And the answer to the million-dollar question is…

Adversities are the breathing ground for innovation and change. Martin himself may recall back in London when Margarite Thatcher Government, facing increasing unemployment, under the moto of education for all, overnight increased student population threefold, without the matching resources. Our response was the birth of Student Centred Learning which has remained with us ever since and used as an effective pedagogic approach to transform teaching to education.

The pandemic is bound to generate fundamental changes to the way we deliver education for the rest of the decade (well beyond that, we shall probably educate our children not in universities, but design them one gene at a time). For 2021, radical enhancement is inevitable. The only thing remaining is what narrative will the education sector offer students, parents and the society in order to explain why we had to wait for a pandemic before thinking of these innovative changes. Admittedly, we have been innovating all the time, including remote delivery, virtual classes, virtual labs, collaborative working, WIL and alternative modes of assessment. Nevertheless, anything different to the past practice warrants some explanation.

Martin eluded to the fact that we don’t know what exactly the future will look like. But one thing to look for (and possibly be aware of) is the way Social Net tools create and propagate ideas. They don’t exactly tell us what to think but tend to steer groups into incrementally forming an opinion and then propagate that exponentially; not dissimilar to Séance group meetings attempting to communicate with the spirits and the hands on a glass are collectively steered towards the letters of alphabet ending up with a message they all submit to. Therefore, it seems sensible to be perceptive of student expectations, but ultimately work as a sector to conceive solutions that reflect our wisdom and the best interest of students.