In the wake of COVID-19—A time to rethink and reengineer education systems

The COVID-19 pandemic marks a significant watershed in the trajectory of educational provision globally. From elementary to tertiary education, the resilience of models of learning and teaching that have evolved over centuries has been tested (see Bozkurt, 2022). The devastation caused by the pandemic to the age-old architecture of campus-based educational provision is not unlike that caused by natural disasters such as a tsunami, an earthquake, or a hurricane. In its trail, the pandemic has left behind not only widespread school closures but also disruptions to the housing and the service industry, especially in metropolitan areas, which have depended so heavily on the younger and transient student population.

Having had some time to assess the damage caused by the pandemic, it is reasonable to assume that given the disruption caused to our educational systems, now is a good time to rethink and reengineer our operations and core business models for teaching and learning for greater resilience in the future (see Waller et al., 2020). And given that most institutions have been exposed to some form of online and distance learning to keep afloat during the pandemic, it would be equally reasonable to assume that these methods of teaching and learning would feature prominently in the redesign and reengineering effort. There is, however, little evidence so far of either of these expectations featuring prominently anywhere.

The models of learning, teaching, and scholarship that contemporary education systems profess and support are a product of more than a thousand years of acculturation, and not easily displaced. They have, however, become increasingly unfit for the current generation of learners who are not of the same background with similar sorts of aspirations and goals. This is not a time, therefore, to whitewash the inadequacies of conventional campus-based operations, but a time to reimagine a more agile and adaptive learning environment for a clearly different generation of learners and teachers. This is a time to rethink and reengineer institutional choreographies to meet the challenges of this new cohort and to futureproof our education systems for the next generation and the ones after that.

What would that next-generation educational institution look like—whether building from scratch or reengineering existing ones? What would be different about the ethos and culture of its new business model? For instance, how would key educational functions, including various education services, be organized and managed in the next-generation institutions? How would role and responsibility in relation to teaching be reorganized in them? How would academic staff be appointed to their positions, and under what terms and conditions? How would academic staff have access to requisite professional development? What kinds of policy frameworks will be required for such future-focused education systems and institutions? And most importantly, what would be different about these considerations from the way they have always been (see Ernst & Young, 2018; Peters et al., 2020; UNESCO, 2020)? This kind of effort will require a holistic approach to rethinking and redesigning core operational models.

Despite this imperative, and the view that a return to pre-pandemic modus operandi is neither possible nor advisable, there are growing calls from both staff and students across campuses for not only a return to pre-pandemic campus-based lectures and their attendant activities but also little interest in adopting nontraditional approaches in redesigning and reengineering campus-based operations (Carroll, 2022). How widespread and deeply rooted these views are across the education sector, or how much they are a result of negative encounters and experiences students and staff with the emergency response to teaching and learning, needs interrogation and a critical look.

The widespread adoption of online education during the pandemic had its benefits, as it allowed educational institutions to remain open and functional in limited ways. However, as an emergency response, practically all iterations of online learning were able to offer only a minimalist solution, which naturally, and unfairly, was compared to more robust forms of online and technology-enhanced learning (see Hodges et al., 2020). As the article “What Contributed to Students’ Online Learning Satisfaction during the Pandemic?” by Sin-Hyang Kim and Sihyun Park shows, these studies revealed many challenges faced by students. Unfortunately, they also set back the agenda and progress made over decades on the comparative advantages, benefits, and efficacy of open, flexible, online, and distance learning, especially for particular contexts and groups of learners. The findings of Kim and Park’s review of 42 studies, drawn largely from the South Korean context—with its relatively advanced technology infrastructure—need to be interpreted with caution as the experience of learners in less technologically advanced settings may not be the same. Their study found that among the most influential factors in student satisfaction with their online learning experience were instructional support, technology acceptance, and perceived teaching presence, with the highest effects for teacher related factors such as instructions, reminders, and feedback on student learning activities. This study did not explore the impacts of the affordances of online learning on other dependent variables such as student engagement, academic achievement, and staff satisfaction, the results for which are likely to have revealed similar challenges.

Many students and staff prefer the physical campus and the live lecture because of their predictability and reliability, so it should be no surprise to anyone that learners (and staff) would want their online learning environment to work just as reliably and all the time—not just periodically or intermittently. And even if the technology is available and reliable, all students and staff need the requisite digital literacy to be able to work these tools effectively and efficiently.

The acts of teaching in online learning, therefore, cannot be any less rigorous and engaging than they are when carried out on the physical campus. When, and if this is the case, learners are going to be naturally dissatisfied. This is not to suggest that there is anything wrong with online learning and teaching per se—and it would be unfair to assume that online education is any less effective and/or efficient than the campus-based experience. It means that the online learning experience has not been designed well. In the article “The Benefits of Belonging: Students’ Perceptions of their Online Learning experiences,” Daniela DiGiacomo, Ellen Usher, Jaeyun Han, Jill Abney, Anastacia Cole, and Jaylene Patterson posit that regardless of the educational context, a sense of belonging is a requisite social condition of learning, obviously based on the premise that while being a solitary activity, effective, efficient and engaging learning is enhanced when it is a social process. And because it is so, issues of ethnicity, gender, and mode of study are likely to influence students’ engagement and belonging with their learning experience. The most engaging learning environments are those that provide ample opportunities for a wide variety of engagement types, including student-student, student-teacher and student-content interactions, as well as opportunities for group-based discussion and debate and their facilitation.

