Ask any group of university students whether they prefer online learning to face to face teaching and they will say no and the non-technological savvy teaching faculty will agree with them. However, despite this prevailing view, the COVID pandemic that began to hit universities hard in March 2020, heralded a worldwide move to online learning, often with little preparation by the institutions. However, as universities begin to see light at the end of the tunnel, there is no talk of the wholesale abandonment of on-line learning. This is due to the fact that much has been learned about the power and pitfalls of on-line learning.

 In Fiji, where I am currently employed by Fiji National University (FNU), one such pitfall was the fact that many of the students had no access to the internet in their villages and some did not possess an appropriate device such as a laptop or iPad. This situation taxed the University’s system considerably and resulted in a senior management ruling that students faced with this problem would be allowed to defer their studies until they were able to travel to campus. Nevertheless, this pitfall did have some positive outcomes. First, the senior management team learned to take rapid decisions to deal with issues such as this by making use of chairperson action or decisions by circulation that enabled appropriate and speedy responses to the various challenges they faced. Secondly, it highlighted the fact that, in a country like Fiji, online learning does not necessarily mean remote learning as many students need to travel to the campus to access a device and the internet. This has led to discussions to extend the notion of a campus-based learning commons, already in place in FNU, that involves access to the internet and devices to better accommodate such students.

 Furthermore, the accelerated and wholesale move to online learning during the early days of COVID 19 enabled the potential of this delivery approach to be fully explored. Faculty who had little or no experience of online delivery was immersed in online workshops and documentation that gave them a step by step approach to maximizing the full potential of the online mode, provided by an able Centre for Flexible and eLearning. Consequently, it became abundantly clear to those faculty members and students who may have been under the impression that online learning is a ‘soft option’, that this is not the case.

 The success of the online mode pivots on teacher presence. The move to online learning meant that faculty were rapidly made aware that online learning is not merely a matter of placing lecture notes and power-point slides on-line, posting some assignments and leaving the students to it. In order to guide faculty on just what constitutes teacher presence, FNU developed a checklist that conveyed the online activities required of faculty in their interaction with students. Central to this was the use of the discussion forums integrated into the learning management systems such as Moodle that are the vehicles for effective online education. To maximize student learning, faculty are required to be full participants in these forums by posting questions for their students. The ideal approach for faculty is what is often called the Socratic approach that involves posing the type of questions that require students to move from a rote learning mentality to thinking deeply about the subject of their classes and arrive at their own solutions to issues raised in discussions. 

 A particular innovation worth noting during the early days of the pandemic was the creation of an FNU Online which utilised online learning to the full in order to serve the Fiji Community. This was a collaborative effort between FNU and a boutique online platform provider that enabled FNU to produce a fully online course aimed at professionals who had lost their jobs as companies in Fiji sought to survive through retrenchment. This online course offered essential skills in information technology and business planning to enable individuals to start their own businesses. The course attracted 1,700 participants, 80 per cent of whom completed the course and either received a certificate of attainment if they chose to produce a business plan or if they completed the course but did not produce a business plan, they received a certificate of completion. One interesting feature of the FNU Online initiative is that, while aimed at the Fiji Community, it attracted a number of international participants including a number from the United States and even some from the United Arab Emirates.

 What then have we learned from the move to online learning that resulted from the global pandemic? Well, we have learned that we must not assume that all students have equal access to the internet and appropriate devices and this is especially so in the less developed world. In such circumstances, we need to act flexibly, rapidly and with compassion and this approach needs to carry on into the ‘new normal. Secondly, we have learned that online learning is not a soft option for faculty and requires teacher presence to bring about effective student learning. Finally, we now realise the potential of online delivery to serve the community in times of need and also to showcase, in FNU’s case, the University internationally.

 Professor James Pounder
BSc(Econ), MBA, PhD, EdD, PFHEA
Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Learning and Teaching)
Fiji National University