Fostering hybrid curriculum for inclusive learning environments

Experts Discuss Hybrid Learning’s Potential and Challenges at UNESCO-BIEU Session

During a session organised by the Bureau International d’Éducation de l’UNESCO (BIEU) in cooperation with the Wallonia Brussels Federation, experts gathered to discuss the theme of hybrid learning, its potential, challenges, and practical implementation. The BIEU, established in 1925 by Piaget and integrated into UNESCO in 1969, is the oldest institute at UNESCO and is set to celebrate its centenary next year. Its mandate is to support educational modernisation and curriculum reform globally, excluding university education.

The session’s theme centred on assessing hybrid learning, which combines in-person instruction with online components to cater to diverse student needs. It addressed YSYS lines 3 (access to information and knowledge), 4 (capacity building), and 7 (e-learning). Dr. Aurélien Fiévez, Associate Professor and Head of Digital Strategy at the Haute École Spécialisée in Geneva, and an advisor on digital transition at the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, presented the digital platforms developed in response to the COVID-19 crisis. These platforms include HAPI, based on Moodle for secure teacher-student environments; DIX, for integrating digital skills; E-Class, a resource platform for co-creation and sharing; and a partnership with PICS for content creation and digital skill development.

Dr. Omar Thiam, Programme Specialist at UNESCO-IBE, discussed the HELA initiative, which promotes hybrid education by combining in-person and remote learning. He emphasised the need for quality resources and capacity-building programmes to support states in adopting hybrid education. Dr. Thiam also highlighted the challenges in mobilising individuals to adapt to new educational models and the importance of producing quality resources and supporting capacity-building programmes. He noted that hybrid learning is primarily utilised in secondary and higher education due to privacy concerns and other reasons.

Both speakers acknowledged the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into educational platforms for tutorials and adaptive learning. They discussed the limited involvement of private partners, with a preference for public and open educational resources. Training and support for teachers and students in digital and pedagogical skills were deemed crucial.

The session concluded with an invitation for participants to complete an evaluation questionnaire via a QR code to provide feedback. The session provided valuable insights into the evolving landscape of hybrid learning and the efforts of educational institutions to adapt to changing needs and technologies.

Mallorie Trannois:
We are going to start this next session that the BIEU organizes in cooperation with the Walloon Federation of Brussels. Just a few words before starting the theme of this session and presenting the people who will debate today on the theme that you can see on the screen. The BIEU is an institute that was created in 1925 by Piaget in Geneva. It was integrated at UNESCO in 1969 in Geneva, Switzerland. It is the oldest institute at UNESCO. Next year, we will celebrate our 100th anniversary. Our role is to help the States, to support the States through the Minister of Education, to help them modernize, to modify their curriculum, namely their school programs, the basic program, the first and second cycle, from early childhood to high school, excluding university. We propose to implement all the guides, all the tools created by UNESCO in the context of different training, and we act on all the countries of the globe. We have an international mandate. So, without further ado, I will leave the floor to my colleague, Emy, who will present the theme, as well as the two people who will intervene. Thank you.

Amy Paunila:
The theme is to assess the potential and challenges of hybrid learning and provide practical insights into implementing its core components. We will explore real-life examples from Africa and Europe, focusing on integrating technology within the framework of hybrid learning. in-person instruction and developing blended systems to cater to diverse student needs. This session addresses YSYS lines 3, access to information and knowledge, 4, capacity building, and line 7, e-learning. So just to introduce our presenters today, we have, to my right, we have Aurelien Fierves. Dr. Fierves is Associate Professor and Head of Digital Strategy at the Haute Ecole Specialisée in Geneva. At the same time, he is an advisor on the digital transition at the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. His research interests focus on the integration of ICT and education, digital skills, integration models, teacher training, and other areas related to educational sciences. Also to my right, Dr. Omar Thiam. He is currently a Program Specialist at UNESCO-IBE, and he supports educational reform projects in Africa. His projects include hybrid education, learning, and assessment project, HELA, and multilingual education across West Africa and the Sahel. So the modality of the presentation will follow. Both presenters will present, and afterwards we will have time for questions from the participants. Thank you. Dr. Fierves.

