Although the amount of work did not decrease while teaching online, homeoffice gave me the right headspace to reflect on my experience as a student (since 2009 at different universities) and as a senior lecturer, teaching ~12 hours a week at JKU (since 2018, Department of International Management). Below are my conclusions.

Currently, top leaders of the automobile industry are trying to engineer a selfdriving, environmentally friendly vehicle. Tesla shifted the paradigm and designed a computer on wheels. But, what does this analogy have to do with our education system on a broad scale and our university? Our current patterns and solutions are keeping the vehicle in motion; hence, reassessing them is not necessary. Consequently, we might consider applying some finetuning and re-engineering because that worked for hundreds of years. Let´s rush back to “normal” (before lockdown)! Chances are good; we can avoid the laborious task of constructing a “computer on wheels”. Snooze is comforting.

Slightly adjusting our tests and teaching methods to virtual settings already demands a lot of effort… Why go further and start fundamentally questioning why, what and how we teach and demand from our students… While some of us would complain about impersonal AI scanning through CVs and monitoring our private shopping behavior, we are also content with assessing an entire semester of learning with a 20-minute, multiple-choice, online test format. No one questions that, exams are proven assessments of the profound manifestation of students´ lexical knowledge. They work as advertised to demonstrate performance like looking at a picture of an automobile… Snooze is comforting.

After all, we (will) have self-driving cars. They can take us on the same route, to the same destination we went for decades. While ticking boxes on the list of “Life Achievements”, safely getting from point A to B is comforting; you can even sleep while “driving”. Nevertheless, can you keep snoozing while teaching and learning?

I do not want to. In my opinion, students are our partners in creating their learning experience. We need to consider them that way. How would you approach someone with whom you want to create meaningful learning experience? Would you want them to half-heartedly attend simultaneous online classes and be overwhelmed by human-less, online assessments? Or would you want to make sure that they feel accommodated and respected? These are some of the important, fundamental, and dreaded questions to answer. Although, the vehicle was functioning on its “normal” way up until now, vital elements of our current education system and knowledge are in need of revision accompanied by shifting paradigms. Researches supported by the Business School (“Pedagogical Excellence in the Digital Age” (Fink & Höller), “Problem Based/Oriented Learning / Experienced Based Learning” (Musil, Keller, & Güttel) and “eTutor++: An adaptive e-learning system with personalized exercising tailored to students´ individual learning curves” (Schütz)) can hopefully steer us away from the “normal”.

I would like to spark conversations, to find out what the new questions are, we need to ask in order to create truly inspiring and enriched-learning environments with our students. I am happy to hear from you if you have thoughts, opinions, and ideas or wish to collaborate!

Please find me on LinkedIn: Juhász Edit or drop a mail edit.juhasz(at)jku.at!

Hereby, I would like to thank Dr. A.R. Elangovan, “Elango” for the inspiring feedback rounds, Christopher A. Williams for his editing comments, and my friends and family for their encouragement on this journey!