With three daughtersOlivia, 15, Emma, 14, and Ava, 10and a career in elementary-level education, Howard School first-grade teacher Angie Torres Milleris well positioned to offer tips for home schooling to house-bound families.

Recognizing that parenting is one thing and teaching another (not to mention the near-impossible task of simultaneously working), Torres Miller said I started worrying that parents wouldnt be able to keep their kids busy. So, she started the Facebook page, Learn, Play and Grow, a space for sharing posts and videos that parents can use to help keep their kids occupied with meaningful activities.

Focusing on easy-to-make projects like using a toy dinosaur to project a large shadow that children can then outline on a big sheet of paper, or Jell-O trays with items embedded that toddlers can dig-out, Torres Miller hopes the activities can buy harried parents a short respite, Something for kids to do even for 15 minutes.

I dont want kids to take the brunt of the stress parents are feeling, she said. Thus far, 1,035 people have joined her Facebook page and Torres Millers enthusiasm is palpable when she says, It feels so good! Every day I post five activities.

Serving a wide range of kids of different ages and different needs, Torres Miller has also been providing activities for students on the autism spectrum, trying, she says, to pull-in as much as I can. All this, while continuing to teach her first-grade class at Howard School for two-hours each morning via Zoom, then taking over story time afterwards, as staff share the load of teaching specialized subjects.

I hear friends of mine say, Im ready for the kids to go back to school, Torres Miller related. She sounds an empathetic note when she adds, I feel so bad, (a lot of parents) dont know where to start. She hopes her Facebook activities provide some support for her growing online community: Im trying to helpthey seem so stuck.

To see Torres Millers Facebook educational posts, search for the group Learn, Play and Grow on Facebook.

Link:
Howard School teacher offers online education activities | News - Coastal View News

India has been under lockdown for more than a month in a desperate attempt to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Even when the lockdown gets lifted eventually, the government may not allow large congregations in restricted physical spaces. It is almost certain that educational campuses will not be fully populated any time soon.

Universities and colleges were in the middle of the second semester of their academic year when the lockdown was enforced. There was a great deal of anxiety, particularly about the graduating batches of students, lest the ongoing session should be declared a zero semester. This prompted a number of local initiatives in response to the exigency. There were sporadic attempts from individual teachers to reach out to their students and keep them engaged. A few universities made hasty arrangements for teachers to continue to hold their classes virtually through video conferencing services such as Zoom. The transition to virtual modes was relatively less difficult for those institutions that had, even prior to the lockdown, adopted learning management system platforms like Blackboard or Moodle. All the above were well-meaning attempts, albeit somewhat impromptu, to keep the core educational processes going through this period.

Also read | Online learning out of reach for many

There was a report in the media on April 13, 2020 quoting the Chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC) as saying, among other things, that to maintain social distancing, online learning and e-education were the only way out, and that it was the need of the hour for students, teachers and the education system as a whole. This statement was clearly meant to prepare the higher education community for the exigencies of a protracted and indefinite period of closure of campuses.

However, close on the heels of this, it was also reported that online education was likely to be adopted as a strategy to enhance the gross enrolment ratio in higher education. The Chairman of the UGC told the news agency ANI: We are seeing at this time of COVID-19 and even later when all of this (is) over, to give a push to online education. It is important for improvement in the gross enrolment ratio (GER) in the country. This prompts several questions about the appropriateness of what may well be an effective contingency measure to tide over the pandemic crisis to be deployed as a long-term strategy for enhancing enrolment in higher education. The following are three such questions: one, how far will online education help support greater access to and success in higher education among those who are on the margins? Two, how equipped are online and other digital forms of education to support the depth and diversity of learning in higher education? And three, is there an unstated political motivation for this apparent shift in strategy? We will address these questions briefly here.

Higher education today has an unprecedented influx of students who are first-generation aspirants. They have no cultural capital to bank on while struggling their way through college. Access is not merely enrolment. It also includes effective participation in curricular processes, which for those on the margins would mean first, to negotiate through language and social barriers. These students are also from the other side of the digital divide which makes them vulnerable to a double disadvantage if digital modes become the mainstay of education. Unless they receive consistent hand-holding and backstopping from teachers and peers, they tend to remain on the margins and eventually drop out or fail. It is therefore necessary to think deeply and gather research-based evidences on the extent to which online education can be deployed to help enhance the access and success rates.

Coronavirus | In the time of the pandemic, classes go online and on air

Acquisition of given knowledge that can be transmitted didactically by a teacher or a text constitutes only one minor segment of curricular content. It is this segment that is largely amenable to online and digital forms of transaction. Disciplines, particularly at the undergraduate level, which are textbook-based and pretend to be relatively stable bodies of certitudes, lend themselves somewhat to such transaction. But learning in higher education means much more than this. It involves development of analytical and other intellectual skills, the ability to critically deconstruct and evaluate given knowledge, and the creativity to make new connections and syntheses. It also means to acquire practical skills, explore, inquire, seek solutions to complex problems, learn to work in teams and more. All these by and large assume direct human engagement not just teacher-student interaction, but also peer interactions, including informal ones. Learning often happens through osmosis in social settings. Deconstructing given knowledge in relative isolation is never the same as doing it through a dynamic group process.

