For me, a university professor and also a parent of a student who entered university this year, the first semester of the 2020 academic year has been a series of bewildering moments. The semester has begun, but the empty classrooms on a campus closed due to the global pandemic of “COVID-19” make it hard to feel that the semester has started. Preparing online lectures instead of offline classes and managing classes through the LMS is becoming a new challenge for professors. In the case of my son, who has become a freshman, it is frustrating that he must participate in orientation and lectures online from home without even experiencing university culture on campus. At home, as I share feedback with my son on the effectiveness of online lectures, we also share the hope that this situation will end quickly.

However, this crisis situation is not only negative. Up to now, humanity has often created new opportunities in the process of overcoming crises. The Black Death in 14th-century Europe spread into a global pandemic, and about 100 million people died in Europe alone. Europe faced a crisis due to this horrific disaster, but in the process of overcoming it, various technologies developed and opened the era of early modern times. More recently, after the crisis of the 2015 MERS outbreak, Korea leveraged the opportunity to strengthen its diagnostic testing system and demonstrated excellent diagnostic capabilities in this “COVID-19” situation. Considering these historical lessons of turning crises into opportunities, what are the opportunity factors that this “COVID-19” crisis will bring to the field of university education? It will be an opportunity for educational innovation.

As all universities delay offline classes, a situation is unfolding in which they have no choice but to conduct classes for more than a month through online and remote lectures. To this end, each school is expanding learning systems that strengthen online classes on existing LMS platforms such as I-Class and e-Class. They are also actively working to build systems, including expanding servers in preparation for a surge in student access. Building an online learning environment has been one of the core tasks of educational innovation. In the meantime, universities that had not received government financial support programs found it difficult to secure funding to build such an environment, and were lukewarm about establishing an advanced education system. However, as the situation has reached a point where it is difficult to operate a university without building an online learning environment, they are hastily concentrating financial investment in this area. As a result, educational innovation in universities will be brought forward even more. Taking this opportunity, the government needs to actively seek program development and financial support.

By taking on online and remote lectures, professors are gaining an opportunity to achieve educational innovation on their own. In the meantime, professors have faced many demands for teaching-method innovation such as PBL and active learning. Nevertheless, it is also true that many professors did not challenge innovative teaching methods while adhering to traditional university lecture formats. But now, a situation has arrived in which every professor must participate in innovative teaching methods. Professors must learn how to record their lectures and manage them in an online class system. They must also know how to use remote lecture systems such as Webex, Zoom, and Black board. In addition, they need to become familiar with video production, live lecture streaming, and how to use YouTube. As innovative teaching methods, which used to be optional, are now required, an opportunity has come to strengthen competency in innovative teaching methods.

Students have gained an opportunity to strengthen creative thinking and self-directed learning competencies. In the 21st-century model of talent, core competencies that are never left out are creative thinking and self-directed competency. Therefore, most universities are striving to educate talented individuals with these competencies. In the meantime, students were accustomed to an educational approach with high dependence on professors’ general lectures and low self-directed participation. However, as online lectures expand and remote lectures become commonplace, students’ self-participation in learning is inevitably required. If this environment is used proactively, students’ leadership in learning can be restored. If that happens, opportunities will expand to cultivate future talent with creative thinking under self-directedness.

The current situation is not desirable. Nevertheless, turning this crisis into an opportunity is a task given to those involved in education. There will be various trials and errors and side effects, but it is necessary to take this situation as an opportunity for educational innovation. Just as we are overcoming the “COVID-19” crisis with mature civic consciousness, I hope we will overcome the crisis in university education through educational innovation.

[Lee Guk-heon, Professor, Department of Theology, Sahmyook University]

Professor Newspaper http://www.kyosu.net/news/articleView.html?idxno=49557