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Welcome to "Transforming Teaching and Learning," a column that explores how colleges and professors are reimagining how they teach and how students larn. If y'all'd like to receive the free "Transforming Didactics and Learning" newsletter, delight sign up here.

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Last calendar week in this space, I asked a grouping of thoughtful observers a gear up of questions nearly what colleges' sudden, widespread shift to remote learning might mean for the future of online didactics. The cavalcade seemed to strike a chord with a lot of readers -- many positively. But others suggested that the questions I posed, and the people I posed them to, weren't the ones front and eye for "the situation we're in," every bit George Station, a lecturer and faculty acquaintance at California State University Monterey Bay, put it on Twitter.

"Theoretically there are no wrong questions, but at the campus/class level and in professional learning networks," he wrote, "information technology's mainly questions most creating or maintaining community from confront-to-face to virtual alternatives, engaging faculty and students in the process, easing angst nearly remote work, etc." that people are searching for answers to.

He encouraged me to "accept another run at it, with people and club in the foreground."

With his help, that's what I've done beneath, with a new prompt directed to a new set of respondents. Delight continue to weigh in in the comments beneath, on Twitter (@dougledIHE) or via e-mail -- nosotros're all in this together.

The prompt:

What has changed in your (or your colleagues') instruction practices as a issue of the COVID-xix crisis? Did your institution'due south (or your own) priorities or guiding principles for learners alter? What is different for your learners?

How do yous expect your ability to support learners through technology to be enhanced or degraded? Will the relationship between content and procedure change? With the "college at dwelling house" environment being the norm, how will you reimagine equitable access for students?

Which changes are "forever" -- permanent changes in the teaching and learning mural? Which seem more likely to revert to pre-coronavirus approaches, as a new normal in college instruction emerges?

What possibilities are at that place for rebuilding or evolving your own institution on the far side of the COVID-19 crisis? Is this opportunity for growth through the crisis different for your other alliances (east.g., personal learning networks or college-ed professional organizations)? What is your emerging vision for post-crisis higher educational activity in general?

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Bryan Alexander, futurist, educator and author

Much depends on how the pandemic plays out.

If nations similar the U.South. tin can fire through all or the worst of COVID-xix in a couple of months, as China did, the impact volition be intense but short term. If the coronavirus and our response persist for a year or more, academia will be redefined.

I fear many of the fiscal costs volition clobber our budgets equally land appropriations to publics reduce even further, equally campus costs mount, international enrollment drops, endowments wither and families are just able to spend less on teaching. All of that occurs in the curt-term scenario. If COVID-xix gnaws on nations for semesters on end, that will gut higher teaching's finances. Given recent institutional history, we should expect an expanded adjunctification of the faculty and "queen sacrifice" cuts to programs (particularly the humanities).

Our shift online could take several forms. Starting time, if bad-experience stories circulate and have influence, we could see participation and even enrollment decline. 2d, given equity issues worsened past recession, open education resource and open-admission publishing could triumph. Nosotros may besides see inequality drive unlike engineering science uses, with wealthier communities using more demanding technologies (virtual and mixed reality, telepresence) while poorer ones turn to tools with lower infrastructure demands (asynchronous video, audio, images and text).

Third, as entirely online pedagogy continues, certain pedagogies and support structures should win widespread attending. Colleges and universities might compete for students (as well as faculty and staff) based on how well and prominently they carry out these teaching methods. Quaternary, if the pandemic persists unevenly, coming and going in waves over a long period, we might get used to alternating between face-to-face (i.due east., really composite) teaching and wholly online pedagogy.

Research is experiencing a stall now as faculty remove themselves from on-campus resource. An attenuated pandemic could depress scholarly output for a year or more. At the same time, some faculty members may play an increasingly public role for their research, from work in health care to analyzing COVID-19's touch on through the lenses of sociology, political science, culture, media, urban studies, etc. This may appear both in formal scholarship, enquiry and evolution, or public advocacy.

