Developing a Collaborative AutoNetnographic approach to researching doctoral students’ online experiences

2020 was a year few will forget. The COVID-19 global pandemic resulted in massive changes to people's lives, particularly in relation to the use of online communication tools. While video conferencing and communication tools had been used before the global 2020 COVID-19 crisis, this increased across all aspects of society, including healthcare (Lee, 2020; Wosik et al, 2020), business (Obrenovic et al, 2020), education (Dhawan, 2020), entertainment and recreation (Agostino, Arnaboldi, and Lampis, 2020; Son et al, 2020b), and for personal use (Farooq, Laato, and Islam, 2020). Schools and universities rapidly shifted to online learning modalities (Garbe et al, 2020; Rapanta et al, 2020). In tertiary education, this presented both challenges and opportunities. One challenge was to continue to support learning in an engaging environment. However, this also provided research opportunities focused on the impact and benefits of online learning as well as opportunities to develop innovative research methodologies aligned to an online world.