Abstract:
This paper reflects on the effects of student engagement as a result of a shift from face-to-face
to online learning during the COVID-19 lockdown in New Zealand. The reflection focuses on
the experiences of three accounting academic staff at Unitec Institute of Technology (Unitec) in
Auckland, New Zealand. Unitec is part of the Te Pukenga- New Zealand Institute of Skills andTechnology and has offered an undergraduate business degree in accounting for several years
and a Master of Applied Practice Professional Accounting since 2016.
The reflection is structured as follows. Section 2 provides a background of the spread of
COVID-19 in New Zealand and the response to the subsequent lockdown by the New
Zealand Government and Unitec. In Section 3, the method is explained, and our reflections
are set out in Section 4. Section 5 summarises our learnings from a shift to online teaching,
and Section 6 concludes the paper.