Aurélien Fiévez:
Hi, thank you, Amy. So I will explain to you a different platform from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. Just to begin, a little introduction to the context. We made different adjustments in the 2020 and 2021 with the COVID crisis. We had blended learning and our educational system to integrate digital tools on different kind of teaching and learning outcomes. So we have four platforms in the, yes, four platforms on the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. The first one is HAPI. HAPI is based on Moodle and we are using it to our teacher to provide secure and stable environment for teacher and students. We have the second one with HAPI and the second one is DIX, the learning platform. So it’s a platform to digital skills, to integrate digital skills in the educational system. Sorry, we have two pieces and it’s not really easy. And the third one is E-Class, the resource platform for the educational community for co-creation, sharing and discussion with different kind of groups. So I will present you the first one. So it’s E-Class. E-Class, it’s a platform with a thousand of resources selected for their educational potential. Free access, customizable and free, corporate climate consultation. We have teaching resources, videos and different publications from the educational system. We have a lot of resources in different topics. So, the different topics of our curriculums, we have different contributors and producers on E-Class. Brussels, for the Ministry, is the first one, of course, but our universities are producing different kinds of resources. So, we have our media team, they are producing different resources for the teachers and for the students. You can find different resources on the internet platform, so you can go to the E-Class Pinsby and you can access to it. We have different screenshots of the platform, so we have the exchange groups, we have different contacts for our teachers. We have different news on our resources and our educational system, and we can share different resources to our students. HAPI, the second one, HAPI is based on Moodle. I think you know Moodle. So, different features, communication, resource sharing, creation of educational content. So, it’s a platform for teacher secondary education. It’s free, of course, LGBT compliant, and hosting on our Ministry. Different pictures of the platform. So, this is the main menu. and different course of the teacher, the different resources and activities. So you can see the different kinds of activities we can do with it. And the last one, the pictures of the course of the system. We have, we use it for the management of the schools. So we can communicate with the educational team, we can communicate with the management team and we can collect and centralize the different documents. It’s another picture of the platform. Also you can go to internet and see the platform too. So you have different kind of elements you can create and share it to the students. And the last one is the new one. We made a partnership with France, with PICS. So the Wallonia-Brussels Federation have an agreement with PICS to share and to create different contents for our publics. So we have three kinds of publics, the citizens, the educational system and our public servants in our administration. So the platform is based on development of digital skills. It’s a creation of contents, different kinds of contents and it’s also free for our teachers. So the teachers are using it to develop digital skills of their students. So you as a citizens can go to the platform, the platform is. It’s free. You can develop different kinds of digital skills. And it’s based on two topics. The first one is you can assess your digital skills. You can check if you are really easy with the digital environments. You can develop with different training your skills on different topics. And after that you can certificate your skills. But the last one is in post. So we have different kind of topics. I said that already. Five areas. Eight levels. It’s based on DISCOM. It’s based on the framework from the European Commission. So we have information data, communication, collaboration, creation content, protection and security, and digital environments. So we have different skills you can develop on it. This is an example of a question. The most important is this one. Because you have a real environment to test your skills. It’s not really a quiz. It’s really an activity. You need to do an activity to see if you have the skills. So we have different strategies and different kinds of training environments to develop your digital skills. We are using it with different universities, with different secondary schools. But actually we have 10,000 students and more than 40 universities are using it. So DISCOM is used by 20 million people around the world. and at least 4 million certification. We are in the second year, so in Belgium is the beginning, but already we have more than 50,000 persons who are using Rite-Name. So the conclusion for my part, we have different platforms on our educational system. We made a lot of adjustments after the COVID crisis, and right now we are using a lot the blended learning and e-learning platforms for our secondary school and for the university. Globally, a lot of courses and curriculum programs are online, so it was some examples, but you have a lot of other examples in our educational system. That was what I wanted to show you. I will finish in French. Globally, the part we wanted to show you was mainly digital tools. It also required a strong support, so we had to reinforce 40 people in the educational system in order to be able to support teachers at secondary schools in the implementation of these different platforms. So just the two platforms I showed you mobilize about 160 people in an educational system where we have about 200,000 teachers. We have 160 people who are impacted and involved in the technopedagogic part of the educational system. We have more and more requests for hybrid or remote learning, simply because today we also have difficulties in bringing all the programs into the educational system. what we have to do in a face-to-face way, and therefore the remote aspects will also allow to fill this lack of flexibility, by which we can also provide these elements. So that was a bit of the feedback I could give you on what we have put in place in recent years. It is constantly evolving. We also have the PIX project, which is taking on more and more scope, and which is now used not only in the Federation and the University of Brussels, but also in the Dutch-speaking part of our country and even at the federal level. So this is a project that will occupy our educational system for a few more years. Thank you very much.

