With universities moving courses online in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the rapid transformation to distance learning may help form a "new normal" in the post-pandemic era for the higher education sector.

Blended learning, which combines e-learning with traditional classroom methods, is expected to witness dramatic increase at many colleges around the world, according to representatives at a special dialogue convened by Tsinghua University and UNESCO under the theme of "Online Education in the COVID-19 Response and Beyond "on Friday.

There were 21 universities from 15 countries which attended the meeting online.

"We are entering into an entirely new teaching and learning paradigm," Stefania Giannini, UNESCO assistant director-general for education, said during the opening remarks.

The pandemic has become a major education crisis and governments are grappling with the complexity of providing education remotely with more than 1.2 billion learners affected so far, taking more than 73 percent of the total enrolled learners globally, according to the latest data from UNESCO.

Giannini said that half of the students worldwide that are affected by school closures don't have access to household computers, more or less 40 percent don't have the internet at all and 64 percent of teachers don't have the skills to conduct distance learning.

To help countries deploy remote learning systems to minimize educational disruption, last month UNESCO launched a global COVID-19 education coalition, bringing together about 90 multilateral partners and private businesses, including Microsoft, Huawei and the Global System for Mobile Communications.

Universities have also swung into action, transiting from the traditional face-to-face lectures to "emergency remote learning" in the space of a few weeks.

With Tsinghua University among the first to move all courses online, Qiu Yong, president of Tsinghua University, concluded three keywords for effective implementation of online education-"access, quality and equity".