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Maha Bali, associate professor of practice, Center for Learning and Teaching, American University in Cairo

What has changed in your (or your colleagues') teaching practices equally a consequence of the COVID-19 crisis? Did your institution'due south (or your own) priorities or guiding principles for learners alter? What is different for your learners?

I am a kinesthesia developer and I too teach, so the impact on me has been twofold -- in one case every bit the person supporting others in their education, and once as a teacher. I think some of the primal things people accept been struggling with accept been how practise we support each other through this difficult challenge/crisis (and some faculty accept made their own back up groups within departments, some have used our services extensively) and for some, how do we maintain rigor and ensure pupil learning outcomes are met. For me personally, I feel like my teaching priorities have shifted. Rather than thinking of how to have what I currently do to an online format (easy for me as an eLearning skilful) information technology has become, how do I adjust my class so it becomes what students demand well-nigh in this moment in history?

One important thing I felt my institution tried to emphasize was moving online with equity in mind and trying to reduce learner anxiety. So for example, in our guidelines for moving online (planned for ii weeks at the moment) we recommend that faculty not rely too heavily on synchronous videoconferencing so every bit not to disadvantage students whose internet infrastructure is poorer, or who utilize a shared device at dwelling house, or who accept other family members who need the cyberspace bandwidth for other things. For the time being, kinesthesia are advised not to conduct any exams during the coming two weeks, which I think is a relief for many students.

My department has been especially careful about helping faculty make the correct choices for their ain teaching philosophy and learning outcomes, so we take been working hard to offering options for, e.yard., doing a seminar-style class online without synchronous video. I feel like my department has been caring for faculty to help them set up, and hopefully this intendance will transfer onto students. In conversations with our faculty, I sense this strong ethic of intendance for students and their well-being.

How practice yous expect your ability to support learners through technology to be enhanced or degraded? Volition the relationship between content and process modify? With the "college at abode" environs being the norm, how will y'all reimagine equitable access for students?

I think this volition exist difficult for faculty who aren't used to living online, finding a style to be connected with students while also maintaining a work-life balance (recollect that many faculty accept partners and kids at home who too demand to work online).

I think equitable access to students volition require more than flexibility than we anticipate, with everything from attendance to deadlines to modalities of advice. Information technology's not but about advice here, but affect, which is more needed than ever when we are beingness advised to utilise social distancing.

Which changes are "forever" -- permanent changes in the teaching and learning landscape? Which seem more likely to revert to pre-coronavirus approaches, as a new normal in higher education emerges?

I don't know. I worry that this volition plow out to exist a horrible experience of online learning for many and they will never want to do it again. I practice hope some will piece of work difficult to make it piece of work well and realize its potential, but I am cautious almost this, considering no one signed up for this, neither faculty nor students, and there are so many other things about this entire situation (exterior of schooling per se) that is causing anxiety and tension, that information technology is all mixed up together in my emotional reaction to the situation. I do experience hopeful about the number of people I talk to who want to focus on intendance (run across our crowdsourced curation: http://bit.ly/onlinewithcare).

What possibilities are there for rebuilding or evolving your own institution on the far side of the COVID-nineteen crisis? Is this opportunity for growth through the crunch unlike for your other alliances (e.g., personal learning networks or higher-ed professional organizations)? What is your emerging vision for post-crisis college education in general?

I don't empathize the question. :))

But for in one case, so many of us beyond the globe are going through similar things in dissimilar contexts and learning from each other. I have seen so much sharing beyond the globe and within institutions, so I imagine new relationships and solidarity might terminal beyond.

I am on the advisory board of a projection chosen Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange, and my own students participate in a Virtual Exchange activity every semester. This semester I anticipate this experience will be deeper than usual, every bit everyone around the world volition have something in mutual to share.

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Robin DeRosa, director, Open Learning & Educational activity Collaborative, Plymouth State University

What has changed in your (or your colleagues') teaching practices as a result of the COVID-19 crisis? Did your institution'south (or your own) priorities or guiding principles for learners alter? What is different for your learners?

