The World Economic Forum has estimated that globally, over 1.2 billion children were out of the classroom due to the restricted physical interactions amid COVID-19 pandemic. More significantly, after twenty months, many of these children are still unable to participate in learning the way they used to do pre-pandemic. Kudos to teachers for embracing digital technology to maintain learning continuity during the pandemic. However, the real questions are how could this sudden shift has impacted on the nature of teaching and learning? Are the changes caused by the coronavirus going to be lasting?
Over the last decade, adoption of digital technology has exponentially grown across the education spectrum, and the online education market has been projected to be reaching US$350 billion by 2025. Specifically, with the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the technology giants and many EdTech companies have invested like never before to develop their platforms and include various new features to cater for the new demands. In addition, many education providers have formed long-term partnerships with Tech companies to facilitate learning through their platforms. What does this mean for the future of teaching and learning?
During the pandemic, technology helped education institutions to survive and maintain teaching continuity. With this experience, however, the importance of flexibility in learning has been more valued. Many students in higher education now expect to have the option to join the classes remotely, or watch the lectures later, and asynchronous discussion forums and other online engagements to be embedded with their F2F instructions. Such blended learning can provide students with more opportunities to engage with learning, better learning experiences, more inclusiveness, and more accessible learning. Education providers that already have committed for strategic long-term partnerships with EdTech companies could be those who have realised these affordances of blended learning.
Students may not have a direct role in educational change, yet they can be powerful. It is because student learning experiences can hugely impact on teachers’ instructional decisions, and teachers often embrace instructional methods that they think facilitate student learning better. If teachers build positive perceptions about blended learning, they will sustain the practice which means blended teaching becoming the new normal in the post-pandemic era. This will likely lead to more frequent adoption and diffusion of blended learning at institution level. Educause has predicted that the rapid changes that occurred in teaching and learning during the pandemic is going to be permanently embedded in future teaching, and technology-integrated teaching will play a pivotal role in the refinement of instructional methods and to provide more student-cantered learning. So, it is likely that while education providers that become early adopters will be leading the way in the future while late adopters would likely fall behind.