Arguably, some of this can, to some extent, be built on to a digital platform. But curricular knowledge has a tendency to adjust its own contours according to the mode of transaction and the focus of evaluation. It gets collapsed into largely information-based content when transacted through standard and uniform structures of teaching-learning and examination.

While digital forms of learning have the potential to enable students to pursue independent learning, conventional and digital forms of education should not be considered mutually exclusive. Online learning needs to be understood as one strand in a complex tapestry of curricular communication that may still assign an important central role to direct human engagement and social learning.

Several institutions of open and distance learning (ODL) had been established in India and other countries during the mid-1960s to 1980s. This was a consequence of explorations for less expensive models for provisioning access to higher education to new generations of aspirants. As has been argued elsewhere, ODL may also have been considered by governments at that time as a safe strategy (in the light of the many instances of campus turbulence) for managing mass aspirations for higher education without necessarily effecting large congregations on campuses (Menon, 2016). One wonders whether there is a similar unstated motivation behind the present enthusiasm for online education.

(Shyam Menon is a Professor at the Central Institute of Education, University of Delhi and former Vice Chancellor, Ambedkar University Delhi)

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Limitations of online learning - The Hindu

The Electric Utility Fleet Managers Conference now offers an online education connection to help people in the electric utility industry access its educational programs and to provide a forum for sharing professional knowledge.

The EUFMCs annual conference in Williamsburg, Virginia, each spring features educational presentations by experts from utility fleets and related suppliers, as well as roundtable discussions in which fleet managers can share information to help each other solve problems and improve operations.

The organizations online Education Connections at https://eufmc.com/connect.html lets anyone ask or answer questions.

EUFMC media coordinator Seth Skydel said, TheEUFMC Education Connectionis now reaching attendees regularly with valuable information on current and pertinent topics. In the Education Connection Archive visitors to the site will find questions and answers on COVID-19 response subjects related to fleet operations.

Skydel notes that, so far, topics on the site include Connecting with Shop Employees, Prioritizing Work with Operations, Maintaining Staffing, Properly Sanitizing Vehicles, and Addressing CDL Renewal Issues.

Additional topics will also be added.

Continue reading here:
EUFMC Now Offers Online Educational Forum - Lift and Access

After Harvard administrators announced Monday that the fall semester may take place online, faculty have begun preparing in earnest for the possibility of continued remote teaching.

This spring, instructors had less than two weeks from the day the University announced all classes would move online to the first day of online classes to transition their courses to a virtual format. If classes continue remotely in the fall, several department chairs said the summer would give them time to develop a more robust online educational model but added they may also have to cancel or postpone certain classes centered on in-person experiences.

While many faculty said earlier this semester that they felt prepared to deliver classes online, they also encountered unforeseen difficulties after the transition happened. Faced with the task of remotely proctoring students in different time zones, many shifted to open-note examinations, placing faith in the Colleges Honor Code to prevent cheating.

But now after Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Claudine Gay told faculty in a Monday email to immediately begin planning for a possible online fall professors must figure out how to deliver an excellent and equitable learning experience for all students amid the pandemic. Gay previously said that doing so would require rigorous and creative solutions.

So far, around 300 faculty have sought out resources from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning the FASs teaching support center to help transition to online instruction, according to the centers faculty director, Robert A. Lue.

To meet the demand, the Bok Center offered faculty a variety of consultations, workshops, self-paced modules on online learning, as well as an option to request that Bok Center staff observe their courses and provide feedback.

Lue said the Bok Center is preparing for multiple different scenarios next fall and may work with several academic departments, as well as instructors of large courses, to help them plan over the summer.

One thing thats crucial is that the Harvard curriculum will be excellent. Everyone is committed to that, he said. Were going to be working super hard all summer long.

Comparative Literature chair David N. Damrosch said he and nearly all of his colleagues in the department have used Bok Center offerings to transition their courses online. He plans to encourage faculty in his department to go back to the center over the summer to develop their courses.

If in the fall, were doing a full Zoom semester, that will take some extra thought, though I think were three quarters of the way there now, Damrosch said.

Economics department chair Jeremy C. Stein said the transition has exceeded his expectations for what could be achieved online.

When the news first came out, I was like, Oh my gosh, I dont even see why we would continue the class, he said.

Stein added that getting to know his students in person in the first half of the semester made the process of moving online easier.

It is obviously a much more challenging proposition to do a semester from start to finish online, he said.

Other departments, however, have run into conundrums in attempting to conduct laboratory courses online.

Physics chair Subir Sachdev said his department will not be able to offer components of some of its classes or even entire courses if students are not able to return to campus this fall.

Sachdev said he is already considering what to do about fall courses that would typically be taught exclusively through labs, such as Physics 191: Advanced Laboratory and Physics 123: Laboratory Electronics.

If the fall is entirely remote, then we may have to completely redesign that course or offer something else in the hope that the students would take that course when they eventually come back, Sachdev said. Theres no completely online substitute for a complete lab course like Physics 191.

Director of Science Education Logan S. McCarty 96, who has been helping faculty across the Sciences division transition their courses online, said some Chemistry courses that work with toxic materials such as Chemistry 145: Experimental Inorganic Chemistry would likewise have to be postponed.

