Opportunity in COVID-19 crisis: Moving away from chalk and talk to technology-integrated teaching in Nepalese higher education institutions

Abstract

This qualitative study explored teachers’ use of technology to manage teaching and learning activities during COVID-19 in Nepalese higher education institutions. To this end, 11 teachers from three universities located in five provinces of Nepal were purposefully selected. Their experiences of using technological tools were explored through semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The findings show that the implementations of online teaching and learning to manage students’ learning loss during the COVID-19 were marred by paradoxical policy, insufficient resources, teachers’ attitudes, socio-psychological issues, the lack of trained teachers and connection among technology, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Interestingly, the findings demonstrate that the teachers have taken the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity for learning to use technologies in their teaching and learning activities. Based on these findings, we suggest that the government of Nepal needs to design an action plan to facilitate free mental health and wellbeing counseling programmes for students and teachers, provide sufficient devices with internet access to their students and train teachers and staff on how they can blend technologies, pedagogies and contents.