The emergency online pivot is long gone, yet the “new normal” turned out to be neither of those things.
The sector continues to wrestle with problems that look suspiciously like academic long covid: falling attendance, concerns about disengagement, and a steep rise in the number of disabled and neurodivergent students and mental health conditions.
It is tempting to attribute these problems to student attitudes, “Gen Z personalities,” or to blame online provision and the emergence of GenAI. It is equally tempting to respond by going to either extreme, either by doubling down on surveillance and policing student behaviour, or by promising ever greater flexibility.
But both responses risk forgetting the nuances that the pandemic revealed about inclusion, particularly for students from widening participation backgrounds.
The best year?
In our new paper, “The best year / ‘I struggled with everything’: widening participation experiences of pandemic online learning”, we worked with 23 widening participation students at two Scottish universities to understand which aspects of the online pivot supported or undermined their participation. Much of what they recounted echoes the broader literature on Covid and higher education; however, their relative disadvantage magnified their experience.
The themes we report are particularly salient for current debates about engagement and inclusion, notably, participants kept returning to the question of agency and resources. For many, lockdown removed their commute which made it easier to combine study with caring responsibilities, jobs, and health conditions. But it also gave them back hours they would have otherwise spent on public transport as well as the associated cost, a change described as transformative and for one student “The best year.”
At the same time, the very flexibility that some students valued intensified existing inequalities for others. Many struggled with poor broadband, limited devices shared with family members, and the absence of quiet spaces. One student described how “online learning brought my work to a grinding halt” because without a dedicated study space they “struggled with everything.” Without access to campus libraries and study spaces, watching recordings rather than coming in for lectures actually reduced their control over the learning environment.
Belonging and the incidental
Participants also emphasised that belonging and authentic connection underlies so much of what we do as educators. Widening participation students have long described the effort of trying to “fit in” to institutions that were not built with them in mind, and the tension between wanting to succeed academically and not wanting to stand out socially. The relative anonymity made possible by online learning made some students more willing to type questions in the chat or attend virtual office hours. However, participants were also clear that online interactions with staff felt transactional and when every meeting had to be booked and justified, it made everything feel more formal.
What they missed were the incidental conversations before and after class, the chance encounters in corridors and libraries, and seemingly purposeless chit-chat with peers that allowed them to compare progress, make sense of expectations, and realise that they were not the only ones struggling.
And our study draws attention to the hidden curriculum and the role of self-regulation. Widening participation students are less likely to arrive at university familiar with tacit rules about how to study, when it is acceptable to ask for help, or how to navigate institutional systems. Our participants described how moving online removed opportunities to learn vicariously by watching how others behaved in class, by overhearing peers ask questions, or by observing how more experienced students managed their workload. Without these cues, those who already felt they did not belong were even more reluctant to reach out, particularly if they worried about adding to staff workload.
Psychologically, these experiences connect to work on self-efficacy and self-regulated learning, which show that students who doubt their academic capability are less likely to seek help, persist with difficult tasks, or adapt their strategies after setbacks. We also saw strong links with self-determination theory, which argues that three basic needs underpin intrinsic motivation: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Flexible engagement can clearly enhance autonomy, especially for students with complex lives. However, if we neglect competence and relatedness, greater autonomy simply becomes greater responsibility without corresponding support.
A bit of distance
Part of the reason we’re writing about this now is that thanks to the timeline of academic publishing, the authorship team collectively experienced double digit covid infections, three promotions, two College restructures, and the creation and birth of two humans in the time it took to publish our study. But part of the reason is that sometimes a bit of distance is needed to truly understand the most important lessons and to see that our new problems and potential solutions, are actually rather familiar.
Universities must protect and normalise flexible learning options that confer genuine agency and must not use concerns about engagement to punish the most vulnerable. For example, the evidence that recorded lectures improve accessibility for disabled students and those from widening participation backgrounds is now substantial and removing this flexibility in the name of “getting students back” risks penalising those for whom education might be the only way out.
But it is also just as vital that we conceptualise campus presence as an inclusion issue and recognise that to frame the need to attend as exclusionary is to misunderstand the issue. Students who lack quiet study space at home are disadvantaged when too much learning is pushed out of the timetable. Our participants were clear that regular, structured time on campus was not the enemy of flexibility; it was the scaffold that allowed them to make use of flexible resources. When deciding whether to keep online exams, flip a module, or consolidate teaching into fewer longer blocks, it is essential to ask where and when students will actually be able to study and how their contact with both staff and students will be impacted if campus time is reduced.
If we want higher education to be genuinely inclusive, we need to resist trying to find simple solutions to complex problems – banning lecture recordings and arguing that in-person exams are always/never (in)appropriate are comforting solutions because they’re concrete, not because they’re right. The experiences of widening participation students during lockdown reinforce that inclusion is less about offering students unlimited choice and more about designing flexible structures that combine agency, support, and connection. Those structures are likely to benefit all students but if we ignore them, we will once again ask those with the least social and material capital to shoulder the greatest share of the risk.
This article is based on research carried out with colleagues Jacqui Hutchison, Alison Browitt and Jill MacKay, whose contributions we gratefully acknowledge.