At the beginning of this month my daughter was still going to school, faculties had mostly ex cathedra lectures, and e-learning was still considered an option for enhancing the quality of teaching and learning. We were discussing the need to integrate digital technologies more heavily into education and the ways to approach it, while at the same time having a number of discussions on the importance of teacher presence in the classroom, and how technology can get in the way of interaction with a teacher – interaction that is crucial for the development of higher-order thinking. Finding the appropriate balance is not easy.
Suddenly we were facing the rise of a pandemic on European and global level, a pandemic which made us stay at home. Today, all schools and faculties have been forced to work online and are desperately trying to cope with this change. Although we are now talking about moving from face-to-face teaching to online education, are institutions and teachers fully aware of the difference between emergency remote teaching and planned and organized online learning?
Read the full post on the President’s Blog.