Bright future ideas (our response to covid-19)

Being challenged, that best describes the mood that has been dominating our minds. It was somewhere mid-March 2020 when our rector together with her colleagues decided radically but decisively to put a hold on conventional lecturing and our desk research. These measures, unseen to us, in reaction to the COVID pandemic made us feel challenged as in ‘not now please’ but as much as in ‘alright, we’ll make something out of this’.

From the VUB Architectural Engineering yearbook 2019-20.

This enforced shift has extended by far our means
and methods to share knowledge with students and practice.

The unease that our university’s and other measures brought along required us to change plans and practices, while triggering new thoughts. Advised by fellow researchers who are taking back a prominent place in media, we questioned what we missed most, what surprised us, and which changes we would want to keep. We wondered in which ways this unintended redesign is better than the one we had before and which opportunities it brings.

Of course, we have been discovering countless buttons and icons while shifting to online teaching and tutoring. Calls and recordings, broadcasts and webinars, lockdown browsers… You name it, we did it. This enforced shift has extended by far our means and methods to share knowledge and insights with students and amongst researchers but also held up a mirror to us. Literally, recording lectures gives us the chance to review and improve our talks. But metaphorically speaking, this shift came with restless reflections about the sense and nonsense of online and offline teaching and led to concrete ideas for combining both in the future. We have seen that multiple students favoured learning at home, watching recordings whenever, how often, and at the pace they prefer. Similarly, we reached students from the East Coast to the Middle East and continued to support each of them in their personal development. By extending our online course material and dedicating physical meetings to deepen understanding and practising skills, we might be able to align better with the divergent learning styles and situations of our students, … and, who knows, keep awake that sleepy student in the back.

More than ever before, we grasp how unique life
at our campus is now we are at home.

Also from the perspective of research and the day-to-day management of the department, we learned what topics can be discussed in a virtual setting, and which ones require dialogue in person. This insight also opens opportunities to involve more people more often and more efficiently in the numerous decisions that have to be made at the department. Calling in an expert on a specific research question and checking a schedule with the secretary office are now done in a minute through the online Teams platform that connects us. Through the internet also colleagues that are staying abroad, working remotely or are focusing on a particular task, such as finishing the manuscript of their doctoral thesis, remain involved, strengthening the participation and inclusion of the diverse collaborators our department is rich.

Apart from our educational and scientific endeavours, more than ever before, we grasp how unique life at our campus is now we are at home. The accidental encounters on the esplanade, the chit-chat in our kitchen, and the way we support each other with cookies and cake: we truly miss it. But we did discover other things about each other instead. During the countless formal and informal video calls that brought us together again, we could catch a glimpse of the loved ones, the children, the cats and dogs, and the favourite books of our colleagues. And maybe, more than in the department’s kitchen, online we found the space to spam our co-workers with negligible news. Understanding the value of serendipity to become better together, we replaced our kitchen-talks with virtual calls and created feeds full of lessons learned and tall-stories, so we are still inspired by our common and divergent interests.

Learning-by-doing has demonstrated
its potential again.

Further, we love to see this lockdown as an unexpected example of action research. For instance, consider the roll-out of the digital Teams collaboration and meeting platform. It was completed in just three days. Under normal conditions, university-wide software changes would take months or even years because everything that could possibly go wrong would be thought through in advance. Now, we did not have that time, so everybody accepted imperfections, showed confidence in each other’s expertise, and engaged in a constructive dialogue about how to gradually improve that new platform. It is not the first time that learning-by-doing has demonstrated its potential, so we hope to let it trickle down into our research too.

The same trust applies to telework. The current experience to work from home has strengthened the confidence in ourselves and each other, and has created on its turn motivation and efficiency in multiple ways. Moreover, it comes with heart-warming mildness and tons of goodwill when tools do not work as they are expected to, when colleagues cannot be reached during office hours because children require all their attention, or when disastrous haircuts show up during video calls. Each of us realizes that everyone is having a hard time bubbled-in while trying to make the best of it. Hopefully, we'll be able to maintain that kindness through the post-corona era.

We have been amazed how fast our treasured
Brussels turned into a bike-friendly city.

And finally, we have been amazed how fast our treasured Brussels can turn into a bike-friendly city, how many parks one can find within walking distance, and how the Grote Markt, like some of our gardens and terraces, is wildering in spring. Many of us experienced that those wild-flower-gardens or parks around the corner appear to be a better place to focus and think deeper than the office or our lab is. Therefore, we love to rethink our relation to the spatial environment and find new spots and places to work during different moments and for different tasks in the near future too.

Who knows, maybe these windows of opportunity behind which something promising lies, have always been there. And if so, we are not sure that they are more open today than have been before. But who cares? We don’t. What matters is that they are there; that they are here in our minds and our voices, and that we want and will turn them into actions although how and when remains unknown. And maybe that is what makes us and many colleagues true researchers, not just the scientific rigour of our work, but our common effort to name the unknown, to accept uncertainty, and to be confident that there is a bright future ahead.

 

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Text by Waldo Galle with contributions by Camille Vandervaeren, Charlotte Cambier, Elise Elsacker, Ine Wouters, Niels De Temmerman, Paula Fuentes Gonzalez, and Stephanie Van de Voorde.

Image: Isa Genzken’s ‘Camera’ installed on top of a five-story Art Nouveau building in Brussels that houses the art gallery Greta Meert. Arch. Louis Bral, Robbrecht & Daem (© Waldo Galle).