Workshop: Forestry Education in the New Normal: Challenges, Opportunities and Solutions

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected educational systems worldwide, leading to the cessation of normal practices at universities and colleges. As an immediate response to the crisis, universities have switched their in-person teaching to online learning. Meanwhile, challenges associated with a lack of high-quality online educational resources, inexperience with online course development and implementation, and limitations in the support of multi-cultural online classrooms were encountered. The Asia Pacific Forestry Education Coordination Mechanism

(AP-FECM) has been working with the UBC Faculty of Forestry, the UBC Centre of Teaching and Learning Technology, Beijing Forestry University and many organizations to offer more than 15 open-access online courses with over 2000 students enrolled from the Asia Pacific region since February, 21st, 2020. A weekly Online Teaching/Learning Lecture Series has also been launched for faculty members around the Asia Pacific region. During this workshop, we, along with our partner universities around the Asia Pacific region, would like to present our lessons learned through our online teaching/learning experiences during the pandemic. Several renowned content experts will share their insights about the educational techniques, pedagogical strategies and valuable experiences for coping with the Covid-19 pandemic. This event will also provide a platform to discuss the challenges, opportunities as well as solutions in forestry education under the new normal.

This workshop was originally planned as the Side Event for XV World Forestry Congress. Due to the Covid-19 restriction, we finally decide to withdraw the Side Event from the World Forestry Congress. Still, we try our effort to fulfill the aim of the Side Event to the largest extent allowed by current conditions.  We hold this workshop at the same time slot instead.

If there is any issue with getting access to the video above, please click the link below for watching the show.

https://youtu.be/x9MNkitUWJM

 

Convening Organizations:

Asia Pacific Forestry Education Coordination Mechanism (AP-FECM)

Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia (UBC)

College of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB)

Beijing Forestry University (BFU)

Asia-Pacific Network for Sustainable Forest Management and Rehabilitation (APFNet)

 

Our Presentations and guest speakers:

Opening remarks

— UBC Faculty of Forestry (Prof. Dr. Robert Kozak, Dean of UBC Forestry)

— Asia-Pacific Network for Sustainable Forest Management and Rehabilitation (APFNet) (Dr. Lu De, Executive Director of APFNet)

 

  1. Collaborative research on forestry education after the global pandemic: the role of the AP-FECM Office, UBC

—AP-FECM Chair, UBC (Prof. Dr. John Innesdownload the PPT 

  1. Oldies but Goodies: Our Vision to Build Up New Generation through RETC

— Regional Education and Training Center (RETC), Asian Forest Cooperation Organization (AFoCO) (Soozin RYANG, Acting Head to AFoCO RETC, Program Officer for Education & Training)  download the PPT

  1. Hybrid teaching and learning mode during and post-pandemic

— Co-Chair of AP-FECM, Beijing Forestry University, China (Yu Lin, Deputy Director, International Relations Office) download the PPT

  1. Online student engagement and course assessment

— University of the Philippines Los Banos (Prof. Dr. Juan M. Pulhin); University of the Philippines, Open University (Dr. Roberto B. Figueroa, Jr.)

  1. Virtual mobility poses new chances for forestry education and research

—Vietnam National University of Forestry (Prof. Dr. Hoang Van Sam, Director of International Cooperation Division) download the PPT

  1. Sketching future forestry education for Bangladesh in the Covid19 pandemic and post-pandemic situation

— Chittagong University, Bangladesh (Prof. Dr. M. Al Amin) download the PPT

  1. Innovative Sustainable Forest Management Education in the Asia Pacific region

— UBC Faculty of Forestry (Dr. Anil Shrestha, Lecturer and Senior Researcher of Asia Forest Research Center) download the PPT

 

Panel discussion and closing remarks

—AP-FECM (Prof. Dr. Guangyu Wang, Associate Dean and Director of APFECM Executive Office, UBC Faculty of Forestry)