COVID-19, online or digital technologies, major themes, and main findings in higher education: An overview of reviews

The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to a new era of rapid scholarly publications (e. g., peer-reviewed journal articles and non-peer-reviewed preprints). Included among such publications are reviews and reviews of reviews, both of which take longer to publish under normal circumstances. This is more so for overviews. Therefore, the current overview reviewed 18 review articles published between March 2020 and March 2021. It did so by investigating online technologies for teaching and learning used by higher education institutions (HEIs) during the COVID-19 pandemic, and by examining major themes, main findings, key conclusions, and other characteristics of these 18 reviews. One of its findings is that online pivoting tends to signal a necessary change and innovation embraced by HEIs during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a pandemic technological change and innovation that underpins their SoTL.