Over the last few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has deeply disrupted the economy, Higher Education and social interactions, forcing us to move to virtual gatherings. The lessons learned from this massive online conversion will have a lasting impact on educational practices.

 

1. Higher Education and the Upcoming Semester. As New Zealand announces its COVID-free status and the European countries tentatively reopen their borders, the COVID-19 threat is far from over. As institutions all across the globe try to plan for the next academic year, the reality of a shared “new normal” for higher education points to a series of challenges and opportunities. Harvard graduate and professional schools have announced their intention to extend remote teaching for the rest of the calendar year. Cambridge University UK is shifting to online lectures for the whole academic year. Inside Higher Ed reports a mix of hybrid approaches such as shortened and even extended terms to avoid student density across US colleges. (Media Sources on the IPSAPortal).

 

2. Contribution from HE Associations. EDUCAUSE is a non-profit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. Their website is a useful tool for information on trending topics, professional training events and relevant publications. EDUCAUSE offered basic survival skills and support for online teaching with videos and articles at the beginning of the epidemic. It also provided weekly reports and updates. As the semester ends, EDUCAUSE is trying to draw some conclusions about the success of the online experiment. The EDUCAUSE Review, the association's open-access digital publication, was the first to indicate that emergency remote teaching is not the same as online learning, which has been widely adopted in academic discourse and has served to put the spotlight on quality asynchronous learning content like MOOCs. (E-Learning on IPSAPortal).

 

3.  MOOCs for Social Justice. The end of the current semester has also coincided with anti-racism protests around the world in the wake of the George Floyd case. MOOC platforms are promoting learning as a force for social good, to enhance the values of equality and social justice. The Coursera platform has curated a collection of courses to help “deepen people’s understanding of the underlying systemic issues that give rise to social injustice”. These classes come from world-renowned experts and thought leaders. Coursera includes courses such as Love as a Force for Social Justice from Stanford University, Economic Growth and the Role of the State from Tel Aviv University and Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace from ESSEC Business School. In this context, the IPSAMOOC courses are a core curriculum in Political Science, carried out by leading scholars in the International community and produced by the Federica Web Learning Centre. (IPSAMOOCs are directly accessible on IPSAportal).

 

4. COVID-19 MOOCs. MOOCs have continued to play a major role in the COVID-19 response by disseminating scientific insights into the virus and its containment. They also provide information regarding treatment protocols and the psychological impact of the pandemic. While the research team at Imperial College London led the way with its Let’s talk about COVID in March 2020, there are now 15 courses on the Coursera platform, including COVID-19 What you need to know from the Osmosis group and Mind Control Managing your mental health during COVID from University of Toronto. A recent addition is COVID-19 Contact-tracing from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health which offers free certification. The UK platform Futurelearn is currently hosting 15 COVID-related courses with a similar topic span such as COVID-19 Critical Care from the University of Edinburgh and Helping young people manage low mood and depression from the University of Reading. Edx focuses its strategy on Spanish-speaking healthcare professionals and the public with 4 practical courses; two are addressing patient care and mechanical ventilation while the other two are about communication and lockdown strategies. (E-Learning on IPSAPortal).