Traversing the Edge of Chaos: Phase 3 and 4 preparations for post COVID-19 world

No one truly knows what the COVID-19 virus itself will do over time–e.g., will it spread further and/or in multiple waves? Accordingly, it becomes difficult to prepare for the Fall 2020 academic term without knowing if campuses will be open (or open to students). As Phil highlighted this week, two in five US college presidents are considering a continuation of remote or online courses in the fall. If that’s the case, faculty and students who now feel that they are just “trying to get to the finish line” this spring may soon feel they have unwillingly entered “a race to the starting line.”

In my previous post I described this period as a phase transition, which some call the “edge of chaos.” As we navigate the edge of chaos, we can and should plan for multiple scenarios in the fall–what Phil called Phase 3 of “4 Phases of Higher Ed Response” in his revised higher ed outlook post (see Phil’s chart below). These scenarios may entail a) staying online for the entire fall term, b) starting online with the possibility of shifting back to the classroom at some point, c) starting in-person with the very real possibility of shifting to remote again, or d) something else.

Regardless, we have enough time to move from “emergency remote teaching and learning” or “Covid-converted courses” to (something closer to) more thoughtfully prepared online learning experiences (e.g., see the Educause Review article on “The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning”). In his April 1 article for Inside Higher Ed, Doug Lederman got the ball rolling, describing how “[s]ome colleges are preparing (quietly) to deliver better online learning at scale.” Below are a few ideas for those who are asked to do so.

Supporting faculty and students

Instructional design

• Help faculty get down to basics: Using approaches like Wiggins and McTighe’s backward design model, we can help faculty narrow down their courses to the “must know” information and skills. The shift to remote or “Covid-converted” courses forced some instructors to rethink what students absolutely need to take away, or pare down the course to address only what students need to succeed in subsequent courses or in the field. To provide maximum flexibility, this should become standard practice for the foreseeable future.

• Consider “hybrid flexible” course design to support “remote flexible” courses: Brian Beatty’s hybrid flexible, or HyFlex, course format allows students to choose where (in the classroom or online) and when (synchronous or asynchronous) they participate in class activities. Since it supports students’ choice of time and place for learning, the HyFlex course design would also work for a “remote flexible” course–namely, it would mean designing a course that could easily shift from classroom to online and back again. In a Universal Design for Learning sense, it involves providing multiple pathways for students to engage with the content and each other, and multiple pathways to demonstrate evidence of learning.

Communication 

• During the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) April 6 webinar about Managing Your Online Presence, April Mondy from Delta State nailed it. She shared that communication to students should be transparent, empathetic, proactive, and consistent. Check out the webinar recording or read the webinar transcript to dive more deeply into April’s take on communication and being more aware of the student experience. Once students learn we may be online again (or still) this fall, they may decide not to return. Communication at the course and institution levels should let students know how you plan to support them and how the institution is improving the experience.

Formats

• Focus on asynchronous, low bandwidth activities: Equity issues will not go away over the summer, and will probably get worse. A New York Times article this week pointed out how different college students’ lives are unequal–i.e., some students need to work or to contribute financially to support their families. In other cases, families sheltering-in-place together are sharing one or two computers among several working adults and/or K-16 learners. I’ve already mentioned the issue of access to adequate Internet connectivity, which affects a number of students in both rural and urban areas. These factors (and others) signify that there will be students who are not able to join class Zoom sessions at specific times.

• Provide flexibility in how students can turn in assignments: In my own online class, I’ve had students who dealt with housing insecurity (e.g., living in their cars, couch surfing). Taking classes by smartphone makes it hard to write papers in Microsoft Word, so allow students to submit in whatever format they can. For example, Google docs are possible on a smartphone, but not easy. Also consider videos or other ways for students to convey ideas with the tools that they have. This flexibility also points to the relevance of evidence-based learning. NOTE: If you’re interested, next week (April 16) the Association of Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL) will host a free meetup to explore the question “How do students generate evidence of learning in a remote world?”1

• Address the needs presented by large format classes: Last week, Alex Usher advocated putting extra resources into large classes in Fall 2020–including a multi-”section” approach to serve smaller groups and a well-resourced MOOC approach to serve the large group more effectively. His suggestions are designed to support student success. He calls out first year students in particular, but his ideas also would support first-generation students and others who typically may not perform well in online environments. Instructors should plan how they’ll support students and schools should consider using enrollment caps or increasing staff.

