Impact of COVID-19 on BISE Research and Education
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EDITORIAL
Impact of COVID-19 on BISE Research and Education Wil van der Aalst • Oliver Hinz • Christof Weinhardt
The Author(s) 2020
1 Introduction The last BISE Editorial board meeting took place on 8 March 2020 in Potsdam and was co-located with the International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI2020). This was just 1 week before COVID-19 restrictions were imposed in Germany. It was, by the way, also our first Editorial Board Meeting held in a hybrid (analog and digital) mode. One day later, on March 9, the first coronavirus death in Germany was reported, and on the same day, the government of Italy imposed a national quarantine. WI 2020 was probably one of the last major conferences to take place in 2020 in the usual (i.e., face-toface) form. In the weeks following our BISE Editorial board meeting, universities and schools were closed and conferences were canceled or converted into online events. The way the COVID-19 pandemic was handled varied from county to country, but it dramatically impacted every individual and every organization on the globe. Next to the devastating short-term effects, we believe that there will
W. van der Aalst (&) Lehrstuhl fu¨r Informatik 9, RWTH Aachen, Ahornstr. 55, 52056 Aachen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] O. Hinz Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Goethe University Frankfurt, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 4, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany e-mail: [email protected] C. Weinhardt Institute of Information and Systems and Marketing (IISM), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Kaiserstr. 89, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany e-mail: [email protected]
also be longer-term effects on education and scientific gatherings. It will permanently change the way we work, educate, interact, and do business (the ‘‘new normal’’). Therefore, in this editorial, we reflect on the effects of COVID-19 on BISE Research and Education.
2 Impact of COVID-19 on Education In most countries, primary and secondary schools closed temporarily. Universities had to switch to online education. This impacted children, students, parents, and teachers, and exposed the shortage of computers among the different groups. According to UNESCO, the COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted classroom learning for at least 9 out of 10 students worldwide, and about half of the students worldwide have no access to online teaching (826 million learners worldwide have no access to a computer) (UNESCO 2020). The ‘‘digital divide’’ between rich and poor is disturbing. For higher education, the transition was more straightforward. Many universities were able to switch to online education in just a few weeks. However, also in higher education experiences are mixed. On the one hand, students could study in a more flexible, self-paced manner. On the other hand, social interaction is a crucial ingredient for studying. Universities and college campuses are unique ecosystems where students with different backgrounds learn and socialize in close proximity to each other. In some countries, the percentage of
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