In March of 2020, the world came to a screeching halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Without any warning, businesses big and small were closed, elementary schools and high schools ordered to shut down, and colleges and universities urged to move all in-person classes to online. This chapter explores the curriculum design for digital delivery and readiness for an emergency pivot.
TopThe Pandemic
Prior to 2020, the National Center for Education Statistics' Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data showed that in the fall of 2018, more than 6.9 million students, or 35.3 percent of students in the nation, were enrolled in some manner of distance education courses at degree-granting postsecondary institutions (Wallis, 2020). Depending on the definition of an online course (which can be reported as more than X% of the course taken via the web versus a course containing any asynchronous communication versus a course taken completely online with no face-to-face experiences), approximately 15-30% of all learners in higher education took courses exclusively online (Educational Data [EdData.org], 2021) through 2020. However, as of March 2020, 99% of students across higher education were taking courses fully online (Diep, 2021), forcing faculty to pivot faster and committedly like never before
Instead of focusing solely on a method of keeping students on track to course completion and graduation, online learning became a method of keeping students and faculty safe while continuing with their respective responsibilities within the higher educational system. Components of online learning, while traditionally not designed nor structured for the entire higher educational system, is proving adaptive to massive groups (Bickle & Rucker, 2020).
While online learning has been the only consistent segment of the United States higher education population to see yearly growth for the past decade (Allen & Seaman, 2017; Seaman et al., 2012), the sector has seen enrollment losses each year since 2009. But in 2020, Fall’s approximate national enrollment in Title IV degree-granting institutions of approximately 17.7 million students saw a decline of -2.5%. This is almost twice the rate of decline in Fall 2019, which was 1.3% (EdData.org, 2021).
It seems fair to suggest that many educators saw the pandemic as more than a health crisis but as an education crisis too. How could institutions teach all students at a distance with faculty who had never taught online before?