Evidence-based practice
The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented event in modern history, transforming the nature of higher education. To examine how we coped with COVID-19 in the classroom, we embarked on a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Education; #Pandemic Pedagogy. In times of uncertainty, we often look for advice from educational research journals when deciding what best to do in our teaching. General journals like HERD and Studies in Higher Education are supplemented by more business related journals like AMLE or Journal of Marketing Education. These journals are now beginning to publish work on how we all coped with COVID-19. Evidence-based practice increases our teaching confidence and decreases our learning curve costs.
Tales of the unexpected
The whirlwind of the pandemic catapulted educators to use new and evolving formats. It threatened students’ mental health, and challenged both learning and teaching. In response we created a special issue on; Tales of the unexpected: teaching turmoil and triumphs in times of crisis. We received papers concerning the unexpected, the turmoil, but also the triumphs of the crisis. Marketing faculty are probably some of the academics most accustomed to changing teaching materials. We expected to showcase the discipline with “lessons learned from changemakers.” We wanted to explore scholarship that addresses: (1) how our teaching and learning transformed quickly, (2) the short-term success of the quick pivot, and (3) the impact of that transformation longer-term.
COVID-19 Issues
Within the short-term timeframe, we expected and received research in areas such as; student experience as well as faculty experience, working from home issues, up-skilling challenges, and curriculum changes. We also had submissions on what worked and what did not work, online pedagogical tools and how syllabi and exam formats can be designed for online.
Further research
Unexpectedly, we received very few papers on other longer-term issues, like the frameworks for changing the marketing curriculum content for guiding course and/or content development in the long term. We received nothing on the implications and understanding of the value of face-to-face teaching and programmatic efforts to bring online to the forefront of educational planning.
Also, despite anecdotal evidence, we saw no papers on infrastructure issues such as supplier perspectives for online material and teaching tools like third-party providers (e.g., Microsoft Teams). Neither did we see anything on management issues such as how the crisis response to teaching changes were managed by individuals or teams within disciplines, schools, or university administration and academic managers. These have yet to be fully explored and researched. The special issue of JMED will be out in early 2022, so we hope you enjoy reading it.