DUBAI — As coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc, the global lockdown of educational institutions, among others, is causing major (and likely unequal) interruption in university students’ learning. For them, the period is undoubtedly incredibly stressful: classes are moved online, semesters abroad are postponed, examinations and how they are conducted remain uncertain. As universities have gone virtual within a matter of days, students felt disenfranchised. In an interview, Robert Speed, Vice President at Blackboard for the Middle East and Africa, said Blackboard has been operating in the ME Region for the last 20 years, “so we have been a key part of developing teaching and learning online pre-COVID-19.” He noted that COVID-19 has been such a disruptor in the education sector across the Middle East Region with a huge shift, and at pace and scale from traditional face to face learning to a purely digital teaching and learning environment. In order to mitigate the negative impact of the pandemic, Speed emphasized that “institutions need to support and train their faculty members to effectively leverage education technology, and to ensure the content they deliver online is engaging, accessible and inclusive so that students can be engaged on whatever devices they are using. Institutions also need to be able to stand up safe and secure virtual classrooms, integrated them seamlessly and to maintain continuity of the academic day.” Excerpts of the interview follow. As teaching has moved online on an untested and unprecedented scale, do you think it offers better quality education than the formal (classroom) one? What are the support and solutions you have for teachers who just transitioned to e-teaching? Digital teaching and learning tools have evolved over the years to deliver a personalized, anywhere-anytime, seamless and connected experience suited to the needs of today’s ‘digital natives’ than traditional classrooms. It must be noted that education quality is run professionally by the Universities and Institutions with their specific roadmaps and international high standards set by the Ministry of Higher Education. We at Blackboard are working towards driving technical fluency and skills development through our global, solution-agnostic professional development offering for supporting faculty to go online. We provide educators online courses on the digital technologies that on-campus and distance-learning students use daily, as well as strategies for integrating digital technologies into every aspect of the education experience. Did the extraordinary situation trigger rapid development of new courses? It has certainly changed the way institutions develop new courses however pre-COVID there was some very professional content available, it was just used in a different way What is the advantage for universities and institutions using your solutions as to another provider? We work very closely on the ground with our partners and customers to advise them of the continuous investments we make in our software and technology. One of our solutions that institutions are relying on to facilitate online learning during the pandemic is our virtual classroom solution Blackboard Collaborate. It is specifically designed to ease the transition to a fully digital teaching and learning environment by offering both synchronous and asynchronous course capabilities. It connects students and instructors via desktop and mobile devices. It promotes collaboration, engagement and accessible learning through features such as hand raising, whiteboard, chat, breakout groups and polls. It also integrates seamlessly with all leading learning management systems (LMS) that an institution may have. The success we have seen in the Kingdom is pretty impressive with over 2 billion minutes used in March and April. There is also a challenge in libraries — universities and institutions work hard to put in place extra online study support to remain accessible yet safe for students — Does Blackboard have any solution to integrate university"s resources online? We provide institutions with a dedicated area that can be used to post eReserves, electronic manuscripts and other institution resources. This ‘Library’ is fully integrated with our LMS, making it a powerful and flexible way to share and distribute materials. Instructors can incorporate links and references into their course content, allowing students to avail these resources. We also have many high quality adaptors available so 3rd party software can easily meet international standards of integration Clearly, online learning also affects examinations, as universities are working hard on putting in place viable alternatives to on-site exams. This has raised many issues about how to ensure that different assessment methods can be introduced in ways that assesses students fairly, without detriment to their performance. Does Blackboard have any solution on this without sacrificing quality and fairness? Our LMS solution allows instructors to create tests and surveys for their courses to measure student knowledge, gauge progress and gather information from students. Instructors can create questions or add existing questions from other tests, surveys and pools, and can make adjustments to scoring, feedback, images, metadata, extra credit and how questions are displayed to students. Tests can be timed, assigned a required password and set so each student receives a different order of questions. The recent data we have captured on University and Institution success in the Kingdom has seen assessments on our platform jump 900 percent from 2.8 million in January and February into 26.3 million in March and April. For doctoral candidates, thesis defenses have also moved online, and newly minted holders of a doctorate are finding creative ways to celebrate the achievement. What is your take on this? Do you have a solution on this trend? Our virtual classroom solution provides an opportunity for students to interact with their instructor using video. This is a good way for doctoral candidates to defend their thesis. We have some clients in Saudi Arabia that are using the virtual classroom for their master’s programs. What are your tips and recommendation for students who have moved to e-learning? It’s crucial that students stay current — don’t fall behind and then have to play catch-up. Maintain precise organization even though you might have additional flexibility in your online courses. Plan ahead and set short and long-term academic goals. And communicate with your instructors regularly, using the tools available to you. What is Blackboard"s stance and solution for universities and their students to maintain quality education while adapting to the new conditions? Universities can learn from the experiences of institutions that have in the past had to transition to online models in times of crises. We have created the Continuity of Education space on the Blackboard Community Site for institutions to learn from their peers and share resources and plans with each other aimed at maintaining the quality and continuity of education. Do you see opportunities on new educational practices brought about by this pandemic? How are you dealing with universities using your solution to support and meet their new requirements? The importance of distance education in an increasingly uncertain world of global pandemics and other dramatic disruptions is without doubt. Institutions will likely integrate virtual teaching and learning formats and practices into their infrastructures and harness it to develop a more robust system. Our technologies are built for this very purpose and we have quality solutions in place to accommodate the specific needs of each institution. We have dedicated additional resources to capably and efficiently tackle this surge in demand, including increasing our capacity by 50 times. We are also proactively collaborating and engaging with our clients in the Middle East and around the world to anticipate their current and future usage needs. As universities and institutions face uncertainty, what do you think is the outlook of education after COVID-19? While digital teaching and learning tools have been gaining significant traction over the last few years, the traffic towards them has certainly risen considerably due to the pandemic. We believe this shift will prove a permanent trend. What do you think are the long-term consequences of online education? Technology can deepen the education experience for learners and for teachers, particularly through personalized learning and data-driven insights. Online education can be inclusive, accessible and can weather potentially disruptive developments. What are your action plans to sustain the surge in online education, knowing that it gained exponential momentum due to COVID-19? While COVID-19 has certainly put an increased focus on online and distance learning and continuity of education, we believe that the future will include more blended learning and flipped classrooms. In this situation, cloud-based solutions will continue to grow in importance as they are able to rapidly scale to meet institution’s needs and we are working hard to ensure success in the Kingdom is maintained to meet and exceed the aspirations of the 2030 vision. — SG