Leadership and strategy

Let’s get the elephant in the room addressed up front: times have changed and a return to “normal” is just not on the cards, not truly.  Blended learning – to a greater or lesser extent – is here to stay. 

So, how do we rescue the reputation of blended learning, which has been battered by students’ experiences of universities’ hasty response to the pandemic and become synonymous with low-quality content?

Let’s start with a question for instructional designers and faculty members: when you last designed a course, how much time did you spend thinking about the role that each element in that course plays in shaping your college or university?

Faculty have a marked influence on students’ learning and academic success through their teaching. During the shift from face-to-face to online learning, the importance of the faculty role has become even more salient, with students looking to their instructors for stability, leadership and support during uncertain times.

Meet Harry. Harry is an assistant professor, no tenure yet − hopefully in a few years. According to his contract, Harry is supposed to spend 60 per cent of his working time teaching and 40 per cent on research. Academic reality, however, tells another story.

In the past two weeks, Harry was part of a hiring committee (which took eight hours), contributed to a report on student evaluations (two hours), peer-reviewed an article (six hours), attended an editorial board meeting (two hours) and had a number of chats with students who needed extra attention (three hours).

Technology has become indispensable at all levels of education, from kindergarten to universities. In Asia, most higher education institutions embrace a bottom-up teaching approach, which focuses on practices. The past year, with the pandemic, has brought a number of major developments in digital solutions, improving the learning experience and performance.

It goes without saying that the Covid-19 pandemic has taken a heavy toll on the education sector. Approximately 1.6 billion students from 192 countries, or 91 per cent of the world’s student population, have experienced educational disruptions.

Love them or loathe them, academic team meetings are part and parcel of the job and, when done well, they can serve up opportunities for strategising, problem-solving, sharing news and galvanising colleagues. However, all too often meetings fall way short of expectations, especially online. Time evaporates and nothing of value is achieved; cue lower attendance, disconnected staff and higher levels of multitasking among those who do turn up (you know you do it).