One possible solution may be to offer students three credits for taking the lecture portion of a four-credit course in the fall, then one credit for the lab component once campus reopens, McCarty said.

McCarty said the summer will offer time to transform lecture-style courses from a hastily-planned Zoom course to a high-quality Harvard X-type course, referring to Harvards online education platform. He said such courses could include filmed science demonstrations, quizzes, and guest speakers.

We could create a highly produced, polished, really good experience, where the lecture part of the class would be far superior than what weve been able to throw together on Zoom, McCarty said.

Physics professor Amir Yacoby, who helps teach the laboratory component of Physics 15b: Introductory Electromagnetism and Statistical Physics, wrote in an email that the lab staff was able to meet most of its learning goals this semester despite the remote format. The staff recorded videos of themselves conducting experiments before campus closed, and students remotely analyzed the video data, wrote papers, and participated in discussions.

This was not a typical semester. However, we have maintained active student engagement, enthusiasm, and learning despite the remote modality, Yacoby wrote.

The lab staff are discussing ways students may be able to collect data at home in the fall, Yacoby said in an interview. He added that his course already focuses on creating simple models that allow students to puzzle through phenomenon on their own.

Overall, I believe that we can replicate our activities and maintain 95 percent of our goals remotely, he said.

Staff writer James S. Bikales can be reached at james.bikales@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @jamepdx.

Staff writer Kevin R. Chen can be reached at kevin.chen@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @kchenx.

See the article here:
Harvard Faculty Prepare for the Possibility of Online Classes in the Fall | News - Harvard Crimson

We look at the impact of the pandemic on schools, universities, students, parents, teachers and professors and who is at the table to shape what happens next. We now have an economic crisis on top of the public health crisis, and the ways that were choosing to educate children is simply unequal and is going to lead to an educational crisis, says education scholar and Cornell University professor Noliwe Rooks, author of Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education.

AMYGOODMAN:This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The Quarantine Report. Im Amy Goodman in New York. Juan Gonzlez is co-hosting from New Jersey, as we turn to the impact of the pandemic on schools, universities, students, parents, teachers and professors. Here in New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic, home to the largest school district in the United States, public schools have been closed since March 16th. At least 68 Education Department staffers have died from coronavirus, including 28 teachers, 25 teachers assistants, also administrators, office workers, school aides, food service workers, guidance counselors, a parent coordinator and a technology specialist.

On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new grading system for the rest of the coronavirus-disrupted school year and said some so-called underperforming students may be enrolled in virtual summer school. This is is Mayor de Blasio.

MAYORBILLDEBLASIO:We want to make sure the grading policy we use now fits the moment were in now and the reality of our kids, our parents, our educators now. So, the chancellor, his team worked with parents, teachers, elected officials, advocates, listened to all different viewpoints. Weve had a series of conversations confirming the direction of this policy. And it came down to the notion of what we owe our kids at this moment: first of all, flexibility.

AMYGOODMAN:This comes as the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest school system in the U.S., has announced no student will receive an F grade. California Governor Gavin Newsom said the states academic year could start in late July or early August, and some K-through-12 campuses may reopen to offer summer school programs.

Meanwhile, here in New York, at least 12, and possibly as many as 17, faculty and staff in the public City University of New York system have died since the coronavirus pandemic began, including five at Brooklyn College. This comes as universities nationwide face massive financial losses from closing down their campuses and moving instruction online during the pandemic.

For more on all this, were joined by education scholar Noliwe Rooks, the W.E.B. Du Bois professor of literature at Cornell University, where shes also director of American studies and a professor in Africana studies. Shes the author ofCutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education, joining us from her home in Ithaca, New York. Shell be the featured guest tonight at avirtual community conversationon the future of public schools in Queens afterCOVID-19.

Professor Rooks, welcome toDemocracy Now!What has the coronavirus pandemic exposed about education in America?

NOLIWEROOKS:Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me.

I think, as weve seen in so many other areas, the pandemic is exposing, just shining a light on, inequalities that are already there, as we see people who are impacted, who are falling ill, tend to be poor, tend to be Black, Latinx. The children who are suffering the most with this closing down of schools share similar kinds of demographics.

One of the things that is perplexing and hopefully we can come out of the other end of this really taking this seriously is we had absolutely no conversation. There were no emergency plans for closing of schools, for ceasing education. When it became clear that it was putting teachers and students and, as you mentioned, the numbers of educational workers who have lost their lives or fallen ill attempting to stay in classrooms, we had no plans for what happens if you take schooling offline. We quickly, across the country, New York City and elsewhere, decided on remote education.

There are two things about that that are particularly disturbing. One, the fact that something as central to communities, as central to children, as central to vulnerable communities as public education public education is not just about education for vulnerable communities. Its also about healthcare. Its also about mental health stability. Its about for some kids, its about where you get your clothes washed. Its about where you get the food youre going to eat during the day. To take something that central offline, in a hodgepodge, in a rush, without even thinking that disaster preparation should account for, like, what we do in the absence.

