The global pandemic of COVID-19 has taken the world by storm in 2020. It came without any warnings, and it changed the way we see a lot of things we do every day. Even after two years after the pandemic was put under control, we can see that some effects of the measures conducted to prevent it will become mainstream.
Nobody can deny that it was a shocking development for the whole planet. In just a couple of months, two-thirds of countries were under a lockdown and there were so many things that were forbidden to people. For instance, we can see that physical distance between people in public places was more than an active thing.
Besides the hospitality industry, which has taken a major blow, we can see that education suffered a lot during that time. However, like aiu.edu, which stands for Atlantic International University, attendance was never affected. It even grow during the pandemic. Students were forced to practice online attendance for almost two years. Today, we want to talk about the situation in education and the influence the global pandemic had.
1. Online Attendance
One of the first things that were introduced to the students was the concept of online attendance. Of course, we cannot say that this is the first time this one has surfaced, but it is important to say that the scale of implementation wasn’t nearly as broad as during that time. Think about it, it was introduced in elementary schools, which was never the case.
On the other side, it is easy enough to spot that middle and high school students, who experienced some sort of online attendance before, shifted completely towards it. Therefore, it is more than clear that it became the only way for individuals to attend classes. Many didn’t feel comfortable with this approach since they feel less engaged that way.
Still, many felt benefits from this approach, especially those who feel anxiety when they feel they attend classes. As a result, they were able to feel less anxiety and have a much better experience while studying. However, we can see that the percentage of these students isn’t as high. Therefore, a majority didn’t feel comfortable with this approach.
2. The Change in the Approach
In universities, students weren’t allowed to attend classes physically, as well as in the lower levels of education. As you can presume, this lead to massive changes in their modus operandi. We all know how universities generally work. Their modus operandi is well known, and it hasn’t changed much in the last couple of centuries.
The professor would speak about the subject at hand and dozens, if not thousands, of students would listen to what the professor had to say. We must admit that this worked perfectly for some time before COVID-19. As a result of the pandemic, professors needed to change their approach, mainly because of the lack of physical attendance.
You will certainly agree that lecturing students online and in person are two different things, for both parties. Professors who are used to having engaging communication with their students were now forced to change the way they approach things. You will find numerous stories around the internet about how was this implemented and how many professors struggled with it.
3. Potential Problems
Of course, such a massive shift in approach wasn’t beneficial for a lot of fields of education. For instance, it is quite clear that it is not possible to comprehend some of the subjects without being physically present. We are talking about the medical branches, like stomatology and other similar branches.
So, they cannot have experience in doing a wide array of different activities on their own. For that reason, you can see so many students who struggled with keeping up with both the physical and theoretical parts. Therefore, you can see that most of them had a gap in their education. So, they will need to bridge it in the future.
Some experts have talked about a wide array of different problems that can arise in the future because of that. However, we are more than sure that both universities and students will be able to overcome these gaps in the future, by implementing a wide array of different programs and approaches.
Nowadays, you can see that there are so many programs developed in the two years that will help with these things. It is possible to find some of them online and they need to be funded by universities and governments at the same time. Thankfully, we can see that many institutions have decided to go forward with these projects.
4. What Does the Future Hold?
The most important question is what the future holds for universities. Of course, it’s quite challenging to provide a concrete answer to this question for a lot of reasons. However, it is more than clear that there are so many elements that will stay the same in the future or that will experience not many changes.
As you can presume, the online element is here to say. However, it will be way different than before. Since it is not mandatory anymore, many people will choose not to go this way. Instead, they would return to the way it was before. At the same time, it is more than clear that a certain percentage will stick to online attendance.
As we’ve stated, some branches require physical attendance and physical experience. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to comprehend all the things needed to be an expert in a certain field, as you can imagine. So, the future will be different than it was before, but some of the implementations will stick, that’s without a doubt.
Final Word
Understanding all the important elements of the future of education is not as easy as it may seem. There are so many things that require your attention, and you need to comprehend all of them before you can understand what are the things that will change in the future. Here, you can see some of the most important ones.
