Academia in the cloud

According to Giroux and Penna (1979, 2012), institutions impart more than the taught curriculum; they reinforce sector norms, values, attitudes and beliefs in a covert way, referred to as the hidden curriculum. This is a long-term belief held by the authors, who first published their insights in 1979 when the taught curriculum was bound only to physical spaces. Yet, between the first and the second
(2012) publication, the learning landscape has changed
significantly. One such change is the emergence of online degrees. An online degree follows the same higher education institutional (HEI) quality conventions as traditional part-time degrees; students are required to meet the same entry criteria, engage in study, and complete equivalent assessments. In this paper, we focus on the experiences of those engaged in online degrees, contrasting their experiences with more traditional degrees, to uncover the online hidden curriculum. We explore how UK sector norms and university values, attitudes and beliefs influence the online curriculum within a single HEI. While writing this paper, the Covid-19 pandemic has spread across the globe and we considered the impact of this on the current socio-economic climate and learning landscape. In order to continue to deliver the traditional curriculum, HEIs, academics and students are rapidly adjusting en masse to remote teaching and encountering strikingly similar problems to those created by the marginalisation of online learning.