Support

• While there currently are few to no on-campus student jobs to speak of, use work study funds to pay students to be peer mentors and/or provide supplemental instruction. The same way deans and department chairs are soliciting veteran online faculty members to mentor faculty who are new to remote teaching, campuses should solicit veteran online learners to mentor students who are new to remote learning, and those who sign up to get help. In my online class each semester I always have students who have taken 6-10 online courses before they arrived and students who have never taken an online course before. I offer bonus points instead of funding, and the veteran online learners usually agree to answer peer questions that come up in the forums. There are models out there. Western Governors University hires mentors to support students at the course and program levels, which they assert increases online student success. At San Jose State University, students took it upon themselves to create a mentoring program called SUERTE (Spanish for “luck”), where students who successfully transfer from Evergreen Valley College a) show prospective EVC transfer students how they succeeded, and b) support those students before, during and after they transfer themselves.

• Take financial aid funds meant for housing payments and ship a laptop set up for online learning and/or a pre-paid wifi hotspot to everyone who needs it. Throw in campus swag–a t-shirt, a school logo sticker on the laptop lid, a water bottle–to build community spirit. In a Covid-19 article last month the Brookings Institute predicted that “The pandemic is casting a harsh light on issues of privilege and equity, and we’ll see many marginalized students disappear from the system without considerable effort to provide them with extra support.” We need to disprove that idea.

• Campuses need to point to or construct comprehensive orientations to remote and online learning to guide students in how to identify their own needs and how to be more successful. For example, ask them to take an online learning readiness survey and plan to address gaps, or describe how to create a quiet place to work when sheltering in place with others. Also guide students through navigating the LMS interface once they’re online (see the section on Consistency below). These orientations should address the needs of disproportionately impacted student groups as well.

Organizational considerations

Implications for administrators include program-level and institution-level actions that support student learning as we move from “remote” to “online.” I’ve just scratched the surface with these few below:

Budget, infrastructure, and resource allocation

• Map out and budget for a more robust online learning ecosystem: Campuses, districts and state systems have added a wide array of tools beyond the LMS to support temporary remote learning. These include digital platforms for communication (e.g., Pronto), accessibility checking (e.g., Ally), tutoring (e.g., NetTutor, Upswing), virtual labs (e.g., Labster), counseling (e.g., Cranium Café), exam proctoring (e.g., ProctorU), and host of other tools. Many of these adoptions were done extremely quickly, some without a typical Request for Proposals process. Some were offered by the vendor to help during the COVID-19 crisis, others were purchased at scale for multiple campuses to use. Now is the time to start thinking about what happens on July 1, when many of the emergency contracts end. Whenever possible, state systems or higher ed consortia should still leverage economies of scale, but this next round of renewals and adoptions should include thoughtful conversations focused on critical questions like “Does this tool directly support students?” and “Does this service align with our mission, which includes learning equity?”

• Set up structures to reallocate resources more quickly: In recent weeks, many grocery stores have been able to keep up with demand for fresh produce because they were able to shift their allocation ratio. Typically, restaurants and other food service providers typically take a much larger percentage of produce. With so many restaurants, hotels and cruise ships closed temporarily, though, food suppliers have been able to reallocate that produce to grocery stores to meet the needs of more people eating at home while they shelter in place. Campuses should be looking at resource allocation the same way. When campuses are closed (or closed to students), what money is saved (e.g., low to no electricity use) and what staff members are underutilized? If enough staff are trained in advance, they can move like a flash mob to support faculty and students when course formats change overnight.

Support (across programs or across the whole institution)

• Take steps to make the remote or online learning experience more consistent across your program or institution: While we want to foster academic freedom, students are faced with having to do the same tasks three, four, five or more different ways. My neighbors’ child has her K-12 teachers all asking her to submit work in different ways–some by email, some via web interfaces like dropbox, and some even by text! While leaving the content alone, higher ed programs can work to make sure that students taking multiple major classes have a more consistent experience–e.g., they know how class environments are set up, the same basic rules apply to all classes. Similarly, institutions can use templates or blueprints to give courses a common navigation scheme, look and feel. (NOTE: This may require working with the Academic Senate.)