Everyone tends to be a couple of weeks backside on proportionate responses. When it became clear that we would all need to move to remote learning, there was at first a sense that this meant developing online courses in the same ways that we would do this during more normal times. At present I call back people are realizing that the circumstances are annihilation but normal. Many of our students immediately lost jobs and incomes and were thrust into poverty almost overnight. Many of them don't have Wi-Fi access, and some of our didactics lecturers don't, either. As more than students and kinesthesia and staff become sick, it's clearly going to milkshake our plans yet again. Basically, I think what'southward emerging for best exercise is that at that place is no best practice for this yet, and information technology's imperative that we all remain flexible and listen to the human beings in our colleges when they tell us what they need both in lodge to learn and, more than importantly, in society to survive.

How do you lot await your ability to support learners through technology to be enhanced or degraded? Will the human relationship between content and process change? With the "higher at home" environment being the norm, how will you reimagine equitable access for students?

I am so grateful that nosotros have technology to assistance us in our response to this pandemic, but I don't think engineering is the effect here. The consequence is how to protect the public good as nosotros weather the months ahead. We need to be thinking less about getting our classes online and more about how colleges can brainstorm to build architectures for learning through a pandemic. I retrieve we will demand to be a lot more creative than but opening Zoom rooms or posting stuff in the LMS, especially when so many of the students (and even adjuncts) at my ain university don't have reliable internet access.

First, talk with your students: What practise their lives expect similar now, and how can learning complement rather than complicate their new reality? Second, engage with the crunch: this pandemic is unlikely to concluding forever, and then while it is with us, how should our fields exist responding and how can we involve our students in using our academic resources to solve challenges that the pandemic is causing? Whatsoever courses we teach, two things are true: one) we teach students and nosotros need to listen to them in club to design around their capacities, and 2) our fields accept something to offer a world in crisis, and our students are the futurity of our fields.

Which changes are "forever" -- permanent changes in the teaching and learning landscape? Which seem more probable to revert to pre-coronavirus approaches, as a new normal in higher didactics emerges? What possibilities are there for rebuilding or evolving your own institution on the far side of the COVID-19 crisis? Is this opportunity for growth through the crisis dissimilar for your other alliances (due east.g., personal learning networks or higher-ed professional organizations)? What is your emerging vision for postal service-crisis higher teaching in general?

I hope that this pandemic is helping us rethink the way nosotros have devalued public systems. Over again, I don't care much about online vs. face-to-face. I call back the cardinal is public. Just like with health care, public higher education is not just nigh individuals being served. If we want salubrious communities (longer lives, less crime, improved mental health, etc.), we need to fund public institutions and infrastructures that allow the public to pay itself for what it needs to thrive. Public higher pedagogy -- the data is clear -- is ane of those things. I promise that post-pandemic, nosotros will fairly fund public higher education, public broadband and public wellness. The fact that nosotros oasis't yet is i reason that this is hitting us so hard.

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Kristen Eshleman, director of innovation initiatives, Davidson College

In a recent Twitter substitution, I argued that the question posed by the article -- "Will a shift to remote pedagogy assist or hurt online learning?" -- was the wrong question to ask, at least for the moment. The more than important question for this crunch is how we do (or don't) support our students and educators through what is a massive upheaval. Nosotros can worry about how online learning might modify in the future after. Right at present, nosotros must take care of those in the eye of this huge shift.

The current response is triage. We are adapting to maintain as much of the familiar learning and community engagement as we can in the short term. Yeah, we should adopt the technologies and strategies that support effective online learning. To that finish, we volition benefit from the excellent prior work of online education researchers. Right now, we need the simplest and nearly effective methods for our students to achieve the resolution they desire, equally nosotros seek to sustain the customs and connections we accept formed in residence.

Information technology's i thing to do this online when y'all are already starting from that premise -- where your customs has self-selected for that environment. It's quite another when your community hasn't. Every bit Amy Collier reminded united states of america, "Our kinesthesia and our students are hurting and grieving right at present. This is a moment for care." We may learn more most our adaptability from how we respond to this crisis than what nosotros blueprint.

