Schools Going Distance Learning - Coronavirus

Might as well consolidate this thread, it appears to be growing.

• University of Washington
• Bellevue College
• Cascadia College
• Seattle Colleges
• Seattle University
• Shoreline Community College
• Everett Community College*
  
• Stanford
• Princeton
• Pacific Luthern University
• University of Puget Sound
• Columbia University*
• Barnard College*
• Jewish Theological Seminary*
  
• Ohio State
  
• NYU
• Fordham University

*Taking a hybrid approach or limited shutdown.

 

• Harvard

 

**Yawn**

 

Rice University....

https://emergency.rice.edu/coronavirus

 

I know of this university. In fact, I took a few classes with them but fell asleep during the lectures.

 

They are known for that.

 

Here in the SF Bay Area...

UC Berkeley is moving all lecture classes online. Labs will still be conducted on campus as will things like performing arts classes.

https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/03/09/as-coronavirus-spreads-uc-berkeley-suspends-in-person-instruction/

San Francisco State.

https://news.sfsu.edu/coronavirus

Golden Gate U. (except the law school. A virus wouldn't dare infect a lawyer, they would sue it!)

http://newsroom.ggu.edu/coronavirus/main/

Santa Clara University

https://www.scu.edu/kob/covid19-030920/

San Jose State

http://blogs.sjsu.edu/newsroom/2020/updates-on-novel-coronavirus-outbreak/






n

 

Add Amherst

 

I find it interesting that so many of these schools had plans and infrastructure already in place to do this. So I wonder how many will retain some level of increased DL delivery after coronavirus passes.

 

The Ivy League cancels the Conference Basketball Tournament...

https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/coronavirus-update-ivy-league-cancels-conference-basketball-tournaments-amid-outbreak-concerns/?ftag=SPM-16-10abi8e

 

There are DOE guidelines that require contingency plans, as recipients of Federal funding.

 

Just get out

https://www.wdrb.com/news/berea-college-cancels-semester-and-asks-all-students-to-move/article_18ca2ae8-62ed-11ea-ba3e-632524706207.html

 

The funny thing is that while certain schools have robust online learning systems in place at the end of the day, a professor with dropbox and an email account can pretty much do the same thing.

There are profs and administrators out there who swear that there is no way, no how that they are going DL. Their reasons range from "my subject cannot be taught via distance" (sometimes, though, this is accurate) to "it will degrade the integrity of our fine institution."

I think it will depend on how long this carries on for. If it's a week or two, I doubt we will see any change. If this many schools had to go for the rest of the semester doing DL? I think it would break a lot of misconceptions. I think we would see some creative approaches from faculty emerging. I think a lot of people would change their minds once they see that the sky doesn't fall.

Because, for real, most (all?) of the Ivies and other elite schools have some form of distance learning at present. For some it's only graduate level. For some it's only certain courses and you could never do a full degree. For some it's all non-credit. But they are all playing in the DL forum. If they ever opened up degrees to fully online then this whole landscape will change.

If Harvard can add another 5,000 students to their enrollment without any other scaling and without adding so many that it makes Harvard seem less exclusive...look out. They can charge whatever they want for that education and it will be paid in corporate bonds and blood diamonds the following day. If these elite schools had even small portfolios of fully online degree programs? That could be the swing that kills schools like UPhoenix or maybe even the small and insignificant non-profits that are relying on tuition dollars just to stay afloat.

 

Wow, I have a colleague, with whom I graduated from NCCU, that teaches there. Wow.

 

And I mean get out...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/10/us/harvard-students-coronavirus-trnd/index.html

 

So wait.. There aren't any confirmed cases in Berea and they are just cutting it off? Why would students not have internet access if they left campus? Kentucky is a little slow in the times, but we have a thing called the internet.....

 

Well, this type of event could lead some top universities to look into offering completely online degree programs. Might be a small chance but as Lloyd Christmas said "so you're saying there's a chance!"

 

Which means that the DL infrastructure is already there. Servers, software, staff training, the the whole ability to offer programs online, just waiting for the switch to be turned on. Which kind of defeats the argument that rolling out DL programs would involve huge cost and upheaval. Suggesting that the fact that many of these schools weren't offering lots of DL programs up until now was a policy decision.

I'm wondering whether, now that schools are rushing overnight to offer many/most of their classes online, they will totally dial it back to the previous minimal levels when the corona virus emergency is over. or whether many of these schools will leave some of their suddenly unveiled DL capabilities in place.

In other words, this might conceivably end up being a huge boost to the DL cause.

 

They can't turn around and say that DL is somehow of lower quality because they would then have to disallow their own courses/credits.

 

That is a horribly unsympathetic means of addressing the concern. A school of that size, certainly has to statistically have students with no place to go.

There are students and even faculty who do not have internet access or high speed internet from home, at almost every school. It will become a challenge to manage, for the benefit of students and faculty.

While the infrastructure may be in place, it's ability to rapidly scale may be in question. Many LMS contracts have appallingly small bandwidth and storage capacity limits, that will not be able to handle faculty members loading it up with their traditional classroom content. Even with videos being hosted through third-party sites, Tech Relay/Camtasia/Youtube/etc., many schools will reach their limits simply from uploading presentations en masse. Exceeding alloted storage content often invokes some egregious penalties for the LMS management companies. There are few schools that I am aware of, who host and manage it themselves. Also keep in mind, that teaching online is radically different than traditional teaching, when done effectively according to the metrics/rubrics - such as Quality Matters. Even if faculty have had rudimentary training at one time, unless they regularly used it, it will be problematic.

Perhaps, although I would be reluctant to believe that will be what many will extrapolate. Many faculty members will simply attempt to record their traditional lectures, upload it, and issue assignments as usual. When that methodology of instruction fails to give the same learning responses, which it won't as that is not how distance learning should be conducted, I can certainly see some faculty seeing it as an affirmation that distance learning is not of the same quality. "See, I tried it, it doesn't work!" Personally, I think it is significantly easier to teach in person than it is online, and achieve effectiveness as an educator.