Posts Tagged ‘corona virus’

higher ed fall 2020

SIX SCENARIOS: WHICH ONE WILL YOUR U.S. COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY EXPERIENCE THIS FALL?

ANTHONY MORETTI

Six scenarios: Which one will your U.S. college or university experience this fall?

  1. Option 1: Shut down for fall
  2. Option 2: Start on ground, finish online
  3. Option 3: Start on line, finish on ground
  4. Option 4: Start on ground, finish on ground
  5. Option 5: Start online, finish online
  6. Option 6: Multiple on ground and online periods

These scenarios omit two critical components of the campus: the many men and women who can’t work from home and extracurricular activities.

Layoffs and furloughs must be the last option; pay cuts/freezes and other cost-saving opportunities must be exhausted before even one person is laid off this fall.

Extracurricular activities must be undertaken with an abundance of caution. Only those activities that are essential and can’t take place virtually must be held. Social distancing must be practiced, no matter the health conditions that exist at the particular time.

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How the Coronavirus Will Change Faculty Life Forever

As the pandemic wears on, expect heavier teaching loads, more service requirements, and more time online

By Bryan Alexander MAY 11, 2020 

https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-the-Coronavirus-Will/248750

(no access to the Chronicle? Not problem: use this link – https://bryanalexander.org/scenarios/two-competing-visions-of-fall-higher-education-plus-a-ghostly-third/)

fall 2020 tech prep by IT_EDUCAUSE


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more on higher ed options for fall 2020 in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=covid

how to university budget cuts

this is currently discussed on the Higher Ed Learning Collective (https://www.facebook.com/groups/onlinelearningcollective/permalink/572195173411185/)

Temple University hoping to avoid furloughs, layoffs; president orders budget cuts

Officers, deans and advisors to the president will see their salaries cut by 10% beginning in May. Non-union employees who make more than $100,000 will see a 5% reduction in pay. Englert’s own salary, which a spokesman said was $800,000, was cut 20%.

Colleges’ Plans for Reopening

Here’s a List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall

APRIL 23, 2020
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Here-s-a-List-of-Colleges-/248626

Beloit College — shifting to a “module based semester” to allow flexibility to move toward either online or in-person classes

Boston University — leaning toward in-person classes

Brown University — leaning toward in-person classes

California State University at Fullerton — starting fall semester online

Centre College — block-scheduling courses in shorter segments to allow flexibility to shift toward either in-person or remote learning

Clemson University — exploring a range of scenarios, from in-person classes to entirely online

Cornell University — no decision expected until June

Montana State University — planning for the return of students in the fall, subject to guidance from a task force

Ohio State University — leaning toward in-person classes, with a final decision by late June

Purdue University — planning to start fall semester in person if testing and contact tracing allows

San Jose State University — planning to conduct classes mostly or entirely online

Southern New Hampshire University — planning to allow students to move into dorms, and is offering full tuition scholarships to incoming freshmen

Stanford University  expects to make a decision in May, but might delay fall quarter till winter

University of Arizona — planning to hold in-person classes

University of Central Florida — leaning toward in-person classes

University of Maine system — planning for in-person classes

University of Maryland system — planning to start in-person, but some larger classes may be online

University of Michigan — hoping to hold classes in-person

University of Missouri — planning for in-person classes

Washington State University — planning for in-person classes

Wayne State University — leaning toward starting fall classes online

West Virginia University — exploring a range of scenarios, from in-person to entirely online

William Jewell College — intends to open for fall semester

higher ed pandemic scenarios

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more on pandemic in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=corona+virus

Rethinking the Academic Calendar

Rethinking the Academic Calendar

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/04/20/beloit-redesigns-its-academic-calendar-give-itself-more-flexibility-if-covid-19

Elizabeth Redden April 20, 2020
Beloit has announced that it is breaking the semester into two modules in which students take two courses each.
“The aspiration is to have a residential learning experience next year, but if COVID rages, this flexibility allows us to have it only affect half a semester, possibly,” Boynton said. “Let’s say it creeps into September, then that first module is online, but if continues to dissipate, then we’re able to bring students at this hinge point. It’s a break in the semester; it’s an obvious time to bring students into residence.”
“It also lessens the disruption in the sense of conducting four online courses at one time is a lot of pressure for faculty, and what we’re finding — and I think this is not just at Beloit but across the nation — is that juggling four online courses is a lot for students,” he said. “Limiting the online experience to two courses at a time is better for faculty and staff and student learning.”