The second thing is, what we have put in place instead of in-person education is online schooling. What education scholars, what scholars this is not even an open question anymore know is online education advantages some children and disadvantages, severely disadvantages, others. Communities that cannot have easy access to fast, to stable internet, it matters. The ways that those children are able to learn, to keep up, to have their learning abilities evaluated, you just cant do it as easily. A majority of poor Black and Latinx families access their internet through their phone, so theres additional charges that are racked up when they have to use their phones to try to access learning. We know that. We also know that in terms of standardized tests, in terms of closing gaps in educational learning, online learning consistently performs worse than any other delivery method. We know that from 20 years worth of research. Its not something new.

So, in this moment of crisis which it was a crisis something had to happen. You know, it wasnt couldnt be planned for. Thats what a disaster is. We both shut down schools in a way that further harmed certain kids, and we instituted a kind of learning thats going to cause an educational pandemic once these schools reopen.

JUANGONZLEZ:Well, Professor Rooks, I wanted to ask you. At Rutgers University, one of my teams I teach investigative reporting. I had one of my teams, thats doing a project on the coronavirus, did a survey of several hundred Rutgers students precisely on this issue of remote teaching. And the figures they came up with were astounding. Eighty-five percent of the students who responded to the survey said that their ability to concentrate, in the shift to online classes 85% of them said was extremely affected or very much affected. And also, 71% of them said that their home environment was poor for being able to actually participate in the classes, in online classes. So, there is a this is at the university level.

NOLIWEROOKS:Right.

JUANGONZLEZ:Now take this down to the public school level. Your sense of the impact that this is having even on the ability of students to learn?

NOLIWEROOKS:Right. You know, were seeing things like children who are sitting on a sidewalk in front of a McDonalds because theres stable Wi-Fi there, looking for some Wi-Fi so that they can in fact complete the assignments. They want to learn. They want to keep up. They want to do well. But this form of education makes it difficult.

Much like your students at Rutgers, I have students all across the socioeconomic spectrum in my classes. I have students who went back to homes that were housing insecure in New York City, in various family shelters, where the Wi-Fi is spotty at best. And I have students whose families became involved inICEactions in the period between the declaration of the emergency and when they had to go home, and trying to navigate all of that; and now students, you know, whose parents are unemployed, whose family members have died. So, I know, as you do, firsthand, from a college perspective, how disruptive this is.

Its not a leap to think, you know, students who were already at risk, who were already vulnerable, who were already in families worried about their ability to make ends meet, we now have an economic crisis on top of the public health crisis. And the ways that were choosing to educate children is simply unequal and is going to lead to an educational crisis, an educational pandemic, on the other side.

You cannot ask students to perform well with a medium that requires a lot of concentration. You really have to pay attention, and you have to know how to make your computer work if it goes off. You have to know what to do if your Wi-Fi all of a sudden goes down, in the midst of trying to learn new concepts, of trying to learn foundational knowledge that youre going to need to continue to move through the educational system. It is disruption on top of disruption on top of disruption for communities and children who can least afford it.

JUANGONZLEZ:Im also wondering if youve been following the experiment that Los Angeles unlike many of the other places around the country, in Los Angeles, the local public television station immediately switched to having different bands of its spectrum to provide instruction to different classes. I havent heard this happening in many other places around the country, using public television, which is obviously accessible to many more people, to be able to get instruction out to students.

NOLIWEROOKS:Thats a great idea. And that is no, I have not heard about that, and I had not been following it.

I do know, all over the country, though, you are seeing businesses, parents, activists and families get together to talk about what would work best for them, what they think needs to happen. There have been some calls for allowing children to access the Wi-Fi in public schools. We cant have instruction take place in New York City public schools for a variety of reasons, but is it the case that children on school grounds could not access that Wi-Fi in order to have something stable? There are people who are asking for creativity in this moment.

And certainly, as we think about what happens on the other side, we dont know when schools are going to open up again. We dont know what form. We dont know. But we know that theres going to be a other side of this. And as we reach that other side, Im hopeful that we do not repeat some of the unintentional mistakes that were made when we shut things down, when we did not ask, school by school, neighborhood by neighborhood, What do you need from us? What is it that give them a seat at the table. Give folks who are most impacted a seat at the table and say, just ask the question, How can we bring these schools back online in a way that does not disadvantage your children? What do you know that we need to know? And I think were at a point in the crisis where we need that kind of creativity and collaboration.

AMYGOODMAN:What about the mental health of young people right now, who are at home, who, you know, in a lot of cases, either they dont have access to screens or their parents didnt want them to, now of course online all the time? And also, this vision you have of the future? You have the president of Brown University saying if schools dont reopen in the fall higher education higher education is imperiled.

NOLIWEROOKS:Right.

AMYGOODMAN:Now, most kids go to public schools

NOLIWEROOKS:Exactly.

AMYGOODMAN: whether were talking about community colleges, whether were talking about public universities. What about all of this, that we dont even know whats going to happen, and the inequitable, very different kind of endowments that the Ivy Leagues have versus the rest of higher education in this country? Are we going to see a closing of hundreds of schools?

NOLIWEROOKS:Right. You know, one of the things the conversation about higher education is sort of mirroring the conversation that were having about K-12 in that were tending to were not. Our public policy, our sense of urgency is not around children who are most in need or institutions that are serving children who are most in need.

