Presentation by Dr. Som Naidu on Reimagining Flexible Learning to Build Resilience in Education Systems Post COVID-19.
Sarah Stein from the Open Polytechnic oc NZ (TOPNZ) welcomes participants and moderates the session.
Dr. Naidu begins with a welcome and respect to the original people (welcome to country).
Summarised the key takeaways from Covid-10 - impacts indiscriminate, best resourced institutions affected just as much as lesser resourced, least affected have more open, flexible and distance, and has shown how unprepared and ill-equipped education sector has been for the disruption!
Encouraged all to learn from their experiences so that we can move forward, with better ways to engage learners through reengineering activities and models to ensure they are more resilient.
Comtemporary Australian Universities are unprepared. Still 'bricks n mortar' institutions which are faculty centred rather than flexible, agile and learning centric. Vector consulting report and Cisco/Optus report concur that digitalisation of learning (Australian universities and TAFEs) is slow and patchy despite the need to change. Educational leaders agree that the future of educaiton requires re-think but perhaps the teaching workforce not supported to build the relevant capabilities :(
Recommended the need to set up value principles to inform the design of flexible learning - equity, diversity, equality need to have precedence, all learning can be flexible, there is no one size fits all, therefore need for different approaches. Flexibility build in through learning experience design, learner-content engagement, learner-teacher engagement, learner-learner engagement, learner engagement with learning environment, learning engagement with assessment activities, feedback and with the larger iinstitution.
Strategy needs to move from responding (robust platform) to reflecting, reimagining.and rebound (evaluative processes). Suggested looking qt 'space agnostic design' and unbundling the 'credit' programme.
Think through the key considerations - what will the institution look like and how will it be different from now? What are the key functions, role and responsibilities and appointment of academic staff. What professional development required? What kinds of policy frameworks support the new approach?? See resource from UNESCO 2020 and article by Peters et al (2020).
Therefore, how prepared are we??
Provided and discussed example - Open University of Australia collates courses from other universities. Shifting to this model may work for some. For most institutes, technology-enhanced learning sits on the periphery, most willing to experiement with flexible/open etc. but NOT at the detriment of their normal programmes!
Interesting Q & A with some discussion on Te Pūkenga, its aspirations and suggestion for us to be proactive and to represent the realities/pedagogical challenges etc.
Good presentation with clear line of narrative and challenge to the sector, to up our game, and to use the learning from the challenges to make things better.
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