Digital Trends in Education: Marketing of the Online Teaching

During 2020, many universities scrambled to get their teaching online responding to the Covid-19 global pandemic (Cohen, Development and Learning In Organisations: An International Journal, 2020). This was new for many Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs), their academic staff and students. The online teaching mode requires an upskill and, in some cases, reskill by the academic sector (Sia and Abbas Adamu, Asian Education and Development Studies 10:263–275, 2021). Most studies have addressed the problems faced by students during this process, ignoring the problems faced by tutors (Joshi et al., Interactive Technology and Smart Education, Ahead-of-Print, 2020) and how this ‘transitional emergency model’ may push educational technological innovation. This chapter is an exploratory investigation of university tutors’ experiences of teaching online (Sikes, Qualitative Research Journal 17:230–242, 2017) considering the following questions: What digital trends emerged and what this may mean for future technological educational innovation? Will online education remain a new business model in HEIs and will this create strategic differentiation across the sector for institutions and staff? Four narrative vignettes (Downs, Qualitative Research Journal 16:362–373, 2016) represent the experience of academics across HEIs in the Southeast of England. Life history research explores the meaning of stories in their wider historical, social, political, cultural, and geographical contexts (Downs, Qualitative Research Journal 16:362–373, 2016). The co-productive offers insights into and contribute to, the complex and ever-evolving relationships and differences between social, structural, and cultural locations and the identities and agency that tellers and hearers accord themselves (Sikes, Qualitative Research Journal 17:230–242, 2017). The narratives/sketches were collected through ‘Flipgrid Introductions’, ‘a Teams debate’, and final common threads and points of divergence captured on Padlet (Tadajewski and Jones, Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 9:118–212, 2017). All agreed that some form of ‘Online Learning’ will remain post-Covid but that more distinctive approaches by HEIs will become noticeable as technology-mediated learning delivered via online education methods become more commonplace (Pillai and Sivathanu, International Journal of Educational Management 34:586–609, 2020). This provides differentiation in terms of courses, content, learning modes, staff expertise, business models, and outcomes. Faculty envision an eclectic pedagogical approach for the future ideal online learning experience, which merges three pedagogical views: personalized/adaptive learning experience, transformative learning experience, and collaborative, constructive, and connected learning experience (Shearer et al., American Journal of Distance Education 34:36–52, 2020). The result is new educationally digitally focused products and processes. The authors suggest a strategic and business model for technologically educational innovation.