Postgraduate Programme post Covid-19

Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted everything the world over. One of the most crucial sector that the pandemic has disrupted is the education sector. It is difficult for students, teachers, colleges, universities to conduct classes virtually as there is a lack of human connection. There are various loopholes when it comes to online learning, the internet connectivity may be slow, not everybody would have the required equipment to study online, and so on. At a recent CII session, Dr Fergal O’ Brien, Assistant Dean, Graduate & Professional Studies, the University of Limerick, Ireland, gave an overview of educational disruption during the pandemic. How this disruption is going to force educators to reconsider their traditional education models and how they should design their programmes given the circumstances. How students should be assessed in the new norm of online submissions and online learning and much more

Universities criticised

The University of Limerick is one of the seven universities on the island of Ireland. There are some criticisms which say that our universities offer the same education theme as compared to other universities. If you look at their marketing context, typically for undergraduates, they say, you will have a positive student experience, we have great facilities, and you will get a job. But the fact of the matter is that there is very little focus on the education, learning and development of students. A lot of universities over the world are guilty of offering slightly different versions of the same thing. Maybe what we experienced in the past will force all of us to reconsider, reimagine, how we deliver education and what we are trying to achieve.

The global pandemic has resulted in changes to the education ecosystem the world over. Researchers, learners, teachers, university management, and many other stakeholders have experienced a massive disruption that may change the face of university education forever. The disruption to student mobility has impacted on “returns on investment” for learners; it has resulted in cancelled and deferred enrolments impacting university budgets; increased challenges around internationalisation and highlighted digital divide issues. So, how we are going to react to this? In my opinion, human beings are very good at going back to where they started from; even if a significant event happens in their lives they will go back to what they did before—we are extremely resilient.

One of the interesting things, particularly from internationalisation is distortion of students. I do not mean students that are travelling to any other university, I am talking about international education in general. This disruption to student mobility has impacted returns on investment for learners. We would have many students who would sign up to do postgraduate study at our university and those who are unable to physically attend our university in our country, will also impact these opportunities going forward. So, the return on the investment has hugely impacted and the future returns on investment for future learners may be impacted also. The disruption due to the pandemic has cancelled and deferred many enrolments which has impacted university budgets the world over, which I am sure many of us have experienced and an increase in the challenge around internationalisation and international experiences as well. That has highlighted digital divide issues. Meaning, the access that certain cohorts of students can have to technology vs. for example, less advantaged cohorts. And the digital divide is also highlighted by the fact that certain locations, cohorts, may not have access to consistent broadband speed and may have connectivity issues. These are some of the issues that have happened with respect to the disruption.

"The disruption to student mobility has impacted on “returns on investment” for learners; it has resulted in cancelled and deferred enrolments impacting university budgets; increased challenges around internationalisation and highlighted digital divide issues"

Dr Fergal O’ Brien

Disruption due to the pandemic

For the most part, academics have resisted moving to online education models, instead, they prefer to have the traditional approach. Why is that? The traditional approach is easy for the people who are doing it for years and from the university’s perspective, it is cheap. There is a perspective that online education is a cheap alternative to traditional teaching, the truth is it is not. That being said, having resisted moving to the online teaching methods, almost overnight, we have successfully moved to the blended online models. And it seems pretty spectacular in terms of disruption and in terms of forcing universities and their teachers to move to another model.

With respect to the learners, I am only sure about this and I look forward to further research about it. It appears or it seems that learners have anxiety as a result of moving to this new model. The research then future talks about increased future workload pressures. Well-being is something that will need more time to learn about. I think one of the more interesting things that I have heard and it relates to my previous point is that online learners feel that they are on a part-time programme but the load is full-time and they are struggling to marry those two things together. The perception is that I have enrolled online for the course and it is a part-time course but it is actually a full-time course and I think the students are struggling with that. I think it is crucial that when we are imagining education we do not lose the sight of the crucial university experiences and activities that have been lost and are impossible to create on a virtual platform. I strongly believe that students who physically attend the undergraduate courses learn just as much outside of the classroom as they do in the classroom. The skills that they develop, the resilience that they develop, the independence that they develop, is crucial in the university experience.

The other thing that has come up in terms with the disruption and it is something that we have to deal with, particularly, some of the models that we have within our university are the problems around assessment. Assessment in the virtual environment becomes quite difficult, as is socialisation. And I am not talking about socialisation in terms of physically attending a university. In this case, socialisation can also happen online but it is a difficult process to get students involved in. So, these were some of the things that a pandemic disruption has resulted in.

Pre-pandemic—something was wrong already

Prior to the pandemic, something was wrong already. Universities were probably not fully up to speed with the needs of the industry. In many ways, we were doing what we always did. I think the industry started to lose its patience with universities. Because we were lagging behind in terms of their needs, particularly for skills and talent. So, the incredible pace of technology changes makes it difficult for us to produce graduates that are work-ready—advances in machine learning, automation, are universities keeping up with the pace? From the industry’s and learner’s perspective, the ROI was being questioned, is this degree going to give me a return of the investment? Would it be better to go directly into the industry and doing my training there? The industry then were asking is it worth to send their staff to universities for them to look after the needs that the universities have.

So, prior to the pandemic, university education was still rooted in outdated approaches to education, stifled by traditional approaches to programme development, often by providing a supply-led product. I think there was a gap between the demand from industry and universities. We started to see that in our own university by accounting bodies, for example, maybe looking for the more apprenticeship-type model rather than traditional education type model.

