Redesigning the College Experience During a Pandemic

Higher education institutions are speculating if they will open their doors in the fall and how much health regulations will affect college life as we know it.

Without the certainty of face-to-face modality on campus, higher education authorities must find out what direction the next semester will take. In the uncertain landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic, options are divided among doubling down on the health regulations, optimizing the efforts spent so far to deliver quality online education, delaying the start of the semester in the fall, or even canceling it. In any scenario, the only sure thing is that this school year will be very different from the previous ones.

Most likely, no matter what modality the universities decide to adopt, the number of students will decrease considerably. Between financial crises, sick relatives, lost jobs, and government support pressured by other priorities, studies predict that the institutions could see a 20% overall decline in the number of students enrolled.

“Almost all of my students who have been admitted to top-tier colleges are reconsidering their plans for this upcoming academic year, with some submitting gap year request forms to delay the start of their freshman year so that they can have the full college experience,” said Christopher Rim, college admissions consultant and CEO of Command Education. The percentage rises when we count the international students who will surely pause their search for a foreign institution. BOSSA (Beijing Overseas Study Service Association), mentions that China, being the leading country of origin of students coming from abroad, will be quite affected by the epidemic, since “it has directly blocked between 40 to 60 percent of students from applying for university admissions or visas.”

“Almost all of my students who have been admitted to top-tier colleges are reconsidering their plans for this upcoming academic year.”

However, some solutions that have been suggested for this specific sector, as Elise Hodge points out, include offering international students a hybrid semester. Students would start their courses enrolled in the desired universities remotely and, when ideal, they will be able to follow up by attending their classes on campus in a conventional way.

What will happen in the fall semester?

Some universities are already detailing specific plans for the next semester. In the state of California in the United States, the head of the state university system pronounced that its 23 institutions will begin the fall semester virtually. This is no surprise, as in a survey conducted by The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, more than half of U.S. colleges were found to be considering remaining in this modality for the rest of the year.

Other institutions, such as the University of Notre Dame, plan to open their doors for the fall and implement rigorous health regimens, such as the tracing of contacts, quarantine and isolation protocols, social distancing, and the mandatory use of masks in public. Similarly, Harvard also plans to open the campus but is preparing to have most of its classes remotely. However, while some universities are announcing their return in the autumn, the decision about whether or not the college campuses will reopen in the fall semester will not be the decision of the universities. It will be the political and health authorities in each country who will determine when and how the institutions of higher education will reopen for classes.

Back to “normal” face-to-face lessons

The decision to open college classrooms could be a riskier and challenging course of action. The New York Times walked through some hypothetical situations that could arise in this scenario. These situations ranged from “fever checkpoints at the entrances to academic buildings. One-way paths across the grassy quad. Face masks required in classrooms and dining halls. And a dormitory turned quarantine facility for any students exposed to the coronavirus.” The idea of implementing mobile apps was even discussed, where students would have to report their symptoms daily, and only then would they receive a pass to enter their classrooms.

However, these measures cannot deal with situations that might occur outside the campus and classrooms. With students eager to return to university life and first-year students who wish to experience the freedom that college life offers, it is almost impossible to ensure that these measures will be adopted, given that empty stadiums and Zoom parties are not very appealing.

Cancel the semester if campuses are still closed?

On the other hand, some institutions share that the most sensible decision is to cancel the next school year altogether, considering that the in-person experience is essential for the continuity of the school year. “An autumn semester online is not a possibility […] We did not have any choice except to be online in the middle of the semester, but it would be academically irresponsible to bring the next full semester online. It takes 70 to 80 hours a week to maintain a semblance of instruction. It would not be physically possible to sustain the same teaching effort. If the normal academic standards were applied, a large number of students would fail. If it is not possible to resume in-person instruction in the fall, the only responsible course of action would be to cancel the semester and close the universities.” A report from Eduventures explains that there is no doubt that many institutional authorities are skeptical of being able to emulate the university experience remotely.

Also, many professors feel vindicated in their belief that the essence of the university and the campus are integral. “Yes, the physical campus facilitates higher education fundamentals—learning communities, diversity of ideas, human formation—but if something, in this case, COVID-19, shuts that down, surely the right move is not to give up, postpone, or settle, but to recreate those fundamentals in new ways. If Fall 2020 can’t happen on campus, we need to find a way for it to happen, vibrant and unchecked, online.”