The vast majority, well over 50%, well over 60%, of Black and Latinx kids who get BAs, who get college degrees, do so at community colleges or for-profit universities, not at four-year institutions, and certainly not at schools like one that I teach in which I teach. But the conversation about reopening colleges and universities has so far excluded community colleges almost wholly. Im hearing very little in the national media about what is the impact on community colleges, where most of these kids are actually being served.

Its a similar phenomena that youre finding with K-12, where theres almost no conversation about the kind and the quality of instruction thats even taking place online based on the socioeconomic background of the kids. Some kids are having some of the plans entail them having limited like 40 minutes a week or two 40-minute sessions a week, that actually involve the computer. And the rest of the times, not even online, parents are being asked to step in, are being given different kinds of worksheets and plans, and they are being asked to step in and to help ensure that kids are completing this work. The parents have different abilities to offer that kind of help.

So, in both K-12 as well as in higher education, as is so often the case, our public policy is not starting from the bottom up. Its starting from the top down. Its starting with what works best. In a time of crisis when were all impacted, its still asking, What works best for the most wealthy?

AMYGOODMAN:Well, of course, this is a conversation that well have to continue. Noliwe Rooks, we want to thank you for joining us, the W.E.B. Du Bois professor of literature at Cornell University, author ofCutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education.

Read more:
Education Crisis: From Pre-K to Higher Ed, Students Face Unequal Access During Coronavirus Shutdown - Pressenza, International Press Agency

(WBNG) -- The New York Hunter Education course is required to purchase a hunter license in the state.

It's typically offered in-person, but because of the coronavirus, it's now being offered online.

The online course cost $19.95, a new fee put in place by the software developer, which isn't required for the in-person classes.

"We are volunteers, we don't get paid, the DEC doesn't get paid, the only money they get paid from is when you go to get their license," said Broome County hunter safety coordinator Alan Hektor.

While the online class is convenient, hunting officials are voicing concerns about the course being offered in the non-traditional way.

"When we have the training here we do field work. We actually take the students out to the fire range, as you can hear in the background, and we let them shoot state guns," said Hektor.

Hektor says there are things he teaches his students hands-on during a typical eight hour course.

For example, loading your vehicle with your firearm or crossing a fence with your firearm.

Hektor says those field lessons are important for one reason.

"Safety. Our number one concern is safety for the hunter in the field," he said.

Hektor also says the instructors teaching the in-person classes have years of knowledge.

"Most of the instructors are old like myself. My father who is 96 and has been an instructor for 73 years. So we pass on our experiences to the new students," he said.

Having an instructor in the same room allows them to share some real-life experiences.

"People fall out of tree stands, you would not believe it. Experienced hunters, turkey hunters shoot each other. It's things that we pick up on and we tell them there's certain things they can do to prevent incidents," said Hektor.

The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation says the course will be available online until June 30.

For more information on how to sign up, click here.

View post:
NY Hunter Education course being offered online - WBNG-TV

This article is part of our latest Learning special report, which focuses on the challenges of online education during the coronavirus outbreak.

A professor at Loyola University New Orleans taught his first virtual class from his courtyard, wearing a bathrobe and sipping from a glass of wine. Faculty at Lafayette College, in Easton, Penn., trained in making document cameras at home using cardboard and rubber bands.

Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y., set up drive-up Wi-Fi stations for faculty members whose connections werent reliable enough to let them upload material to the internet. And students in a musicology course at Virginia Tech were assigned to create TikTok videos.

The disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic has prompted cobbled-together responses ranging from the absurd to the ingenious at colleges and universities struggling to continue teaching even as their students have receded into diminutive images, in dire need of haircuts, on videoconference checkerboards.

But while all of this is widely being referred to as online higher education, thats not really what most of it is, at least so far. As for predictions that it will trigger a permanent exodus from brick-and-mortar campuses to virtual classrooms, all indications are that it probably wont.

What we are talking about when we talk about online education is using digital technologies to transform the learning experience, said Vijay Govindarajan, a professor at Dartmouths Tuck School of Business. That is not what is happening right now. What is happening now is we had eight days to put everything we do in class onto Zoom.

There will be some important lasting impacts, though, experts say: Faculty may incorporate online tools, to which many are being exposed for the first time, into their conventional classes. And students are experiencing a flexible type of learning they may not like as undergraduates, but could return to when its time to get a graduate degree.

These trends may not transform higher education, but they are likely to accelerate the integration of technology into it.

This semester has the potential to raise expectations of using these online resources to complement what we were doing before, in an evolutionary way, not a revolutionary way, said Eric Fredericksen, associate vice president for online learning at the University of Rochester. Thats the more permanent impact.

Real online education lets students move at their own pace and includes such features as continual assessments so they can jump ahead as soon as theyve mastered a skill, Dr. Fredericksen and others said.

Conceiving, planning, designing and developing a genuine online course or program can consume as much as a year of faculty training and collaboration with instructional designers, and often requires student orientation and support and a complex technological infrastructure.

Not surprisingly, when we really do this, it does take more than seven or eight days, Dr. Fredericksen said wryly.

If anything, what people are mistaking now for online education long class meetings in videoconference rooms, professors in their bathrobes, do-it-yourself tools made of rubber bands and cardboard appears to be making them less, not more, open to it.

