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THE POST-PANDEMIC BLENDED UNIVERSITY IN THE TIME OF DIGITISATION
This paper documents the inevitable emergence of the ‘Global School’, assesses how the Covid-19
pandemic is hastening that transformation, and then focusses upon how these elemental educational
developments may apply at the post-school level. Digitisation involves a pivotal leap in human potential
as profound as the wheel in terms of development, as significant as the book in relation to information,
and as iconoclastic as anything dreamed up by the deepest analyst/therapist in terms of the human psyche.
Given that we are moving inexorably and joyfully into the One World One School situation, do we
envisage the one global and blended university – where universal access and organisation are
intermingled with local needs, cultures and priorities? Are we also progressing towards a blended post-
secondary assessment and learning pedagogy in which the digital is dominant? And, if so, how will the
pandemic – and the responses to it – pave the way towards that desirable destination?
Keywords: Global School, Digitalisation, Digitisation, Digitalization, Blended University, Covid,
Pandemic, Smart University
Preamble
In the mid-1960s, one of the present authors was condescending and foolhardy enough to announce that the most
prestigious academic qualification available in Australia was a London University external degree. A few years
subsequently, when Harold Wilson’s emissaries visited Australia seeking models for the UK’s emerging Open
University, it was he who escorted them to Armidale where they gained much of practical value from UNE’s
distance learning experiences (Douse, 1973).
Half a century on, education is undergoing a fundamental transformation consequent upon the challenges and
possibilities of the Digital Age and responding to the tangible/virtual duality of contemporary consciousness. The
manner in which the transmission of information (and the terrifyingly glorious vastness of readily-available data
out of which, skilfully, such information may be derived) and the sharing of ideas and the stimulation of creativity
may be achieved, manifest a fresh socio-economic as well as educational era – a transition as epoch-shattering as
that from feudalism to capitalism. We are moving inexorably and joyfully towards the Global School: the Covid-
19 pandemic may open up a short cut to that destination. Having first clarified what this entails for schools, we
shall then explore the implications for universities.
The Global School
The present authors have spoken and written extensively on the forthcoming and fundamental transformation of
schooling, definitively described and defended in their recent publication One World One School (Douse & Uys,
2020a). Schools, as we know them are an industrial age phenomenon (with ecclesiastical antecedents). In this
contemporary world, characterised by connectivity, exemplified by immediacy and defined by self-determined
information access, they are as outdated as are slavery, droit du seigneur and facsimile machines.
We have explained how education needs to be totally restructured with Digitisation as the cohesive force so as to
achieve its potential and create previously unimagined synergies. We have detailed how attempting to incorporate
isolated applications into essentially second millennium institutions and systems has resulted in four decades of
disappointment. We have called for an entire overhaul, moving above AI and beyond ICT, embodying and
synergistically integrating contemporary technology in its connectivity, organisation, curriculum content and
research, and in innovation, learning methods and management – see Figure 1 below. By no means the End of
History – more, at least educationally, the Overcoming of Geography.
The Global School’s essential, integrated and mutually-supportive components comprise:
· Learners: active, engaged, for life, committed to personal development, self-directed, information and digitally
literate, research-capable, mobile, collaborating, sharing their learning globally;
· Connectivity: easy, rapid, reliable, uninterrupted and affordable (i.e. free) access worldwide utilising
appropriate mobile appliances for every learner [unspecifiable here, as there will be rapid changes in handling,
versatility, on-line support methodologies and cost minimisation];
· Teachers: well-prepared and well-led professional educators, delivering, facilitating and assessing digitally-
delivered learning, at ease with the technology, guiding, supporting and counselling the learners, sharing their
learning materials globally;
· Curriculum: responding to learners’ well-informed preferences, attractive, contemporary and proven learning
modules (with teachers’ guides) at all levels in all subjects, in every relevant language, plus background materials,
further reading, in ineffable variety;
· Pedagogy: geared to supporting learners whether face-to-face or at a distance, far from test-obsessed,
encouraging enjoyment and the thrill of exploration and discovery, engendering a lifetime love of learning;
· Inclusion: all learners worldwide, full- and part-time, on-campus and distant, irrespective of age, gender, beliefs,
abilities or disabilities, are welcomed equitably and individually catered for; and
· System: geared to optimising enjoyable learning through, for example, exemplary educational institutional
leadership, the continuous professional development of teachers, participation of family and community, and
stimulating extra-curricular activities.
