Looking back at 2020 | The year we went digital

Online learning, in all its controversies and challenges, was the digital transformation of the year.

Zoom classes have become the standard for Sixth Form and university students, and teachers are adapting to a new reality of giving lessons to empty classrooms as students look on from their Microsoft Teams window.

Admittedly, the Maltese school reopening has been relatively successful despite warnings of COVID-19 spikes, thanks to guidelines and enforcement; and blended learning is proving not to be as big of a headache as anticipated.

With the wave of changes that took hold over the scholastic year, teachers could have easily gotten the short end of the stick. The decision taken to close schools as the first cases of COVID-19 trickled in was quick, and in hindsight maybe a fortituous choice that forced educators to completely rethink their teaching methods and strategies, at least for the final scholastic term. This uncertainty was carried over to the next scholastic year, with teachers having to prepare in-class and online teaching materials to account for every scenario.

Teachers’ union president Marco Bonnici notes that there are still several pending issues to tackle. Some educators have had to make use of very old technology, with many schools lacking proper infrastructure to fully accommodate digital learning. And not exclusive to teachers is the increasing pressure to be online at all times, ready to reply to communications at any time of day. Unless regularised through a formal policy framework, Bonnici warns that the situation will only pose serious risks for people struggling to make the distinction between work and life – and will make many workers prone to exploitation by their employers.

Work-life balance was a major struggle in the digital shift. Before the pandemic, office hours were strictly limited to the time spent physically in the office, with optional out-of-office emails checked at the workers’ discretion. But bedrooms and kitchen tables quickly turned into makeshift home offices, and it became increasingly difficult to mark where work ends and life begins in our daily routines.

As a natural consequence, the right to disconnect was given added importance in legislative spheres. Labour MEP Alex Agius Saliba has been spearheading a directive on the right to disconnect at EU level, correctly noting how digitalisation is fostering an “always connected” culture only made worse by teleworking initiatives. He had told MaltaToday that new working conditions brought on by the pandemic are “blurring the fine line between working time and rest periods”, and a Eurofound report detailed how respondents felt that they are working more hours when teleworking than they normally do at their offices.

The efforts aren’t limited to the EU. Carmelo Abela, Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister, revealed last month that government is aiming to become the first European member state to introduce a “right to disconnect” legislation, granting workers the right by law not to answer work-related emails or messages after working hours. On top of this, he called for a legislative framework regulating remote working to be proposed in the near future.

When it dawned on everyone that the pandemic won’t be a temporary three-month disruption, the need to take on digital alternatives became all the more evident. Any hopes of being an international festival hotspot for the summer were quickly quashed, but some local festivals opted to move completely online. The Malta Book Festival, for the first time in its history, took on a digital form this year with over 60 events streamed to the festival’s Facebook and YouTube accounts. Sir Salman Rushdie, a master in magical realism, was even able to join in a conversation with Alfred Sant at the festival thanks to the digital format. In spite of the challenges, the digital format was well-received and the festival a success.

The pandemic forced people into their homes, and companies were forced into the homes of their customers, or more accurately into their digital devices. At the start of the outbreak medical professionals were being urged to vet appointments and support patients over telephone to avoid patients spending too long in waiting rooms and risking contagion.

But what may be an issue for some stands out as an opportunity for others, and telephone appointments paved the way for telehealth start-ups to enter the sphere. Tabib.mt were among the first to offer telehealth services in Malta, connecting registered medical professionals with patients over a video call to avoid risks of contagion. Michael Psaila Debono, the company’s business unit lead, admits that local telehealth services have come a long way, with the pandemic aiding in accelerating its awareness. However, there’s still a long way to go culturally, even if it’s being accepted more.

Most would have been skeptical of online learning and telehealth at the start of the year, but the pandemic propelled Malta into a new digital era. Whether these new methods will find a permanent place in our post-COVID world is a different story. As Marco Bonnici put it, only time will tell how Malta, and the world, will change both in the short term and in the long term. This year has showed us that Malta is capable of an online shift – a move to digital will only need finetuning in infrastructural and legal frameworks to ensure that people have the right tools and proper safeguards to carry out their work.