Amy Paunila:
Thank you very much Aurelien. We can return to Aurelien shortly with some questions. But now we will move to Omar’s presentation.

Omar Thiam:
Thank you Emi. My presentation will be in English and the slides are in English. As my colleague Malory said earlier, the BIE is a specialized institute of UNESCO that works specifically on curricula. Our mandate aims to improve the quality of education through curricula. As you know, the world has experienced an extraordinarily sad phenomenon in 2020 with COVID-19. We have experienced a phenomenon that has disrupted the educational system from one day to the next, depending on the country. We found ourselves with schools closed, the shutdown of courses in some countries, especially in Africa, where we intervene a lot. From March to July 2020, schools were closed. Schools and countries had to implement innovations. major to ensure pedagogical continuity and thus ensure the resilience of the educational system. This is the reason why the UNESCO BI, working specifically on curricula, could not stay away from this. We have put in place the HELA initiative, which I will talk to you about this afternoon, which simply aims to promote hybrid education by combining the present and the distant. When we say distant, we do not only mean digital, we also have all the other options, via digital, but also via educational resources, or via physical resources. So we went from a mix of teaching, where we only talked about the present and the digital, to a much more diversified, much more flexible teaching, where the teacher plays not only a central role, but also has an important role to play, especially in an inverse pedagogical dynamic. So the UNESCO BI, in developing this initiative, aims to ensure, whatever the situation, that we can ensure pedagogical continuity. Because we are not safe, and I do not wish for another pandemic, we are not safe in some countries, from a blockade of classes or a pluriometry that would cause the shutdown of classes in some countries, or a general strike. There are phenomena in this world that can disrupt the course progress at any time, which is why we are fighting today within the UNESCO BI to promote this hybrid education, naturally accompanying the states to adopt this approach and develop it. of tools that are made available to them. So, how do we do it? First, the first, in terms of the methodological approach, we had to look at, during COVID, how schools, at the level of the countries, how schools are behaving in the face of the crisis. So, we saw extraordinarily innovative solutions and we looked in all the continents, in India, in Senegal, in Côte d’Ivoire, in Asia, so, almost in a lot of countries and in all the continents, to see what were the resilient responses that were brought about by the schools. And so, we documented this through the work that is in green that you see. And after that, what we did, we took the time to reflect, documenting this, and also relying on research to build what we call a framework of orientation that allows us to guide, to orient the countries, while working on the methodology, by naturally clarifying this concept that has evolved a lot, where we talked about mixed education towards a hybrid education, while also giving all the practical modalities of implementation of the initiative. We also developed a series of guides, a guide relating to the evaluation of distance learning, because, as you know, during COVID, when most of the courses had been switched to distance learning, one of the problems that had been raised by the teachers, by the trainers, was how to evaluate these learners. In a lot of developing countries, this was the main difficulty. This is why we conducted a study in nearly 25 countries, and from this study, we deduced a guide that accompanies, that guides the students to the right path. which implements, which gives keys to better evaluate remote learning. And finally, we have developed a document that aims to support the promotion of this hybrid education, also by giving, through this resource, keys, very interesting elements, allowing the country to effectively lead the initiative. So you see, this is one of UNESCO’s key areas, it is the production of knowledge and resources. This production is made available to States, it is made available to States to better support them, to better support them, especially through capacity-building programs, I will come back to that later. Concretely, what have we done in the countries in which we have intervened to promote this initiative? The first thing that has been done is to make a diagnostic, to analyze what the state of the educational system in these countries has been, you know, from one country to another, you have sectoral policies, you have a framework document, which can be decennial, which can be quinquennial. We have relied on these documents to better understand what the priorities of the country are, to better analyze the state of the curriculum, and