Chapter 1: Introduction to New Student Literacies amid COVID-19 – International Case Studies

The world has seen a lot of disasters which have affected some part of the globe and healed in due course but rarely has any health disaster affected the entire world like COVID-19. It not only affected the health sector but caused a downward spiral of the world economy. The world was not prepared to face such a magnitude of the disaster. Overnight, schools and universities declared a lockdown affecting 1.57 billion students in 191 countries (UN, 2020). The sudden closure of educational institutions negatively impacted education around the world and much of the education sector shifted to remote learning. This exacerbated the shortcomings of those institutions who were unprepared for the sudden shift to remote learning. The global pandemic triggered the need to reconceptualize how educational institutions provision teaching and learning. Universities resorted to intensive use of different technology platforms and resources to achieve their learning outcomes. This volume explores how educational institutions needed to rethink teaching, learning, research and innovation, and implement innovative approaches to address such complexities. International case studies have been compiled that highlight the issues related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education and how different countries tried to cope with the sudden shift of remote learning and tried to resolve challenges around the issues of digital pedagogy.