Post-pandemic education: TU Delft experts contribute to a worldwide perspective

A newly launched open-access book, co-authored by online continuing education front-runners at TU Delft, brings together the experiences and lessons of several international institutions in the wake of the corona pandemic.

Janine Kiers and Bertien Broekhans, from our Extension School for Continuing Education, together with colleagues at Wageningen University, share the approach taken by their respective institutions to shift online education from a ‘to many learners’  (vertical scale) delivery model to ‘by many teachers’ (horizontal scale) one, hence the title Moving Horizontally: The New Dimensions of At Scale Learning in the Time of COVID-19.

Implementing lessons from large-scale online education

Although so far large-scale online education played a minor role in campus education in the Netherlands and in most of European higher education (HE) institutions, the COVID-19 crisis showed how experiences in this learning format and its digital tools and methods could be effectively used to switch from on campus to remote teaching. “The crisis increased the acceptance of online learning and supported efforts to move from an emergency response to a more coherent and organised, longer term response”, says Kiers, “however, we are not there yet. The steps taken so far do not automatically shape a future of horizontally scaled online education for students at European universities. To achieve that, changes are needed also at institutional and governmental level - in policy, administrative processes and rules and regulations”.

Challenges in upscaling

“The experience in online education ‘to many learners’ was definitely helpful, but upscaling degree education brought new challenges. Think for example about providing personal, at scale support for many teachers. Or about the availability, overnight, of online tools at scale, whilst covering privacy, accessibility and the provision of student support. 

“Mainstreaming horizontally will indeed require cultural, organisational and institutional change” confirms Broekhans, “Really innovating university education and the HE system will only work in small steps. However, I feel positive that an important step has been taken: more online-based and digital tools are used by more teachers, and in more courses on campus.”

A bumpy road toward flexible learning experiences

From the book, page 140: “The lessons from the COVID-19 response are having their effect. From now on, it is realistic that the delivery of education can be threatened not only by a fire (destroy a location for lectures), but also by a pandemic (disturbs the mode of teaching). Options to make educational programs more resilient to future threats by embracing online tools and methods are considered. This may affect managerial strategic decisions for the years to come. Processes of digitalization and flexibilization of HE will be incentivized, to start in the day-to-day operations in the short term. This gives options to enlarge our education portfolio to broader target groups. 

“Rules and regulations will ultimately change, since campus, remote and online will be mixed. Both teachers and students begin to ask for a vision for the future of their university education, on the medium and long term, from their managers and boards. Together we should build a vision for the future where the best learning experience for different target groups will be central in order to successfully reach the learning objectives and attainment levels. 

“So far, we’ve experienced that there are many rules, regulations and policies in place that are grounded in a specific mode of delivery of education, and do not offer flexibility to adapt  to changing circumstances and new modes of delivery. It may be worthwhile to reconsider these with the purpose of offering a good learning experience to students.”

Get your free copy

An initiative by GeorgiaTech in the US, this free e-book counts TU Delft and Wageningen University as the only European institutions contributing as leaders in the field of online education. The book is of interest to everyone who is organising and involved in online/remote HE and/or is considering the impact of the pandemic on the future of HE on the long and the short term. Click for your copy of Moving Horizontally: The New Dimensions of At Scale Learning in the Time of COVID-19.

For information about the TU Delft Extension School for Continuing Education, see the intranet/employee portal pages and read the Impact Report 2020. 
For the TU Delft’s online education portfolio, visit the website.