This report examines five key topics that are influencing new models of teaching and learning. The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic saw a significant shift to online learning and while this raised the profile of online education, the practice since then has been a return to the on campus model, although this has often led to reports of empty lecture halls as students continue to embrace the flexibility of hybrid models. Since 2022 the advent of Artificial Intelligence, in particular Large Language Models, has led to considerable reflection in higher education on the use of essays and exams in assessment and how to best incorporate these tools into teaching. The impact of these two factors, the pandemic and AI, place Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the position of having to satisfy their current student base, with an economic model largely constructed around the physical campus, while also developing models that will provide robust and flexible models for students in the future.
Author
Martin Weller is Emeritus Professor of Educational Technology, at the Open University. He is the former Chair of the Open Programme, the Open University’s flexible, multidisciplinary degree, and Director of the GO-GN, a global network of Doctoral students in the area of open education. He developed the OU’s first fully online course in 1999, which attracted over 15,000 students annually. He is the author of the books The Digital Scholar, 25 Years of Ed Tech and Metaphors of Ed Tech.
He maintains a popular blog at blog.edtechie.net
Commissioned by the N-TUTORR National Digital Leadership Network.
