Initial crisis leadership during COVID-19 higher education: a systematic review

The effect of the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) on the higher education sector is profound. The scholarly research on COVID-19 effects in higher education have largely focused on presenting intra-period facts, often with poor contextualisation to the broader evidence base. This manuscript draws on the first comprehensive systematic literature reviw database comprising 138 publications, the COVID-19 in Higher Education Database, to provide a first glance at six months of COVID-19 crisis leadership responses in the higher education sector. This systematic review aims to consolidate learning and teaching literature between 1 January 2020 and 30 June 2020 to share timely educational knowledge with the sector. Through a thematic analysis, the authors identified six key themes emerging in the literature: academic development, edtech, student experience, pedagogy, policy and wellbeing. They found that there were consistencies in the emerging literature across different disciplines and jurisdictions, despite the general lack of interaction between these manuscripts.