to understand what were the answers that were provided by the countries at the forefront during COVID-19, what were the answers in the emergency that were proposed. This allows us to identify the strengths and weaknesses, the advantages of one and the other. And of course, by working, UNESCO never works alone, we are very inclusive. We are always working with partners on site, first with the Ministry of National Education and its directors who are in charge of the curricula. with all the partners of the United Nations and even other NGOs working in the education system in the countries concerned. The second step was the implementation of all the resources that I presented a few minutes ago, the guides, the tools that have been developed, we put them into operation at the disposal of the States through capacity enhancement programs, which allows us to ensure the promotion of hybrid education by sharing, by discussing with them, by giving them the keys, the key factors of success of the implementation of hybrid education by presenting the modalities, the pedagogical methods, because as you know, when you are given a two-hour online course, it is not the same as a two-hour online course. So there is an effort to revise the curricula that is necessary and to adapt the dosage and also the distance and presence percentages. So we have worked a lot on these issues, which are quite technical, based on the orientation framework that I presented earlier, which is a little bit like our reference document, which guides us in the elaboration and promotion of the modes of hybrid education. So the third step that we are going to work on is a future step, because the initiative began to be developed from 2021-2022. You will see a few pilot countries later. who benefited from our support. So there will be a phase of monitoring and evaluation that will allow us to see how the HELA initiative has been implemented in the countries. And it will allow us, it will be an opportunity for us to see what the gap was between what was planned and how the learners themselves, because the learner is still at the center of our work, how the learners have experienced this transition from a classical learning to a much more flexible and therefore much more hybrid learning, and also to have a feedback from the teachers. Because one of the difficulties that we noticed in the different case studies that we had to develop was that it was much easier to implement the technique than to mobilize the individuals. We noticed this in all the case studies that we had to do in the different continents, that it was much easier to set up the platforms, to train people, but it was much more difficult to mobilize, to simply have the human adhesion in the face of this new given, because quite simply, you know, there is always resistance to change. So we plan to do an evaluation after five years of what has been done in the countries, how the countries have implemented these technologies that we had to do. So I’m going to show you very quickly a few countries in which we had to intervene and which are pilot countries to test, to implement the HELA initiative. So the countries were not chosen by chance. You will see that on the list that you have on the board, apart from the Ivory Coast, all the other countries are in situations of instability and which are countries… extremely fragile, and who were not prepared for this generalized closure of courses and who did not necessarily have digital courses. So they were not at all available to switch courses from the classic model to the hybrid model. Beyond Côte d’Ivoire, there is already a virtual university, and this virtual university, as we have seen during COVID, has been a kind of catalyst to facilitate the dispersion, the dissemination of resources. The second phase are the pilot countries. There, you will also see that, apart from Benin, there is also a virtual university within it, even African, because Benin has developed an initiative that aims to try to collect, to federate all the virtual universities in Francophone Africa. So, apart from Benin, all the other countries that are here are very fragile, very unstable, and who were not, like the previous ones, prepared to switch courses to hybrid teaching modes, simply because they were not available. So we had to intervene in all these countries, and when we intervene in these countries, we work specifically with, as I said earlier, the Ministry of Education. And within these Ministries of Education, you always have a direction or an institute in charge of the curricula, which is in charge of taking care of curriculum reforms. So when we talk about UNESCO-BIEU curriculum, it is really the curriculum in the holistic sense, which goes from design to evaluation, including content, as well as manuals. It is really the curriculum in the holistic sense of the term.

Amy Paunila:
So, I think this QR code is available. Those who wish can capture it. Ami, you can explain the principle.

