The big idea: Should we leave the classroom behind?

The pandemic has driven a great leap forward in digital learning. Is there any point in looking back?

My 21-year-old goddaughter, a second-year undergraduate, mentioned in passing that she watches video lectures offline at twice the normal speed. Struck by this, I asked some other students I know. Many now routinely accelerate their lectures when learning offline - often by 1.5 times, sometimes by more. Speed learning is not for everyone, but there are whole Reddit threads where students discuss how odd it will be to return to the lecture theatre. One contributor wrote: Normal speed now sounds like drunk speed."

Education was adapting to the digital world long before Covid but, as with so many other human activities, the pandemic has given learning a huge shove towards the virtual. Overnight, schools and universities closed and teachers and students had to find ways to do what they do exclusively via the internet. Naturally there were problems, but as Professor Diana Laurillard of University College London's Knowledge Lab explains, they essentially pulled off an extraordinary - and global - experiment. It can't return to the way it was," she says. The cat is out of the bag."