This document discusses challenges for first-year students during the COVID-19 pandemic and strategies for supporting them. It summarizes recent research on how the pandemic has transformed higher education, including a shift to online learning and uncertain job prospects for students. The document then outlines how the University of Southern Queensland is addressing these issues through its strategic plan, including more flexible academic calendars, online education, and leveraging emerging technologies. Staff are encouraged to consider small steps like piloting new teaching approaches to better support first-year students during this difficult time.
1. Educational Futures &
the First Year
Experience
School Planning Day
School of Health & Wellbeing
Bill Wade, Manager Educational Futures
2. Those First 4-5 weeks
Think, Pair, Share
What are the likely challenges or pain points your students
will face?
What can you do and/or have you done in the past to help
students through this period?
Take 5 minutes and discuss with a partner sitting next to you
Share with larger group, your ideas and things you might do
Ed Futures & the First Year Experience 2
3. Educational Futures &
the Pandemic
Green, Anderson, Tait, & Tran (2020)
Precarity, fear and hope: reflecting and imagining in higher education educations
during a global pandemic, Higher Education Research and Development
Reflecting -in-action and the work of imagining the future
The extraordinary significance of the pandemic as it transforms HE
What does recovery mean and what is it we want to “recover?”
A mass-scale experiment in remote and virtual teaching
New appreciation for the potential of online learning
Inequitability, job loss, grim economic impact, uncertain futures, unemployment
Transform precarity and disruption into creativity, flexible and inclusive teaching and
learning
Ed Futures & the First Year Experience 3
4. Educational Futures &
the Pandemic
Rajan Gurukkal (2020)
Will COVID 19 Turn Higher Education into Another Mode? Higher Education for the
Future 7(2) 89-96, 2020
Survival struggles lead to potential alternatives
Will crisis-driven alternative economy responses, e.g., basic income, work sharing, food
security measures, survive?
There will be a rise of flourishing techno-capitalists
Mode of teaching has shifted irreversibly to online and virtual learning
Universities will update technologically equipped proctor centres for examinations
HE more personal and self-directed vs general and institutionally administered
Online mode is going to stay as the new normal and de facto substitute
Ed Futures & the First Year Experience 4
5. What’s on the Horizon?
USQ & Our Educational Future
USQ Strategic and Academic Plans
• The new normal post COVID-19
• Flexible academic calendar
• Online education & flexible assessment
• Short form courses and micro-credentials
• Data, analytics, and student supports
6. Educational Futures More
Globally
Educause Horizon Report
Economic, Technological, Political,
Higher Education and Social,
trends
Convergence
Ed Futures & the First Year Experience 6
9. Leverage Emerging Technologies
Online Digital Learning
USQ as a VIRTUAL Campus
USQ Technology Demonstrators
USQ Hub for Immersive and Virtual
Experiences (the HIVE)
Faculty and School Discipline Specific
Initiatives
What is happening specifically in your school to
address the increased demand for online learning?
Ed Futures & the First Year Experience 9
18. ACTIONS
Take Aways & Executables
What small steps can you take to lead self, others
or the organisation to better support the First Year
Experience, with a special focus on leveraging and
emerging technology or innovative teaching
approach?
Think, reflect, commit to an action
Consider using a Commitment Card & have a peer
check in on you in 2 months time
Ed Futures & the First Year Experience 18
20. Find out more:
CRICOS QLD 00244B | NSW 02225M TEQSA: PRV12081
07 4631 1600 http://hive.usq.edu.au
oalt@usq.edu.au / demonstrators@usq.edu.au / hive@usq.edu.au
Considering a demonstrator or have a virtual or
immersive experience you want to explore @ USQ?
21. Find out more:
CRICOS QLD 00244B | NSW 02225M TEQSA: PRV12081
07 4631 2636 https://staffprofile.usq.edu.au/Profile/Bill-Wade
bill.wade@usq.edu.au
For further discussion on educational
futures feel free to contact me
Editor's Notes
Why is it so hard for universities to innovate or organisations to be agile?
In 2017, Wade, Udas and Brosnan had two articles accepted for publication addressing this question and describing the approach taken by USQ to address the innovation paradox.
The innovation paradox arises from the need for a stable core environment but also a need to be agile enough to experiment and explore. The two are both necessary, but seem to be contradictory.
From Agility: It Rhymes with Stability Aghina, De Smet, Weerda (2015)
Technology Demonstrators aims to help balance the innovation paradox and make a positive impact upon learning and teaching at USQ. Initial reach and outcomes data suggests that we may well be on our way to having that kind of impact. More research and evidence gathering will be underway in 2018 to know for sure.
Nearly 30% of USQ staff and students have engaged with a Technology Demonstrator.
Why Demonstrate?
More and more university graduates are choosing to be entrepreneurs. USQ understands that entrepreneurial thinking needs to be developed and demonstrated at the university. In order to spread innovation at USQ, we started Technology Demonstrators in 2015 to “under-complicate” decision making. We designed the program to be agile, simple and easy to use. University teachers are testing technologies that they believe will have a positive impact on student learning.
Our overall goal is to influence a culture of innovation at USQ and beyond.