Aurélien Fiévez:
I will speak in French. The big challenges, as I explained earlier, are mainly the increase of the hybrid aspect, but also flexible. Whether it is in the educational system at the secondary level, mainly in social promotion, it is mainly to provide tools to all teachers and students so that they can carry out courses remotely or in a hybrid way, mainly in a hybrid way, especially with the aspects of reverse classes for all of their teaching. The challenge we have today is mainly to make these tools available. That’s one challenge. The second challenge is mainly training and support. Given that to be able to use the platforms we have available, we need digital skills, digital skills, but also technical and pedagogical skills. We have these aspects of training that must be relatively important. We must put in place this type of support. transversal at the central level, at the level of the educational system, inevitably, we make these training available. But we also have to make them available at the local level. So, we have a local support that has to be put in place. So, it’s a bit like the second challenge that we have, and which is the most common and the most visible. After that, we see an increase in the statistical level of the use of platforms, whether it’s for remote teaching or hybrid teaching, which is increasingly used. Obviously, during the COVID crisis, we had an increase, which was obviously striking. But we have this increase, even after the crisis, which continues to increase. So, we have this evolution that is relatively present, with this interest for teachers to make this type of teaching available.

Omar Thiam:
Thank you, Ami. Among the challenges, the very important challenges that we naturally have to face, for us, it is first of all the production of resources, to continue to produce quality resources adapted to the context of the countries, to better support them, to equip them, and, as Aurélien said, to have this ability to support as many countries as possible through capacity enhancement programs. Because UNESCO does not have the means to train everyone. Our idea, our objective, is to create a critical mass that can then be deployed, facilitated, and implemented within the country. So, this is an important challenge. To be able to intervene in all the member countries that request us, to respond to all the support requests. because it is a topic that interests our partners more and more. Another important challenge is the monitoring and promotion, wherever we can, of hybrid education, by trying to show the advantages acquired in the first countries and the first results. Here we will have the first results in a few months, we think that in the middle of next year, of what has been proposed in certain countries. So we have to be able to value, not only to document all this, but also to value this work to better convince, to better make our plea within the countries. I would also like to point out that when we talk about distance learning, hybrid education, it is not only digital. As I said earlier, we have also seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, in some countries in Africa, who have used the radio, who have used the telephone, alongside digital platforms that have been developed. It has become very diversified, which gives a much wider access to education, because you can connect at any time, if you have a connection, you can also have access to your data offline, quite simply, and continue to learn from anywhere and at any time.

Amy Paunila:
Thank you Omar, thank you both. I would like to invite people from the audience to ask some questions. Yes, please go ahead.

Audience:
Can you hear me? Thank you for this insightful presentation. Can I ask the question in French? Have you thought of a strategy that would include artificial intelligence? Because you already have a strategy. If so, what is it? What are the challenges that you anticipate? And if not, why? Thank you.

Amy Paunila:
You can both answer.

Aurélien Fiévez:
Should I start?

Amy Paunila:
Yes.

Aurélien Fiévez:
At the level of artificial intelligence, it is integrated in two ways. The first way, as I said, we also have a desire to develop digital skills, whether students or teachers. An important axis is the development of content related to the development of digital skills necessary, I think of everything that is thought of, necessary for the use of artificial intelligence. These are training courses that are set up via PIX. And the second thing is the technological use of AI in platforms. We have two uses that I can give. The first is in the platforms that we use for remote training. We study the aspects related to the tutorial. So the aspects of AI in the framework of the tutorial for remote training. And the second thing is the use of AI for everything related to clothing treatment and prediction, especially in terms of skills development. So we have adaptive algorithms, especially in the context of PIX, which studies the way in which the person will respond to questions and activities in order to offer him the most relevant exercises. So this is the second use that is used in terms of AI. Of course, the technological evolution is rapid. And this is something that is quite important, notably European projects on the issue, which fund research on the use of air in aviation.

Omar Thiam:
Just to complete, within UNESCO, at the seat in Paris, we have already developed a guide to answer your practical question. A guide that has been the subject of many discussions between researchers and experts. We will naturally be able to share this guide. It is a practice that has been developed recently. Thank you.

