Immediate Priority
The NCOE’s first collaborative effort is to provide guidance on COVID-19 pandemic institutional responses, specifically those that feature online remote teaching. Leveraging the knowledge that exists within each organization’s membership, the NCOE partners will be issuing guidance on research that should be guiding postsecondary online initiatives. As conditions change, the NCOE partners will continue to collaborate on themes relevant to online learning.
Academic Continuity Planning
From cybersecurity attacks and natural disasters to the Coronavirus Pandemic, many institutions have been forced to develop academic continuity plans under extraordinary circumstances. For institutions with academic continuity plans, leaders are forced to test the viability of their work under complex and rapidly changing conditions. The leaders of OLC, QM, UPCEA, and WCET wish to take a moment to thank our members who have been working extremely hard to implement plans, acquire technical support, support faculty, and prepare students for any eventuality.
For those institutions without academic continuity plans we believe work should begin immediately. While the current conditions present a unique opportunity to position the delivery of instruction online as a key component in any continuity discussion, make no mistake, these conditions are not ideal for the development of quality online learning experiences. Online learning requires intentional instructional design as well as an exploration of the learning modality and pedagogy that must be aligned to a larger institutional strategy with intentionality, and collaboratively operationalized by various stakeholder groups within and across organizations.
We support institutional leaders that are considering the delivery of instruction via online technologies and are cautiously optimistic that once Coronavirus (COVID-19) concerns abate that those same leaders will more deeply engage with online learning pedagogy, strategy, and quality assurance practices reflective of the needs of those engaged in teaching and learning online.
Transitioning Face-to-Face Courses Online
As leaders in the field of online learning, the four organizations would like to express appreciation and admiration for the leadership that online educators and administrators are taking in helping minimize academic disruption across the nation. Facilitating the development and offering of high-quality online courses and programs can be challenging under the best of circumstances. Facilitating the transition of classes designed for face-to-face pedagogical practices, including the potential development of new types of assessments, into an online format during an academic term is challenging work.
Over the next several weeks, we anticipate there will be increased conversations about the effectiveness of online education, the role online education can and should play in continuity planning, how to effectively transition face-to-face courses online during a crisis, and how to best support both faculty and learners who might unexpectedly need to navigate online learning spaces. These are all critical conversations that the four organizations are working to address, both independently with their members as well as collaboratively for higher education. We will shortly be releasing plans for joint research, writing, and sharing of information about online education during the upcoming year.
In the meantime, we would like to offer the following thoughts and advice:
Acknowledge differences in face-to-face courses migrating online in an emergency vs. courses designed to be online.
Provide faculty with needed academic, design, and technical support.
Help students access the technologies they need.
Ensure that all educational materials and activities are accessible for all students.
Expand academic support services in the online environment.
Don’t judge the effectiveness of online learning based solely on the outcomes of face-to-face courses migrated online in an emergency.