Revolution In Education?

The Coronavirus Pandemic Has Unleashed A Revolution In Education: From Now On, Blended Learning Will Be The Benchmark

Enrique Dans  ITORS’ PICK|28,492 views|

https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2020/04/13/the-coronavirus-pandemic-has-unleashed-a-revolution-in-education-from-now-on-blended-learning-will-be-the-benchmark/#6e96f38a536f

Classes that will continue as best they can, voluntarism, online teaching seen simply as a side dish, students without access to computers or an internet connection, teachers who simply assign essays based on reading material, or measures such as a universal pass have become sadly common.

The change will be permanent: educational activity will no longer be face-to-face or online but a blendable to move from one to another immediately fluidly, continually, through a student’s life, way beyond the school, college or university years.

Firstly, we need to resolve the so-called digital divide

Secondly, this will mean that teachers must reconsider all their methodologies and prepare them for this new, blended learning environment.

Thirdly, institutions, both educational and normative, must understand that, in this new context, some ways of teaching no longer make sense.

Online teaching will not consist of turning a handle while students learn on their own. On the contrary: it will require teachers to engage more than ever, who will spend many hours in forums moderating conversations and opening new threads.

academia and pandemic

Faculty Members Fear Pandemic Will Weaken Their Ranks

APRIL 09, 2020

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Faculty-Members-Fear-Pandemic/248476

Covid-19 is being described as both a crisis and an opportunity for higher education. But how “opportunity” is defined depends on where one stands in the academic hierarchy. While some hope the pandemic provides a chance to reverse troubling trends toward the adjunctification and casualization of academic labor, administrators may see it as a different sort of opportunity, to realign institutional priorities or exert greater authority over their faculties.

statement by the Tenure for the Common Good group offers 20 recommendations for administrators, including that they “resist using the current crisis as an opportunity to exploit contingency further by hiring more contingent faculty into precarious positions.”

As faculty members are asked to take on greater teaching, advising, and administrative responsibilities, faculty development and retention “will be more important to institutional resilience — survival — than ever before,” Kiernan Mathews, executive director and principal investigator of the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education, wrote on Twitter.

To DePaola, the pandemic doesn’t pose new problems to academe as much as it magnifies existing ones. “Everything was held together with gum and paper clips, and coronavirus came and just sort of knocked it all down at once,” DePaola said. “I think none of the crises that this virus is causing are new. They’re just accelerated greatly. And the contradictions of the system are heightened all at once for people to see.”

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The Small World Network of College Classes: Implications for Epidemic Spread on a University Campus

https://osf.io/6kuet/

2020-04-11

Beginning in March 2020, many universities shifted to on-line instruction to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, and many now face the difficult decision of whether and how to resume in-person instruction. This article uses complete transcript data from a medium-sized residential American university to map the two-node network that connects students and classes through course enrollments. We show that the enrollment networks of the university and its liberal arts college are “small-world” networks, characterized by high clustering and short average path lengths. In both networks, at least 98% of students are in the main component, and most students can reach each other in two steps. Removing very large courses slightly elongates path lengths, but does not disconnect these networks or eliminate all alternative paths between students. Although students from different majors tend to be clustered together, gateway courses and distributional requirements create cross-major integration. We close by discussing the implications of course networks for understanding potential epidemic spread of infection on university campuses.

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qualitative research in online environment

https://www.facebook.com/groups/onlinelearningcollective/permalink/557378281559541/

A Facebook group thread:

Qualitative researchers: Does anyone have any general pointers on conducting qualitative work in this environment other than doing interviews or focus groups over Zoom? Example: I (normally) do a lot of participant observation work. Where and how will I do this or do it as well as I have done it?

At this moment, my focus is all on teaching. But if this situation becomes more prolonged, I need to figure out how to keep the research going too.

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Qualitative Data Analysis Tools

https://libguides.mit.edu/anthro/qda

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more on qualitative research in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=qualitative+research

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