Social support is also reported as facilitating online distance learning in the article “Using Online Photovoice and Community-Based Participatory Research to Understand Facilitators and Barriers to Online Distance Education during COVID-19” by Ahmet Tanhan, Christopher Boyle, Besra Taş, Yasin Söğüt, Craig Cashwell, Emel Genc, and Hasan Turan Karatepe. Researchers in this study used online photovoice and community-based participatory research to understand facilitators and barriers to online distance education for college students in Turkey. They found that while the affordances of online learning technologies served as facilitators, they also posed barriers to learning when the technology—especially connectivity to the Internet—was not working well, or as it should have.

Additional benefits of promoting and supporting social presence along with teaching presence include motivation to learn. In the article “Do Online Teaching and Social Presences Contribute to Motivational Growth?,” Minhye Lee and Jieun Lim argue that instead of always seeing motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic) as a predictor of retention, satisfaction, and achievement, there is merit in seeing how motivation itself can be enhanced with more explicit design of teaching activities and opportunities for greater social and group-based learning experiences.

Distance education that requires minimalist interaction and engagement among peers and with the educational institution is widely acknowledged as an attractive mode of education for independent study, especially for learners who either need the independence or choose it. Many of these predominantly adult learners possess a high degree of independence, fortitude, and self-direction. In the article “Influence of Self-Directed Learning on Learning Outcomes in MOOCs: A Meta-analysis,” Min Young Doo, Meina Zhu, and Curtis Bonk explore the role of self-direction on success, especially in open-ended learning environments. The findings of this study support the general view that self-direction has benefits for motivation and self-regulation, as well as learning achievement.

But learners will vary in terms of self-regulation and agency, as suggested in the article “Help-Seeking Matters for Online Learners who are Unconfident” by Jaclyn Broadbent and Wren D. W. Howe. This study explores how self-efficacy, or willingness to seek help, might influence success with learning. Following up on mixed results of the relationships between help-seeking behaviors and achievement outcomes, this study found that learners with low levels of confidence and who do not seek to engage with peers and teachers benefited more from help-seeking than those with higher levels of confidence and higher tendency to engage. In the article “Developing an Agentic Engagement Scale in a Self-Paced MOOC,” Rang Kim and Hae-Deok Song describe the development of a scale for ascertaining learner agency to be able to support it effectively and efficiently.

Observations such as these highlight that all learners, regardless of whether they are online or offline, need support and scaffolding in their learning. This is especially true of educational contexts where online learning is adopted as part of conventional campus-based operations. In such situations, the attractiveness of models of distance education such as online learning is the flexibility they afford for learning and teaching, and not so much its independence, hence the need for reintegrating social and teaching presence into online and distance education practices. A powerful strategy in the development of this kind of social and teaching presence in online learning environments is moderation. This refers to the activities of the instructor, teacher, or tutor in support of student learning.

In the article “An Exploratory Review of Literature on Moderation in Asynchronous Discussions,” Michael Ahlf and Sara McNeil list these as managerial, monitoring, pedagogical, technical, and social. Unsurprisingly, these are all generic teaching functions and they are critical in the success of any learning experience—not just online learning environments. The problem is that while they are taken for granted in campus-based educational settings, they are easily neglected and misinterpreted in asynchronous online learning environments. A widely used instrument for facilitation and moderation of the learning experience is the online discussion forum. In the article “Interaction in Online Postgraduate Learning: What Makes a Good Forum?,” Richard Kipling, William A. V. Stiles, Michael de Andrade-Lima, Neil MacKintosh, Meirion W. Roberts, Cate L. Williams, Peter C. Wootton-Beard, and Sarah Watson-Jones explore its role and function in teaching and learning. While little can be achieved when student participation in discussion forums is poorly managed, excessive control and manipulation can be unhelpful to the learner, and the teacher, as is suggested in the article “Leveraging Explainability for Discussion Forum Classification: Using Confusion Detection as an Example” by Hanxiang Du and Wanli Xing. The challenge is to get the mixture, and the balance right between independence and interaction. This is age-old advice, and one suggested long ago by Daniel and Marquis (1979) in response to calls for more interaction in distance education contexts.

So, let’s be very clear about one thing—online and distance learning is not an easy solution (JISC, 2021). It requires the same level of rigor that is required for the design and development of campus-based learning experiences. Many institutions are attracted to the idea and the affordances of online and technology-enhanced learning and are willing to experiment with it in parallel with their conventional learning and teaching practices—but not at the expense of it. In most educational contexts, such innovation and change to core business models sit on the periphery without real institution-wide impact—as an opportunity to promote existing brands and tap into new markets for additional revenue. Calls for its abandoning from the physical campus, as an inadequate solution in the wake of the pandemic, while whitewashing the limitations of the campus-based experience, are not going to save us from the next major disruption. What will save us is a move away from tinkering at the edges, toward a systemic rethink and reimagination of mainstream provision. Failing to do so is one of the most potent of all challenges facing an enterprise-wide rethink of educational and institutional choreographies. Who among us is undertaking such an enterprise-wide rethink of their operational models?