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‘Reflection needed on growing digitisation of education’

Image: Pavel Ignatov, via Shutterstock

European lockdown rush to online teaching raises questions about quality and long-term strategy, survey suggests

Although most European higher education institutions generally managed to move teaching online in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, further digitisation of higher education should be thoughtfully managed, a report from the European University Association has recommended.

Among the questions rectors should ask themselves, according to the report, are whether the shift online should stay after pandemic lockdowns are no longer necessary, whether institutions can jointly offer such teaching, and whether more sophisticated methods of ‘blended’ digital-physical teaching can be explored.

The report, published on 21 January, was written by EUA staff Michael Gaebel, Thérèse Zhang, Henriette Stoeber and Alison Morrisroe, as part of an Erasmus+ co-funded project to inform universities’ digital education strategies. It was based on a survey of university heads in the 49 countries of the European Higher Education Area, with 368 institutions responding from April-June 2020.

The survey found that institutions’ adoption of digitally enhanced education increased after a similar survey was carried out in 2014—even before the pandemic made uptake more urgent. Staff training, institutional strategies and investment in equipment all help facilitate digitisation, it found, while a lack of external funding and low motivation among staff can stymie it.

Now, “critical assessment” is required to determine what changes to digitally enhanced learning and teaching are needed and socially desirable, said Gaebel and colleagues.

“It would be strategic to ensure that digitally enhanced learning and teaching does not get marked as an emergency mode, to go back into the box until the next pandemic, but rather to maintain the momentum, and seek to sustain and further develop the elements and aspects that worked well and could provide benefits beyond the crisis,” they said.

Gaebel and colleagues said that future innovative ideas are likely to come from students and staff, but that institutions and governments can facilitate the adoption of such ideas by eliminating regulatory obstacles and providing resources.

A separate report, co-funded under the same project and published on the same day, found that protocols for universities to judge their own levels of digitisation must be chosen carefully, ideally based on local situations and what other self-assessments an institution already uses.

“The real value of the instrument depends on the purpose and how it is implemented by the institution,” said Gaebel and Morrisroe alongside non-EUA digital education experts Airina Volungevičienė, Mark Brown and Rasa Greenspon.