The pessimistic view is that [students] are going to hate it and never want to do this again, because all theyre doing is using Zoom to reproduce everything thats wrong with traditional passive, teacher-centered modes of teaching, said Bill Cope, a professor of education policy, organization and leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Undergraduates already seemed lukewarm toward virtual higher education; only about 20 percent took even one online course in the fall of 2018, the consulting firm Eduventures estimates.

Sentiments like these suggest theres little likelihood that students will desert their real-world campuses for cyberspace en masse. In fact, if theres a silver lining in this situation for residential colleges and universities, its that students no longer take for granted the everyday realities of campus life: low-tech face-to-face classes, cultural diversions, libraries, athletics, extracurricular activities, in-person office hours and social interaction with their classmates.

The beauty of a residential education has never been more apparent to people, said Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University.

But advocates for true online instruction say that students experience of taking courses on their own schedules over mobile platforms may come back to them later, when theyre ready to move on to graduate or professional educations.

Online higher education is a thin diet for the typical 18-year-old, said Richard Garrett, the chief research officer at Eduventures. But todays 18-year-olds are tomorrows 28-year-olds with families and jobs, who then realize that online can be useful.

Already, more than half of American adults who expect to need more education or training after this pandemic say they would do it online, according to a survey of 1,000 people by the Strada Education Network, which advocates connections between education and work.

It isnt entirely students who will move this needle, observers say. Its also faculty.

Even those who had long avoided going online have had to do it this semester, in some form or other. And they may have the most to learn from the experience, said Michael Moe, chief executive of GSV Asset Management, which focuses on education technology.

Along with their students, faculty were thrown into the deep end of the pool for digital learning and asked to swim, Mr. Moe said. Some will sink, some will crawl to the edge of the pool and climb out and theyll never go back in the pool ever again. But many will figure out what to do and how to kick and how to stay afloat.

If theres anyone whos banking on this, its the ed-tech sector. More than 70 percent of such companies have been offering products and services to schools and colleges free or at steep discounts this semester, anticipating sales later, according to the consulting firm Productive.

Cengage, for example, is providing free subscriptions to its online textbooks, and says it has seen a 55 percent increase in the number of students who have signed up for one. Coursera is providing 550 colleges and universities with free access to its online courses.

Administrators and educators are reframing their attitudes, said John Rogers, education sector lead at the $5 billion Rise Fund, which is managed by the asset company TPG and invests in ed tech. That really is the difference-maker. The pace of adoption of those tools will accelerate.

People resist new ideas until external shocks force them to change, said Dr. Govindarajan, who cites as an example the way World War II propelled women into jobs that had traditionally been done by men. We are at that kind of inflection point.

Faculty, he said, will ask themselves, What part of what we just did can be substituted with technology and what part can be complemented by technology to transform higher education?

Universities should consider this semester an experiment to see which classes were most effectively delivered online, he said big introductory courses better taught through video-recorded lectures by faculty stars and with online textbooks, for example, which could be shared among institutions to lower the cost.

Students who want classes best provided face to face, such as those in the performing arts or that require lab work, would continue to take them that way.

Lets take advantage of this moment to start a larger conversation about the whole design of higher education, Dr. Govindarajan said.

We had better not lose this opportunity.

This article was published in cooperation with The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit news organization that covers education. Sign up for its newsletter.

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Will the Coronavirus Forever Alter the College Experience? - The New York Times

Every morning, Michelle Martin-Sullivan rises with her toddler and begins her biggest task of the day: making contact with all her students, who are scattered among the foothills of rural eastern Kentucky. Some she calls by phone, others she chats with over text, and some she sees in class on Zoom.

Like teachers across the US, Martin-Sullivan is working remotely, and the transition has proved difficult almost everywhere. Rollouts of online portals have been plagued with technical issues in many districts, while others have struggled to distribute devices like laptops and iPads amid shortages from suppliers.

For Martin-Sullivan, though, the issues often go deeper than teaching itself. Many of her students are essential workers at stores like Walmart and have begun picking up extra shifts to support their families. Other students, as well as some teachers, dont have internet access at all.

Teachers have been conducting their phone calls and check-ins with students from random parking lots, like church parking lots, the Walmart parking lot, [or] just anywhere that you can get wifi, she says.

The results of these struggles with distance learning will remain unclear for some time. Many standardized tests have been delayed or canceled, which means school districts wont get data on their students progress.

On this episode of Reset, we explore how the pandemic might affect students going forward, and how long those effects could last.

According to Matt Barnum, a national reporter for the education news site Chalkbeat, traumatic effects have big impacts on students lives, both on how much they learn and long-term factors like college enrollment rates and income.

Theres this idea that children are resilient. Theyll just bounce back from whatever you throw at them. And from a research perspective, thats just not the case, he says. We know that things can affect students, both good or bad. We know that early trauma can affect students for bad. We know that a high-quality teacher or access to early childhood education can affect students for good in the long term. So I think its not unreasonable to think that this is going to have long-run negative effects.

Still, there are ways that policymakers can decrease these negative impacts, as Barnum explained. Research shows that one easy way to help students catch up is to add extra instructional time to the end of the school day or make the school year longer.

We have evidence from research: There is a study in Florida that when low-performing schools extended the school day, students did better on state tests. We have another study in Louisiana showing that summer school helps students who are struggling in reading, he says. And so it just makes a whole lot of sense that if you want to make up for missed instruction, you should just make up for missed instruction.

