The Postdigital Challenge of Pandemic Education

This paper briefly introduces key theoretical underpinnings of the postdigital perspective. Based on synthesis of 56 articles on the Covid-19 pandemic published in Postdigital Science and Education, 2, issue 3, and a selection of related articles, it distils the main themes, problems, approaches, and solutions identified in postdigital literature. The paper classifies identified themes into three large groups: lived experiences and their responses, politics, and philosophy. It identifies connections between research in these different, often incommensurable areas, and points towards postdigital and postdisciplinary nature of the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper brings these insights together in the concept of viral modernity, explores its theoretical and practical limitations, and develops recommendations for postdigital research in the age of Covid-19. It concludes that it is our duty as educators to move beyond edu-techno-problems and edu-tecno-fixes characteristic for mainstream journals and research approaches, and to address human problems in their entirety.