ANU DVC on the Future of Learning

Professor Maryanne Dever, ANU Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education & Digital), delivered the keynote at the opening of EdTechPosium 2021 in Canberra this morning, with a gentle dig at the Australian Government: "We are not helped by the revolving door around the Minister for Education".

But the PVC started on the tech side about providing suitable leaning management systems, then the need to help staff to use them effectively. She moved the broader topics of offering international students to option of studying online at first before comping to Australia to work and study. As someone who has spent the last ten years teaching online and three years as an international online student, much of what the DVC envisaged has been my daily life for all that time. So I suggest aiming for even more flexibility. Australian universities can offer all students, not just international ones, the option of studying wherever they happen to be for must of their study. In practice students will still want to come to campus, and my rule of thumb is this will be about 20% of the time.

"Massive digital disruption of the pace and scale we have seen was not on the agenda for our higher education system. While Australian universities have managed with varying degrees of success to deliver emergency online learning in the wake of COVID19, most of us are still processing what the last 18 months mean for the future of university learning and teaching. In this presentation I will draw on my experience managing change across this period to explore some of the opportunities offered by this new normal, reflect on the comfortable assumptions that have been shattered, and question what it might take if we are to emerge from this moment in better shape than we went in."