Survey of French university practices: revelations from a Post Covid19 study !

Plunged into the storm of the health crisis and containment, the public higher education and research system has been through some difficult times. We found this out by interviewing numerous digital Vice-Presidents across France in our #Univ4Good series and in a wide-ranging survey we carried out for VPNum.

Beyond figures and tools, the first analysis highlights several key points in performance and pedagogical continuity :

Extreme sensitivity and responsiveness to the sometimes dramatic social situation of a minority of students,
A highly agile system for adapting to distance learning and assessment,
A desire to move towards a more digital approach, to make knowledge acquisition and dissemination models in the academic world more hybrid.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the staff and teams who responded so promptly to our survey, in a complicated context and with little visibility of what lies ahead, particularly for the start of the 2020 school year.

The main thrust of this survey is to demonstrate the capacity of the entire ESR to respond, mobilize resources, excel in practices and open up to a digital world. Interviews, key figures and messages of support all add up to a realistic and positive view of the situation over the past few months, even if we must not overlook the difficulties encountered, the changes in pace and the fatigue accumulated by teams who are now exhausted.

Take, for example, the problem of the digital divide, which unfortunately still affects 2% of university students. Universities have been quick to put in place a number of measures to tackle this problem, mobilizing nearly 3.4 million euros from their budgets (for the 29 universities that responded to this question). They equipped more than 10,000 students with computers and Internet connection devices (sim cards and 4G keys)!

The same is true of access to learning resources. When you consider that up to 80,000 sessions per day were supported by the servers of a single institution, it’s clear that the infrastructures and equipment mobilized were of the right size. Moreover, it’s worth remembering that long before the crisis, all universities had LMS platforms (most often Moodle) enabling them to follow courses and take exams.

However, the national, or at least European, spirit is alive and well among our digital Vice-Presidents, and this period offers them an opportunity to call once again for standardized, national (or European) tools to be developed, and to prove their effectiveness in the face of the Zoom, Teams and Google Meets that have flooded our screens. Will they be heard?

But the French university system is also a model of equal opportunity. It is a constant challenge to help all staff make better use of digital tools, and the covid19 crisis has only amplified this challenge. One of the challenges of the next academic year is to train all players in digital practices. The vast majority of our staff express the need to continue supporting administrative staff, as well as teaching and research staff. It would be wrong to think that only students are having difficulty adopting the new tools.

At a time when the continuation of hybrid teaching remains fairly likely for the start of the new academic year, 80% of universities are continuing to reflect on possible hybridization modalities.

We’re delighted! Supporting organizations in their digital transformation is precisely our mission at Simone et les Robots.

Carrying out this survey has confirmed our deep-seated convictions: French universities are geared towards a digital future that will guarantee access to knowledge for all. But high standards are another very strong feature of our university system, and that’s why we wanted to highlight the incredible performance it has demonstrated since the first day of confinement !

We invite you to read in detail the results of this national survey. It is unique in its kind, not only because of the unpredictable and severe crisis we are experiencing, but also because of the scope of the panorama it presents. We are proud to have been chosen, and particularly happy to have collaborated with the VP-Num association to contribute, at our level, to the recognition of the efforts and actions undertaken by French universities to promote innovative and socially responsible teaching!

Thank you all for your generous and kind contributions.

Simone