Colleges and Universities today are embarking on a vast array of seemingly random trials to try to get through the COVID-19 pandemic. If someone were in the cat-bird seat, they could look at the wide array of approaches to how the schools are trying to adapt to what is certainly the short-term reality, and which could easily become the long-term normal. The question is whether we will be able to sort out what works and what does not work. What are we learning from these experiments?
Notre Dame in South Bend, IN is attempting to quarantine the entire campus, bringing all students back and trying to keep them on campus. Harvard is seemingly on the other end of the spectrum, keeping all students off-campus, and looking to a future where students spend only two of their four years on the Harvard campus. One school is bringing only Freshmen back to campus, while another is only bringing back Seniors. Many schools are moving to a hybrid model where classes are broken in half, and on alternate weeks, the half attends in person and the other half online. And this only covers undergraduates. Grad students have a completely different set of rules and assumptions.
As infection rates vary from campus to campus, we can expect that schools’ approaches to teaching will change during the year. Many are already planning to go entirely online after Thanksgiving through the winter. Expect chaos.
And chaos is here! Notre Dame has gone online for at least two weeks after an outbreak of 140+. Purdue has suspended 33 for breaking quarantine guidelines while committing to in-person classes. UNC has gone online after detecting four COVID-19 clusters on campus in a fraternity, two residence halls, and an off-campus apartment complex. Will any of these approaches be better than the others? It is going to be difficult to tell.
Measuring the outcomes of education seems simple, one would think. We measure GPA, Honors distinctions, class rank, etc. But one of the least measured values of the residential college education are the informal networks and the more formalized networks. (via clubs, sororities, classwork teams, etc.) Many articles in the press value a college education in terms of lifetime earnings, but what portion of that gain is from classroom learning? If all knowledge came from the classwork, graduates from online programs would have equally successful life experiences and earnings. Is it personal growth through successes and failures, through taking risks? Alas, we do not have the data to know. And we are probably not measuring the right things.
To date, there are no proponents of the theory that online education is better than in person.[1] This tendency is understandable, given the pedagogy and the learning curve for both students and faculty. At this point, we must all accept that the value of online education is, on average, less than that of in-person education, and certainly the full residential college experience. But this forms a great hypothesis. What approaches to learning will deliver the best outcomes in the post COVID world?
The environment we are in today is a rare opportunity to understand better the value-creating components of the American College Experience. We have a wide array of educational approaches. But the measures of success may be inadequate.
We at the Prometheus Endeavor view these kinds of problems as a challenge. Our approach is to ask the key questions that will enable leaders to develop better solutions.
What is your Endeavor? – What is the outcome you are trying to achieve? Is it the quality of education? Is it throughput of students? Is it retention?
What are the Resources you are willing to commit to the Endeavor?
Who are the Stakeholders, and what do they expect from the outcome? Students? Parents? Faculty? Alumni?
How do you learn from the experience? What data are you collecting? What are the outcomes you are hoping to see? How do you measure them? What components of the approach to learning are driving the value?
How do you govern this kind of experiment? Who is providing oversight? What data is restricted? How do you manage the confidentiality that is required?
Update
In the August 30, 2020 New York Times there is an article about experiments on college campuses. Most of the experiments are in the form of infection management. They range from COVID testing of dorm sewage, to campus focused apps that track contact with other students for track-and-trace of infections. UNC Charlotte is working on a system to sample waste water coming from dorms to get an early warning of infection within a sub population of the campus. RIT is getting daily reports from each student to track their health and movements. Other campuses are developing home grown apps based on the Google-Apple APIs to anonymously track contacts when an infection occurs.
These experiments are a precursor to many other experiments that will take place in the real and virtual classrooms over the coming months.
About The Prometheus Endeavor
Our mission is to apply our knowledge and management experience to further the IT and Digital Endeavors of society, its institutions, and businesses. The Prometheus Endeavor does not do consulting or represent vendors. For over 30 years, members have advised and managed some of the most successful deployments of IT.
[1] An exception of this is the claim by the President of Southern New Hampshire University who said that the best on line courses are better than some in person courses.
