In an announcement accepting social distancing is here to stay, UK’s Cambridge cancelled face-to-face lectures until 2021. The reputed institution revealed plans to replace group face-to-face lectures with on-line lectures for the 2020/21 academic year.
The Cambridge University statement said “Given the likely need for continued social distancing, we have decided to suspend mass lectures in person for the next academic year. Lectures will be available online”.
“Like all communities around the world, we are now contemplating what our own post-lockdown world will look like. Whether it is a phased and careful return to on-site work, or indeed continuing to work from home, we are all faced with new uncertainties.
The impact of social distancing is likely to mean that we will not be able to deliver all our teaching and learning as we usually do”.
Resuming our University’s on-site operations will be much more challenging than shutting them down
It has been widely acknowledged that, under the social distancing measures that are likely to be in place for the foreseeable future, the provision of large group face-to-face lectures would not be possible.
Although distance learning is not new, the fact that there is not going to be any group lessons or face-to-face learning raises the question: Is this going to be the new normal? There are profound implications of this ‘new normal’ though.
