COVID-19 College Closure Communication Project
On March 12th, 2020, Trinity College Dublin was forced to close down in response to a Government of Ireland directive. This directive was an effort to stem the spread of COVID-19 - the virus that was spreading globally.
All staff and students of the university were informed that due to closure, all activities would take place remotely. In other words, people were instructed to ‘work from home’. For academic staff and students this meant a (sudden) shift to online teaching, practically overnight, as the teaching term still had a number of weeks to run and modules, placements, laboratory work and other teaching and learning activities had to be completed. Lecture theatres were closed and teaching and learning began within the confines of people’s home environments. For administrative staff, laboratory technicians, librarians, grounds staff, catering staff and many other core staff across College, the abrupt College closure brought the challenges of moving away from the hub of working contexts and colleagues to engage in alternative means to continue their work and College duties.
Within a very short space of time, communication with colleagues and students changed radically. Shifting exclusively to remote communication brought with it challenges and opportunities. Challenges included a total dependence on information technology (e.g. email, phone, various online communication platforms) to get ‘the job done’. Among the opportunities were the chance to innovate, upskill and engage in different communication modes as the sole means to engage with others. Such other forms of communication were not totally new to members of the College community. Staff and students across College are familiar – to greater or lesser extents – with the many modes of communication that technology facilitates; what was new was the enforced absence of in person face-to-face interactions.
We undertook a piece of research to examine the College Community’s responses to this change in communication. We wanted to profile how people felt about the change, how they handled it, and what helped them to or hindered them from adapting to it. We were also very aware of the potential implications for social and mental health, so we captured views on this too.
You can download a one-page summary report of our findings HERE. A more comprehensive report will be released in due course. We will use the comments from this research to provide advice to College about what is working and what is not working as we continue together through this COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we want to take this opportunity to thank those who participated. Your generosity of time is greatly appreciated.
Dr Ciarán Kenny (ciaran.kenny@tcd.ie)
Dr Irene P Walsh (ipwalsh@tcd.ie)
Department of Clinical Speech and Language Studies
School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences