East Asia Watch: How are Malaysian universities adapting during Covid-19

This blog is the fifth in our series East Asia Watch - exploring how education institutions in East Asia are responding to different challenges that are evolving out of the Covid-19 pandemic. The purpose of the series is two-fold:

• provide UK institutions with a greater understanding of both challenges and expectations of student-sending countries in East Asia
• provide UK institutions with learning points and food for thought when developing their own responses to Covid-19.

A dialogue with Professor Perry Hobson, PhD, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Engagement at Sunway University in Malaysia.

In this conversation, Professor Hobson shares his thoughts and insights on the immediate challenges and opportunities posed by Covid-19 for Sunway University in Malaysia.

How are Sunway University and Malaysian higher education institutions adapting to Covid-19?

Here at Sunway University, as with many other universities around the world, the pandemic came as a significant jolt to our normal on-campus academic operations. Like others, we had to jump in at the deep end with providing online delivery. When the Movement Control Order (MCO) was announced in Malaysia, we were somewhat lucky with the timing as we had not yet started our semester. We were fortunate in that we were able to create a small window of opportunity to work with our academic staff and administrative teams to make the necessary arrangements. So in less than 2-weeks, we were able to provide some short and intensive training to our staff before shifting online. Of course, not all institutions in Malaysia were able to do that. As a result, different students and staff at different institutions were impacted rather differently. In our case, we also had to respond quickly with acquiring additional licences for specialised software and acquiring more bandwidth access to the library. A number of other significant decisions, such as going to Pass/Fail grading, were made too.

Of course, we remain concerned about our students feeling alienated or disconnected from the university and their friends. While we know they want to get back on campus, we also know the risks of doing that without having the right social distancing measures in place. I would suggest that all institutions are trying to be responsible. We are looking to do the right thing, within the guidelines from the Ministry of Education, and to ensure we give adequate advice to students and parents. However, it’s a fluid situation. Needless to say, we are aiming to balance keeping our students engaged with the requirement not to have too many students on campus at the same time.

I can’t speak on behalf of other institutions, but this certainly came as a wake-up call to the sector in terms of ‘Crisis Management and Business Continuity Planning’ and online delivery. Looking ahead, I am not sure whether all universities will be able to weather this storm and financially survive.

How ready are higher education institutions to switch to delivering teaching digitally?

Our immediate issues related to having adequate licences for specialised software, access and suitable bandwidth – requiring increased investment quickly. In the initial days, our staff ended up working from home - with some suddenly having to use their own laptop equipment and learning to become adept at using iPads and even mobile phones!

We realise that students across disciplines have varying needs for contact time.  When students were told to learn online, we knew that many of them would initially struggle. Within my institution, different Schools have engaged with their students in different ways. Personally, I decided to launch a weekly webinar in hospitality and tourism called “30 Minute Talks”, which was aimed not just at Sunway University students but also students in Malaysia and in other countries in the region. We saw a weekly increase in attendees – from 165 to 285, then 390 and it peaking at around 550+. The common issue facing students has been that a lot of them are frustrated because they are at home and they don’t all have proper equipment or connectivity. They are suddenly in shared living spaces with family, and having to deal with a learning situation they were just not prepped for.

I would suggest that all this indicates that there are huge problems not just in Malaysia but all around the Asia region – when it comes to delivering content for students.  Not only is learning online challenging for students who are used to face-to face delivery, but it is probably even more challenging for many of our academic staff who have been thrust into doing this at very short notice. Having said that, this searing experience has also made us identify and now plan for the future in terms of skills, systems and equipment.

Looking ahead, I would suggest that a raft of investments need to be made by Malaysian universities. Not only in terms of technology or licences, but also the training of staff with online delivery. Now that we are able to be back on-campus, we are already investing in sound-proof lecture studios so that our academic staff can record lectures of a professional quality – as we were simply not able to do during the initial days. Talking to people at other universities here and abroad, I think most of our academic colleagues have been facing similar challenges. But looking ahead, we now all now need to be get prepared to do more digital delivery.

In what ways has Covid-19 impacted research and partnerships in terms of internationalising education for institutions?

In terms of partnerships, we have a 14-year relationship with Lancaster University in the UK, and they validate more than twenty degrees at Sunway University. Our relationship with them has progressed pretty much as normal given the breadth and depth of the linkages. Of course, we have experienced some challenges with how our normal collaborations have progressed.

For instance, we had to halt all of our exchange and short-term mobility programmes. Also, our researchers were unable to get onto the campus for over 3-months, and this became highly problematic when you have labs that have on-going experiments that need measuring.