Figure 1: The Global School
Let us draw an analogy. For over two millennia, there have been numerous discrete libraries, each tied to a physical
location, each providing valued services (predominantly books – originally hand-crafted) to their particular
customers (initially theologians). But now, with Digitisation, it is sensible to conceive of just the one fully-
connected worldwide library (the ‘Global Library’), enabling any user anywhere to access information, to
contribute to the vast body of facts and ideas and, indeed, to print out items or download books and journals for
private study and enjoyment on hand-held and other personal devices. This is indeed already a reality with the
advent of the Word Wide Web, the concept of the Cloud, as well as the integration of numerous databases into
single portals where it does not matter to the student where the file resides but simply that it meets their
requirements for learning and research. And, in a similar way, instead of multifarious and isolated educational
institutions of varying natures, locations, qualities and aspirations, with Digitisation it is now feasible and
necessary to think of the Global School as the one (soon to be) fully-connected and networked worldwide
educational institution.
Alongside the actual, the virtual will from now and henceforth be a vital and integrated element of everyone’s
everyday education: so central to teaching and learning that it becomes indistinguishable from the more traditional
components. In terms of secondary and lifelong learning, we have shown that contemporary (i.e. outdated)
education systems often remain geared to providing compliant labour to increase the wealth of a few, tailoring
people to the workplace, and engendering the false notion of education as human resource investment. Such second
millennium schools, predicated upon preparation for adulthood, based upon externally imposed curricula and
teacher-centred pedagogies, sorting out rather than serving their students, are antediluvian. They may now be
washed away by the flood of possibilities arriving by the tides of contemporary technology, expertly navigated by
teachers, planners, educational philosophers, far-sighted world citizens and, above all, by learners increasingly
conscious of, and progressively demanding worldwide educational support appropriate to the Digital Age.
Billions of learners are yearning for education. Instead, nine-tenths of them are fobbed off with job preparation –
and discriminatory job preparation at that. Most young people worldwide are being lulled into subservience,
distracted by job market distortions, robbed of genuine education in favour of job readiness fabrications. Far from
education being a preparation for the world of work, the only reason for working hard, for getting a well-paid
job and for accumulating wealth is to be able to devote oneself to obtaining the most self-fulfilling possible
lifelong education. What young people – all people – should be helped to acquire are the multiliteracies of the
Digital Age (UNESCO, 2020), the facility of deciding what they want to learn, and to enjoy learning, in the present-
day, evolving context.
Education in the Time of Covid-19
The present authors have, very recently, addressed the issue of the pandemic’s potential role in furthering the
fundamental transformation, addressing Covid-19 and the Demise of ‘The School’ (Douse & Uys, 2020b). Our
conclusion was that the urgent actions consequent upon the present pandemic offer a short-cut into that transformed
educational situation within which ‘The School’ as we know it will fade into history.
From March 2020, the novel Coronavirus pandemic began to dominate the news, everyone’s conversation and
both the local and the national personal and public health situations. ‘Getting our schools back to normal’ appeared
to be the worldwide aspiration, albeit acknowledging co-existence with the virus on a long-term basis, and typically
(in many Western countries) as if schooling were predominantly a combination of child-minding and university
selection. But all of that vain effort was based upon the false presupposition that the mission was to restore
education to its pre-pandemic situation where the use of digital technologies were often treated as a possible add-
on based on the personal preferences of teachers at all levels of education. Blending online and face-to-face
learning was thus not based on the affordances of these modalities and thus strengthening the learning and
assessment, but simply the personal preferences of most teachers. However, prior to Covid-19’s emergence, many
schools worldwide were already commencing their fundamental transformation, made necessary and possible by
Digital Age technology. The digital divide is to be treated very seriously, yet many developing countries have
developed effective strategies to close that gap such as national agreements with Internet Service Providers to
allow free access for learning purposes, use of Open Education Resources (OER) and laptop and tablet lending
schemes to students and staff. Responses to the coronavirus challenge need to be consistent with that underlying,
permanent and more profound conversion.
