The global COVID-19 pandemic has forced an abrupt transition to online education. Researcher Tim Stevens is studying the transition to online education at Wageningen University. What can we learn from the transition to online education? The first results are available now.
Change of focus
Tim Stevens was studying the Redesign Lab at WUR as part of his postdoctoral research when the lockdown measures in March suddenly called for a change of focus. The transition to remote teaching raised many urgent questions – not only at the Education and Learning Sciences group (ELS) but also at the corporate education department of WUR (ESA). Within no time 4TU.CEE, the education department of WUR, and the ELS research group joined forces to evaluate and learn from the current transition.
Opportunity for educational innovation
Although there is some knowledge about the factors that contribute to the effective adoption of online teaching methods, the crisis situation of today presents an entirely new set of circumstances. On the one hand, the limitation of physical contact forces the sudden move to remote teaching without proper preparation, which presents teachers and universities with a serious challenge. On the other hand however, this crisis situation provides an opportunity for educational innovation as it increases the available resources and attention for online education, and triggers the experimentation with new methods that may prove fruitful for the future.
This project aims to provide insights into the factors that shape the effective adoption of online education at Wageningen University. The results of this study will be used to provide recommendations for practice (for WUR, 4TU.CEE), and to contribute to the scientific understanding about the adoption of online teaching methods in higher education.
Research Design
The main research question that we aim to address in this study is: How does the move to online education influence course didactics, teaching and the learning performance of students?
First we will identify what changes are made in teaching methods for different type of courses. Second we will study how the different type of teaching methods and adaptations are experienced and evaluated by students and teachers. And finally we will study how the different type of teaching methods and adaptations affect the learning of students, and what the role of teachers’ attitude, performance and perceived organisational support is in this.
This project is comprised of a two-staged research design, which includes a 'full-breadth' and 'in-depth' study;
- descriptive quantitative analysis to identify patterns (correlations) between course characteristics, changes in didactics, organisational support, teaching and learning
- comparative case study based on interpretive methods to better understand the complex interplay between factors in the adoption of specific online teaching methods (such as lectures with Virtual Classroom, groupwork with Microsoft Teams, and lab-practicals with Labbuddy and open source framework H5P)
More information about the project can be found on the 4TU.CEE innovation map.
If you have questions, suggestions, know of similar projects or would like to receive regular updates, please contact Tim Stevens at: tim.stevens@wur.nl