Many recent discussions of Australian education I have taken part in have the theme of what to do after COVID-19. The sense is that things have been bad, but under control: what of the changes brought in as an emergency measure should be kept in the long term? However, I suggest Australian universities should not assume there will be a period of stability in which to gradually introduce changes. COVID-19 is just a foretaste of far more difficult challenges to come in the next few months and years, with technology, and geopolitics forcing changes to how, what, where and who we teach. There can be a larger sudden interruption to international student access to Australian campuses in the next few months, and in the next few years new alternatives to studying in Australia for both domestic and international students (Worthington, 2014).
Australian universities should now flip their educational offerings, along with their teaching. With flipped learning students are encouraged to study material online before attending a class. In the same way, students should be offered online study, before attending a campus. Universities do not have to abandon the campuses they have invested so much in recently, just make minor tweaks to boost online learning
E-learning has been proven over at least a decade. It has been
shown possible to produce high quality, active learning
courses and blend them with campus instruction. This has been done
with mixed teams of domestic and international students, undertaking
practical projects online together, to meet professional accreditation
requirements. It is possible to teach staff how to do this across the Australian HE sector.
I have been teaching online since 2009. Most of my students were
happy with this model and get similar results to their classroom courses.
However, many academics are reluctant to undertake the training required
to teach this way and students have been reluctant to sign up for
online courses, seeing them as inferior.
One way to make online learning more attractive is to offer it as part
of a package, with campus instruction. As an example, for computer project students last year I designed a learning module with asynchronous
delivery. This has automated quizzes, discussion
forums, videos, ebook and peer assessment. But added to this are face
to face workshops, held in a purpose-built flat floor classroom (Worthington, 2020).
The blended model ran for two semesters in 2019. When COVID-19 struck in
2020, the workshops were moved to Zoom. There was no need to change the
course materials, activities, or assessment, as an emergency online
contingency had been planned for (Worthington, 2014 & 2016). There is
the option of using a hybrid model in the future, with some students in
the classroom and some online. Also recent online
hackathons I have helped mentor for the Australian National University, Australian Computer Society, and the Australian and NZ Defence Forces
show promise.
Academics' reluctance to learn to teach online can be addressed by
offering teacher training part of a degree, before they become academics.
Rather than being seen as just a training course, teaching can be
promoted as part of the skill-set of every profession. Our tutors can
study teaching as part of their degree program and pay the usual course fees to do so, at the same time they are paid to tutor. Tutors
not enrolled in a degree can receive a micro-credential.
The key, I suggest, is not to focus on moving courses online, as that is
a relatively simple task. A bigger challenge is to have programs that
are more than just a collection of "courses" and offer students
vocationally relevant training, with flexibility. I discussed this last
week in my last talk in Canada on "Higher education after COVID-19".
In my last talk I described COVID-19 as a White Swan event: one they were warned of but failed to prepare for. Some may dispute they were warned, but after COVID-19, all universities must understand that the flow of international students to Australian campuses may suddenly stop again in the next year. In the longer term, there will be new international competition both for Australian domestic students and international ones.
The Australian Government and university leadership may not act in time, so I suggest individual university academics should individually prepare for the new higher education environment. They can ensure they gain skills to teach in in new ways, which may require they spend their own time and money learning. Also academics should look to set up new companies, and encourage their students, to provide educational services. This can be done in the startup centers set up on and around our campuses. Some might argue that our academics should concentrate on their day jobs, but most of those are going to disappear as the business of education changes over the coming months and years.
References
Worthington, T. (2012, July). A Green computing professional education
course online: Designing and delivering a course in ICT sustainability
using Internet and eBooks. In 2012 7th International Conference on
Computer Science & Education (ICCSE) (pp. 263-266). IEEE. URL
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCSE.2012.6295070
Worthington, T. (2014, August). Chinese and Australian students learning
to work together online proposal to expand the New Colombo Plan to the
online environment. In 2014 9th International Conference on Computer
Science & Education (pp. 164-168). IEEE. URL
https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/11724/1/Worthington%20Chinese%20and%20Australian%20students%20learning%202014.pdf
Worthington, T. (2017). Tom Worthington's MEd(ED) ePortfolio:
Conclusion, Athabasca University. IEEE. URL
http://www.tomw.net.au/masters_eportfolio/conclusion.shtml
Worthington, T. (2020, June). Blend and Flip for Teaching Communication
Skills to Final Year International Computer Science Students. Paper
accepted for the IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment
and Learning for Engineering (TALE), 10-13 December 2019, Yogyakarta,
Indonesia. URL https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/204833
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