Hybrid learning - a little girl on a Lenovo laptop

EDUCATION

Can we smash the barriers to education with hybrid learning?

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Hybrid classroom solutions could put lifelong education within everyone’s reach. But, to fulfil that promise, we’ve got to solve 3 persistent challenges in digital instruction.

Educators have long looked beyond the classroom to extend learning to more people in more places. A century ago, correspondence courses extended schooling to students who couldn’t attend classes.[1] In the 1990s, compressed video and the internet suddenly made synchronous remote learning – instruction in real time – possible for millions.[2]

Today, mobile devices put 1:1 instruction in the palms of billions of hands, potentially mitigating the global shortage of teachers and eliminating the barriers to learning.[3] Hybrid classroom solutions potentially give all of us, lifelong access to new knowledge or skills.

Potentially.

Because digital instruction comes with its own set of trials. Equity, security and continuity are top of mind for educators and their IT departments. As the world’s leading provider of education technology, Lenovo is committed to solving these challenges. We co-innovate with other industry leaders like Intel®, Microsoft and Google to deliver smarter outcomes.

Delivering Equity

1:1 programmes – where every student has a custom-built device connecting them to learning materials – level the educational playing field. But access to 1:1 programs isn’t yet equal.

That’s why we offer subscription-based Device-as-as-Service and TruScale infrastructure solutions that minimise upfront investment costs. We’ve pioneered free 1:1 programmes that extend STEM instruction to those least likely to get it. And our LTE-ready devices empower learners everywhere – even where Wi-Fi is scarce.

3M: Higher education students now fully online

69M: Size of global teacher shortage⁷

60%: Increase in student retention rates with eLearning⁸

Delivering Security

Education is one of society’s most vulnerable sectors to cyberattack[1], but Lenovo is helping fortify the ramparts – from design to supply chain and from unboxing to recycling.

Our end-to-end approach to security has next-gen protection built in, not bolted-on. Combined with virtualised desktop infrastructure (VDI) and DaaS, it can protect institutions, educators and pupils from all manner of digital threats.

At the University of Algarve, Portugal, for example, we installed VDI along with a high-performance computing infrastructure. This solution allows 8,000 students and 700 academics to securely access vast processing power from any device, anywhere, anytime.

The Intel vPro® platform provides a highly secure platform foundation with hardware-based protection against attacks below the OS, coupled with capabilities for advanced threat detection and remote recovery.

By minimising installation and maintenance burdens, our modern IT kits and end-to-end support services are helping streamline security burdens at hundreds of institutions.

Delivering Continuity

The more closely digital instruction recreates the communal classroom experience, the more likely students are to stay engaged – with the teacher, the subject and one another.[1] That’s a high bar, but we’ve evolved tools that hurdle it.

Our hybrid learning solutions enable synchronous learning. They also make virtual classrooms more vivid – and, along with our collaboration tools, more social.

Classroom management solutions like LanSchool and Lenovo Hybrid Classroom with Microsoft Teams and Google Meet Series One Room kits allow educators to customise lessons. All while maintaining a rich, multi-media environment and a sense of community for students. Randolph Eastern School Corporation, a pre-K-through-12 district in Indiana, USA, is a case in point. The University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, is another.

Cloud-based or locally hosted, such solutions are helping school systems deliver continuity – even in the midst of a pandemic.

We can’t solve all these issues overnight. But when educators and IT professionals team up with purpose-built technology, we can make it possible for everyone to learn – no matter where they are.