In times of crisis, such as the spread of a pandemic or a natural disaster, Higher Education Institutions havehad to generate contingency plans to protect the educational community, which have often been at theexpense of the strategic plan and, consequently, of the quality of the education.
The organization of the University of the Future will be tested, it will be the time to check if it has the right tools to react and implement an action plan with less impact on the community. Although for many HEI this is still a utopia, the online transition is the first step, in pursuit of the continuity of classes at the instructions of governments and world health organizations to maintain isolation.
The suspension of classes indefinitely has led institutions to quickly evaluate and implement ways to continue their academic planning in a remote way. According to Chronicle Higher Education, specialists recommend that it is time to start thinking about programs both in their classroom and online modes, prioritizing agility and flexibility as skills to be delivered to students to lessen the impact of upcoming crises.
Latin American universities are facing the challenge of isolating the population early on. Some studentsdoubt whether to continue this academic period due to the strong economic impact that is beginning to be caused by the restriction of spaces for social exchange for which the educational centers are generating the best measures for the continuity of students and weigh the enormous damage that this type of crisis can generate to the formation of students.
In China, where the advance of this crisis already has an advantage of two months, the effects of a recession and an important set of Higher Education are beginning to be seen: 600 thousand teachers and 50 million students doing online classes. These types of measures are creating changes that can be permanent in educational strategies.
Goldie Blumenstyk, senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education, points out in her column that once this type of system is implemented in universities, distance technology will share its place with previous models, whereby the educational experience will become a hybrid of face-to-face and virtual. The question is: Have HEI already begun to develop these educational models? How are universities facing universal access to the Internet?
Internet access is one of the most important gaps to consider during this online transition, according to PewResearch Center in the United States 73% of adults have broadband internet in their homes, but there are big differences in the quality of the connection. About 17% of adults access to Internet from their homes only through a smartphone, which means trying to read assignments, write documents, do research and take questionnaires under unfriendly conditions.
Institutions in Chile, such as the University of Chile, have implemented measures like delivering mobile internet devices to guarantee equity in internet access. And other institutions are analyzing their main strategies to make feasible the different modalities of classes carried out in a face-to-face way.
Successful remote learning experiences depend on teachers knowing how to create and deliver engagingonline lessons, and on students who also have the access and digital literacy skills to access them.
We mapped out the main tips for educators in this process of change, which we hope will be helpful in the transition:
Academician Heather R. Taft, recommends in The Chronicle Higher Education, to those teachers who have to adapt their lab classes to a virtual environment, to rethink the learning objectives of labs that were designed for face-to-face classes and find those that make sense with the resources that students can find at home, considering the difficulties they may have, by finding some very specific material in a nearby store.
From her point of view, the simulations have been very effective for online classes and she highlights three types that the technology offers:
iNaturalist and Zooniverse have large projects that allow students to collect and classify data and can also be transformed into laboratories. With these types of projects, the follow-up of instructions given to students can be controlled and publish them in their institution's learning management system.
If the institution has the provision, it could purchase home lab kits and send them to the students with theinstructions that you have previously indicated in the university system. Creating a log, where students include photos and notes, with name and date will help verify the accomplishment of the labs.
The specialist recommends PhET and Howard Hughes Medical Institute simulations. To do so, she suggests choosing an open-access simulation and generating the instructions as required in the institution's management system so they can reach the students without problems. Consider creating a discussion panel for students to post questions to be answered together.
The implementation of the online mode is a complex process, which requires rethinking the learning objectives that teachers had previously thought for the classroom mode. Therefore, it is necessary to create an action plan according to the contingency, aware that this online transition will be a process that will not only cover the emergency season, but also a way of teaching that will be integrated to the current way of instruction.
The analysis of this first stage and the testing of the new objectives will provide teachers with experience in these new teaching methods. The role of educators at this time is essential.
u-planner has adapted its solutions to these challenges with a commitment to support HEI, know how here.