Studying after the pandemic – Despite Corona: face-to-face teaching at universities is not disappearing – News
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Because of Covid, teaching will be different in the future, says Sarah Springman, the rector of ETH Zurich, in an interview.
Sarah Springman came to ETH Zurich almost 25 years ago. She has been the rector for the last seven years. She is now moving to St. Hilda’s College at Oxford University as director in February 2022. She talks about how Corona has and is changing the way we study.
SRF News: Sarah Springman, you suggested in an interview that Corona will change teaching permanently. How exactly?
Sarah Springman: I’m not sure I can really say that Corona has incredible innovative strength in teaching at ETH. Personally, I started with hybrid teaching methods as early as 2000. In my opinion, the individual lecturers and professors will consider how they can help students better understand their subject in the future.
Almost all students were there before Covid. After that they were only at home, now partly. How will this share develop?
Basically, I believe that after Covid, almost everything will be done differently. But face-to-face teaching is incredibly important to us. This is also incredibly important to our students.
Our lecturers want to be able to look into the eyes of the students.
Our lecturers want to be able to look into the eyes of the students to see whether they have understood something or not. But I cannot tell you a percentage of how many will be on site and how many will be at home.
More or less than 50 percent?
Face-to-face teaching will remain and is absolutely essential. The experimental teaching, the laboratories, the project work will be on site. But certain things can be done from home. For example, if you model numerically and have access to a good computer.
Even if you study at ETH Zurich, do you have to be in the Zurich region in the future and can’t you do it from southern Italy?
No, you have to be here in Zurich. Also so that you can benefit from your colleagues. «Peer learning» is important.
Will the workload for the professors actually increase or decrease in the future?
If you have to do everything in parallel, on site and video at the same time, that is of course a little more work. But the professors learned a lot. And they noticed that, depending on the method, you get better results from the students and that ultimately makes less work.
If you think back: how would you have been as a young student like these new forms of teaching?
Of course we didn’t have anything digital back then. I would have loved to learn with today’s opportunities.
Interview conducted by Hans-Peter Künzi.
SRF 1, Regionaljournal Regionaljournal Zürich Schaffhausen, December 16, 2021, 12:05 p.m. vwam; gotl