Feature article

As we march closer to the 2030 target date for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is becoming more urgent that we engage young minds with these global challenges and demonstrate to them how they can have a real impact.

We developed Game Changer to engage students with the SDGs through the development of “impact-driven entrepreneurship”.

I recently read Cheating Lessons by James Lang, and this article is a by-product − that is to say, not plagiarism − of that book.

A problematic trend I notice when conversing with students is how many of them struggle to remember what they did in modules from previous semesters.

These discussions got me thinking about how to design learning activities that are unforgettable. Albert Einstein, among other figures credited with the quote, famously said that “education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school”. I want to ensure my students remember what they have learned from me, especially after all the hard work they put into the course.

To be clear, what we’ve all just been through with “online learning” is not online learning at all. It is emergency-use online learning (EUOL). We should be careful to call it what it is. Pretending that what we’ve experienced is online learning is akin to pretending the burger you just ate was filet mignon. Well, they’re both meat.

Having heard a number of educators talking about a reduction in student attendance at live online lessons as well as limited interaction from those who do attend, we developed the following tips based on our experiences of online teaching, observing others and evidence-based continuing professional development.

Let’s get the elephant in the room addressed up front: times have changed and a return to “normal” is just not on the cards, not truly.  Blended learning – to a greater or lesser extent – is here to stay. 

So, how do we rescue the reputation of blended learning, which has been battered by students’ experiences of universities’ hasty response to the pandemic and become synonymous with low-quality content?

Online repositories of educational resources have been developed gradually, usually by people who are passionate about their subjects. Some of them have built vibrant, collaborative communities of users. These online libraries and the communities they gather can support active learning and help inform our assessment tasks.

How can we develop passion in our students for a discipline? How can we come up with assessment tasks that help them master new skills?

Let’s start with a question for instructional designers and faculty members: when you last designed a course, how much time did you spend thinking about the role that each element in that course plays in shaping your college or university?

Faculty have a marked influence on students’ learning and academic success through their teaching. During the shift from face-to-face to online learning, the importance of the faculty role has become even more salient, with students looking to their instructors for stability, leadership and support during uncertain times.

Meet Harry. Harry is an assistant professor, no tenure yet − hopefully in a few years. According to his contract, Harry is supposed to spend 60 per cent of his working time teaching and 40 per cent on research. Academic reality, however, tells another story.

In the past two weeks, Harry was part of a hiring committee (which took eight hours), contributed to a report on student evaluations (two hours), peer-reviewed an article (six hours), attended an editorial board meeting (two hours) and had a number of chats with students who needed extra attention (three hours).