Then, what have we learned so far? We learned the sector can plow on a dime when we need to. We learned that when all of the oars are rowing in the same management, nosotros rise to the claiming and adapt to changes that once seemed improbable. We embraced discomfort together. We may even learn that some remote learning could be desirable for what it affords our students. If we hold on to these learnings beyond a crisis, we will exist less delicate in an already uncertain and changing context.

Most important, at Davidson, nosotros are leaning into care over productivity. We are witnessing servant leadership in action. Our procedure volition never be perfect, but equally nosotros move through this crunch I am reminded of a quote from Maya Angelou: "I've learned that people will forget what y'all said, people will forget what you lot did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

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Joshua R. Eyler, director of faculty evolution and lecturer in writing and rhetoric, University of Mississippi; author of How Humans Learn: The Scientific discipline and Stories Behind Effective College Teaching (West Virginia University Press, 2018)

I'g really not certain anyone tin can accurately predict how higher ed will change equally a event of this crunch. I practice remember that several changes are possible, given what I take seen over the terminal few weeks and what I've observed happening across the country.

Outset, i affair is clear: the rhetoric of intendance has been central to the discussions universities have been having correct now. Front and center in all of the decisions -- from closing campuses to emergency policies well-nigh P/F, withdrawals, etc. -- has been an expression of caring for students. I'm not talking simply almost their concrete wellness here, though, but about their emotional and psychological well-beingness equally well and the means in which crises like this affect students' ability to learn.

There is a thread of the national conversation right now that seems to imagine that higher ed's but concerns are getting courses online as quickly as possible no matter what, merely this hasn't been my experience. What I have seen is faculty at my institution and beyond really considering their students, thinking virtually how challenging this state of affairs will be for them, and building educational environments that center community and generosity. Brandon Bayne from UNC, for example, circulated a syllabus annex on social media that spoke directly to these problems, and it has been shared by thousands of faculty nationwide. Once you make this such a cadre function of the chat, you cannot undo it, and information technology is my hope that higher ed will rebuild on the foundation of these principles.

Secondly, in developing multifaceted responses to various elements of this crunch, the silos that are traditionally embedded within institutions of higher ed take been shattered. Just as 1 example among many: I take spent the concluding 10 days on a team made upwardly of colleagues from unlike units across campus. I hadn't even met some of them earlier nosotros showtime began this piece of work, only we came together to help faculty make this transition, and I take heard the same thing from friends at many other universities. Similarly, at that place are groups working together on student resources at many universities that may not take collaborated before as much as they have been over the last few weeks. Making change in college ed is typically a daunting prospect because of these silos, merely they have been cleaved down at present in means that I hope volition be long lasting and will lead to effective responses, programs, policies and networks in the time to come.

Finally, I've seen kinesthesia beyond the country sharing resources, supporting each other, consoling each other, offering promise and forging a way forward together. That'southward something on which you tin build a futurity.

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Laura Gibbs, online instructor, University of Oklahoma

My school is responding with a lot of compassion for students right now. For case, we've instituted a P/NP policy and so students can see their final grades for the spring semester and opt to accept a P grade in whatever course in which they received a D or amend, including classes for their major and other caste requirements. I'chiliad actually glad to see that because many students are facing life crises, and nosotros should be doing everything we can to aid them make progress towards their degree.

Just here's the thing: we've ever had students whose lives are in crisis, and every semester I see students who should accept had that compassionate P/NP option bachelor because of the challenges they face (medical crises, family crises, financial crises, etc.). So, I promise we volition proceed that P/NP policy on the books. Students who persist in their instruction through hardship always deserve support in every manner nosotros tin offer it, not just in this time of global crisis.

Besides with technology. There are so many means we can use the net to connect with each other, person to person, sharing and learning together, and that applies to all classes at all times, non simply in this crisis. The reason I left the classroom to teach fully online was to find more/better ways to connect with students. In the classroom, there were ever students I didn't actually become to know, students who fell through the cracks.

