Pedagogical Disruption and Lecturer Preparedness During Emergency Online Teaching: Evidence from Sri Lankan Higher Education

The sudden transition to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic placed unprecedented demands on university lecturers, particularly within resource-constrained higher education systems. While early scholarship has documented broad challenges associated with emergency remote teaching, less attention has been paid to how lecturers in developing contexts experienced pedagogical disruption and professional strain during this period. This paper examines lecturer preparedness, instructional adaptation, and professional wellbeing during the rapid shift to online teaching in Sri Lankan higher education. Drawing on qualitative evidence from an exploratory study conducted during the pandemic, the paper synthesises lecturer-reported challenges relating to digital competence, instructional design, workload escalation, infrastructure limitations, and emotional pressure. The analysis situates these experiences within wider debates on pedagogical resilience and academic labour under crisis conditions. Rather than framing lecturers as passive recipients of institutional directives, the paper highlights the active but constrained role academics played in sustaining teaching continuity despite limited systemic support. The findings contribute to international discussions on emergency online pedagogy by foregrounding the lived realities of lecturers operating within fragile digital ecosystems. The paper concludes with reflections on what lecturer experiences during COVID-19 reveal about preparedness, support, and professional sustainability in higher education systems facing future disruptions.