Abstract
This case study describes how a global campus team at a mid-sized state college helped facilitate the institutional shift to remote functionality during the COVID-19 pandemic. The college's strategies include interdepartmental partnerships, frequent communication, professional development, student and staff support, and technology implementation. The chapter provides a reflection on the lessons learned, a retrospective realization that the team employed Kotter's eight-step process for leading change, and recommendations for advancing best practices. In addition, the narrative highlights the attention placed on the global team's efforts to humanize technology during the transition process. Humanization helps mitigate the challenges that can result from change and can be beneficial in the learning process. The team infused this characteristic throughout trainings and webinars to ease the disruption of system-wide adjustment.
TopOrganization Background
The authors’ institution, herein referred to as “the college” or “the institution”, is a mid-sized state college that provides educational services to approximately 28,000 students each year. Courses that lead to certifications, associate of arts and science degrees, and bachelor's degrees are offered at the institution. Students can complete courses in face-to-face, blended, and online modalities. The college strategically created a Global campus to help facilitate online growth trends experienced by the institution. For nearly a decade, the Global team collaborated with faculty to design and develop online courses that led to degrees offered fully online. Since the launch of these online programs in 2012, the institution has experienced significant growth in online enrollment. In the five years leading up to the pandemic, the number of students taking online courses increased from 41.7% to 65.4% of the entire student body.
Figure 1.
Percentage of the College student population who are online learners
The Global team consists of a campus president, a digital program development and services team, video services, learning management system (LMS) administrators and technical support staff, a faculty trainer, student success partners, and a project coordinator. The team supports many stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff, and administrators. To do so, the Global team utilizes project management to track initiatives the team is working on for internal and external reporting. Additionally, the team incorporates a cloud-based library that is used to organize projects and documents that are needed for course design, training, and sharing institutional information. This level of organization was beneficial when the college transitioned to remote learning and working.
TopSetting The Stage
In early March 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. The declaration occurred when the college was preparing to close operations prior to its annual spring break. COVID-19 was still very new, conditions were constantly changing, and recommendations were fluid. As more details emerged, the state’s Governor and Education Commissioner made the decision to suspend face-to-face instruction and close all postsecondary institutions for regular activities through at least the spring 2020 semester. This announcement came the Saturday before employees and students were due to return to campus from their week-long holiday.
While online courses resumed after spring break, the college suspended face-to-face and hybrid offerings for an additional week to allow time for transitioning to the online modality. College leadership tasked the Global team with designing and delivering training sessions on a variety of topics to help faculty, students, and staff become more familiar with the LMS, the technology tools available, and how they could effectively use them in the online environment. Technical job aids, training sessions, and support systems were created and made available to all members of the college community. During that week, the Global team supported faculty and students by converting over 2,200 course sections to remote instruction.
The successful navigation of the pandemic was achieved in a holistic manner. Attention was given to student, faculty, and staff safety, plus the college ensured that educational quality was not diluted during the modality shift. While the institution was prepared for online learning, the abrupt transition to both remote instruction and work, plus the shuttering of the physical aspects of college life, presented new challenges.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Digital Transformation: The process of optimizing and transforming the institution’s operations, strategic directions, and value proposition through deep and coordinated shifts in culture, workforce, and technology.
Hybrid: A method of course delivery that combines in-person and online learning.
Humanization: When relating to technology, humanization is the process of making technology tools appear less intimidating, more approachable, and related to the task at hand.
User Interface: The space where humans interact with a website, application, computer program, home appliance, or computing machine. User interface design aims to be easy or intuitive for users, and there are several interfaces under this umbrella including graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and voice-controlled interfaces (VUIs).
Digital Divide: The gap which exists between society’s growing reliance on technological devices and the Internet and the percentage of the population who do not have access to these items and networks.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL): A learning environment principle that seeks to optimize teaching and course content in a way that works for all learners.