Online, we accept more than ways to connect with students and more than flexible times in which to exercise that (my courses are 100 percent asynchronous), and that means I can connect with every pupil, much more then than when I was limited to the infinite and pace of the classroom. I would urge everyone to explore dissimilar options -- blogs and websites, Twitter and YouTube (make your ain channel!), and so on. My school is emphasizing the LMS and Zoom, but I hope faculty will expect at other spaces and channels besides, experimenting to run across what works all-time for you and your students. Yous're not going to figure that out right abroad, and that's fine. Brainstorm with your students about possible options! If you find new ways to connect with your students beyond the classroom now, that will assistance you be a better teacher in the future, no matter what that futurity holds.

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Penelope Adams Moon, interim managing director of online learning strategy and affiliate kinesthesia, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, University of Washington Bothell

What has changed in your (or your colleagues') teaching practices as a result of the COVID-19 crisis? Did your institution's (or your own) priorities or guiding principles for learners change? What is dissimilar for your learners?

One of our campus'south guiding principles is that we aim to provide access to excellence. In the wake of COVID-19, that principle has taken on new meaning. Whereas we once might accept framed excellence in terms of attainment (e.g., rankings, publications, awards), this crunch has revealed that our excellence might really not be measured by our proximity to perfection, just by our ability to iterate and adapt. Faced with a ridiculously brusk window in which to prepare, our faculty and staff are forging ahead with all the grace of a wobbly toddler -- perfection exist damned! They are jumping feetfirst into unfamiliar technologies and pedagogies with minimal training, aware that they volition be iterating in real time in forepart of their students. They are emphasizing empathy and flexibility in their syllabi, more than witting than ever of their own need for such affordances. Right now, teaching excellence is more likely to take the form of granting students flexibility then that they can treat out-of-schoolhouse children rather than handing them another tightly conceived assignment.

It will be interesting to come across if this comprehend of flexibility sparks a broader shift in college instruction. For too long we take mistaken rigor for bookish integrity when in fact, from a definitional standpoint, rigor merely means rigidity, severity and harshness -- the exact reverse of the flexibility nosotros so demand during this crisis.

How do you look your ability to support learners through technology to be enhanced or degraded? Will the relationship between content and process modify? With the "higher at home" environment existence the norm, how will you reimagine equitable access for students?

Three weeks ago, our CIO created a core emergency response squad that'southward been running at total tilt ever since. Issues of equity have been central to our work. We've ramped up of our equipment loan service and moved apace to procure additional laptops and hotspots for underresourced students. We've stepped in to foreclose panic buying of software and hardware, conscious of how such purchasing creates security bug, overburdens support staff and siphons money away from other crucial needs. Nosotros've stressed the demand to minimize synchronous sessions as they disproportionately burden students and staff wrestling with low bandwidth and those needing to intendance for family unit members.

Nosotros've also thought about how to provide support more than equitably. Our campus has traditionally been pretty decentralized, and kinesthesia and students take been accustomed to highly personalized, bespoke support and grooming. That model has privileged those with time and access to campus and is ill suited for crisis situations. We've responded by streamlining our organization for requesting support, cross-preparation staff and pivoting to a one-to-many support model. The i-to-many model includes, among other things, dynamic instructional and operational continuity pages, a educatee help page focused on remote learning and access to applied science, live Zoom-based crash courses (recorded for asynchronous use), and a publicly attainable course template that enables faculty to focus on customizing, rather than edifice from scratch in the LMS. Our COVID-nineteen strategies will, I call up, actually make our support more than responsive and equitable moving forward.

What possibilities are there for rebuilding or evolving your own institution on the far side of the COVID-nineteen crisis? Is this opportunity for growth through the crisis different for your other alliances (east.thou., personal learning networks or higher-ed professional organizations)? What is your emerging vision for post-crisis higher education in general?

For me, this crisis has confirmed how much we need to refine processes across higher teaching. Bottlenecks and single points of failure abound. Professional and disciplinary provincialism inhibits collaboration and leads to costly duplication of try. Cumbersome and redundant approval processes and governance structures limit our ability to be nimble and responsive to our community's diverse array of needs. Our planning is more ofttimes performative rather than strategic. We consistently overestimate the capacity of faculty and undervalue the expertise of staff.