For students who have struggled more than their peers, some experts have suggested that the federal government should fund an army of recent college graduates to tutor students with the added benefit of helping prop up a dismal job market.

Finally, students will also likely need emotional support when they go back to school. Aside from the interruption to their education, they may know people who got sick or died from Covid-19.

If schools want to hit the ground running academically, they also probably need to be thinking about addressing the trauma that students may have faced. Presumably the best way to deal with that is to have trained professionals in schools, who can work with students to talk this through and support them in this, Barnum says.

Whether government officials will take any of these actions remains to be seen. But policy options that can help students through the pandemic exist. The question is mostly whether governments especially during a massive economic downturn will make them happen.

Subscribe to Reset on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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At home, Bryce (7) and Beck (5) Machacek officially begin the McFarland School Districts Distance Learning program, which was implemented in response to COVID-19 pandemic-related school closures, on Monday, March 23. Madison Metropolitan School District students are expected to begin a virtual learning program April 6.

STEVENS POINT A few items from a journal

As for many in these times, emails and phone calls have arrived from near and far. Family, friends, business associates and news sources over the years have reached out.

One came from Charles Wurster, a scientist who had a pivotal role in Wisconsins efforts to ban DDT in the 1960s. Wurster lives in Maryland, but Wisconsin is close to his heart. He was angered when we held an election during the pandemic, endangering lives and making a mockery of democracy. Trumpublicans want a Trumpublican dictatorship, he wrote. They want as few voters as possible, and the virus is helping them. I hope Charlie is wrong, but April 7's gruesome deed makes one wonder.

Up on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, Wisconsin native Patrick Herzog sends along his recipe for strengthening the immune system. Herzog, a wildlife biologist, author and educator who has spent most of his adult life in Canada, knows something about the topic. Twenty years ago, he was stricken with an aggressive form of leukemia, requiring a long-shot experimental treatment regime. He survived, and he told the story of how nature helped him heal in an inspiring 2017 book, Tiger, Tiger: A life Restored by Nature. He says folks in his rural setting have been quick to comply with Canadas stay-at-home advice. His own cancer regime required the same of him. I, of course, have been through the self-isolating gig before, one that was indeed a means to health and future life, he said in a recent message.

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Bill Berry: Online education, immune boosters and an election: More COVID-19 journal entries - Madison.com

The plan was solid, but its execution began as a dumpster fire.

Thats how Stefan Troutman, an instructional coach at Moses Lake School District, described it: plagued by tech glitches, his effort to host daily online check-ins for district staff went south quickly.

But in the weeks since schools closed statewide and at this rural school district 180 miles east of Seattle, Troutman and his colleagues began to figure it out. Every weekday morning, roughly 100 educators get online for a new ritual: to swap online learning tips and motivate each other to keep experimenting and finding new ways to serve their 8,700 students.

As school districts grapple with the fact that education wont resume in person this school year, Moses Lake and others across Washington are taking seriously their mandate to find creative virtual solutions. Getting students laptops and internet access were the first and easiest steps many made since school buildings have closed, though its unclear how many students still lack devices.

What districts do next to transform their curriculum will dictate whether children slide backward. Students already behind because of systemic inequities may slide the most.

While Washington requires school districts to teach remotely, districts arent mandated to track student attendance or individual teachers instructional plans so its hard to say, definitively, how its going. Some districts immediately distributed laptops and began online instruction, but others, such as Seattle Public Schools, first delivered devices weeks into the states mandated closure.

Students in low-income families and those who are homeless are less likely to have an internet connection, let alone basic needs such as food and shelter. And children who need extra attention, because theyre learning English or have a disability, for example, are fighting for the services schools promised them.

Online schooling has a mixed reputation. Its marked by the failures of several for-profit virtual schools and credit recovery programs. But experts say online education is now at an inflection point. Going online is no longer a choice, and schools have been thrust into a grand experiment that could transform forever how learning virtually is done.

In Moses Lake, the daily online meeting is an important part of that. At 9 a.m. on Monday, teachers and staff were getting pumped up.

No thumping music. No jumping jacks. Just pure, earnest praise to get hyped for the week. We are doing it, and were rocking it, a district instructional coach said. Troutman is the master of ceremonies. From his living room at home, Troutman casts to YouTube a livestream of these impromptu professional development sessions. The goal up until now has been survival, Troutman said. But the conversations were about to start having are, how do you redefine your lesson?

Teachers in Moses Lake and beyond are learning by trial and error: Many are teaching over video platforms, while others are sending students recorded lessons. Some are printing out materials to drop off at students homes.

Teachers are all being thrown into this, said Gary Miron, professor of education at Western Michigan University. It doesnt mean they are all going to act responsible and be totally prepared to switch and start testing ideas. But it gives us an opportunity right now with this crisis, if we can, to start considering new models for instruction.

Existing research on best practices in online learning will only get educators so far. When you are being asked to implement online learning in the way our research suggests you should, but you are being asked to do that in a 12-day period, thats nearly impossible, said Annalee Good, co-director of the Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

There is no single set of practices that will fit every school district, she added. What matters most, she said, is each districts context and preparedness.

