Online teaching and learning in higher education: Lessons learned in crisis situations

In the year 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic turned both private and public life upside down. Teaching and learning at higher education institutions worldwide had to move online on very short notice. This Special Issue focuses on the academic practice of online teaching and learning in higher education in the current time of crisis. Online teaching and learning has been a prominent research topic for the last three decades, but online study programs at universities are still scarce. In this synthesis article, our considerations about online teaching and learning in higher education are positioned in the broad framework of communities of practice (CoPs). We establish a relationship between CoP-concepts and the integrative framework for learning activities involving technology in higher education (the C♭ model), as proposed by Sailer and colleagues in this Special Issue. We continue with some initial thoughts on online teaching and learning in higher education in general, and emergency online teaching and learning more specifically. After an overview of the international research compiled in this Special Issue, we derive a number of general insights on online teaching and learning in higher education, emphasizing, for instance, scaffolding of regulation processes or communication platforms as potential artifacts of an online teaching and learning CoP. •Synthesis of the Special Issue “Online Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Lessons Learned in Crisis Situations”.•Reflections on academic practice of higher education online teaching and learning in times of crisis.•Role of communities of practice and resulting artifacts in (emergency) online teaching and learning.•Reference to the C♭ model, a comprehensive framework, to describe digital teaching and learning artifacts.•Insights on online teaching and learning in higher education based on the synthesis of the studies in this Special Issue.