2020 has handed everyone an unexpected card. In the past six months, companies learned how to function with a completely remote workforce. But in the education world, instructors, administrators, and campus leaders had to completely change the way they educate their students.
Gone are the days of crowded lecture halls and packed study rooms.
Earlier this week, T1V hosted a webinar focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the current status and future of higher education.
T1V featured a panel of education experts alongside moderator and T1V CEO, Mike Feldman. The panel included:
- Lisa Flashner - COO of Ellison Institute of USC
- Jodie Penrod - Senior Director, Technology of Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine / Office of Information & Learning Technologies
- Mark Henry - Educational Technology Architect of Texas A&M University’s Zachry Engineering Education Complex
Here are just a few of the key takeaways from the questions Mike Feldman asked of our webinar panelists.
What have been some of your biggest challenges since COVID-19 started, and how have you adapted to it?
Lisa Flashner of the Ellison Institute began this segment by sharing the impact that COVID-19 has had on cancer research. Since March, almost all cancer research has been suspended to make way for research being done to combat COVID-19. The long term effects of this shift will be tremendous, and so Lisa highlighted her team’s eagerness to return to ‘normal’ so that the Ellison Institute’s critical research can resume. Virtual lab access will continue to prove difficult, but with reduced capacity and enhanced safety efforts, they are starting to see individuals return to the facility.
Jodie Penrod of Ohio University commented with the quality of the student experience in mind. At the start of the global pandemic, measures were put in place to act like a “band-aid,” but now that remote and hybrid learning seems to be a permanent fixture, optimizing the University’s plan for the best learning and teaching experience is more important than ever.
Mark Henry from Texas A&M University agrees with both Lisa and Jodie. He states that research was also hit tremendously and figuring out how to produce quality research is limited when you are remote. Mark goes on to say that getting the labs up and running at full potential drove the cause for more training for hybrid learning and the distribution of hardware.
Looking ahead to the fall, how are you modifying plans for your building / campus?
There was a general consensus among the panelists that the highest priority around education right now is ensuring the health and safety of students and faculty / staff when they enter a building. Providing sanitation stations, limiting the amount of people in a room or on campus, and following the CDC provided guidelines.
But to create an optimal learning and collaboration atmosphere, the panelists also agreed that technology is critical - so that in-room students can learn while socially distant, and so that instructors and students alike can teach and learn from wherever they are.
Mark Henry, Texas A&M University, stated that even though they need to prepare for network issues with the increased amount of students working remotely, they basically “stepped into this situation totally prepared”. ThinkHub Connect active learning software has been a major asset in their curriculum for the last few years and predominantly set the course for new education plans for combined remote and in-room learning.
What technology will you be using to support distance teaching / learning / collaboration?
The panel agreed that Zoom and other video conferencing products can be limiting. As we learned from a previous T1V panel webinar, “the human brain wasn’t wired for Zoom.”
T1V’s ThinkHub collaboration software leverages distance teaching and learning for a hybrid classroom or HyFlex model so that remote and in-room participants have zero distance disparity in the education experience.
Both Lisa Flashner and Jodie Penrod are excited to be using ThinkHub MultiSite to support their collaboration efforts, whether in a classroom or research setting, connecting room-to-room or campus-to-campus.
How do you manage the training, or do you have any issues around training for these modified environments?
In today’s world, technology is a huge component of student and instructor experience.
As strange as it sounds, the pandemic benefited the technology team at Ohio University in terms of training. Jodie explained that generally in technology adoption, faculty and staff can be resistant to new technologies - but the pandemic provided the opportunity for the team to quickly adapt to new technology.
Jodie applauded their staff’s initiative to learn more about ThinkHub Connect technology and how it can benefit the student experience.
What do you think is going to happen in Spring 2021, or even a year from now? Are you planning for this already? Any predictions?
Mark Henry believes that humans are social creatures and want to be together, even if the pandemic is currently preventing that The ultimate hope is as a vaccine is developed, restrictions will be lifted and universities will begin to operate normally.
But, the development of technology has only improved the collaboration between remote participants, decreasing the sense of virtual distance disparity. This flexible technology will change the way we teach and learn… for the better.
These questions and more were answered during the COVID-19 Impact on Education webinar.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a significant impact on the future of the higher education classroom, but if people and technology continue to work together, the outcome can be amazing.
To learn more about how these education experts are overcoming these challenges in COVID-19 and get the full answers to our panel questions, be sure to watch the webinar on-demand here.
