| | JUNE - 20239they are able and skilled to work with others who are not co-located. A return to campus model may work for the university business, and justify a return on capital expense being building rent costs, but it's not helping students practice the skills they need in real and relevant ways - communication, empathy, and engagement.This is where technology comes in, and the need to think smartly about the way we use it. We can deploy Microsoft Teams. Slack, Trello - whatever tool is most appropriate - within our course delivery models, but if we are segregating students by mode or campus, we are making it easy for us to manage, but missing the opportunity to grow student capability and knowledge.In my teaching, I have always integrated online and on-campus students, even before technology was a true enabler like it is today. Students pushed back, as they needed to consider such things as the context in which others were studying. Some were part-time and working during the day, some worked shifts, some were parents, some lived at home, and some were couch-surfing and had limited access to the internet. It was tough - on-campus students routinely wanted to just catch up after class, for example, or one distance student would want to do everything themselves because it was easier. The teaching team would explain to students the importance of learning the skills associated with distributed teams, and students valued the experience even if they found it difficult. The importance of setting team charters, understanding personal contexts and availability (and having empathy for situations), establishing communication routines, learning to adapt, and becoming skilled with communication technologies were all part of the journey.As we move towards a more integrated learning future generally, where micro-credentials and professional learning will align with and embed into higher education qualifications, educators will need to design for integration and think about ways to support collective and collaborative learning communities. Some, but not many, institutions already do this well, successfully supporting online students, professional cohorts, and on-campus students to complete their studies together in one collective class. Others rely on admission and enrolment pathways to separate students into split cohorts, whereby online students are taught as separate entities to those on campus, and micro-credentials are taught entirely independently of the core curriculum on which they are based.We have the technology to enable integrated community models within our tertiary classrooms but were not placing enough importance on it. Anyone who has beamed into a synchronous meeting, only to find themselves unable to hear the conversation around a table, and having to repeatedly ask people to repeat words or move the microphone, will be familiar with this. In this example, enabling appropriate sound in rooms, or ensuring meeting facilitators always orient to the online community, are simple and available solutions. It's a system, process, and mind set challenge for the future. It's always going to be easier to work in separate cohorts or teach to an on-campus group. It is what's most valuable moving forward that we need to consider. If we are to prepare our students to be career-ready, which is the current global focus of the sector, we need to move beyond blended and flipped options to think about how we enable and support integrated learning communities
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