Bulletin No. 2, 2020

Coming Closer at a Distance: Snapshots of CUHK in the pandemic 3 digital and atomistic lifestyle can be emancipating as well as frightening. Institution fades; the individual comes to the fore. The ordinary men and women, boys and girls, find a new rhythm in online learning or working from home. When the physical goes virtual, one can be master of oneself at a click. In the age of knowledge in abundance and in open access and when the veracity or fakeness of news cannot be assumed without careful fact-checking, independent thinking becomes a gift, a duty or ultimately a test for those who survive and thrive. Distancing breeds detachment, and detachment breeds introspection, a penetrating and unmediated introspection that takes us back into ourselves and our relationships with others and the world. The ability to read and see, think and tell the real from the fake, determines whether we sink or swim in the sea of knowledge and guides us away from the maddening crowd. COVID-19 has completed the makeover to Education 4.0—a thorough integration of technology in teaching and learning. Online courseware like Coursera and edX have been around for a while, but it is social distancing that makes computer literacy a survival skill of the learners. Students in different time zones can click on teaching videos anytime and learn at their own pace. The teacher-student hierarchy disappears: the focus has been shifted from the teachers to the students who, with independence suddenly thrust upon them, are to take full responsibility for their own learning. Literally then, the harder one works, even when confined to home, the more rewarding the education will be. New knowledge and experiences are freely available on the Internet. Many online talks and education programmes, mushrooming in times of lockdown, have made the virtual world a marketplace of eye-openers and intellectual nutrients—the Heart to Heart Talks by the Art Museum and the Arts and Humanities Conversations by the Faculty of Arts are just two examples. The pendulum of education swings from classroom to cloud, but it does not stop there. The morphing of classes into streaming or recorded videos prompts a rethink on the nature of education: can a stack of videos replace face-to- face teaching? Is education merely knowledge transmission? The answer given by most interviewees in this issue is an unwavering ‘no’. However advanced technology gets, the human touch remains core to teaching and learning. Face-to-face interactions are irreducible if we are to deliver the full wonders of education—cultivation of virtues and meaningful, lifelong relationships. Liberating as it is, romanticizing mobile learning has its perils. On the other side of freedom lies the abuse of freedom. Acts of academic dishonesty—freeriding in group projects and ghostwriting—are not unheard of, and they become easier and more tempting in a virtual learning environment. As waves of infections strike the city, classes reschedule and contact hours shrink, it falls squarely on the learners themselves, not the curriculum, to take education in their own hands.

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