Online Learning Update

Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
Almost three quarters of college and university presidents believe staff layoffs will be necessary as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report from research firm ABC Insights. The survey, which is based on responses from 142 top leaders, shows most intend to “hunker down” and wait for the virus to pass. But more than half predict they will need to cut budgets across the board. Already, colleges’ finances have suffered as many institutions refund student fees and invest in new infrastructure for online learning1

https://www.educationdive.com/news/college-presidents-anticipate-cost-cutting-layoffs-from-coronavirus-surve/575647/

By Melissa McGowan, Chico State

As the University announced all classes would move to a virtual environment for the rest of the semester, RCE Director Jeff Layne reached out to ask for their help. Within 24 hours, the students produced a series of videos to support other Wildcats with the transition. “I would love to help out my fellow peers! I’ve been reading all of the updates from Chico State and wishing that I could do something,” said senior Ariana Valdivia, who is working toward her liberal studies degree online. “I consider myself an expert of online learning because I’ve been doing schooling online since 10th grade!”

https://today.csuchico.edu/online-learning-tips/

BY LARENDA MIELKE, etal; eCampus News
Institutions will need to make careful decisions in order to maintain operations in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.  As the coronavirus outbreak intensifies, higher education institutions are making difficult decisions about closing campuses and moving courses online. Institutions need to think not only about the current term, but also about potential impacts on strategy and finances into the summer and fall terms.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2020/04/07/coronavirus-on-campus-strategic/

Kirby Goodman and Greta Ferdinand, Colgate University Maroon-News

“Without altering our rigorous academic standards, the faculty are working to minimize any disadvantages for students in this online environment,” Wells said. “There’s not a lot that Colgate can do to shape home environments, of course, which is one of the reasons that Colgate granted every request from every student who wished to remain on campus. Colgate also made the decision to refund room and board charges for remote-learning students on financial aid for whom these charges were wholly or partially covered by grant aid; this refundable credit may help students who need to augment internet connectivity at home,” Wells said.

https://thecolgatemaroonnews.com/23380/news/admin-and-faculty-address-online-learning-obstacles/

NATHAN ALLEN, Poets and Quants
At the time the Mason School first announced the beginning of its online MBA program in April of 2015, both USC’s Marshall School of Business and American University’s Kogod School of Business announced online MBA programs in the same month. Suzadail was hired by the Mason School from Syracuse University where she had spent nearly 14 years, first as a program coordinator and eventually the Associate Director of Graduate Distance Learning. Since the launch of the online MBA in 2015, Mason has also launched an online Masters in Business Analytics and is set to launch a brand new online Masters in Marketing this fall.

https://poetsandquants.com/2020/04/06/one-b-schools-path-from-scratch-to-online-learning/?pq-category=business-school-news

Susan Grajek, EDUCAUSE Review

Institutions reported that bandwidth and/or Wi-Fi access is presenting students with the most difficulty, followed by acquiring the devices necessary to support remote learning.2 Most institutions are responding with equipment loans and access to free or very-low-cost services. Institutions report somewhat more students are having difficulty accessing institutional services (with the exception of advising services) than they are transitioning to fully remote learning. Most institutions have developed safety nets for students who need food, housing, and/or financial help. The particular types of support options available to students vary by institutional type.

https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2020/4/educause-covid-19-quickpoll-results-help-for-students

Charles Hodges, etal; EDUCAUSE Review

Well-planned online learning experiences are meaningfully different from courses offered online in response to a crisis or disaster. Colleges and universities working to maintain instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic should understand those differences when evaluating this emergency remote teaching.

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning

Tanya Basu and Karen Hao, MIT Technology Review

The coronavirus pandemic has turned back the clock to a kinder time on the web, before the novelty of virtual connection wore off. It’s like turning the clock back to a more earnest time on the web, when the novelty of having a voice or being able to connect with anyone still filled us with a sense of boundless opportunity and optimism. It harkens back to the late 1990s and early 2000s—before social media, before smartphones—when going online was still a valuable use of time to seek community.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615442/why-does-it-suddenly-feel-like-1999-on-the-internet/

Colin Wood, EdScoop

The Higher Education Course Recovery Consortium, which includes institutions such as Indiana Wesleyan University and Franklin University in Columbus, Ohio, is offering “deep discounts,” Manzer wrote, for entry into online courses this year. “More than one million seats are available through the end of 2020 in regionally accredited asynchronous online courses with flexible start times and offered in differing lengths, ranging from introductory, general education to highly specialized topics to meet specific major requirements,” Manzer wrote.

https://edscoop.com/need-online-courses-new-university-consortium-has-1-million-openings/

Business World

Udacity has created and released a free course in collaboration with Upwork, the online talent solution, to promote best practices for remote team management as many companies find themselves working with distributed teams for the first time. A one-hour course, Managing Remote Teams with Upwork will help managers and other team leaders learn the tools and develop the skills and strategies needed to hire, manage, and optimize remote teams.

http://bweducation.businessworld.in/article/Udacity-And-Upwork-Partner-To-Develop-Free-Course-On-Managing-Remote-Teams/06-04-2020-188355/

Natalie Schwartz, Education Dive

Four-year universities have long encouraged students coming straight from high school to enroll in their campus-based programs while guiding older learners to their online divisions, creating a divide between the two groups. But Generation Z, whose members were born in 1997 or later, may prove to be the force that can break down those barriers. At Western Governors University, an online institution that targets adult learners for self-paced programs that begin each month, students average 37 years old. Yet Gen Zers are the university’s fastest-growing demographic.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/gen-z-takeover-could-online-colleges-gain-traction-with-young-students/575484/

