Don’t despair – there is a big upheaval coming but there are a lot of potential positives

 

By Claire Field

A quick comment from me this week as I prepare to do what a number of universities and other tertiary education institutions are doing – switching from face-to-face offerings to fully online.

In my case, it’s the experience of moving a traditional conference with 100+ senior VET leaders, government officials and EdTech entrepreneurs into a virtual offering within a matter of four days.

Unfortunately, after the government’s announcement on Friday too many delegates and speakers were prevented from travelling or attending even smaller events (as institutions move proactively to keep staff safe).

My experience is a microcosm of the experiences tertiary institutions are planning for and executing on. I am enormously lucky that things are on track thanks to a very generous offer to help (and the requisite technical expertise) from Kerri Buttery at VETNexus.

In the next few months all institutions will need help to pivot to a fully on-line offering and while that may seem overwhelming (and the times generally seem gloomy) – it is not all bad news.

One of the conference speakers is Dutch EdTech entrepreneur, Rene Persoon, from aNewSpring. We caught up (with appropriate social distancing) in Sydney yesterday and with Europe ahead of Australia in terms of people being forced to self-isolate and educational institutions therefore delivering on-line – he shared the following:

*  a small number of their clients (VET providers) have suffered and had to close down their operations.

* others are significantly massively expanding their operations to meet the on-line learning needs of people stuck at home and bored with playing PlayStation or watching Netflix.

* on-line education is improving educational outcomes. In The Netherlands they are seeing school students learning as much in two hours of well-developed online learning as they would in a day in a normal classroom.

So don’t despair – there is a big upheaval coming but there are a lot of potential positives.

Claire Field advises on VET, international education and private higher education