And however the crisis has also offered glimpses of what could be -- diverse teams mobilizing to creatively solve problems equally they ascend, bureaucratic hoops jettisoned so that mutual-sense action can proceed apace, and academic and workplace constraints loosened to allow us all -- faculty, staff and students -- the flexibility we need to be productive colleagues, attentive caregivers and counterbalanced human beings. I am hopeful that higher teaching will sally from this crisis with fresh ideas and structures.

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Sean Michael Morris, director, Digital Teaching Lab, and senior instructor of learning pattern and applied science, Academy of Colorado Denver School of Education and Human Evolution

Tin we wait that pandemic-related pedagogies, policies and approaches will somehow change the face of teaching? I'thousand reminded of Sandra Bullock's graphic symbol at the end of Speed -- afterwards she and Keanu Reeves have survived dozens of threats, explosions, bombs and more -- when she quips about their romantic connection, "Relationships that start nether intense circumstances -- they never last." So, I have to wonder: Will education's sudden run into with online learning (which is really more an come across with educational engineering science and its failings) atomic number 82 to something sustained and productive? Or is this a short-term thing that serves a purpose, fills a gap? What we're experiencing with the pivot to online is the latter, not the one-time.

Arit John's recent Los Angeles Times commodity, "Teachers find many obstacles as they try to keep kids learning amid coronavirus," has little to study in the way of positive change in this regard. John and his co-writers report that "Every bit teachers scramble to adjust to an entirely new world of education, they are coming upwards confronting significant barriers." And though the piece is focused on Yard-12 schools, we find similar issues in higher education. Vice's "Motherboard" reported on the real problems teachers and students face up in the pivot to online: "A contempo study institute that roughly one in five college students has problem accessing bones technology … Adding to the stress of already vulnerable teachers, the impact of the transition to online education for the most vulnerable college students could exist increased dropout rates."

What's happening at present isn't what we ever imagined for online education or digital learning. Information technology isn't the thou experiment some writers suppose, nor does the solution lie in disruptive and situationally irrelevant instructional pattern. The pin to online is a response to an unprecedented emergency, triage at best. Digital pedagogy is an emerging field -- may always demand to be -- and not something hastily discovered in the aftermath of a crisis. The nuanced piece of work of digital instruction has been existence done, improved upon, iterated again and again, past dedicated teachers and scholars for decades. It was never meant to be a quick solution for every teacher in every situation.

If in that location is anything I hope emerges in the new normal of higher education after this crisis passes, it would be a clearer, more widespread awareness that nosotros must commit time, resource and scholarship to digital teaching. We shouldn't turn to the outdated and undertheorized conventions of traditional online learning, merely instead to approaches flexible, responsive and caring plenty to support students and teachers today and through the next emergency.

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Lora Taub, professor of media and communication and dean for digital learning, Muhlenberg Higher

What has changed in your (or your colleagues') teaching practices equally a result of the COVID-19 crunch? Did your institution's (or your own) priorities or guiding principles for learners alter? What is dissimilar for your learners?

At Muhlenberg Higher, our best resources for pedagogy remote -- in a pinch and panic -- are our guiding principles. They remain unchanged, simply distinctly amplified. Our care and commitment to our students' learning and growth are more visible than ever. These principles guide the choices we are making in reframing and reimagining our courses -- in a pinch and a panic -- for remote teaching and learning.

Everything is different for our learners. But working in our favor, working to keep u.s. knit together while flung beyond the country, is the community that students and faculty congenital with each other in the commencement 8 weeks of the semester. That is the foundation that shapes what is possible for our learners now, under varied and dynamic weather and constraints.

How practise you await your ability to support learners through technology to be enhanced or degraded? Will the human relationship betwixt content and process change? With the "college at home" environment being the norm, how will you reimagine equitable admission for students?

Nosotros began cultivating the environment and practices for learning online in the liberal arts half-dozen years ago. Forty kinesthesia have completed our faculty development plan for online grade design and pedagogy. In nearly every department on campus, there is a faculty member who has experience teaching online, and our culture of peer learning and mentorship runs deep. This collective wisdom, and a culture that values and practices peer mentoring, is more than of import than the item technologies we are invoking for remote learning.

