Higher education (HE) institutions like other educational institutions are on the cusp of major disruption that is created in part by globalisation, digitalisation and recently the growing pandemic caused by Covid-19. Never before has the HE sector being challenged the way it has been in the last few months and it illustrated that changes can happen faster than expected. In time of crisis, the tendency is to focus on the short term solutions and to ignore what is likely to be faced in the post crisis. However, it is precisely during the crisis that the focus should also be on the future developments in HE to ensure broadening access and equity to relevant high-quality programmes and services designed to achieve learning for sustainable development. This means that the HE sector needs to think about possible future requirements from teaching and learning as well as from an organisational perspective and thus, to re-vision the future of HE. In the session, we will present results of focus groups, which we conducted in May and June 2020 with experts of the University of the Future Network who are working as researchers, lecturers and managers in HE institutions around the globe. The discussions focussed on re-visioning the future of higher education while responding to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The experts focused on visionary paths with regard to teaching and learning in HE in the future and related challenges and opportunities. They discussed significant conditions that need to be in place to ensure accessibility and inclusivity in HE and how visioning of teaching and learning in HE will look like post Covid-19. After presenting results and key issues, we invite the participants of the session to share their experiences and views on the results with us in a moderated discussion. |