scholarly journals The Impact of COVID-19 on the Higher Education Sector: Challenges and Opportunities

Author(s):  
Charbel Chedrawi

The COVID-19 pandemic has provoked a sudden and disruptive shift to remote and distance learning in the Higher Education Sector. The latter encompasses many complex elements that necessitate careful design and development to endorse a productive education outcome. This short reflection discusses the impact of the pandemic on the Higher Education Sector in general, shedding the light on the main challenges and opportunities induced by the shift to online education.

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. p12
Author(s):  
Dr Warrick Long ◽  
Associate Professor Lisa Barnes ◽  
Professor Maria Northcote ◽  
Professor Anthony Williams

Continual reforms in the Australian Higher Education Sector result in ongoing significant changes to the experiences of the Australian academic. As a result, massification, internationalisation and corporatization form the landscape of academia in Australia. The Australian University Accounting Academic (AUAA) faces ongoing challenges and opportunities within this dynamic academic environment, and this study explores these challenges in relation to teaching themed issues that confront the AUAA. By using a questionnaire and interviews with AUAAs, three themes emerged, being curriculum, teaching workload, and the impact of online teaching. The “ASSET” support framework is developed from these conversations with the AUAA’s to help them become an “asset” to the university during these times of disruptive change instead of allowing the system to “gazump” them.


Author(s):  
Vlasios Sarantinos

The chapter explores the impact globalization has created for the higher education sector, looking at how the landscape evolved across the world and how the role of universities has been transformed. Extending the analysis further, there is an investigation of how institutions have tried to respond to the emerging challenges and opportunities presented as a consequence of the shifting field. The focus then moves to the African continent and peruses the particular development of higher education under the influence of colonial legacy and globalization, examining how institutions have endeavored to adapt. The chapter draws to an end with a reflection of the main issues, inherent limitations, and how the research agenda could be taken further.


Author(s):  
Aleksandrs Skvorcovs ◽  
Tatjana Titareva ◽  
Graurs Igors

The European Union (EC-JRC, 2010), has stressed that higher education must change and adapt to economic and social needs, that institutional change is essential to educational innovation, and that information and communication technologies (ICT) must form part of the teaching and learning process. The second international challenge is to encourage international cooperation between institutions in order to share knowledge across borders and facilitate collaboration (Morin, 2009) and post-cosmopolitan citizenship (Dobson and Bell, 2006). The dramatic decrease of the number of students in Latvia in the last 10 years by 64% and disproportionally high number of HE institutions, makes Latvia’s Government, the Ministry of Education and Science and higher education institutions to look for new ways to structure and optimize the processes in the higher education sector. The main research question of this paper is: the general development trends of the main drivers for attracting more students into the tertiary education sector in Latvia by means of online education and internationalization. The relevance of the research: the authors review the intersections of the distance learning and internationalization as the optimal solutions for the critical situation in the Latvian higher education sector with lack of students.


2020 ◽  
pp. 61-73
Author(s):  
Yu. M. Tsygalov

The forced work of Russian universities remotely in the context of the pandemic (COVID-19) has generated a lot of discussion about the benefits of the new form of education. The first results were summed up and reports were presented, the materials of which showed that the main goal of online education — the prevention of the spread of infection, - has been achieved. Against this background, proposals and publications have appeared substantiating the effectiveness of the massive introduction of distance learning in Russia, including in higher education. However, the assessment of such training by the population and students in publications and in social networks was predominantly negative and showed that the number of emerging problems exceeds the possible benefits of the new educational technology. Based on the analysis of the materials of publications and personal experience of teaching online, the potential benefits and problems of distance learning in higher education in Russia are considered. It is proposed to consider the effects separately for the suppliers of new technology (government, universities) and consumers (students, teachers, society). It is substantiated that the massive introduction of online education allows not only to reduce the negative consequences of epidemics, but also to reduce budgetary funding for universities, optimize the age composition of teachers, and reduce the cost of maintaining educational buildings. However, there will be a leveling / averaging of the quality of education, and responsibility for the quality of training will shift from the state/universities to students. The critical shortcomings of online education are the low degree of readiness of the digital infrastructure, the lack of a mechanism for identifying and monitoring the work of students, information security problems, and the lack of trust in such training of the population. The massive use of online education creates a number of risks for the country, the most critical of which is the destruction of the higher education system and a drop in the effectiveness of personnel training. The consequences of this risk realization are not compensated by any possible budget savings.


2021 ◽  
pp. 097226292098839
Author(s):  
Amandeep Kaur

Novel COVID-19 has turned the whole world upside down. Each industry is showing a downward trend. At the same time, digitalization, which got its birth in 2015, got its growth and is having a paradigm shift. Experts have given it a new name ‘digital inclusion’. This article studies the impact of online education imparted to children during the pandemic period through various applications.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 101-118
Author(s):  
Tracey Muir ◽  
◽  
Tracy Douglas ◽  
Allison Trimble ◽  
◽  
...  

