Much has been said and written on the COVID-19 pandemic and its various impacts on our physical and mental health. The objectives of this paper are to analyse certain issues and concerns through a personal memoir, i.e., my experience of teaching and supervising the post-graduate students of Social Work, through digital platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic at my workplace, Bankura University. Nevertheless, whether the digital world is enhancing prosperity, social connectedness, peace, and the collectivisation of humans, or leading to alienation, violence, and unhappiness, is a matter of academic research and debate, and has led to the formation of discourses surrounding the positive and negative impacts of such technologies.
The ‘new normal’ days of COVID brought dual psychosocial challenges, primarily stemming from seclusion and alienation from the pandemic's emerging realities, and partially from overdependence on digital technologies, leading to a hyperreal world. If the psychosocial and survival issues of seclusion and alienation emerging from the COVID-realities needed to be tackled, then the use of digital technologies became indispensable. Thus, the challenge was to strike a balance between the real and the hyperreal worlds to minimise the cons and maximise the pros while interacting with students via digital platforms and dealing with community wellness as discussed in this paper. The objective of the paper is also to discuss the changing pattern of pedagogy that might have been influenced by ‘new normal’ psychosocial exposures during the pandemic era.
The methodological approach of this paper is primarily grounded in my experiences of teaching and supervising postgraduate students through digital platforms as a social work educator. In addition, methods like content analyses of primary sources-students’ reports, online routines, notices, and materials have been adopted, along with conceptual analyses of the secondary literature reviewed.
Keywords: Digital pedagogy, COVID-19 pandemic, New normal, Psychosocial, Reality, Hyperreality.
Much has been said and written on the COVID-19 pandemic and its various impacts on our physical and mental health. The objectives of this paper are to analyse certain issues and concerns through a personal memoir, i.e., my experience of teaching and supervising the post-graduate students of Social Work, through digital platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic at my workplace, Bankura University. Nevertheless, whether the digital world is enhancing prosperity, social connectedness, peace, and the collectivisation of humans, or leading to alienation, violence, and unhappiness, is a matter of academic research and debate, and has led to the formation of discourses surrounding the positive and negative impacts of such technologies.
The ‘new normal’ days of COVID brought dual psychosocial challenges, primarily stemming from seclusion and alienation from the pandemic's emerging realities, and partially from overdependence on digital technologies, leading to a hyperreal world. If the psychosocial and survival issues of seclusion and alienation emerging from the COVID-realities needed to be tackled, then the use of digital technologies became indispensable. Thus, the challenge was to strike a balance between the real and the hyperreal worlds to minimise the cons and maximise the pros while interacting with students via digital platforms and dealing with community wellness as discussed in this paper. The objective of the paper is also to discuss the changing pattern of pedagogy that might have been influenced by ‘new normal’ psychosocial exposures during the pandemic era.
The methodological approach of this paper is primarily grounded in my experiences of teaching and supervising postgraduate students through digital platforms as a social work educator. In addition, methods like content analyses of primary sources-students’ reports, online routines, notices, and materials have been adopted, along with conceptual analyses of the secondary literature reviewed.
Keywords: Digital pedagogy, COVID-19 pandemic, New normal, Psychosocial, Reality, Hyperreality.
