studies of responses OR consider specific issues and/or experiences.  We would welcome rapid responses co-authored by staff and students.

2. Full papers (no more than 5,000 words) that reflect on and critically consider these changes in the context of the Irish higher education landscape. and beyond.

3. The Student Perspective – short pieces (500 – 1,000 words) written by students that address the impact of the COVID-19 emergency on their learning and wider experience.

For all categories, we welcome submissions that consider the impact of the COVID-19  emergency on any aspect of:

• Learning, teaching and assessment in higher education,
• Student support,
• The student experience,including student engagement,
• The experiences of educators and students including lesser represented groups,
• Responses and impacts specific to disciplines,
• Digital capacity, including the digital divide,
• Research.

In addition, we would also welcome full papers that consider:

• National or sectoral responses,
• Institutional responses,
• Quality Assurance,
• Impacts on student and newly qualified health professionals.
• Implications for the long-term future of higher education.
• Implications for the future of research in HE.

Key dates.

The deadline for all submissions is 1^st September 2020 for consideration for the Special Issue (31^st October).

Decisions to authors – 20^th September 2020

Deadline for final revised submissions – 14^th October 2020

Submissions should be made via the AISHE-J website https://ojs.aishe.org/index.php/aishe-j/about.  We would be delighted to discuss any ideas you might have for a submission.  Please contact the email address below, or any member of the AISHE-J editorial team. We would also like to hear from those interested in reviewing these submissions.  Please contact: info AT aishe DOT org

Please note, we can also consider Rapid Responses for inclusion in the June 2020 issue of the journal  If you would like to submit a short paper for consideration for this earlier publication, please submit by 21^st May 2020 and include a brief note to the editor indicating that you would like this to be considered for June.

Format.

Please follow the guidelines below when preparing your submission.  Submissions should be made via the AISHE-J website https://ojs.aishe.org/index.php/aishe-j/about

• Arial font – 11 point.
• Title case
• Maximum 3 levels of heading:
• (Heading L1 -a dd, Heading L2 add, Heading L3 add)
• Please keep tables and graphs to a minimum and ensure that they are clearly labelled consecutively, i.e. Figure 1,2,…..; Table 1, 2….
• If the paper reports research with human participants, this must have ethical approval.
• Referencing should follow APA
• Rapid responses:  1,000-2,000 words, excluding references and abstract.
• Full papers: maximum 5,000 words, excluding references and abstract.