The Influence of the COVID-19 Epidemic on Teaching Methods in Higher Education Institutions in Israel

This paper aims to review the transition to online teaching (that took place on 12th March 2020) carried out by the top 10 academic higher education institutions in Israel as a response to the COVID-19 crisis in Israel, and to present details on several aspects, such as: how did each university make the transition, what were the learning and teaching channels that were adopted, how did they organize to support students and academic staff, what was the official policy of the institution, etc. The paper shows the sharp systemic changes that took place at the universities in order to continue the learning process that began before the epidemic broke out. In addition, we present trends that, although initially considered as potential future processes, expected to take place in the next 10-20 years, become at once the immediate reality, and ushered the Israeli education system towards the next step in the evolution of future teaching methods in general, and transition to distance learning in particular.