Nosotros besides have a culture of peer support amid students and an award-winning digital learning assistantship program for students. Eight digital learning assistants, students with deep involvement in digital technologies and practices, are now holding remote virtual drop-in hours daily, from 2 to six p.m. This culture of peer support for digital learning links up with the expertise of our digital learning team -- designers, technologists and librarians -- who take ensured training and support through the initial transition and continue to offer sustained guidance and support as nosotros all movement forrad.

Equitable and inclusive access for learners is an ongoing conversation and commitment at Muhlenberg, and faculty recognize that this conversation extends critically into the spaces and practices of our remote experience at present. This means critically examining some of our unreflected-upon assumptions -- near technology and about our students. The dean of students, together with senior leadership, have ensured the resources and a process by which students can request funds, items, equipment and other support they might need to participate fully in their remote learning. The digital learning team has encouraged faculty to prioritize asynchronous activities that aim to lower barriers to access and inclusive participation -- that beget student flexibility in their schedules, in modes of participation, in ways of connecting. This has helped a peachy deal.

What possibilities are there for rebuilding or evolving your own institution on the far side of the COVID-19 crisis? Is this opportunity for growth through the crisis different for your other alliances (e.1000., personal learning networks or higher-ed professional organizations)? What is your emerging vision for mail-crisis college education in general?

Muhlenberg College has been intentionally, purposefully evolving our landscape for teaching and learning digitally since 2014. The existing frameworks, practices and values emerging from that early on piece of work certainly open up upward the possibilities for us now, to respond urgently, finer and ethically to the COVID-19 crunch and other challenges and uncertainties alee. I imagine that this experience will help create broader agreement of what the critical digital pedagogy community has known and has been saying all along: technology volition non salve us.

Online learning is a human -- not a technological -- endeavor. We lose sight of that primal reality at our own peril. I have been heartened to run across the outpouring of appreciation and recognition for the instructional design and technology experts on our campus. The opportunities for pedagogical partnership with our digital learning team take always been nowadays -- now they are urgent, and our success equally we plough towards the remainder of the semester owes everything to this group.

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Fabiola Torres, indigenous studies instructor, Glendale Customs College (Calif.)

What has changed in your (or your colleagues') education practices as a issue of the COVID-19 crisis?

Beginning, our teaching modality changed. We are still content specialists. It's a matter of how to evangelize information technology remotely that changed. So our ability to transmit our passion of our bailiwick is still in the process of being explored.

Did your institution's (or your own) priorities or guiding principles for learners change?

Our institution's priority is to enable pupil success. That has not inverse. Information technology is yet our guided principle -- student success. Such principle guides how we think most kinesthesia support, supporting remote learning tools and providing students the necessary hardware to support their educational goals. What has changed is the tone and flexibility of our tone. Even though kinesthesia might complain and even grumble betwixt each other, the backbone of our work and delivery of content is still to support student success.

My priority aligns with my own pedagogy philosophy. I want to level up pupil success in my learning surroundings. I desire to continue to give them the same energy I give them in front of my class, dress up when I shoot a video, clothing my brilliant lipstick while keeping upwardly a rigor that withal feels challenging. However, my design will take a strategic, empathy-minded approach that emanates kindness, intendance and flexibility.

What is different for your learners?

Life is unlike. Family unit responsibilities, economic liquidity, the feeling of tranquility, the ability to physically engage with classmates in the classroom, deli, common spaces, talking to their instructors, but to name a few. (Simply in my case, we are connecting at present more than than always through our featherbrained check-ins via Pronto or through emails. My students actually want to make sure I'm OK, likewise.) What is different near their learning environment will depend on how the instructor will deliver and connect with students. Students who signed up for an Ethnic Studies class still expect an Ethnic Studies class. But they are expecting great content, guidance, stressless class navigation and connection with the class and instructor.

How do you expect your ability to support learners through technology to exist enhanced or degraded?

