The global pandemic has witnessed an unprecedented demand surge for teaching resources to support online and remote learning. Covid-19 has forced a paradigm shift in education as educators and students have been suddenly thrust into online and remote learning mode for an uncertain duration which sees no end in sight.
One group that is most keenly affected are the tertiary students where lectures and books constitute only part of the learning. Much of the skills and knowledge acquisition rest on face2face group discussion, onsite work experience, and other authentic learn settings. On this note, we should be careful not to equate remote with online learning: sitting alone at home in pyjamas, with little notice and interaction to finish an online course/ study programme is remote learning, not online learning per se.
Resources for online education
To confront the challenges of remote and online learning, Erasmus University of Rotterdam (EUR) offers an all-inclusive platform – TeachEUR to support higher education (HE) teachers. TeachEUR not only offers resources and guiding framework for designing online, offline, and hybrid lessons, but also, provides interactive teaching sessions for sharing new teaching methodology and for networking with fellow like-minded colleagues.
TeachEUR
In a similar fashion, Delft University of Technology’s (TU-Delft) Möbius Support Overview presents a comprehensive coverage of support for digital assessment tooling as well as remote teaching guide for both large and small audiences. An additional bonus is the feature for comparison of online exam tools. Möbius Exams is another treasure to explore: a web-based system for developing exams, tests, quizzes, and assignments which can be used for both summative and formative assessment with the possibility to automatically assess students’ responses.
Unique opportunities
On a positive note, COVID-19 presents unique opportunities for pedagogical innovations and technological applications in teaching and learning that could be further leveraged to conceptualise and develop sustainable models of education of the future: beyond COVID-19. This will require the collective responsibility of all education stakeholders to review the educational innovations and the implications for policy and practice, taking into account the central concerns of sociology of education in remote online learning setting.
Blog by: Dr. Esther Tan, Senior Researcher at LDE CEL