Delay The Return To Campus: NUS Calls For Flexibility

As students have returned to university, many have expressed concern at the prospect of being locked down in their university halls. Organisations such as @UniversitiesUK and the National Union of Students* (@nusuk) have urged that student ‘wellbeing’ should be first priority, the situation demands ‘flexibility’**. Likewise, MPs have called for delaying the start of the autumn term until mass on-campus Covid-19 testing or remote learning options are available.

Stewart Watts, SVP International at D2L, a leading edtech supplier for schools and universities across the UK, offers the following statement:

“If this year has taught us anything, it’s that we must move beyond day-to-day firefighting, and focus on building resilience and agility into the foundation of our higher education system. The student experience may well be peppered with closures and local lockdowns for some time, so consistency of digital infrastructure is critical to ensure standards are met and learning loss is mitigated. A patchwork of solutions deployed by universities might be fine during an unexpected and sudden crisis – but that lesson was learned six months ago.

“To be effective and future-proof, investments must focus on training, technology, and digital infrastructure. While there is no substitute for lecturer-led, in-person education, the reality of the current situation is that this will not be readily available the way it used to be. New models for learning – hybrid, fully online, other learning methodologies – should be supported across universities to enable at least some degree of educational continuity, even if through unfamiliar means. Mandates are not necessary, but cohesion and consistency are, and that can be accomplished by thinking differently about how technology is developed and deployed across systems.

“Universities need partners to help them – rather than plug and play solutions that assume years of developing pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning can be lifted into pre-set solutions. Lecturers need to know how to use technology and how it can support them rather than replace them or alter what they have always brought to the lecture hall. If we focus on building resiliency together, we can make it happen and create a new normal better than the one we all long to return to.”