Virtual courses are taking up more and more space in the curricula of the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQÀM). From 81 courses offered online before the pandemic, this number would have increased to 689 today, according to official data obtained by the To have to. UQÀM says that “more than 700” online courses will be offered in the fall 2022 semester.
These new distance learning courses mainly concern management sciences, educational sciences and communication training. In all, nearly 17% of courses at UQÀM will be offered virtually or in “hybrid mode” next fall.
“Many see online teaching as an opportunity to seize to achieve UQAM’s fundamental mission in terms of accessibility and student success,” says Jenny Desrochers, Director of Communications at UQAM. ‘UQAM. This is in line with a request made by many students. »
The increase in the number of virtual classrooms comes as the pandemic no longer justifies this distance between the teacher and the students. Classes have been given mainly in person for two sessions.
“No one is fundamentally against online teaching,” comments Louis Gaudreau, representative of the UQAM teachers’ union, although he has some reservations. It is still necessary that “university life in the broad sense” be preserved, he notes. “On a campus, with student cafes, student associations, dissemination centers, conferences, there is an intellectual life that is part of the training you receive at university”.
Added to this are the technical difficulties posed by the hybrid mode, in which teachers have to juggle with several audiences simultaneously.
“Additional support will be allocated this fall to teachers for teaching online courses,” replies Ms. Desrochers, citing “techno-pedagogical” guides deployed during the pandemic.
The “precipitation” with which UQAM is improving its catalog of online courses also poses a problem for the union, because “nothing in the collective agreements defines the allocation of online courses”, underlines Mr. Gaudreau. “Things are not going in the right order. It should at least be justified in terms of the university mission and not just from the commercial point of view of generating university registrations. »
For its part, the University believes that this digital shift can “facilitate access to studies for all, especially people who reconcile work, studies and family”.