The post-pandemic blended university in the time of digitisation

Abstract

This paper documents the inevitable emergence of the ‘Global School’, assesses how the COVID-19 pandemic is hastening that transformation, and then focusses upon how these elemental educational developments may apply at the post-school level. Digitisation involves a pivotal leap in human potential as profound as the wheel in terms of development, as significant as the book in relation to information, and as iconoclastic as anything dreamed up by the deepest analyst/therapist in terms of the human psyche. Given that we are moving inexorably and joyfully into the One World One School situation, do we envisage the one global and blended university – where universal access and organisation are intermingled with local needs, cultures and priorities? Are we also progressing towards a blended post- secondary assessment and learning pedagogy in which the digital is dominant? And, if so, how will the pandemic – and the responses to it – pave the way towards that desirable destination?