The year 2020 changed the panorama and horizon of teaching forever. Innopolis University switched to online and blended education with minor problems only. Why we were “almost” ready for the switch. This chapter presents those days, how we reacted and managed to move on. What is going to be the future of education?

1 Switching to Online Education

Life-changing events have occurred in the year 2020, affecting a wide range of professional fields. One of the most affected areas has been education. Institutions all across the world had to make the transition to online education in a matter of days.

With the onset of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, various aspects of the present educational system have shown to be outdated. Despite the fact that online education is here to stay, frontal classrooms are a millennia-old tradition that cannot be completely replaced without ignoring human nature. Old and new can coexist, and humans and machines can work together to advance society.

Figure 10.1 shows a pre-COVID classroom where students are raising their hands to get the attention of the teacher, a practice that is at least as old as the First Industrial Revolution.

Fig. 10.1
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Students asking for the attention of the teacher

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2 Lessons Learned from COVID-19

The year 2020 has been a remarkable one for the world in general and, in our case, specifically for education. Many certainties vanished in a matter of days or weeks and will not be back. At Innopolis, we have been forced to reorganize the educational process in 1 week. This implied improving the ICT infrastructure, purchasing or extending licenses for specific platforms such as Microsoft TeamsFootnote 1 or Zoom,Footnote 2 making sure that connectivity was suitable, and identifying adequate methods of instructions. Some challenges have been institutional, some individual. Even something as simple as setting up an effective home office with good connectivity has been, at times, challenging. The reluctance of teachers to indulge in the new format can also be a challenge. However, as an IT university, we did not experience this to a large extent. Changes came as a hurricane, and they are not leaving. Online education, in the blended format, is here to stay.

The experience of the year 2020 showed some distinctive emerging traits that we believe can be generalized to any educational organization worldwide.

2.1 New Methods of Teaching

Education in the form of online streaming has existed before as an integrative option for certain organizations. For some educational commercial online platforms (or universities) was instead a regular way of operating. Traditional academia was mostly reluctant to move and adopt it. The year 2020 was a game changer. During and after the pandemic, new methods of teaching are needed to facilitate student learning. The most popular method is the usage of videos, either the real-time record of a lecture or material separately prepared and provided to students. These options provide flexibility to students and the possibility to re-watch multiple times or even to watch in a speed mode. Recorded lectures are ways to accommodate the lack of physical contact. However, videos by themselves may hardly be the most effective methods of knowledge delivery, due to the limited interaction between students and professors or among students themselves [1]. Therefore, the instructional approaches shifting to online modality should be considered in the light of different factors. Teachers will be operating more as moderators than as instructors [5]. Flipped learning is an alternative method where a teacher records a video of the lecture and shares it with students to be watched as homework, before the lecture. At lecture time, the focus will be on the discussion of the content, on answering questions, and on clarifying misunderstanding [3].

2.2 Evaluation and Assessment by Virtual Means

Adapting courses and programs to an online format is obviously difficult, but the most difficult aspect is assessing students’ results and proctoring. Assessments should be done on a regular basis during the semester rather than relying simply on final exams: the traditional final exam will be replaced by continuous evaluation. Many universities have already switched to this format, and the year 2020 accelerated this transition.

2.3 Greater Use of Open Educational Resources

This has already happened for some time; 2020 is a year of non-return. Here, we also advocate the importance of traditional content, such as books. Closed-access resources turned out to be a blockage for online education. Some of the advantages of online education are affordability and accessibility, and, to achieve this, open educational resources are fundamental.

2.4 Professional Development for Teaching Staff on Digital Education

Our organization, Innopolis University, is a young and dynamic IT university which experienced marginal issues in the switch, being the teaching staff mostly IT specialists with long experience as software users and developers. However, we noticed that the changes have been problematic for some of our colleagues from less IT-related departments, and we have observed significant problems in other universities and faculties. The path of complete digitalization for established teachers is long ahead.

2.5 Distinctive Features Must Compensate the Decrease of Campus Experience

Education is not only about content delivery but campus experience, human networking, sports, and social activities, where young adults learn a 360-degree perspective on life and profession. Online education, even in a hybrid format, cannot offer a comparable experience in this sense. We certainly hope that part of these offline activities can be eventually restored. However, it is necessary to rethink education to offer specific features that can compensate for this emerging gap.

2.6 Greater Emphasis Will Be Placed on Collaborative Projects

As a consequence of loss of campus interaction and networking, collaborative projects, even if executed remotely, can reinstate back some feeling of community belonging and horizontal learning.

2.7 ICT Infrastructure Is Critical

While in the pre-COVID classic delivery mode, teaching could be potentially delivered with a shortage of ICT infrastructure, now this is a “condicio sine qua non”. ICT was before a support infrastructure, and every teacher was able occasionally to deliver a functioning class without a projector, a laptop, or an Internet connection. This is not possible now, and often even a slightly sub-optimal bandwidth can make things frustrating and difficult to follow. Universities that want to win the race have to put the development of ICT infrastructure on top of the list. Before considered a distraction by many lecturers, laptops in the classroom are now the primary tools of operations.

2.8 Paradigm Shift in Teachers’ Training Programs

Teachers’ training programs are mostly designed for classroom-based in-person teaching. With online education as a norm, teachers have to be trained accordingly. Online education presents more challenges in terms of ensuring students’ attention. Furthermore, classroom interactions allow teachers to have some idea of students’ mental state, and teachers can provide support accordingly. Online education makes it difficult to know students’ issues (especially with their cameras and microphone off most of the time). It might become mandatory for teachers to have basic mental health education to assess students’ behavior and provide support accordingly.

2.9 New Ways of Establishing Discipline and Roles

With education being learner centric, classroom disciplinary restrictions are more relaxed as compared to the situation some decades ago. Students have a say in educational reforms, and any significant alteration in the educational process takes place with the teacher and student consensus. With online education, classroom boundaries need to be revisited in consultation with teachers and students. By boundaries, we refer to teacher-student agreements that ensure discipline required to maintain quality of education. Some of the points that require consideration involve camera and microphone on/off issues and lecture delivery modes such as recorded or live sessions.

3 Final Thoughts

Education is not only about content delivery and even not principally about it. What creates the unique university experience is human networking, sports, and social activities, all the involvements where young adults learn a 360-degree perspective on life and profession guided by senior colleagues and faculty. Online education, even in a blended format, cannot offer this experience. There is a significant risk that students can escape “reality” and hide in a “cocoon”. After decades of exaggerated emphasis on “soft skill” where introverts were pushed to their limits and extroverts could more easily thrive, we now push young generations to the opposite extreme and make introverts thrive. Even if one could see a sort of “divine justice” in such change, it is not by moving from one extreme to another that we balance a situation. In some sense, injustice cannot compensate for another injustice. We need to have a balanced approach. Work is now necessary to find a way to overcome such a possible degeneration and avoid the “student in a learning cocoon” approach. Even in the post-2020 era, the community still counts.

The future will see a sharp separation between those educational institutions able to catch up with the pace and those left behind, both in terms of new pedagogical methods and supporting ICT infrastructure. In the pre-COVID classic delivery mode, teaching could be delivered with a modest ICT infrastructure: projectors and laptops were often sufficient, and an Internet connection is not always necessary. Every teacher was able to deliver functioning classes without the need for any particular device. Now even a slightly sub-optimal bandwidth can make things impossible.