The NEW, new normal: an interview for CBCRadio on the future of universities post-Covid-19

One of my favourite radio  programs is CBC Radio’s Spark, with Norah Young. Each week Spark presents the latest in technology and culture. 

The next edition of the program, to be broadcast on CBC Radio 1 at 1.00 pm on Sunday (28 June) and Wednesday (1 July) at 2.00 pm, contains a 20 minute interview with me on the following:

The pandemic rapidly switched education to an emergency, remote-teaching model. But does that temporary change mark a bigger shift towards online learning? And could that make university and college a more flexible experience? 

It is also available as a podcast from here (my interview starts 39 minutes in from the start). There is also a CBC blog post about the interview here.

I cover the following topics:

• blended learning as the new normal
• impact of blended learning on classroom spaces
• need for an institutional digital learning strategy
• which students benefit most from blended and online learning
• the need to offer courses in any combination of online and face-to-face
• impact of demographics on campus-based teaching
• the unique affordances of online learning
• the need to redesign courses especially large first year lecture classes – and whether it will happen
• structural barriers to change in teaching
• the need for institutional strategies for digital learning
• the role of MOOCs and the need for improved learner support
• the need for more faculty development to enable them to teach better online

Regular readers of this blog will not find anything new in this broadcast, but I hope what I am arguing for will get to a wider audience as a result of this broadcast. Indeed, you may want to draw the attention of your senior administration to the broadcast/podcast. After all, if it’s on CBC it must be true – eh?