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VC’s corner
of online learning. University teachers
will need to construct new and adaptive
methodologies for learning within subject
boundaries. Face-to-face tuition may
become much harder to get for many
students. Assessment within online learning
will be an increasingly important arena for
student engagement with critical thinking,
which requires conceptual struggle for
answers rather than mechanistic and
rote-learned responses. The integrity of
assessments will be more problematical
than before as students naturally seek to
manipulate the demands made on their
time and efforts. The real issue will be how
to make learning progressive and critical in
the context of ever-more digitised systems
for learning access and support?
At another level – that of strategic
intellectual work on teaching and learning –
we may want to ask whether we can bring
about a more ecologically based education?
The interconnectedness of health and
social conditions with planetary survival
must surely correspond with the need for a
critical curriculum which embraces learning,
teaching, research and scholarship.
A number of strategic issues can be
discerned, including:
• how universities might adapt to a
changing urban/regional landscape
and a threatened environment
(Bell, S. Transform: 2019)
• should an individual university
re-dedicate to engagement or re-trench?
• can universities themselves provide
leadership for the sector and for students
against insecurity and a precarious future?
• is it possible to offer a ‘new deal’ to
students around continuing learning
benefits?
• can the idea of contemporary university
engagement embrace the new
challenges of a new era including those
of democratic accountability and build
on the achievements of those who
went before in creating a consciousness
of university engagement in Australia
(notably Professor Michael Gibbons,
2005; and Professor David Watson, 2011).
In considering these strategic issues the
argument is that we have reached a turning
point in our lives; that history has reached
a decisive moment in this crisis and that
we shall go forward towards a radically
different type of society now that the old
one has been found wanting.
The era of radical hyper-accelerated,
all-consuming forms of capitalism and
peak globalisation are now over. A more
fragmented and diverse world is coming
into existence.
This means the ‘new normal’ will
change in the way we live, what we
consume, where we travel and how we
communicate. We want to be less fragile
and vulnerable; we want to feel we can
rely on family and community for support
and we shall hope to contribute more to it;
and we want to mitigate the ruthlessness
and exploitation we see everywhere with a
greater degree of social justice.
These things are coincidentally yet
intentionally the value orientations of
Engagement Australia. Defeating the virus
cannot reverse the progress that has been
made if we stand by our beliefs and we
militate for our freedoms to think critically,
to publish our views, to meet to have our
opinions challenged about what the new
normal might look like for universities.
Post-viral cannot mean post-democratic!
We have been locked down not locked up!
Where will our existing universities stand
on the changes needed to sustain a decent
and productive life for all people? Society
will inevitably re-order itself through the
actions of its people and the struggles they
demonstrate for opportunities and a better
life. Some will strive for human fulfilment
through creativity and artistic expression
and some will seek a better economic
outcome. Many will strive through learning
in one context or another to improve
themselves and the lives of their children.
Broader collective achievement may come
to the fore and the vision of a genuinely
collegiate and cooperative university may
be possible.
There are curricular issues to be
addressed such as the need for a
comprehensive and universal literacy.
Such a concept would need to include, for
example, the commitment to learning and
using more than one language in our public
life and discourse.
It is too early to reach definitive
conclusions about the coronavirus
pandemic. Even the world’s best medics
and researchers have stated that it may
take years to eradicate the disease and
the social and economic disruptions
it has caused will have unintended
consequences beyond anything we have
so far predicted.
There is, however, learning to be gained
from the dreadful days of the pandemic
and the massive loss of life.
[The] future seems set
to be one of social crisis
which at the same time is an
educational crisis.
There is hope available to us – we surely
shall find some scientific and medical
solutions which work; this is within our
capacity and resources. There is also hope
in the fact that the pandemic is a spotlight
which has illuminated the key problems that
have shaped the real meaning of this crisis.
Economic and social inequality, racial and
ethnic discrimination, ethno-nationalism
and xenophobia, exploitative and intrusive
techno-surveillance and the threatening
crisis of our planet’s environmental survival
are the underlying issues of our time and
the ones that will shape the future.
This future seems set to be one of
social crisis which at the same time is an
educational crisis. For universities this
amounts to the existence of a sometimes
contradictory struggle to produce critical
knowledge as learners and teachers and
researchers encounter the older academic
forms and silos. Addressing the current and
‘popular’ trans-disciplinary issues directly is
extremely difficult, though popular revolt
and demonstrations by young people
all over the world on racism and social
justice have opened up the possibility of
transformations of public education and
knowledge.
In universities in the third decade of the
21st century thus far, the provided system
and the provided curriculum have not been
effectively challenged. The exclusions of
the provided system have been in general
maintained in spite of the expansion and
diversification of provision. However, the
broadening and deepening themes of
university engagement in response to crises
pose fundamental questions which are now
above the horizon and are increasingly part
of our consciousness of what a universal
higher learning should and can be. ■
Professor Jim Nyland is associate
vice-chancellor Qld at Australian Catholic
University. For references go to
www.campusreview.com.au.
The full version of this article will be
printed in Transform: the Journal of
Engaged Scholarship, 2020.
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