Audience:
My name is Dorothy Gordon and I work in this space, both with UNESCO and with a number of NGOs. I would like the presenters to be a bit more precise on which age groups they are recommending hybrid education for. Also, I would like them to comment further on data and the protection of children’s data rights. And then, I noticed that they were very silent on private sector partnerships and how they are managing them. So, thank you very much. And I did enjoy the session a great deal. Thank you for the presentations.

Amy Paunila:
Thank you very much. Good questions. Would you like to start?

Aurélien Fiévez:
Yes, of course. Blended learning. it’s used on the secondary schools and on universities, but not really on primary schools for different kinds of reasons. The privacy is the one, but not only. And the second part of the questions, it’s the private partners. Okay, we have a lot of public partners, of course, but private partners is really a small part of our contributors. I can think about the E-Class platform with the resources. We promote a lot of OER resources and open resources. And for this kind of reasons, we are not really using private partner like contributors, but some of them are participating to our platform, but not really, it’s a lot of public partners and open resources of our partners.

Omar Thiam:
Thank you, Aurelien. UNESCO is a specialized institution, so UNESCO with a global dimension. Obviously, we can’t be everywhere at the same time. It’s very complicated. We respond to solicitations exclusively from the Ministry of Education. So we are solicited by the ministries to intervene in the countries to support. So it goes from you to, let’s say, from primary school to high school, so to college. And that we can, at the request of the ministry, and that’s up to the country to decide, mobilize other partners who can come to support. But these are the countries that are autonomous. It is they who invite us, who invite us to intervene, to accompany them. It is up to them to decide, as a result, in the context of our intervention in the countries, if they want or not to associate private partners. Thank you.

Amy Paunila:
Thank you. Thank you both. Are there any more questions from the floor? We have time for one more, I suspect. Well, in that case, if we don’t have any more questions from the floor, I would like both of you to just very quickly summarize in a couple of points the main takeaways you think participants would like to have from your sessions.

Aurélien Fiévez:
In summary, what we can bring as complements beyond the recommendations we have already given. I think there is also an aspect of sharing, whether it is expertise, resources, a challenge that we also have, which is precisely related to having quality resources, relevant resources that can be used by the different actors. So I think that this is perhaps an element, a perspective that we can put in place. It is really this community at the international level. and UNESCO contributes a lot to that, to transfer, to share educational resources that allow to make things progress in terms of content creation, but also computer or digital expertise. We have done the experiment with our French colleagues in the creation of the PIX platform and in its maintenance follow-up. We saw that it was much easier to co-create things than to do them on our own. The fact of being able to contribute and rely on multiple partners at the level of other educational systems is relatively helpful. Whether in Belgium with our colleagues from Ireland or in France, or our colleagues from Germany, we make a lot of contributions and, above all, we progress much faster. If there is one element that I could highlight in terms of perspective, it is this one.

Omar Thiam:
Thank you, Aurelien. Covid has been an extraordinary starting point, well, sadly, but extraordinary for education in the world. Covid has allowed, in my opinion, to make a revolution of 50 years in the field of education by innovating and doing extraordinary things because, globally, schools in countries are shown to be very resilient by offering solutions. UNESCO wants to continue to capitalize on this by documenting this. This is our first axis of work, the production of knowledge and resources to better support states because we think that education can no longer be like before, where everything happens in a classroom in a classical, physical way. It’s over. in the coming years, and it has already started, will be much more flexible, much more open. It will be everywhere, at all times. And for that, we need to produce more resources to better support the actors who do education. Thank you.

Amy Paunila:
Thank you both very much, Drs. Aurélien and Omar, for your presentations today. I think it was a very interesting insight into two very different contexts. I would also like to thank our co-hosts, the Wallonia Brussels Federation, thank you very much for co-hosting with us. And to our participants who came today, thank you very much. And if we could ask one more thing for you to do, if you could scan this QR code in response to our evaluation questionnaire, that would be very helpful. And I wish you an enjoyable rest of the conference and the upcoming AI for Good conference. Thank you very much. Goodbye.