Cultivating a sense of splace in the hybrid and virtual classroom at universities

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted higher education globally that required new and contingency ways of teaching. Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) propelled university educators to adopt a pedagogy of flexibility while still maintaining a sense of connectedness. In South Africa, the implementation of ERT was challenging, given the country’s stark socio-economic inequalities. The South African government, therefore, adopted a more flexible version of ERT, remote multimodal teaching and learning (RMTL), to ensure that no student would be left behind. The success of multimodal models requires flexible pedagogical approaches that embrace understanding, compassion, and inclusivity because students in a remote space may experience feelings of disconnection. I argue that educators develop a strong sense of place and space (splace) in the hybrid classroom. Prior to the pandemic, a strong sense of place created in students a deeper connection to learning than that experienced in a remote learning context. The pandemic introduced new hybrid splaces that suggest a shift in both students’ and educators’ connections to an unfamiliar learning context. Students therefore need to feel a strong sense of connection to these new learning splaces. This paper discusses how a sense of splace could foster a deeper sense of connection in the hybrid and virtual classroom.