The Future of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in the Coronavirus Era

Proceedings of The 5th International Conference on Future of Teaching and Education

Year: 2022

DOI:

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The Future of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in the Coronavirus Era

Ray Archee

ABSTRACT: 

The entire higher education sector has experienced a serious downturn for the past two years because of the coronavirus pandemic, but has managed to stay in operation, typically employing a combination of videoconferencing and blended learning. Overall, student losses have not been quite as bad as first predicted, with inconsistent levels of job losses seen around the world. Higher education has kept its doors open and students have realised that enrolling in a higher degree is a more reliable option than finding employment or travelling overseas. The success of the new delivery methods has led some commentators to predict that online, technologically driven curricula will become the norm. Technology has simply provided a stop-gap to enable social distancing to occur during lockdowns that are still ongoing. This paper argues that the vast majority of staff and students do not aspire to teach and learn online. Lack of human presence, minimal collaboration and motivation issues, together with technical problems, and isolation create barriers to teaching and learning alike. The evaluation of online teaching over the last two years is yet to be determined, however, the future of higher education is a return to traditional mainstream classrooms, with an additional back-up website for the majority of instructors and students.

keywords: coronavirus, COVID-19, higher education, future .