Educationally, Covid-19 is an opportunity (as well as an unquestionable disaster). It could well be that post-
pandemic, our world, our societies and our economies will be utterly transformed. Given that ‘the school’, as
presently manifest and conceptualised, is facing its demise, it could well be that – for all its horrific aspects – the
novel Coronavirus offers the catalyst to that development. And so, we urged, let us use these Covid-19 months
(and their aftermath) imaginatively, positively and well – not to return to the previous status quo, but rather to
achieve a blended assessment and learning model where online and face-to-face pedagogies are integrated to create
new synergies for the ‘school’. And, above all, let us recognise that, just as nothing will ever be the same –
economically and socially – post-pandemic, so also will nothing – educationally – ever be the same again post-
Digitisation.
Towards the Universal University?
But to what extent, if at all, does the holus bolus transition – and, hence, Covid-19’s impact upon it – apply at the
post-secondary level? Universities are in part vocational training centres and in part educational institutions. But
those who attend them specifically in order to become lawyers, teachers, doctors, accountants, nurses and software
engineers gain also what some refer to as a ‘liberal education’ just as those who seek primarily the ‘university
experience’ may well – as a practically valuable spin-off – find themselves becoming more marketable job-wise.
Hopefully, there will always be communities of scholars extending the boundaries of knowledge. As Stefan Collini
puts it, “we exercise true democratic accountability, not by trying to subordinate universities to the current
favoured form of economic policy, but by ensuring that they are enabled to concentrate upon their principal task
of extending and deepening human understanding, because it is from the successful pursuit of that task that, in the
long term, society as a whole derives the greatest benefit” (Collini, 2018).
The many thoughtful considerations of ‘smart universities’ (Stracke, Shanks and Tveiten, 2018) – defined in this
instance as “those educational institutions that adopt to the realities of digital online media in an encompassing
manner” – concentrate upon the emergent uses of communications technologies in learning, recognising that the
challenge of understanding goes to the core of institutions and organizations as much as pedagogy and practice in
the classroom. As those authors make clear, the emphasis is upon “the effects of learning technologies, texts and
aesthetics, personalized learning experience, new means of assessments, the potentials of globalized learning
networks… Smart universities transfer the innovative process from the drawing boa rd and the tools at hand to the
learning designs that in turn reflect on human interaction” (ibid). A blended assessment and learning model based
on Digitisation, similarly, may reside in a blended university: one where Digitisation allows it to be truly universal
but blended with local support, culture, needs and priorities.
Universities are, as are so many other veritable institutions these days, businesses: even those most sheltered from
market forces are generally expected to be commercially responsive, profitable and market relevant. The most
prestigious are akin to hedge funds with their endowments running into billions – and their Vice Chancellors paid
in the millions – and, in such circumstances, expecting ethical enrichment is unrealistic. Transnational higher
education has become a major industry and, in a linked and competitive world, how could such displays of
entrepreneurial initiative not come to pass? Equally, how could such a business basis survive the restrictions
consequent upon the novel Coronavirus? How can a business plan predicated upon international students being
present on campus in person in substantial numbers, succeed in the time of the pandemic? And the significant drop
off of international students – particularly from China and India – because of closed national borders due to this
pandemic, has already caused major financial deficits for some universities and consequent job losses.
But comprehensive tertiary institutions and systems may now, and at last, embody the true universitas spirit, those
business orientations notwithstanding. Whatever the mechanism, and however the occupational kaleidoscope
settles at any point in the flow of time, the massive, multifarious, and dynamic requirement for (a) education
and (b) lifelong skills development will need to be met, creatively, efficiently, and, hopefully, equitably and,
of course, unconfined by national boundaries, and based on Digitisation. And all of that to be envisaged and
achieved, let it also be emphasised, not by remote coteries of sequestered decision-makers with noble intentions
unmatched by close acquaintance with reality but by means of the kind of well-informed universal participation
blended with, and informed by local needs that, at its best, contemporary technology makes possible, enjoyable,
and unavoidable.
