Letters | Coronavirus made working from home the new normal, but are Hong Kong academics ready to go digital?
- University teachers with young children or other family members working from home have found online teaching particularly challenging
- Academics’ mental readiness and well-being should also be taken care of as that can severely impair the quality of teaching and learning
At the end of my last lecture before the Lunar New Year, I wished my students well and jokingly said, “Let’s hope that I don’t have to teach in a mask when we return from the holiday.” Never had we thought it was the last time we would meet in person that semester.
Some say being a “digital scholar” has become the new normal because of the pandemic. Are we really ready to go digital, though?
In my recent research project “Knowledge construction and writing online: exploring digital academic discourse and practices in Hong Kong”, I asked academics in Hong Kong to share their experiences and other thoughts about going digital in their profession.
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That is why many academics around the world also disseminate their research through online means, such as writing research blogs and promoting themselves on Twitter and ResearchGate. That means we are investing additional time and energy in developing social media profiles even after the long process of writing up and publishing our research in traditional journals and books.