The opening up of online education in the Australian tertiary sector has made higher education accessible for a wide range of students, including those living in rural and regional areas. While student numbers continue to grow as a result of this opportunity, there are increasing concerns regarding low student retention and progression rates for online students in comparison with on-campus students. Reasons for this vary, however, online students report a sense of isolation and disconnection with their studies highlighting the need for educators to utilise effective facilitation to enhance student connections to an online community. In this paper, we investigated facilitation strategies using two case studies. This illustrated how two online instructors used design-based research to evaluate the impact of facilitation strategies on instructor presence, instructor connection, engagement and learning in maths education and human biology subjects. Findings indicate that focusing on social, managerial and technical facilitation strategies resulted in an increased instructor presence and active involvement, which in turn were influential in motivating students to engage with learning online. The findings have implications for higher education providers and instructors who are tasked with engaging online students. This identifies the importance of targeted online facilitation to enhance learner-instructor and learner-content engagement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 250 ◽  
pp. 07003
Author(s):  
Anna Rybakova ◽  
Aleksandra Shcheglova ◽  
Denis Bogatov ◽  
Liudmila Alieva

This paper focuses on the use of interactive technologies and distance learning in sustainable education. It discusses how remote learning technologies can positively influence students’ learning and entry in sustainable education. The paper looks at the use of distance learning in higher education as a means to help students in the built environment and its use within the education system. It studies and expands the theoretical research on the benefits of distance learning, where the study is remote and there is no personal contact with staff or students, and examines the impact of distance learning on the student’s learning experience. It also proposes and evaluates potential solutions to overcome the barriers to learning in the built environment and create successful virtual learning communities, recognising that such improvements must be reconciled with the primary benefits identified. The paper provides an overview of sustainable distance learning within higher education and discusses the differences between learning outside the structural environment of a profession, what it means for the student’s learning experience and the potential to overcome barriers to distance learning. This is a very timely topic in the times of COVID-10 pandemic. Lockdowns of the economy and social life impacted all spheres of education with schools and universities closed for long periods of time and all teaching moved to online and distance mode. However, coronavirus pandemic also brought the digital surge in the system of education, including the sustainable education. All these innovations might stay after the pandemic and help the education to evolve and to embrace more novel trends and technologies.


Author(s):  
Amir Manzoor

Due to globalization of economic activities and increased scope of higher education, higher education has become a priority agenda for countries around the globe. In order increase opportunities of higher education, institutions of higher education must enhance their quality and access through open and distance learning while following national and international standards. For developing countries, higher education opportunities through open and distance learning are important for economic prosperity and participation in global knowledge economy. Globalization has created numerous challenges and opportunities for higher education. These challenges are more significant for developing countries because of limited resources. At the same time, meeting these challenges is a top priority of developing world. This chapter examines numerous challenges faced by higher education in developing countries. The chapter also discusses how higher education institutions in developing world can use open and distance learning to cope up with these challenges.


2018 ◽  
pp. 541-562
Author(s):  
José Manuel Saiz-Alvarez ◽  
Edgar Muñiz-Ávila ◽  
Delia Lizette Huezo-Ponce

Universities play a key role in modern societies inserted into a globalized economic world. This chapter studies how informational competencies, entrepreneurship, and integral values in higher education are necessary to foster economic growth and fight corruption. The authors especially are focused on distance education as it can be a tool to fight poverty by diminishing high illiteracy rates, mainly existing in developing countries. The purpose of the chapter is two-fold: 1) to study the impact of informational competencies in both education and entrepreneurship, and 2) to emphasize the importance of acquiring integral values by learners to be applied into educational processes based on emotional intelligence. As a result, students will be defined as prospective entrepreneurs endowed with the ability to recognize, internalize and understand emotions to be adjusted into relations and business behavior to impulse their goals. And in this sense, online education has an important role to play, especially in postgraduate studies, as in the case of MOOCs that are also analyzed.


Author(s):  
José Manuel Saiz-Alvarez ◽  
Edgar Muñiz-Ávila ◽  
Delia Lizette Huezo-Ponce

Universities play a key role in modern societies inserted into a globalized economic world. This chapter studies how informational competencies, entrepreneurship, and integral values in higher education are necessary to foster economic growth and fight corruption. The authors especially are focused on distance education as it can be a tool to fight poverty by diminishing high illiteracy rates, mainly existing in developing countries. The purpose of the chapter is two-fold: 1) to study the impact of informational competencies in both education and entrepreneurship, and 2) to emphasize the importance of acquiring integral values by learners to be applied into educational processes based on emotional intelligence. As a result, students will be defined as prospective entrepreneurs endowed with the ability to recognize, internalize and understand emotions to be adjusted into relations and business behavior to impulse their goals. And in this sense, online education has an important role to play, especially in postgraduate studies, as in the case of MOOCs that are also analyzed.


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