Digital disruption in the time of COVID-19: learning technologists’ accounts of institutional barriers to online learning, teaching and assessment in UK universities

This article reports on the qualitative findings of a UK-wide survey learning technologists and their recent struggles supporting attempts for digital resettlement learning, teaching assessment in response to COVID-19 pandemic, underlining frailties universities terms crisis management cultural organisational change. We find broad attitude change towards role contribution technology by higher education staff, yet sense that institutions are neither grasping nor pursuing potential affordances remain focused returning ‘pre-COVID normality’. Furthermore, despite physical campus closures increasing demand technologists, we see institutional boundary crossing frustrated.