The University in the Time of (and Post-) Pandemic
With the novel Coronavirus, everything has changed dramatically: hitherto unknown health, economic, social,
technological, and educational challenges have emerged, although the post-pandemic ‘normalcy’ is far from clear.
Already, Australia’s universities, in common with many of those elsewhere, are responding to their perceptions of
those challenges: perhaps more reactively and in relation to specific issues (e.g. overseas students) than coherently,
creatively and proactively – but that is understandable. However, this major set of inter-related changes is
occurring within a fundamental transformation of all education and so, in that sense, the challenges of Covid-19
offer a pathway to the forthcoming and fundamentally transformed higher education sector worldwide. Let us
understand and seize that opportunity so that a universal university blended with local prerogatives will emerge as
part of global partnerships also for better disaster preparedness (Commonwealth of Learning, 2020).
One of the present authors (Uys, 2020) has reflected upon lessons learned during the present pandemic about
ensuring quality in online assessment particularly in dealing with traditional exams (as traditional tests,
assignments and gradebooks were quite easily transferred online). Successful strategies include diversification,
using interactive oral assessments via web-conferencing, using online proctored exams from home, using “Practice
tests/exams” or “Try It Out” exams, breaking up exams into smaller quizzes, using open book exams with
randomised questions and providing multiple scenarios. In addition to exam anxiety there is also technology
anxiety that requires communication and change management activities. Due to the flexibility for all and students
welcoming typing (not writing!), such online assessment strategies will blend post-pandemic with a small
percentage of face-to-face assessment strategies.
Dr Kwong Nui Sim (2020) discusses flexible teaching and learning “during this critical global time of the Covid-
19 outbreak” noting the lack of “pedagogies that underpin this process along with the shared understanding” and
calling for a “consideration of all aspects of teaching and learning (so that there might be) a silver lining in this
disaster that should be able to change our minds without infecting our lungs” (ibid). The quality of practical courses
and work-based learning and placements have been enhanced through virtual simulation and have been
significantly replaced by digital activities. Well-designed fully online courses though require a much less
prominent role for teachers. The term “blended learning” has existed since the early 2000’s and has been
interpreted in various ways (Oliver & Trigwell, 2005) and has often been misused to justify traditional teaching
with a small percentage of digital thrown in. We posit that the blended pedagogical approaches above in which
digital is dominant will be retained as students, teachers and institutions reflect on what they have been learning
during the pandemic and not simply return to their former ways (McAleavy & Gorgen, 2020; Uys, 2020).
Steven Jones (2020) observes that “Already, old ways of working seem distant and inexplicable. Were there really
so many face-to-face meetings? What did all that bureaucracy achieve? Why did universities submit to so many
external metrics? … (The students) whom I’m now Skyping care little about “value for money” or expected
graduate incomes. They are just glad that their learning still matters, and that university staff care about them”.
Responding optimally to our new and entirely inter-connected and digitally based world necessitates and enables
utterly original understandings, approaches, arrangements and aspirations as encapsulated in blended assessment
and learning pedagogy. It involves the recognition that we are in a time of unparalleled challenges and
opportunities and that, as a starting-point, we can and must agree upon a fresh comprehension of what education
is really for in this third millennium and indeed beyond. Our remote ancestors stumbled upon tools to ward off
predators, to enable agriculture, to play games and to express themselves on cave walls. We now devise tools that
diminish both our need for tools and our ability to use them to good effect. Our elaborate 21st century digital
devices are extensions of our evolving selves, codified in machines and infrastructures, manifest in frameworks of
knowledge and action in a deeply personal yet universal way. Technology and Biology: Who Shall be Master?
The psychology is the biology, and the education is the unifying pathway.