• Scale up (and possibly require) professional development: This will be controversial and no simple task, but campuses should start planning massive faculty professional development efforts now. Students will accept varying degrees of familiarity with remote teaching this spring and even into summer. However, if part or all of their courses are online in the fall, students will demand a different experience once we’re beyond an “emergency transition.”

  • Achieving scale: In the pre-COVID era, our unit at San Francisco State University would run an in-person Summer Institute workshop series multiple times, serving as many as 150-200 faculty. That’s a lot of people, but at the time it was only 10-15% of all faculty. Campuses will need to determine how to upskill every teacher who needs it, and to work with academic senates and/or unions to address adequate compensation.

  • Format: Without knowing what stay at home orders or congregation limits will be like, campuses should plan for this professional development to be virtual. Since 70+% of higher ed teachers are adjunct or lecturer faculty, it also should be asynchronous.

  • Economies of scale: Rather than have every higher ed campus in the country reinvent the wheel, systems and consortia should draw expertise from member campuses and pay for development and delivery of online PD about online teaching. Rather than be tool-focused, the PD should show multiple methods to achieve pedagogical goals with online tools.

• Create a “safe return to campus” plan: A comment on my last post (Thanks, Roxann!) reminds campuses to develop “a comprehensive campus / community plan for returning students and faculty/staff safely to the physical campus at sometime in the near future.” The CDC offers guidance for potential goals–”protect high risk populations,…minimize disruption to teaching and learning, and protect students, staff and faculty from social stigma and discrimination”–and recommends creating “strategies for before, during and after a possible outbreak.”

Data collection

• Unlike Zoom and Facebook, colleges and universities should centralize data collection about their students’ needs and figure out how to get that information to faculty and staff. This means the school sends out one survey that asks students about their readiness for remote learning, rather than repeat the recent situation where individual teachers have been sending out their own surveys with different questions. This invites survey fatigue for students, and creates a set of incomplete pictures for faculty and staff. (NOTE: A diverse group of people–including students–should create the survey so the data collection does not perpetuate inequities.)

• In addition to identifying students’ technological and environmental needs–e.g., better connectivity, a quiet place to learn–we also need to collect student feedback about what helps and hinders their learning in the online environment. It’s instructive to read early attempts to collect this information. For example, Veletsianos and Kimmons recently scraped Twitter posts about “my professor” as a way to see what students think. Read their article, “What (Some) Students Are Saying About the Switch to Remote Teaching and Learning” or the (fitting) Twitter summary of the article by Gavan Watson. Cal State LA’s student newspaper interviewed community college and university students about their anxieties about the switch to remote learning, which include concerns about connectedness, communication, technology, finances and self-care. These articles form a good start, and our institutions can do an even more comprehensive job of collecting student feedback, locally and globally.

A colleague from the City University of New York told me that we all have to “be careful not to accept a contingency plan as a permanent plan.” Hopefully, the ideas in this post and my last post help us avoid that. More radical ideas, like moving to competency-based learning models or breaking courses into smaller, stackable pieces (e.g., 1 unit over 5- or 6-weeks instead of 3-units over 16-weeks), are not realistic goals for Fall 2020 so I’ll save them for later. However, as we reimagine education in the wake of COVID-19, we should not stop with small, just-in-time adjustments. When I co-directed a federal grant for SF State, called Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology, the program director asked all of us grant recipients a provocative question: “If we didn’t have the classrooms of today, what would we create instead?” As we travel along the edge of chaos, let’s answer that question together.

Disclosure: Kevin works as an educational consultant with Peralta Community College District and ACUE, teaches at San Francisco State University, and is on the AAEEBL Board of Directors; MindWires provides services to the CCC California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative.

1 Disclosure: Kevin works as an educational consultant with Peralta Community College District and ACUE, and is on the AAEEBL Board of Directors; MindWires provides services to the CCC California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative.

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