The Vice Rector for International Relations at the Miguel Hernández University of Elche (UMH), Vicente Micol, participated as a speaker at the symposium on online education entitled “Redefining and Reforming Education in Times of Covid,” which was organized by Parul University from the state of Gujarat, in India.

This meeting brought educational experts together to share approaches to and good practices on the new challenges currently facing education and internationalization due to the situation caused by Covid-19. In this sense, the vice rector highlighted that the UMH “was already experienced in virtual teaching due to the use of platforms such as Moodle or Nano Courses.” However, according to Micol, “beginning in March, great efforts have been made with both material resources as well as training and human resources to convert traditional teaching methods to a remote kind so that the 2019-2020 academic year was not affected.”

The representatives from each institution explained the main barriers facing them when it came to implementing remote education and the solutions that they have found. Most concurred that a lack of means, scarce digitization of the faculty, and difficulties with motivating students have been the main barriers to offering satisfactory virtual education. Furthermore, Micol explained that, in the case of the UMH, its faculty acquired the digital training necessary rapidly, have perfectly adapted to a model of continuous training, and that the students have also committed themselves to the changes to the training model.

Concerning the total implementation of virtual education, Micol asserted that “online education is here to stay and will remain so into the future, but we will never be able to substitute 100% of classroom-based education in most programs. This will force us to work on an effective mixed model, one with guarantees for training the professionals required by the worldwide labor force.”

In addition to the UMH and Parul University, other institutions participating in the meeting included Ryerson University & Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning (Canada); Hong Kong Polytechnic University & Open University of Hong Kong (China); CKSV Institute of Management, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tezpur University & Savitribai Phule Pune University (India); Panca Bhakti University (Indonesia); University of Applied Sciences (Lithuania); Wroclaw University of Science and Technology & Poznan University of Technology (Poland); and the Peoples’ Friendship University (Russia).