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“The old order changeth, yielding place to new” (Morte d’Arthur, by Alfred Tennyson, 1809-1892).
The birth of any change, no matter how much demanding, discomforting, displacing, or draining, eventually turns out to be progressive, dynamic, more liberating, and hence must be perceived in all optimism.
As opposed to the well-cited dictum of placing the pedagogical horse before the technological cart for effective education, the year 2020 saw technology lead education by leaps and bounds.
Compared to many parts of the world where education came to a near halt during the pandemic, in Bahrain thankfully with the pre-existing wide availability of network and tech infrastructure at schools, universities, and homes, the by-default switch from in-person to online education took time mostly in terms of adapting to online assessment than so much in teaching and learning.
This ushers in a positive move towards hybrid form of education that seems to promise the best of both in-person and the virtual learning environment.
For companies the hybrid work model is already in motion. Companies like Ford, Microsoft, Google, Apple, to name some, are offering employees options to work remotely on a weekly, monthly, or annual basis with in-person office attendance required for meetings and working on projects.
These new normal arrangements are implemented with no change in work responsibilities, working hours, and even salaries as working remotely during the pandemic proved an uptick in both quality and quantity of work.
For higher education, having set up hybrid classroom models, universities like Harvard, Carnegie, Princeton, Stanford, to name some, are also looking into supporting professional development.
In June 2021 Advance HE, a British charity and professional membership scheme promoting excellence in higher education, launched a Hybrid Higher initiative to plan future work models in the UK.
Evidence such as these ascertain that hybrid is no more an option by default, but increasingly promising realistic model of pedagogy for not-too-distant future.
In the light of this, the launch of the massive education reforms in the form of a new declaration signed by all Arab League member states (‘Gateway to education reforms in Arab world’, GDN, June 2) could provide the most-needed guidelines in laying the roadmap for hybrid education by design and open doors for applied research to document success and resistance that will further guide education and pedagogy for the coming years.
Neesha Khan Malik
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