Opinion


Teaching crisis: an opportunity for change? Out of a necessity to reduce the transmission of Coronavirus, almost overnight


emergency online teaching using business UC tools became the hero of the hour as schools, colleges and universities closed their classroom doors. Yet long before the onset of the mother of all viruses, technology already provided the opportunity for online learning to have more than just an almost inconsequential bit-role in the increasingly diverse learning landscape. Most people didn’t con- sider it a serious player as part of a campus-based education. Duncan Peberdy reports.


Online-only providers such as the Open University, Futurelearn, and Coursera, have all developed pro- grams, including at degree-level, for students to learn at a place and time of their choosing. Perhaps these stu- dents were already into careers and studying alongside holding down a full-time job, or instead had parent- ing and caring responsibilities. But in these scenarios and on those plat- forms, students do not come to class as part of a complete real-time cohort. For K12 and undergraduates, learning is a social enterprise, and small group active collaborative learning support- ed by their tutors was becoming a real force for educational and social good. In less than twelve months, the oppor- tunity for and acceptance of remote learning has advanced by perhaps twenty years.


That hasn’t been be-


cause of technology, it’s come about thanks to cultural acceptance trig- gered by necessity.


It doesn’t mean


that what we have is yet perfect, but in the same way that productivity in knowledge-based workplaces hasn’t fallen off a cliff like many expected, we now realise that education by phys- ical attendance on campus isn’t the only way.


Before Covid there hadn’t been con- sideration or planning for online learn- ing at such scale. Teachers immedi- ately turned to the tools they already had installed, and although massively outside of their comfort zones, start- ed to learn that there can be another way. With so many institutions already using Microsoft Office 365, Teams be- came a natural partner for many, and Microsoft quickly increased the max- imum number of remote participants who could be simultaneously viewed. But even though being able to see all 24 or 30 students at the same time was an improvement, small thumb- nails of each student on a laptop or desktop screen was a poor substitute


for seeing all their life-size smiling faces in the classroom.


There are a few high-end systems that will bring remote students into the classroom in a far more lifelike way, but they are quite bespoke and too expensive for most colleges and uni- versities, especially now investment to provide the necessary scale for remote learning has become a priority.


The


challenge has been to look at the situ- ation from a fresh perspective to deter- mine how the benefits of these world- class systems can be developed with a different approach. So rather than be- ing a single-vendor solution, working with Intel and a small number of Intel technology partners, we’ve collaborat-


In less than twelve months, the opportu- nity for and acceptance of remote learn- ing has advanced by perhaps twenty years.


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