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Disrupt or be Disrupted : Reimagining Higher
Education in the Age of Disruption
But with COVID, we did it [online teaching] in one month flat over Easter because we had to. And it was surprisingly successful.
Professor Irene Tracey Vice-Chancellor, University of Oxford
Universities are some of the most stable institutions in the world, often persisting after wars and other challenges upend society. By educating new experts and leaders, and discovering and guarding truth and knowledge, they help society to move forward. But with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) following close on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, universities themselves are facing fundamental questions about how they follow through on their mission and move with the times. And move they must do, agreed the heads of four universities – Professor Naoshi Sugiyama, President of Nagoya University; Professor Qihuang Gong, President of Peking University; Professor Martin Paul, Rector of Ruhr University Bochum; and Professor Deborah Terry, President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Queensland – who came together for a panel discussion on universities in the age of disruption, moderated by Professor Irene Tracey, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Professor Tracey set the tone with a reflection on just how profound the recent changes have been
for her university. Oxford has followed the same teaching model for 900 years, lecturing “in a room full of students, always learning and absorbing knowledge, and then delivering a tutorial with one-to- one interaction,” she said. While the content has been adapted and new technologies embraced over the centuries, this has usually been a slow and considered process. The pandemic, on the other hand, required a swift response and a sudden move to delivering content online. “We often joke in Oxford that if we had actually decided [in advance] to put our lectures and tutorials and examinations online, we would probably have taken 10 to 15 years arguing about how to do it,” she added. “But with COVID, we did it in one month flat over Easter because we had to. And it was surprisingly successful.” Elements of that experience have been retained even after in-person classes resumed, such as interviewing prospective students online during the admission process. “It was remarkable for a university like Oxford to reflect on the experience and change something it had done for many, many years.”
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