Lessons Learned from the Pandemic of Opportunities
General description of the project
Our presentation focuses on the rapid reforms our ITS division made in response to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020, and is organized around the following simple principles which we found allowed us to be responsive and agile as we moved into uncharted territory:
Keep your ear to the ground: During times of crisis, such as the pandemic-induced pivot to a virtual teaching/learning/virtual environment, there are several actions that can be taken to immediately empower constituents to adapt. However, it is very important to listen to “weak signals” as Vijay Govindarajan refers to in The Three Box Solution, championing the ideas of maverick thinkers. Outside of formal action planning, one has to keep one’s ears open to ideas that come from unconventional sources that become catalysts for innovation. At our University, one of the weak signals was allowing students to access their labs from remote locations. We had the infrastructure in place, however it didn’t come to the top of our priority list. We made this virtual lab resource available overnight to students, which had huge benefits.
Think outside the box: One of the challenges we faced as the University moved into a fully virtual environment was the number of students who did not have access to a reliable Internet connection at their homes; this was particularly acute for our first-generation students and Hispanic students. While we provided them with hotspots to immediately resolve the situation, we are also working with local broadband providers to get affordable broadband access to this community of learners and educators. Bridging the digital divide is not an issue just during the pandemic, it creates lifelong opportunities for our students and our community.
Think bigger: When you are in the middle of the crisis, think about ways in which the innovations that were accelerated can be sustained post crisis. Can some of the activities that were forced to go virtual because of the pandemic become permanently virtual? Do students ever have to stand in line to get signatures for approval or accomplish administrative functions? Can Counseling, Advising and Financial Aid services be delivered in a virtual format permanently, enhancing the speed and efficiency of services to students? What other automated services such as chatbots can be rolled out to weed out inefficiencies that exist in our operation? Can students and faculty come to Campus only to participate in activities that add value to their educational experience such as labs, practicums, teamwork and problem-solving activities, and do the rest virtually in synchronous and asynchronous modes? This will negate the need to build more labs, lecture halls and work areas on Campus.
Technologies
Technologies used:
-Virtual labs: Effective in providing students to lab resources remotely
-Hotspots: Effective in giving students who previously lacked it access to broadband
-Efforts to expand universal broadband access in our community: A work in progress which we expect will result in permanent hardwired broadband access for the students in our community
-Greatly expanded use of our learning management system to move classes online: When deployed by faculty using best practices at conveyed in training by our instructional designers, effective in moving instruction from on-site to a virtual environment
-Using websites, Zoom, chatbots, and electronic form technology to move student services such as advising, financial aid, graduation check, and counseling & psychological services online: Effective in keeping student services available in a virtual environment, and also offering permanent new efficiencies
Explain project results
CSUSB is an Hispanic-Serving Institution with a student population which is 66% Hispanic. 81% of our students are first-generation in college, and 58% are low-income as measured by Pell Grants awarded. The ITS-led innovations to be discussed in our presentation helped all these students continue to succeed after the sudden pivot to online learning by providing them with broadband access, by creating remote access to needed academic resources and student services, and by training their professors in best practices in online teaching.
Why it should be considered best practice?
The summary ideas in our presentation were highly successful in sustaining a functioning university during the crucible of the COVID-19 pandemic, and can be replicated in future crises.
Highlights of your proposed presentation
As the pandemic continues to play out in the United States and countries around the world, institutions of higher education are continuing to innovate and adapt. It is not certain when universities will be able to go back to having their entire student, faculty, and staff population back on campus. Even when everyone is allowed to return, we are not sure what precautions need to be taken and what percentage of students, faculty, and staff can be on campus at one time. Whatever the future holds, we have learned a few lessons that will permanently change the landscape of higher education in the US.
In Person, On Campus presence is not always necessary: Being in the virtual world, we have learned that things can be accomplished faster and more efficiently through virtual means than face to face. Many of the services that required students to be on campus such as financial aid, change of major, and academic advising, can now be provided online. Students come to campus for three major reasons. The academic experience, including attending class and interacting with faculty and classmates; administrative tasks, including advising, registration, financial aid, etc.; and the social experience, including attending clubs and student engagement activities. What students enjoy most and are impacted the most by are the interactive aspects of their academic and social experiences. The mundane administrative activities can be permanently moved to a virtual environment.
Students are capable of a lot more than we give them credit for: Students have adjusted remarkably well to the new learning environment. While most students are not particularly thrilled with the isolation and lack of in person social interactions, they love the fact that they can get their administrative chores done online in a more efficient and timely manner. This gives institutions an opportunity to explore what services and instruction needs to be offered in person and what can be offered more effectively in a virtual format. Students who were born into the Information Age are self-sufficient. Just like video game developers keep challenging and improving the technological proficiency of this generation’s youth, higher education institutions should challenge and expect more from their students.
Faculty and Staff have discovered more ways of ensuring student success: As faculty and staff interact with students in the virtual environment, they are discovering what works and what does not work for students. For example, students are more engaged with teamwork and problem solving in Zoom sessions rather than listening to a lecture by their professor. When professors move students into Zoom breakout rooms to interact in smaller groups and discuss real world applications related to the lecture, they are learning that students are learning well and doing better in their courses. Staff in various offices that provide services to students are discovering that the bureaucracy and red tape that we put our students through to get administrative tasks done are unnecessary and students often prefer interacting with automated chatbots to having to meet with a staff member in person.
If higher education institutions don’t use this time to reinvent the way they operate they may just return to their old ways once things return to normal and reverse the progress that has been made during these difficult months. The lessons learned due to the pandemic can and should be used for a transformation of higher education that is long overdue.
The Evaluation Committee will evaluate submitted proposals based on the following criteria. Each area will be rated on a scale from 1 to 7 (1= non-satisfactory; 7 =outstanding), for a maximum of 63 points.