It volition be enhanced. It has to be. Information technology is my social and professional responsibility to go along our learning -- whatever it takes. I will establish a partnership so that students can also provide input on what is working and what is simply not working, relevant or valuable. I tin can't only provide busywork. My content and education all the same has to affair. In addition, I look to wake up every morning time, shower, dress, put on makeup to look fresh (OK, peradventure I'll proceed my slippers) and be positive, flexible and patient. I take to.

Come April one, I still get a cheque. How many of my students won't get a check? That thought keeps me motivated and focused on my duty!

Volition the relationship between content and procedure change?

Of form it will change -- the modality volition change. The physical presence will change. The weekly design will change. The engineering science will be fluid -- depending on what is functioning, bandwidth friendly and attainable. Delivering content is piece of cake. Nosotros can all put a agglomeration of stuff on PowerPoints and ship it out. Heck, maybe add animations and cool transitions, But enabling meaning, relevancy and purpose? Well, that's where we accept to pay shut attending to our pattern, delivery and, most of import, measurable outcomes -- whether it be formative or summative.

We have to be able to apprehensive ourselves, step back from our own expectations and see where we can improve or broaden without causing collateral damage. But the connection, feedback and communication? Well, that will be augmented 100 times more with guidance that is positive, flexible and patient. In short, we take to be purveyors of empathy and content specialists.

With the "college at home" environment beingness the norm, how will you reimagine equitable access for students?

That volition exist a challenge. Equity requires the institution, the practice and personal commitment to pupil success. As an instructor, I can support my exercise and my personal commitment. I can design my courses and present myself though disinterestedness-minded lenses. Only volition the institution go far and beyond for students who might autumn into an opportunity gap in these far and beyond circumstances? I don't know. Will UCs/CSUs and private institutions hold students accountable for withdrawals in their bound 2020 transcripts? Tin a whole lab class get incompletes and provide a makeup form? Will financial aid penalize students from dropping? Institutionally, students with financial aid will be hitting difficult.

I've explained to students the option of withdrawing, but they say: 1) They tin can't considering they are on financial aid. 2) They are worried about universities penalizing them because they have a W in their transcript. 3) They remember that W'due south will reflect poorly on their collegiate options. To reimagine disinterestedness, we need radical solutions that volition not undercut students with any resource gaps.

Which changes are "forever" -- permanent changes in the pedagogy and learning landscape?

I think many instructors and students will actually savor their remote learning environs. I expect students to experience more confident in taking an online grade. And I wait instructors to want to officially teach online. In brusque, online pedagogy will become a new level of respect from traditional, face-to-face instructors, and students will dauntless new online programs.

Which seem more likely to revert to pre-coronavirus approaches, equally a new normal in higher didactics emerges?

Labs will become truly appreciated. I can totally see a student excited to play music in an ensemble form, a physical chem lab will exist highly respected and a dancer will probably curl all over the dance room. Just I believe new task skills will be introduced. That will exist adamant. Nosotros shall see. As nosotros already tin can tell, belongings an constructive Zoom meeting is a desirable skill. Who knows, maybe even instructional designers, ed-tech learner designers and app developers will finally get more respect in the job market.

What possibilities are there for rebuilding or evolving your own establishment on the far side of the COVID-xix crunch? Is this opportunity for growth through the crunch different for your other alliances (e.1000., personal learning networks or higher-ed professional organizations)? What is your emerging vision for post-crisis higher teaching in general?

I envision in my institution and in others to evolve toward supporting more online didactics and faculty development with teaching applied science tools. Kinesthesia collaborators who went far and across their duty to assistance colleagues will be appreciated, yet faculty who stayed silent volition also exist remembered. (I believe we are in an "all hands on deck" situation.) So many faculty are finding online solutions to their new remote learning environment on their own or with other non-online instructors. And online instructors are becoming ambassadors to education engineering science and effective online design. We will know what worked and didn't piece of work. And if done correctly, we can finally prepare our students for the 21st-century labor marketplace.

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Source: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2020/03/25/how-shift-remote-learning-might-affect-students-instructors-and

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