Elizabeth Williamson, New York Times

Amid those struggles, a Liberty student on Monday filed a class-action lawsuit in a federal court in Virginia, saying that Liberty and Mr. Falwell had “placed students at severe physical risk and refused to refund thousands of dollars in fees owed to them for the Spring 2020 semester,” according to a statement from the law firm filing the suit. The furor in Lynchburg centers on Mr. Falwell’s decision to open the campus to all students and staff at a time when most American universities were closing for fear of spreading the disease. For weeks before that decision, Mr. Falwell had derided other universities’ coronavirus responses as overreactions driven by a desire to harm President Trump.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/us/politics/jerry-falwell-liberty-university-coronavirus.html

Valerie Strauss and Peter Kastor, Washington Post

This is not the story of how online education — by now a well-established system — is finally taking over the traditional classroom. Rather, it’s a story of how faculty members and administrators are struggling to adapt their courses to an online medium. The response is both individual (as faculty members adjust their courses and students respond to their new circumstances) and institutional (as universities scramble to provide resources and create new policies). And to understand what is happening at so many universities across America begins by looking at those three phenomena: faculty members who are using online education without actually becoming online educators, students who must suddenly take classes online, and universities finding a way to shut down most of their daily campus activities without destroying all that they do.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/04/04/these-washington-university-faculty-had-rejected-online-classes-until-coronavirus-heres-how-they-made-switch/

By EDDIE RIVERA, Pasadena Weekender
While it remains to be seen how long it will last, the current world of communication and education no longer exists within hallowed halls. It lives in your phone, or your laptop or iPad. Everything from the classroom to the lab is down the virtual hallway. As this new world grows, so do related educational opportunities like after-school learning centers.

https://www.pasadenanow.com/weekendr/the-online-learning-world-expands/

By Eva Wozniak, Bloomsburg University Now
“Zoomsburg University” is the new norm for Bloomsburg University students as they transition into online learning. COVID-19 is affecting people worldwide. According to an article by the New York Times, “Nearly four billion people on the planet – half of humanity – found themselves on Friday under some sort of order to stay in their homes.” University students now attend class remotely through different platforms, like Zoom.

https://bunow.com/welcome-to-zoomsburg-the-transition-to-online-learning/

Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed

The current crisis has changed the way we deliver our courses. It should also alter our instructional activities. We need assignments that can’t be completed with a Wikipedia or Google search, and that encourage immersion, engagement, and active processing of information. Our activities should involve research skills, weighing evidence and arguments, critical analysis, and application. In creating your assignments, make sure that your students can complete the activity successfully regardless of their circumstances.  Also, tightly align your activities with your learning objectives.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/rethinking-your-assignments-online-learning

Rai Sahib Singh Khurana, Business World

In the country, where traditional higher education may not be possible for all due to financial, personal or any other constraints, the e-learning method/platform can act as a support system to the education industry. Today, India has the latest e-learning trends in the education industry that are being used by developed countries from a very long period. Some of them are Distance education (Postal, Radio, TV), E-Learning, Gamification, Open Educational Resources (OER), Cloud-based e-Learning, Big Data in e-Learning, Massive Open Online Courses, Microlearning, Mobile Learning etc.

http://bweducation.businessworld.in/article/Tech-Trends-How-E-Learning-Platform-Are-Transforming-Education-In-India-/05-04-2020-188222/

Emma Dill, Chronicle of Higher Ed

For adult students working in the medical field or in the military, expecting them to complete coursework alongside their heightened responsibilities due to Covid-19 may be too ambitious, said Matt Bergman, an assistant professor in the University of Louisville’s department of educational leadership, evaluation, and organizational development. “Those frontline workers are dramatically impacted by this and by their ability to balance the competing responsibilities. In some cases, it’s unreasonable to even ask them to do so,” Bergman said. Some of his adult students are considering reducing their course loads or pausing their education until the fall.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Coronavirus-Complicates-an/248406

Kery Murakami, Inside Higher Ed

“Higher education is often considered the balancing wheel of state budgets,” said Harnisch. “And if history is any indication, higher education is going to be at the front lines of the economic fallout from coronavirus.” And higher education is already taking hits from state cuts. Expecting deep losses in revenue, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy last month froze $920 million in state spending for the remainder of the state’s budget year, which ends Sept. 30​, including $122 million for public colleges and universities. The cuts represent half the funding the colleges were supposed to get from the state in the next three months.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/04/13/public-colleges-face-looming-financial-blow-state-budget-cuts

\Stephanie Haines, Christian Science Monitor

“What we’re seeing right now doesn’t fully reflect what online can do,” she says. She expects that as educators continue teaching remotely – and even after they come back to the physical classroom – they will likely delve into a more concerted and sophisticated exploration of how to embrace online learning. “I don’t think anyone ever saw something like this happening on this scale,” she says. “But it could happen again. We’re going to have to be prepared to shift into online learning and do it in a way that is effective.”

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2020/0403/How-online-learning-may-be-more-than-a-stopgap-in-the-US

Sara Barnes, My Modern Met

Happiness can seem elusive. In challenging times, the light through the trees can appear non-existent and like it will never return. But there are reasons to be hopeful, as happiness doesn’t have to elude you. There are actions you can take to foster your own sense of satisfaction that are scientifically proven to work. A course at Yale called “The Science of Well Being” helps you to do just that—and it’s available for free through Coursera. Taught by Dr. Laurie Santos, the class features a series of challenges that are designed to “increase your happiness and build more productive habits.”

https://mymodernmet.com/science-of-happiness-course/