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The Future Of Higher Education

Students walk through the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 18. The school halted in-person classes and reverted back to online courses after a rise in the number of COVID-19 cases.
Students walk through the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 18. The school halted in-person classes and reverted back to online courses after a rise in the number of COVID-19 cases.

As colleges and universities navigate the transition to virtual learning, there is an opportunity to explore new approaches that could revolutionize higher education. While the shift has been driven by the pandemic, it has also prompted discussions about the potential benefits of embracing virtual platforms and active learning methodologies. This shift opens the door to reimagining higher education, not only in terms of remote delivery but also in terms of enhancing the learning experience for students. Alongside these changes, there is a growing emphasis on the importance of continuous learning and acquiring new skills in today’s rapidly evolving world. To support this, corporate learning management solutions have emerged as valuable tools that enable individuals to acquire knowledge and develop their skills in a flexible and accessible manner. By embracing these advancements, we can create a system that better serves students, parents, and university employees while preparing individuals for success in a dynamic professional landscape.

As the pandemic forces many colleges that started in-person classes to stop, colleges and universities are transitioning to virtual learning again.

But will colleges embrace virtual learning? And could that even be better for students?

Here’s a take published in Inside Higher Ed:

Imagine if schools had provided similar direction for improving remote learning. For decades, we’ve known that the passive learning engendered by the mainstay of lower-level undergraduate education — lectures — can be upended by converting courses to active learning.

There’s consensus on what active learning entails: (1) flip the classroom so one-way curriculum delivery occurs ahead of class, (2) quickly ascertain whether students have understood key concepts, (3) utilize classroom time for group problem solving and project-based learning to improve understanding of key concepts, and (4) track whether learning has occurred. Because at least three of these four items require intensive use of technology, COVID’s forced shift to remote learning was a once-in-a-century opportunity to re-engineer courses to active learning…

Are there other changes that could change the way we currently imagine higher ed? And can we create a system that better serves students, parents and university employees in the process?

Find all the other conversations in our “Homeworked” series.

Copyright 2020 WAMU 88.5

Emmanuel Johnson