We have continued to work together online through digital means. One of the bigger challenges for our partnerships has been the furlough issue in the UK, as some of our British colleagues suddenly had to go on furlough at short notice. This has been a tad problematic at time – particularly when you are working closely with people and in the middle of a project and they literally ‘disappear’ for a few weeks.

Research and partnerships continue to be an important aspect of internationalisation. Our projects have continued and we are maintaining our relationships – but there are logistic and administrative changes to timelines and programme design. The interesting thing has been how Covid-19 has brought Sunway University and Lancaster University together in a way we have not seen before.

We initiated our first joint online teaching and learning seminar to share experiences on dealing with online teaching during Covid-19. We connected 110 plus academics online to share best practices on how to resolve similar challenges. We had two staff members from Sunway University and three Lancaster University presenting about their experiences, and the participants were also drawn from other Lancaster University partners including Blackburn College, UA92 in Manchester and staff from their campus in Ghana. To be honest, we had never had such a wide online exchange between international academics between all these campuses before. 

These are small examples of how rather than testing the relationship, Covid-19 is helping to make the relationship stronger. This is important, because at trying times like these some partnerships could easily fall apart. I would like to say that the pandemic has shown us that we can also do many new things with partners, as compared to what we had been doing previously.

Going forward, many institutions will need to re-visit their TNE relationships and models. For example, we are looking at how we can work with our partners in other ways when it comes to student mobility. At the moment, when we think of travel, safety is a major concern for parents and students. Therefore, we are looking at working with Lancaster University in other ways - so that students can do their first year here in Malaysia and then transition over to the UK later. We are also looking into offering virtual exchanges too. I am sure that given the travel restrictions and concerns about health, many institutions may be thinking along similar lines.

Are there any gaps in terms of training that have been identified and how can this be addressed?

Malaysia, along with a lot of other Asian countries, still follows the more traditional model of having extensive contact hours between student and faculty. In other words, there is a culture of needing to be seen to be ‘at your desk’ for you to be working. With Covid-19, working digitally and from home has become a necessity. Personally, I think many of us need to stop physically ‘going to work” and to think about how else we can work more efficiently and effectively. Simply put, spending time stuck in KL traffic is not an effective use of staff time.

One skills ‘gap’ that we need to fill, is that we need to be able to help our students to learn in other ways and to help make them better equipped to deal with an increasingly digital world. Within the university they need ‘empowering’ to take more control of their learning. I would suggest that our degrees need to be made more flexible (in terms of elective choices) and also delivered in a more flexible and blended manner. We need to use less face-to-face lecture based contact hours. Now that students have got used to more digital delivery during this Covid-19 period, universities will have to adapt. In turn, this means our staff need upskilling to improve their digital delivery techniques. I see this as significant ‘gap’ that also has to be addressed.

Given a more digital world, our students will need these new skills as they enter the new world of work – and again this is another ‘gap’. This change was coming, and the pandemic has just turbo-charged it. Students are already highly adept at social media, sharing and networking. Universities need to capitalise and embrace that for education and learning purposes, rather than shy away from it and continue to try and make students sit in endless rows in lecture theatres. We now need to give them digital-ready job skills. 

What long-term or semi-permanent changes to you foresee at Malaysian institutions - what changes will be brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic?

I think we will witness a massive change in delivery.

Far too many institutions have focused on just offering face-to-face learning. If you compare Malaysian institutions with other countries, then the number of contact hours here are substantially higher. This is problematic when you are trying to develop students who should be self-guided independent thinkers, who are able to work on their own rather than listen to hours of lectures.

The reality is that big institutions such as universities are typically very “change resistant”. Covid-19 meant that universities suddenly had to wake up and adapt with amazing speed to the pandemic. Do we want to now turn the clock back to December 2019? Already, all students are now more used to digital delivery and resources. This means the academic staff across every institution are going to have to re-think their lecturing and delivery style. The more forward-looking institutions will capitalise on these changes. Sadly, I suspect some others won’t - and through lack of investment they will simply lapse back into what they were doing before, much to the annoyance of their students.

Another indication of how the situation will revolutionise things, can be seen in the planning that we are doing for the construction of our new 12-storey building. We had plans for many large 500 plus seat lecture theatres. The question has now come up, do we really need all those big lecture theatres?  Would it be better to think about putting more of our lectures online, and perhaps have more flexible flat floor learning spaces for interactive workshops?

