Before the pandemic, I was a migrant worker in university and cultural exchanges.
That meant visiting top universities in the British Isles to build and maintain partnerships and host career events aimed at raising senior year undergraduate and post graduate awareness of job opportunities in China.
Covid-19 changed all that. It was a time of virtual travel. My natural habitat is the webinar (on a number of platforms that I was previously unfamiliar with) and the Zoom meeting.
This has revolutionized my work in several ways – many for the better. First of all, we started to hold virtual trade shows to present universities. This means any Chinese student, parent, teacher, or educator with access to a laptop or smartphone can tune in to hear and ask questions from key university officials – including chancellors and admissions tutors. In times of global climate collapse, this is much better than inviting Western university representatives on flying visits to China to give lectures at schools. It’s also much more efficient as a single session can attract over 10,000 attendees from myriad schools.
A second way in which my work was revolutionized was through university recruitment in the UK and Ireland. Before the pandemic, I loved visiting career centers to discuss roles in our graduate program and at bilingual schools that Ambright operates in major cities in central-east China – the Thomas Schools of China. This February I decided to go on a virtual tour instead.
While a virtual odyssey of higher education doesn’t give visitors to St. Andrews a chance to stroll into seductive bookstores or enjoy a refreshing coastal walk after meetings, getting to Fife with a click of the mouse is certainly far more convenient than a long train ride and overnight stay.
The virtual traveler to the universities has another great advantage. With a webinar or Zoom meeting, it is much easier to attract a large number of co-moderators and participants. For example, I recently had the opportunity to meet 57 other well-wishers from around the world at a retirement ceremony I was attending at a leading UK university. By scheduling webinars and meetings at 9 a.m. in the UK and Ireland, it was possible to include colleagues in Shanghai, representatives from multiple faculties from the host university, and even a guest speaker – a China counselor – who otherwise would never have been able to visit.
It is clear that such benefits should not be thrown away once the pandemic recedes for good. Now that we’ve gotten used to virtual travel in higher education and recognized its benefits, we will likely continue to offer webinars, interact with academic partners on virtual platforms, and test electronic pen pals across cultures, even when the person travels again.
Still, I would deny Oxford professor and author Marcus du Sautoy’s claim during the closing debate at this year’s Jaipur Literature Festival (digital edition) that the virtual world is more real than the physical. And I confess that I long for the day when physical, personal travel will resume.
It will be refreshing to meet academic partners as complete people in three-dimensional spaces and not as blurry images that are constantly threatening to disappear behind the virtual backdrop of their university. Meeting colleagues in China for a stir-fry banquet or Shandong cuisine will definitely be an improvement over another hasty lunch next to my laptop. And the students I meet at career events will no longer have the option to turn their cameras off while I give them advice on working in East Asia.
In addition, it is a relief not to be so dependent on the technology so that the well-prepared event will be a success – even if we are then at the mercy of the mysterious moods of the PowerPoint projector and the unfathomable air of the seminar room. Conditioning controlled.
Jacob Lotinga is the UK and Ireland Coordinator for the Ambright Education Group.
source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/virtual-travelling-has-its-perks-but-its-not-my-bag/
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