We study together during the weekdays, we rotate who cooks dinner. We regularly go on walks, in pairs or alone. I think everyone can recognize the feeling of not knowing what you are going to do with your day sometimes. I experience that my day-to-day rhythm has changed drastically due to not physically having to go to the university anymore and my side-job being cancelled. In these times it is of the upmost importance to stay focused on the future.

What will our lives look like in the one-and-a-half-meter society? It has become apparent that universities, part of that society, are at a crossroad. The question is, what will university education look like in the future once everything is back to ‘normal’? What are the improvements to be made in the field of online education to get the full potential of it? What further developments are needed?

Before the corona period, it was not always possible for students to watch their lectures online. There was no infrastructure for 100 percent online education. Sometimes, teachers experience it as too much of a hassle for teachers to record their lectures and publish them online. This despite the increasing demand of students that want more flexible education, so they can choose for themselves where and when they study.

However, even under the normal circumstances it wasn't always realistic to record online lectures, simply because not all lecture halls are equipped with the right recording tools. Now that it is of the highest necessity, the TU/e proved to their students that it is possible to record (almost) all online lectures. In a very short time span, almost all courses of Q3 were moved online. In addition, regular exams were changed to online exams, oral exams, or assignments. As a member of the University Council, I have seen from up close how the decision-making process was sped up in a way I could not have imagined. This shows that anything can happen if you put your heart to it. I have grown a lot of respect for the management of the TU/e for this.

Now that education is given online, you experience even more the benefits of it. You can choose for yourself where you are during the lectures and you can choose when you will watch the lectures. On the other side, it is apparent that online lectures do not come close to providing the same interaction as a regular lecture on campus. In my opinion, these fruitful discussions during the lectures are a big shortcoming.

There is still a lot of room for growth at the TU/e regarding the development of online interaction. There are a lot of tools and software that have a large potential, but most of these are expensive or are still underdeveloped and not scalable to a university with around 14.000 students.

Personally I always wanted more online lectures, but now I miss the discussions and I realise that online education is not something that can be judged easily; there are a lot of arguments that can be given to both on-campus and online education. Meanwhile, the demand for a solution to inspire and motivate students from home becomes only more urgent. 

Moreover, a lot of questions arise about the role of the university campus in the future. Imagine there would only be online education, what would be the remaining added value of a campus? To tackle this question, I think it is important to change our definition of a campus. Or actually, to broaden it. A campus should not only entail the physical campus, but also the online campus: including all infrastructure and knowledge that is stored online. Also the online interaction of students with each other and with teachers are part of it. This is where the largest potential for online education can be found. A well-designed infrastructure can make it possible to replicate the high quality of physical on-campus education in an online environment.

Now is the moment to lay the foundations for that. For example, for further developing tailored studying, for online platforms for guiding discussions, or all other innovations that are receiving a boost now that there is such a high demand for them. Let us share knowledge about online education and learn from each other’s experiments and findings. But let us also keep an eye on how other universities are stimulating online interaction. This is the moment for entrepreneurs and designers in the field of education to think of new ideas to create opportunities for studying from home.