The Stawell Times-News

Post-pandemic learning: What industry changes can Australians expect?

Post-pandemic learning: What industry changes can Australians expect?
Post-pandemic learning: What industry changes can Australians expect?

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The COVID-19 pandemic saw around 1.5 billion students globally leave their classrooms and adopt digital or at-home learning initiatives.

Naturally, not all of these global initiatives were as strong as they could have been, and so not all students were able to flourish in this altered educational environment.

Even post-pandemic, there has been a very real hesitancy shared by students, parents, and even teachers alike to jump right back into learning as they'd once known it to be.

Traditional in-person learning experiences have retained some of the pandemic's digital learning resources, and education industry analysts assert that there's little reason to believe that Australia's education industry will ever 'return to normal'.

So what is the industry's 'new normal'? We'll be exploring the answer to this question today.

Embracing e-learning and digital learning tools

We have already observed an increase in the number of online courses and even hybrid courses being offered by Australian tertiary institutions across the country.

Alongside this, online courses can be found in a growing number of study disciplines, and this will continue to occur as digital learning tools keep being developed.

The many affordances of digital learning technologies essentially allows universities and other tertiary institutes to offer e-learning alternatives for more technical or hands-on courses that were previously on-campus only due to their requiring specialist learning resources like labs or computer labs.

In the present day, however, specialist areas of study like engineering, architecture, and graphic design can actually be taught online, and it's all thanks to the evolution of digital learning technologies.

Screen-sharing and remote desktop software like TeamViewer, allows teachers to guide students through hands-on tutorials even when learning from home.

These digital learning technologies have also made it easier for students studying remotely to develop technical skills and gain a variety of qualifications at their own pace.

Introduction of flexible course schedules

Speaking of learning at one's own pace, there has been great public discussion over the past two years in particular about the benefits of flexible learning for increasing accessibility to education in all corners of the world.

Online courses and even on-campus courses with highly flexible schedules, allow students with additional work or personal commitments to attain qualifications that may otherwise not have been feasible for them to attain.

Flexible course schedules have already proven themselves to be a valuable asset for working professionals looking to upskill, with courses like executive master's programmes and even short professional skills-building courses allowing individuals to bolster their CVs without necessarily having to take time off work.

Flexible courses are also likely to be just as integral to supporting at-home parents as they transition back into the workforce as flexible work opportunities, both of which are vital for improving employment rates across the globe.

Post-pandemic learning: What industry changes can Australians expect?
Post-pandemic learning: What industry changes can Australians expect?

Teaching self-study skills to younger students

Whilst learning from home or learning remotely may have been a less than demanding transition for tertiary level students, the shift from in-class to online learning did prove to be comparatively difficult for younger prep to year 7, 8, and 9 students, who hadn't felt any prior push to study independently.

Prior to the pandemic, self-study skills were only really introduced to students in the lead-up to their VCE or other secondary school certification exams.

As the pandemic blurred the lines between homework and schoolwork, however, many teachers began introducing their students to the concept of independent study as a means of wrapping their heads around new concepts without needing to be overly reliant on one-on-one time with teachers, because this time was in short supply itself.

This has only continued through to the present day, as staff shortages force students to engage with new coursework and concepts with minimal in-person support.

In truth, there are many advocates across the industry for the earlier introduction of self-study skills, with many asserting that independent study is a life skill and a necessary element in highly technical disciplines like computer science. If schools are preparing to teach more complex subjects to students of younger ages, those students must also be prepared to retain the information and skills they're introduced to and to reinforce their understanding of the subjects as they continue to learn.

Incorporating technical skills-building into teacher courses

It wasn't just students being forced to adapt to rapid-fire changes throughout the pandemic, however.

Teachers across the globe were at the forefront of the fight to protect their students' right to an education, as they scrambled to familiarise themselves with digital learning technologies like Zoom, PDF worksheets, virtual whiteboards, and a myriad of other software.

School holiday periods over 2020 and 2021 saw Aussie teachers engaging in their own form of self-study every day, playing around with the technology that they'd been saddled with, and understanding how best to use these tools with little to no hands-on support from their administrators.

For many teachers who'd only just entered the classroom themselves, the pandemic challenged all that they'd learnt in their tertiary training.

Teaching methodologies that they were only just putting into practice underwent massive technological amendments, drastically altering their initial perspective of the role they were to play.

With all this in mind, many Australian tertiary institutions have been amending and updating course materials for their teacher courses, introducing more digital elements to traditional teaching materials, and placing greater emphasis on the need for future generations of teachers to develop technical skills, not just as they study but throughout the length of their teaching careers.

It's worth noting too that emerging technologies will continue to reshape Australia's education system in the coming years.

Schools and tertiary institutions hold a responsibility to utilise technologies as they're made available to them.

It's also likely that as we delve deeper into this digital age, the 'new normal' that has been made possible through the use of digital learning technologies, will include contingency plans to cater to emergency situations that may potentially see school closures occur again.