Higher education and COVID-19 : is hybrid teaching/learning the solution?

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic more than ever threatens learning and research activities as well as university governance and institutional management. Therefore, transforming higher education during this pandemic requires changes in institutional management, learning and teaching approaches, and technologies for students and lecturers to use. Many higher education institutions (HEIs) have adopted different approaches to ensure effective learning and teaching in this period. Depending on the Covid-19 situation in a country, some HEIs have implemented either face-to-face or online learning with others deciding on both. All these three strategies have its attendant impact on learning and teaching. In most media and academic discourse, it is argued that hybrid teaching/learning is the best solution we have for HEIs during this global health crisis. But different perspectives concerning this approach have not been brought to the fore for discussion particularly in terms of technologies used, internet/network connection for students living in deprived and rural communities, tuition fees for students (whether there should be a discount or not), inability to access resource in a university library, delivery of some disciplines (such as natural and medical sciences) online, and student assessment and academic development. The argument on and solution for higher education for the “new normal” should go beyond the focus of institutional management to look at the students’ and tutors’ challenges for hybrid teaching/learning approach and the Covid-19 measures of some governments in the developing and developed countries. Thus, this paper seeks to discuss diverse perspectives of hybrid teaching/learning as many countries are trying to implement it as an effort to ease some of the Covid-19 restrictions.