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Simply replicating the on-campus university experience in online education is unlikely to be a winning strategy beyond the crisis and into the long term.
Opinion
In response to COVID-19, university faculty worldwide are having to move to remote learning, with years of organizational change being compressed into weeks. Beyond the global lockdown, worries are increasing that international mobility will be permanently lower and that international students will not be allowed, will not want or will not have the means to continue to travel to study. In order to mitigate this loss of income, the move to online looks like being a permanent feature. But, as Marshall McLuhan said, “the medium is the message;” simply replicating the teaching practices and degree offerings of the on-campus university, but online, is unlikely to be a winning strategy beyond the crisis and into the long term. One of the universities’ great strengths is their globalized outlook and ability to invent and imagine the future. Working together, universities can overcome the tyranny of distance to deliver courses to students wherever they are, particularly working with platforms like Coursera.
Universities cannot deliver online learning without changing their approach to teaching. The term ‘opportunity’ can seem crass in the current circumstances, but there’s no doubt that this moment can be used to change the university experience for the better.
In particular, successful online courses understand clearly how a course is useful to the learner in their work and life. Particularly for graduate learners growing professional skills, the traditional campus degree means leaving your home and career for a year or more. For many, this simply isn’t feasible. Rapidly growing flexible, online qualifications are growing rapidly, offering learning experiences that are useful professionally to learners who can keep their existing jobs and continue to live with their families without the cost of moving.
Universities are learning communities –the point of gathering from across the world is to learn together, not just to listen to a ‘sage on a stage’. It’s clear from successful online degrees that getting it ‘right’ isn’t just about producing high-end videos and materials and porting seminars over to web conferencing; it’s about designing meaningful learning experiences that provide community, tutoring and mentoring, peer interaction, assessments, feedback, opportunities for practice and more.
Successful courses also have to be at much larger scales than before, and therefore are developed and delivered by teams. This is a big culture change for universities; moving beyond the lecturer who teaches and delivers a module alone, to having a production and tutoring team that collaborates to deliver notes, videos, skill-building opportunities, seminars, and workshops.
“Successful online degrees design meaningful learning experiences that provide community, tutoring and mentoring, peer interaction, assessments, feedback, opportunities for practice and more.”
For subjects like engineering and medicine that involve practical skills, a global collaboration between universities can bring the world expert to the learner. For example, in clinical work students can develop skills at a local or regional unit, and then work through interpretation online in the global classroom. This will be most effective where universities work together, from London to São Paulo, Lagos to Berlin, and Chengdu to Chicago, forming the global campus. Platforms like Coursera, themselves university spin-outs, may offer a venue for this transformation.
For university teachers this can be exciting; remote learning offers global scale and reach. We can transform and inspire many more people around the world. It doesn’t require expensive lecture theatres or shiny halls of residence; just talented staff and students. Those that thrive in this new world will be those who work together, who can coach each other and truly deliver education that is better than what went before.
For university leadership, this poses fundamental questions about the business model, investments, capital plans, and organizational structure of their institution and brand. Their first priority should be to adapt with pace and foresight. This requires a fast-paced response in delivering teaching online this year, while scenario planning and developing a strong vision for the future.
This pandemic is accelerating innovation in education. In the first week of lockdown at our own institution, Imperial College, we delivered remote assessments for hundreds of final year Medicine students. A world first, and unthinkable only a short few months ago. EdTech companies like Coursera and FutureLearn are deploying AI to match students to courses and are developing personalized pathways, and acceptance has grown that micro-credentials are valuable learning assets. We need to seize this moment to further reimagine the university experience and what our future teaching will look like.
Drs. Gideon Shimshon is the Director for Digital Learning & Professor David Dye is Professor of Metallurgy at Imperial College London and the academic lead for a number of open online courses in Mathematics and Machine Learning.
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
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