As one central and vital illustration (and with due respect of ASCILITE organisers), let it be clear that we should
no longer be talking of ‘Innovation, Practice and Research in the Use of Educational Technologies in Tertiary
Education’ but simply ‘Innovation, Practice and Research in Tertiary Education’. Any time we address ‘Tertiary
Education’ we are inevitably addressing ‘Tertiary Education in the context of Educational Technologies’ and
therefore adding those words is redundant (just as we need not say ‘Education including Books’). Failing to
recognise and apply this Third Millennium truth undermines the discipline to which most of those present have
devoted much of our lives and which we have come, albeit virtually, to Armidale to celebrate.
Conceivable Scenarios
In a sense, every higher education institution perceives itself as special: this one being characterised by white-hot
technology, that by ivy-covered lecturers in ivy-covered halls. This university deserves its reputation for student
support and welfare, that one has researchers at the forefront of the worldwide search for truth (or for lucrative
patents). Clearly, there is a tension between this kind of localised exceptionalism and the opportunities for
benefitting from similarities that allows a Universal University, and that calls for a blended University. Our initial
consideration of each university element’s ‘virtual potentiality’ (and hence ‘international conceivability’) is
tabulated – as (let it be emphasised) a basis for discussion:
Category
Illustrations
Online-
ability
Large-scale ideas &
information sharing
Lectures covering languages, the humanities, law, the social and
much of physical and biological sciences; dissemination of reading
matter…
Very high
Small-scale ideas &
information sharing
Tutorials, seminars, exchanges between students and between staff
and students, joint projects…
High
Hands-on learning
and practical work
Laboratory sessions, hospital and construction site experience,
attachments and internships, digital immersive learning and virtual
simulations, online conferencing, …
Increasingly
feasible –
with much
creativity
Social interactions
& communal
activities
Sport, clubs and societies, student magazines and drama – the
‘university experience’ from Fresher’s Week through to the
Graduation Ball…
Quite high –
with
creativity
Academic guidance
& formative
assessment
Setting, preparing, submitting, assessing and feedback on
assignments; module completion; course requirements and advice…
Quite high –
with
creativity
Research,
publication &
conferences
Awarding, funding, monitoring and outcomes of grants; virtual and
tangible publication; community service; events such as the virtual
2020 ASCILITE
High
Accreditation &
reputation
Contributing to the formal certification of doctors, engineers and
many other categories of professional. Standing as a ‘reputable’ and
‘leading’ institution.
Low
As open universities and professional societies (not to mention MOOCS) have shown – and as the responses to
Covid-19 are further emphasising – a great deal of what a university does may be delivered, experienced, enjoyed,
responded to, learned through and examined upon dominant digitally pedagogies blended (as appropriate) with
face-to-face teaching strategies. It is as if established older terms like “digital”, “virtual” and “online”, as well as
“distance education” and “remote learning” have been “discovered” by mainstream universities in their
mainstream teaching! Accordingly, much or all of that may be shared, much as the entirety of Global School
offerings may be common to all secondary and lifelong learners worldwide. When all of that has been done – what
remains as necessary elements of the ‘particular university’, the ‘individual institution’?
We predict that, post-pandemic, the following will in good time emerge:
(1) a blended assessment and learning pedagogy in which digital is dominant above face-to-face; and
(2) the one blended and universal University where worldwide access and organisation are dominant, yet
integrated with local needs, cultures and priorities.
Such a University would be governed by professional association/government/international organisation Quality
Assurance but still with individual institutions performing some key residual and localised roles. No longer myriad
and competing businesses but now being responsible for enrolling their students and guiding them through the vast
range of available self-learning materials (which certainly need not be institution-specific); monitoring progress,
eventually providing formal certification as merited; arranging workshop experience at accredited outside venues
(hospitals, construction sites et cetera); pastoral support; and research. Much in the manner of medieval
Oxford during the 14th century Black Death, when the rival communities of scholars transmogrified into 'colleges'
within the overall 'university'. But this time, with Digitisation, worldwide.
References
Collini, S. (2018). Speaking of Universities, Verso, London
Commonwealth of Learning (2020). Towards Resilient Education Systems Lessons from COVID-19.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTfb4yprRPA&feature=youtu.be
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