Welcome to the first 2021 issue of “The Educationalist”! Hope you had a much-deserved relaxing break. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your support and for being part of the growing “Educationalist” community. I am looking forward to a new year of learning together! To get us started, I wrote down some thoughts about developments we should be seeing in Higher Education in the next months. They are, of course, partly wishful thinking, because these things always take time. Moreover, I don’t have a crystal ball and cannot read the future; and if 2020 is anything to go by, we should probably not plan too much ahead. Nevertheless, I believe it is important to reflect on what we can do to continue the great work that was done under the hardest conditions last year. And, as usual, I suggest some resources to get us learning and sharing early in the new year. Hope you find it useful and I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Happy weekend!
Five things we should see in 2021 (but probably won’t)
Universities thinking strategically about online education. This should be a logical consequence of what we’ve seen last year. Planning beyond the pandemic, with technology as an important pillar and not just a mere survival kit. Ideally we should start to see more online or blended learning programmes (especially at postgraduate level) being designed. This would open up the educational offer to new target audiences and could provide a more flexible and personalised learning experience. But in order for this to happen universities need to stop seeing online learning as a (very) last resort, an inferior experience to face-to-face education.
“Traditional”/ campus universities learning from distance education. Sometimes there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Distance education has been with us for a long time and it can provide us with a different perspective: instead of trying to replicate online what we do in the classroom, how about trying to design courses with a remote audience in mind? Open universities have a lot of expertise and resources available so this could be a good starting point (see links below).
Universities putting in place or consolidating teaching support structures and providing incentives for excellence in teaching. This has already started in 2020 but has been mostly done in “emergency mode”, relying on temporary solutions. Plus, there are huge differences between universities in terms of the resources they inversed in this endeavour. The next months should see a consolidation of this process, ideally with a focus on the human aspect rather than the purely technological one. This is of course closely linked to my first point, as it should be embedded in the institutions’ strategic vision.
More cooperation between universities to provide high quality online education. Sometimes joining forces can help us achieve more than we could do on our own. By pooling together existing resources, both in terms of infrastructure and pedagogical support, universities can ensure their students’ access to quality online learning. The main idea is to join forces on the aspects that are too resource and time intensive to be tackled independently at the moment, particularly the expertise and support for designing and delivering online courses.
A more coherent and comprehensive pedagogical education approach in Higher Education. Now, this is the wishful thinking part. It’s still astonishing that while in primary and secondary education a teaching qualification is needed, that is not the case in Higher Education. Each country has their own framework, varying from an obligatory certificate to no qualification required. In most cases a few short trainings will do. In order to reach and maintain a high level of quality across the board, a more coherent faculty development offer needs to be put in place. This unfortunately takes a lot of time, resources and effort but I would be very happy to see at least some seeds being planted this year.
Five resources to start your year
2020 Year in Review: The Best Articles on Learning, Higher Education, and Technology by Jenae Cohn: a great round-up of teaching and learning articles from 2020. Since there was such an overload of information in the past months, I’m grateful to Jenae for this overview and for pointing out a few '“must read” pieces;
Blended and Online Learning Design: a free 3-week online course, starting on Monday 11 January (so hurry up!). This is a great chance to learn from Prof. Diana Laurillard and other experts from the UCL Institute of Education;
Sharing our resources for designing online learning from the Open University Learning Design Team: make use of these very useful resources (templates, activity ideas, etc) for your upcoming courses;
Why are European universities not cooperating more?: a piece I wrote a few months back but I still find very relevant on the importance of working together to not only survive but thrive in the pandemic and especially beyond;
THE Campus- a new initiative by Times Higher Education aimed at connecting academics and helping them share their teaching practice. Read here about how you can contribute with a video or a written piece.