Universities and the changing landscape of Higher Education
The arrival of COVID-19 this year has presented us with a world where we have been forced to adapt and live differently. Businesses have had to change how and where their staff work, how they connect with clients and customers and how they provide their products and services. Every member of society, from our youngest to our oldest citizens, have had to grasp their “new normal” and a number of immediate and different challenges. The impact of coronavirus on the education sector was instant, with schools, colleges and universities closing and transitioning to remote learning.
This September many of our students returned to their education institutions and the challenge now is re-engaging with learning and catching up on their studies. For university students, their higher education experience will differ from all their predecessors; with social distancing restrictions impacting the feasibility of large-scale seminars and face-to-face learning time and how they can enjoy and explore the many social aspects and opportunities of student life.
Queen Mary, University of London noted:
“The speed with which we had to adapt all of our services to virtual delivery was initially the biggest challenge, which resulted in quite a bit of learning as we went. We offer multiple services including 1-1 appointments, careers events and workshops and work experience and enterprise programmes. Each strand of activity required creative problem solving to ensure a positive and engaging learning experience for our students. The additional challenge comes from the fact most virtual delivery requires more team resources than in-person delivery, limiting how much we can offer at one time.”
Echoing this, the careers team at University of Greenwich, told us about
“The sheer amount of time academics have had to spend developing new virtual materials to replace their existing teaching plans. It is largely invisible, and is faced with a constant line of misunderstanding from outside who have no idea of the time and effort going in.”
In spite of this tremendous change and the huge resourcing behind it, there have been some incredible successes, not only transitioning to remote teaching but even boosting student engagement. Queen Mary told us:
“Services have benefitted particularly from this transition. For example, we have had far higher engagement with online workshops than on campus workshops, with three times the number of unique finalists attending our online finalist boot camps this year compared to last year.”
Nobody can predict what is around the corner, but hopefully we have worked through the most significant upheavals and now have some great opportunities opening up. Nearly all universities already had a plan in place to digitise learning, with COVID-19 jump starting those ambitions.
University of Greenwich shared a brilliant example of success in the time of a global pandemic:
“What we achieve this year, in terms of rethinking what we deliver, will stand us in good stead permanently. We have achieved more of our digitisation agenda in the last six months than we had hoped to achieve in five years.”
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