How Crisis Innovation Shaped an Academic Institute’s Response

When COVID-19 first emptied college campuses worldwide, academic institutions scrambled to maintain educational quality amid uncertainty. While most of the world has moved past the sight of vacant lecture halls, Israeli colleges and universities now face an even greater challenge: the Swords of Iron War, which has triggered an unprecedented mobilization of students—particularly among engineering programs, where service rates are highest. At Afeka Academic College of Engineering in Tel Aviv, our innovative response to the pandemic unexpectedly prepared us for this more profound crisis.

Anticipating that the pandemic would require long-term solutions rather than temporary fixes, Afeka took a strategic approach—by investing heavily in creating a flexible infrastructure early on that supported various modes of collaborative learning. We developed a synchronous hybrid model that seamlessly adapts to changing circumstances, enabling four distinct modes of operation: fully on-campus, fully remote, faculty on-campus with remote students, and a mixed model where some students attend in person while others participate remotely.

This wasn’t simply about setting up webcams. We installed sophisticated audio-visual systems and a central control panel for easy operation of all the equipment by the lecturer; we conducted extensive testing and faculty training; and we established monitoring and maintenance solutions with a dedicated support team in a dedicated control center. The system was fully functional throughout all stages of the pandemic, and allowed Afeka to immediately adapt to any new regulation within hours. 

This solution proved invaluable when war erupted.

On the tail end of the pandemic, just as normalcy was finally returning to campus, hundreds of thousands of reserve soldiers were called to duty following October 7, severely disrupting the academic year and the ability of reservist students to continue their studies. This disruption hit Afeka particularly hard—42% of our students were mobilized immediately, with the majority serving most of at least one semester, and many serving a great deal of the 2023-24 academic year.

While war presented even greater challenges for Israeli academia than the pandemic, Afeka’s hybrid model allowed us to respond decisively. Our hybrid teaching and learning solution meant student-soldiers could continue attending classes in real time, albeit remotely, whenever circumstances permitted. We’ve further refined our approach to meet wartime needs so student reservists can now access recorded lectures on their own schedule. These adaptations reflect our understanding that times of crisis warrant an “anytime, anywhere” approach to learning that helps students maintain their connection to campus life and their studies, even while serving.

Prior to these successive crises, we invested eight years and a great deal of effort into redesigning engineering education at Afeka and creating an academic journey that is relevant to modern-day students and to current workforce needs. The result Afeka has become an agile institution that does not shy away from change. 

This has also made Afeka College capable of rapid emergency response and instant adaptation. We’ve learned to expect the unexpected, and both our students and faculty have developed greater resilience.

Most importantly, these challenges have taught us that academic institutions must make bold, principled decisions rather than seeking easy solutions. As a result, we are confident that our entire academic community—leadership, faculty, and students alike—will emerge from this crisis prepared to play pivotal roles in Israel’s recovery, growth, and sustainable future.