James Anthony Morse, Academy President, Rabdan Academy • Interview
Rabdan Academy switfly adapted to the pandemic, helping to spread the message about how to remain resilient in a crisis.
What immediate steps did the academy take when the pandemic hit, and what lessons did you learn?
We quickly moved to remote work for our administration and faculty and then commenced the online delivery of education and training for the students, shifting to fully online delivery for all our programs. A few weeks later our vocational training was all online as well. We used the short period while students went on spring break to make the transition and ensure that the IT could support it. We also made sure that students had their own web access and equipment. We started with asynchronous delivery of lectures, and as we learned lessons and developed techniques, we moved into live engagement with students. Everything went extremely smoothly, partly because the team knew each other and had established relationships; and the students knew the organization and vice versa. We then proceeded with exams, which we shifted to online assessments. We were fortunate that the Ministry of Education had established a robust set of rules that we had to follow, for consistency across the higher education system. Rabdan used a software called Respondus, which is a locked-down browsing software that stops students from accessing any other website during their exam and monitors their actions throughout the exam. Online assessments were effective, though it is not the same experience as bringing students into a classroom for a real exam, and many students were pleased that we brought back face-to-face, on-campus exams during the fall semester 2020, for which we took extensive precautions—masks, gloves, social distancing, sanitization, testing, and all the necessary precautions, which worked well. Our mission is about bringing people and organizations together to achieve cross-government interoperability, and the behavioral changes in young people that makes them instinctively see the value of cooperation and teamwork. It is not just about teaching them how to do something, but about how they think about the relationships between organizations and entities, how they will collaborate in the future, and how to be effective. As the pandemic situation stabilizes, we are well on our way back to greater normality, but adjusted to take into account the lessons we have learned and the new initiatives, such as blended, partially-online learning, that we will continue to use to deliver the best possible education to our students. Overall, I have been impressed by the continuity of education delivered since the pandemic started.
Founded to build cross-government understanding
Encourages education through collaboration and cooperation
What has Rabdan Academy and Abu Dhabi as a whole done to ensure this level of resilience?
In the past, many systems and processes were inherently inefficient, which in fact brought some natural resilience, but modern systems and processes are much more streamlined and efficient, which has removed much of that natural resilience. So today, we have to invest in resilience. There is a fine line between efficient, cost-effective, “just-in-time” systems and having enough in warehouses to assure a population that there is sufficient food, water, shelter, power, and so on. A key factor to ensure this is strong trust in leadership. Living in the UAE, we had the confidence to shift online while trusting there would be internet, food in the stores, fuel in the pumps, electricity, and so on. Each business is different, so the extent to which each one can use fallback systems depends on the nature of the business; however, at Rabdan we had a business continuity plan that we implemented. We did adjust it for the actual circumstances of the pandemic, but that is the case for any plan, and, overall, we were able to respond quickly. All in all, it was an extremely smooth transition. Having a business continuity program at the university and faculty who teach it, we were able to start work with Abu Dhabi School of Government to deliver online webinars about resilience and the pandemic for the Abu Dhabi government.
Succeeded in achieving a blended/hybrid form of teaching