"I strongly believe that students who physically attend the undergraduate courses learn just as much outside of the classroom as they do in the classroom"

Post-pandemic - how can we achieve

In terms of low hanging fruits, we have to be interdisciplinary and not just in name, we need to achieve clear goals and measurable outcomes when it comes to being interdisciplinary. So, here is one of my examples, the reason I can say too much about interdisciplinary is because we are at a delicate stage in terms of its development. The sponsor is extremely high-profile and in due course it would be revealed. Right now we are working upon a very interdisciplinary degree in partnership with a very big financial services provider. And it is the industry driving development type of a programme. So, they don’t want their students to sit in a university over a three or four-year programme. They expect the students to come in and study three weeks of material, go in the industry, and apply it; come back to university and do four weeks of material, go back to the industry and apply it.

They want industry partner to provide real-life, significant problems that the industry is working on, they want the students to work as part of those teams. They want the students to be working in a very intense race compared to what they would do in a traditional university programme. They also want to be involved in the grading of the student’s work while they attend internships or placements. That is something that we have not done before and it raises issues around how to train the partner company in terms of grading and assessments etc.

The intake that our university wants in this programme is creative people who can go on to work in the technology sector. In order to get into the programme, the students are going to be required to develop a portfolio showing not on just their creativity but also their suitability in terms of technology, machine learning, artificial intelligence etc. A lot of the work that they do around, research elements would be studio-based. Not in the traditional classroom, but in a space that is creative, innovative, interactive, and disruptive. They won’t do a traditional thesis, they won’t do traditional dissertations. Many of the programmes would be online. I also think that international collaborations and partnerships should become more important but again, they must be meaningful materials and measurable outcomes. It is not just about signing partnerships or meeting once in a while. It is about collaborating for a purpose-exchanging joint projects, not on just paper but in reality. That to me is a low hanging fruit and should be leveraged.

Bridging digital divides—how can we, as a university, bridge digital divides? It would be just as a government policy. How it will support people that do not have the access to the technology such as broadband.

"Programme design post-pandemic should be interdisciplinary. It should be skill-focused. It should be tailored, flexible, balanced, allowing for a student’s well-being"

Placements, internships and residencies

Placements, internships and residencies are very crucial but they may become more difficult given what we have experienced now. One of our strengths as a university is that all our students go on placements during their undergraduate degrees for nine months. No questions, everybody does it. It is mandatory. Our university has been badly disrupted in terms of placements as a result of Covid-19. We have to think about how we are able to manage placements, internships, residencies in the future if something like this comes again. How far down the industry-driven road do we want to go? Do we want to maintain our academic freedom, do we want to continue to be the drivers of the educational space or do we want to listen more with industry and collaborate more with them? But are you then an educator or trainer? That becomes a big issue.

Defenders of discipline

Many times when you open a programme you will have a cohort in a university but you cannot have that programme unless you have discipliners in it. How do we deal with defenders of discipline? How do we deal with ‘dinosaurs’? (traditional models of education) We don’t want to move away from traditional models. It took me a few years in my university to get away from a traditional thesis or a dissertation on my master’s programme. We now offer alternatives that will ensure the same learning outcomes but not with the traditional thesis or dissertation. Because I found out that it was not suitable for many of our learners. It was not a skill they would be required to have as they entered the workplace. But problem-solving, creativity, innovation, disruption, teamwork collaboration etc. it was something that was going to be crucial for them. That’s why I talked about those lab-based experiences studio-based experiences broader than traditional approaches.

Using AI for education

Artificial intelligence-using AI to create training programmes, to match a student’s profile. This is happening already. And there are a lot of exciting startups that are looking at this and they say that it addresses two problems, the first, current education models are not meeting the challenge laid down by the digital revolution and the second, the majority of graduates enter the job market unprepared. Will AI approach to education and training allow students sitting in the same classroom to learn different curricular content, at their own pace and level of mastery? It allows identifying students at risk. This is something we have done at a very small level at the University of Limerick. And whether we stay to a greater or a lesser extent online—there would be more online activity. That would allow us to monitor in a nurturing way. It would allow us to monitor and identify students that are not engaging, students are at risk of not progressing and failing. We already do that at a very basic level in this pandemic. Just looking at the statistics of students and their access to online platforms and reaching out to them to help them and ask them are they struggling. And then, of course, post-pandemic, how are borders, countries, visas, travel, mobile talent, political issues going to drive the new agenda is also something which is very cruical.

Post-pandemic programme design

Programme design post pandemic should be interdisciplinary. It should be skill-focused. It should be tailored, flexible, balanced, allowing for a student’s well-being. It will possibly be a blended programme. In some of our programmes, even full-time programmes on campus had started to have online elements. While the students were physically on campus they were still taking programmes in an online format. I still think that internships, residencies, placements are crucial. They provide a positive experiences programme for learners. I think partnership models are the way forward. Cross faculty, cross-discipline, industry partnerships, and the partnerships between the learners and the teachers, the co-creators of learning.

What we did in terms of dissertation and thesis alternatives—we call it the digital future lab where people from lots of various disciplines come and solve particular problems. It just so happens that our first one on my masters business analytics had a Covid theme. Smart cities was another theme that we intend to have in order to solve the transport issues on the island of Ireland-solving backlog issues in our systems. Using people from technical backgrounds, medical backgrounds, business backgrounds, logistics backgrounds etc. all in the common space, researching problems together rather than researching independently.