Just we are navigating these decisions and plans, I am sure we are not the only university starting to re-think how we are delivering our education. As a sector, we need to do a better job at having a vision of the future of education delivery.

What are the opportunities that you foresee as Malaysian higher education institutions, faculty and students emerge from the current crises and enter the new educational landscape?

I see the opportunity to change. To change what we do, and how we do it. Just as Covid-19 has ‘turbo-charged’ the digital world, this needs to happen on our campuses. Not only in terms of investment and use of our online systems, but also staff working practices, students’ learning and their engagement with knowledge.

I think Malaysia will come out of this crisis well in comparison to other countries. Malaysia has shown itself to be a welcoming, well-ordered country who can cope well when faced by a crisis.

I am pleased to say that an initial survey of our students indicated that most were happy with the delivery that they had been receiving. However, we are also now well aware that many students are challenged in terms of their IT knowledge, their unfamiliarity with online delivery and the issues they have had with equipment. We can now look to address these.

It is almost certain that students have become used to having access to a wider range of online resources, which are also available to them when they want them. There will be no going back.

Students today are used to being online; they are digital natives. Because existing educational systems and models required lots of face-to-face contact hours, the students simply did it. Needless to say, students still like and value the social and interactive experience that comes from being on-campus. However, if you look at student engagement in a lot of classroom settings, it's that not great. After all, the average student only has about a 20 minutes attention span. Online can be much more engaging, if done properly.

We are beginning to see a lot of truisms unfold – such as that two-hour lectures and writing notes just isn't a great way of delivering education. I hope this pandemic period will make people re-think what that they have been doing. Before Covid-19, signing up for online degrees was something ‘different’ and was often something that only specialised institutions offered. Now, everyone has had to do it; and most are starting to the benefits of it. I am not saying it’s the ‘be all and ‘end-all’ for education, but this enforced period of going online is going to being a seismic shift in thinking and practice. Of course, it wasn’t well planned and for many the initial experience may not have been so good. But like all changes with technology, we’ll adapt and it will improve.

Given the Covid-19 crisis, is student mobility still an aspiration for HEIs? What are the key considerations that would drive policies and approaches in shaping outward mobility initiatives in future?

Malaysia is a very ‘open’ country when it comes to education. Inherently, Malaysians do see the benefits of studying overseas. At the moment, I think there will be a lot of concern about the health-safety aspects of study overseas and so I do see a downturn. In turn, I think a lot of pent-up demand will build up, and my hunch is that outward mobility will continue to increase after a downturn - though this will depend on how well various countries deal with the pandemic. Given how well Malaysia has handled this situation, I think this will give additional confidence to students to opt to Malaysia for their studies.

Malaysia has strong student mobility, but it is largely one way. The number of exchange students coming into Malaysia is too low, and I am keen to try and get more students to come on exchange, short courses and to develop some ‘edu-tourism’ initiatives.

I have also been interested in the concept of online ‘Virtual Exchange’ programmes for a while. I am looking into developing virtual exchanges and exploring ways that we can embed them into the curriculum at Sunway University. I believe that we can find engaging ways to connect our Sunway students through virtual exchanges with students and academics from other parts of the world. I hope this is one of the silver linings to the Covid-19 cloud - that we can implement such initiatives that would have unthinkable beforehand.

Overall, I can say that going forward, we know we can do things differently and digitally. This applies not just to teaching but most areas of education.  To be honest, I am quite positive about the changes that are going to come out of this situation. It will push us to move things along and embrace change. After all, institutions have been required to immediately step up and provide solutions – it is this innovation that will continue to build momentum and provide innovative education models as we go along.

Food for thought for UK institutions

Partnerships and joint initiative platforms can and will broaden in scope and programme design.  Existing partnerships can lead to new avenues for a mutual sharing of best practices, training and collaborations. This may include online programmes for students and faculty, career and employability programmes for students and increased sharing of international perspectives from faculty around the world contributing to a two-way internationalisation for institutions.

Delivery of teaching will benefit from a review. This includes an analysis of required contact hours or digital learning, the readiness of faculty to take on digital and blended online teaching for maximum benefit to students, the provision of required training and infrastructure to support academics deliver their best for students. This will require investment.

Virtual exchanges should not be limited to student mobility; a virtual exchange programme can provide UK institutions with much needed value in terms of welcoming international students, faculty and institutions. Virtual availability and flexibility will open doors at this time for progressive institutions ready to adapt and respond quickly to the situation.

Contributors:

• Saman Imtiaz, Head IES Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore
• Rifhan, Rozlan, Manager Study UK Malaysia