In the Research-Education-Business Forum, discussants from academia, research and business sector will present their experience and their vision on cooperation among the three sectors. The aim of the forum is to reveal the current challenges faced by the triangle.
Forum chair: Dr. Anca Draghici (Polytechnic University of Timisoara, Romania)
Education Post-Covid-19: Expanding Horizons of Teaching and Learning
COVID-19 pandemic has paralyzed the education process, the education institutions all over the Globe. According to the available data provided by UNESCO through the online Global Monitoring of Schools Closures Caused by COVID-19 (access on April 14, 2020) the situation is unimaginable:
- 1,576,767,997 affected learners,
- 4% of total enrolled learners World-Wide that are affected and
- 192 country-wide closures with education entities close.
Governments, educators and learners are faced with the unprecedented challenge of ensuring that education continues, even whilst pupils, children, students must remain at home for a long period of time.
- Till now, there have not been used the indicator number of closed schools to characterize the educational process!
- Till now, there have not been restricted the access to education, culture and art institutions, including libraries and other learning life experiential hubs for such an extended area of the Globe and for such many people!
- We are confronted with a high autonomy in providing teaching and learning activities online, virtually using new technologies!
- Instantly:
- Schools, universities were moved (pushed) on-line and thus, they were confronted with a huge knowledge, resources and technology gap (including personal computers/devices and Internet availability for everyone, educational resources available, the information and communication technology, less personal support etc.),
- Teachers and learners’ digital competencies value a lot … and it was the main condition for continuing studying, having access to education resources, collaborations
Crisis period and restrictions have pushed us to socialize and share knowledge, new experiences using virtual tools but there was and is still a lack of collaborative work between teachers/educators in the same or different school/university. Furthermore, there have been manifested a weak collaborative work between academic staff and business actors due to the economic crisis. The main question that arises is:
HOW WILL BE THE EDUCATION AND RESEARCH PROCESSES AFTER THE RESTRICTION RULES WILL BE CANCELLED?