Although online teaching is far from unknown, many who are now having to resort to it have had little or no experience of it in the past. Additional support and recognition for staff who take on additional burdens in online teaching is an ethical prerequisite. Support staff, including technicians, teaching assistants and demonstrators, will probably have been drafted into undertaking different work from that for which they were employed, but essential in the preparation of online teaching resources. The efforts of staff to support students and the university should be balanced by an empathic understanding of the obstacles confronting staff. The principle of solidarity stresses the sharing of burdens to ensure that those asked to bear additional burdens are supported in ways that protect them from suffering unfairly.

Source: Otago Daily Times June 15, 2020 16:30 UTC