Designing higher education experiential learning for the post-pandemic hybrid workforce

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, the higher education sector worldwide has faced an increasing move towards a culture of collaboGration, to drive innovation and commercialisation, between universities, industries and policy-makers. In addition, there is pressure in the sector for greater diversity in international education, optimisation of hybrid models of online/face-to-face teaching and micro-credentialing. In 2020, the World Economic Forum predicted that “50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025, as adoption of technology increases”. Law graduates also face an increasingly automated workplace, which will expect employees to generate valuable client relationships, while identifying cost and other efficiencies, through the use of a variety of digital technologies. During the Covid-19 pandemic, as teachers who had to suddenly embrace technology and the digitisation of education and adapt to unprecedented times, we became more acutely aware of the longer-term impact that the “virtual world” of learning can have on preparing students for their futures of work, irrespective of disciplinary background. We explore what it means to deliver “real-world” experiences when we design experiential learning curricula, to better “digitally” prepare our students for the workforce. For law graduates, this means facing a workplace which is increasingly embracing “digital fluency”, including through the use of hybrid workplaces, the adoption of “e-learning” or online training for induction and continuing education programmes, “on the job” use of AI-based tools for document review/analysis and storage, as well as for legal research and translation, interactions with other professionals and clients.