The evidence machine

Its been a decade since anyone took a hard look at online education. Back then, researcher Barbara Means and her colleagues compiled studies from 1996 to 2008 at the request of the federal government, and compared how people fare when taught face-to-face, online only, or some combination of the two. A blended form of learning won out a model that cant work now. But perhaps more interestingly, Means found, very few studies looked at online K-12 education. Most focused on college.

A decade later, federal officials are launching a follow-up. And theyre in a big hurry.

This is one of the rare occasions where there has been a simultaneous crisis of this type where rigorous evidence is needed by everyone, all at once, said Matthew Soldner, commissioner at the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education. What is something we could do to fire up the evidence machine really, really quickly and see what can be done?

The answer: a meta-analysis similar to Means study. This time, officials are crowd-sourcing the studies they include. Theyre hoping to reduce the time it takes from the typical 18 months to roughly 2.5 to winnow and analyze research that meets a rigorous set of criteria. They hope outside research teams will be enticed to do a deeper dive into the studies and glean sets of best practices.

Techniques used by online-only schools might be appealing, but experts urge caution: Taking up the methods of such schools likely wont work for most public school districts. Online schools often employ too few teachers (sometimes 1 for several hundred students) and pay them poorly, Miron said. Students often dont get to know their teachers, and vice versa. Its failing because its geared toward profiteering, he said.

Many online schools have a poor track record. Kevin Huffman, former commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education who tried to take down a virtual school run by a controversial company called K12 Inc., said that school had a high attrition rate. For those who stuck with it, their first-year results were abysmal compared to their typical public school peers, he said. Theres a massive learning curve, which we dont have time for right now, Huffman said.

Public school districts, in contrast, have a lot going for them. They typically have lower student-teacher ratios, and relationships between children and their teachers are already formed, Miron said.

While federal officials continue their research, experts such as Miron and Means suggest researchers and school districts collect data now.

If we knew some schools did A in the spring and some schools did B in the spring, then we could look at the aggregated data and try to tease out what were some of the more effective practices, said Means, who is now part of Digital Promise, an education nonprofit in Washington, D.C. We dont want to punish students or teachers because of what happened this spring. But we do want to learn from this experience.

Absent hard data on what works and what doesnt solutions are beginning to bubble up from inside online classrooms.

More than a device

Every weekday morning, Kathleen Claymore, a culinary teacher at Moses Lake High School, launches a Zoom room for her students. She mutes herself, but leaves the video on. Students can come and go as they wish, hang out and work together, or request help. Its just for them to see your face, she said.

Access to technology is an important first step, but its not everything Good said. Even having a laptop wont bridge the digital divide. In communities where most families live in poverty and many are learning English, as is the case in Moses Lake, teachers will need to find unique ways to keep students in attendance and engaged.

The type of regular, quality interaction that Claymore offers is important, experts say.

Moses Lake is well positioned relative to others across Washington: School officials gave Chromebooks to all students as school closed, and many teachers have some facility with digital learning tools. But about 65% of the districts students live in poverty. To acknowledge that many need extra help, administrators set up tech sites for students with broken or lost equipment. Staff deliver replacements to students without transportation. Teachers such as Claymore are finding ways to make lessons flexible.

Claymores assignments double as a way to ensure her students are eating regularly. If students need ingredients for a recipe, Claymore provides them. And instead of running her classes in real time, Claymore posts lessons to Google Classroom. Many students wouldnt show up if she hosted lessons live: Several assist their parents in nearby fields or spend their days caring for younger siblings. But Claymore said shes pleasantly surprised that about 65% of her 135 students have been handing in assignments.

Washington may also learn from other high-poverty districts that are further afield. In Milwaukee Public Schools, staff are considering how an online learning program they launched about five years ago, called Telepresence, could be used more broadly during coronavirus closures. High schools that cant offer a whole suite of Advanced Placement classes let students take them virtually from teachers at other Milwaukee high schools. A 2019 study of the program suggests that boosting teachers professional development, and providing ample resources for students without technology at home, are critical for making such online programs work.

These takeaways are particularly important for districts as they consider how to serve students with few resources or support at home, or those in special education. A few major school districts, including Los Angeles Unified are trying district-wide online learning programs, though early reports suggest many students are failing to participate.

Many Washington families report their children are not receiving special education services theyre entitled to; as of April 10, state officials had received at least five formal complaints about special education services.

Officials here could take notes from schools such as Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind, which serve about 4,000 students with disabilities and offer several forms of remote instruction. One lesson: not everything can be accomplished online, but that doesnt mean you should give up.

Michael Berger, a teacher who works with visually impaired and blind students aged 3 to 5 there, filled green plastic bins with paper lesson plans and supplies for each of his students when he learned Utahs schools would close. He regularly swings by his students homes on a recent Friday, he donned a mask and spent three hours dropping off supplies on their porches. Batteries for one child whose assistive technology device went dead. For a student without internet at home, an iPad preloaded with videos of himself teaching new lessons.

Berger also teaches his students during brief, individual weekly online sessions.

His personal takeaway: Parent involvement is huge. How are [the children] going to engage with me over a camera and my voice? Parents have to be very hands on with them during the lesson, he said.

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There's no roadmap for teaching online, so Washington's teachers are creating their own - Seattle Times