Higher expectations for a new online semester

If classes continue through remote education, the expectations of quality instruction from students and families will increase considerably because the universities will have had the entire summer to address the complications that may have arisen during the emergency transition that began in March.

“If there will ever be a time to rethink the nature of college education, this is it.”

Chris Hakala, who directs the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Scholarships at Springfield College, said to Inside Higher Ed that “the kind of remote learning that most campuses delivered on the fly during this spring’s crisis may have been sufficient for the moment. But it was not nearly as good as the instruction most colleges normally deliver in person, or that’s available to students in many high-quality online programs.”

Universities will need to figure out what steps to take to raise the level of quality of the online classes that were being offered during this semester. Synchronous sessions extended remote lectures, and shared documents will not be enough to retain a student body used to better educational methods. “If there will ever be a time to rethink the nature of college education, this is it. In the face of the current pandemic, colleges and universities need to devise strategies to adapt to an extraordinarily uncertain environment not just to address the immediate crisis, but the longer term,” says Steven Mintz.

How to accomplish this?

Eduventures argues that to create an effective remote education, one must start with the perspective taken toward that modality. “If presidents, faculty, and staff — and students — approach a remote fall term with the attitude that online learning is inherently substandard and no amount of imagination or will effort change that, then the result will either be a poor facsimile of student experience or no higher education at all until the pandemic has passed.”

The same study suggests that for virtual classrooms to offer attractive educational sessions, specific measures must be taken:

• Flipped classroom: Instead of expecting students and teachers to read the class material together during sessions, reverse the order. Curate readings for the students to generate questions at home and then discuss them in the synchronous session.

• Rethink the rhythm of the class: Conduct immersive and compelling discussions with fewer readings, instead of expecting students to maintain the same pace of concentration during extended class sessions.

• Asynchronous Sessions: To avoid instructor burnout, ensure pedagogical variety, and help energize the class, teachers should also consider live sessions that contribute to text-based discussions.

• Interaction: To create intimacy and synergy among the students, the faculty could facilitate live group interactions with classmates at least twice a week to discuss class material.

• Materials: Use digital resources already available on platforms such as Coursera.

• Let students lead some classes: Create a different approach by allowing the classmates to conduct specific sessions by themselves focused on clarifying concerns and questions.

Inside Higher Ed for its part, establishes specific critical points for this model to work:

• Educating the whole student: The crisis should remind us that our institutions should promote not only the cognitive development of students but also their well-being, including their mental and physical health.

• Listen to experiences: Higher education institutions should listen more carefully to students’ feedback and be prepared to bring about changes as necessary.

Also, it is suggested to create an education that is systematized, compact, and centralized by areas, expecting that the development of the online class will not be left solely to the teacher and his preferences. In this way, there would be an objective balance at the time of offering the courses.

The challenge of extracurricular courses, sports teams, and social life in an online environment

The attempt to recreate the university experience could be the most significant challenge for remote education. It is undeniable that for many students aged 17 and 18, this factor – informal socialization, athletic events, extracurricular classes, concerts, parties – is one of the decisive ones for them to continue with higher education. “If the universities ignore those resources and limit their focus solely to academics, they turn the traditional college experience into the adult learning experience,” says Doug Lederman.

Eduventures explains that while college sports teams are a complex area to cover in an online environment, customized training could be generated for students and guided by the coaches. While online classes will not be able to reproduce “casual conversations, meetings in the hallway, and the fraternity experience,” he points out that extracurricular experiences such as the arts, politics, religious life, and volunteering are all candidates for remote access during this period. Likewise, socialization among students can be encouraged through resources aimed at vulnerable students, such as the Buddy System, already hosted in several traditional face-to-face environments.

Richard Garrett, the Principal Researcher at Eduventures, mentions that the “essence of higher education is not defined by these physical objects. It can persist between engaged faculty, staff, and students. We just have to reimagine how.” The repercussions in the matter of education that this pandemic will generate will not be permanent, but how the universities are coupled to the panoramas of emergency will remain as a precedent for future situations where we have to respond to crisis scenarios. As Elise Hodge puts it, “by being flexible and agile as an organization, your university will be able to ensure students can pursue their education in times of crisis, no matter what the future brings.”

Paola Villafuerte

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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0