The Role of Learning in Colleges’ Decisions About Fall – Inside Higher Ed
Presidents give their colleges and universities mixed grades on the remote learning they offered last spring. How is that influencing their decisions about reopening campuses this fall?
On Monday Inside Higher Ed published the latest iteration in our series of surveys of college presidents about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the recession, offering a snapshot at various points since March into campus leaders’ views on how their institutions, employees and students have handled the upheaval wrought by the unprecedented events of this spring. The surveys cover a wide range of issues, including their sense of how effectively their campuses continued to educate students during the emergency pivot to remote learning.
We explored some of those subjects in our article about the survey’s results on Monday. But I want to dig a bit more deeply into that topic in today’s “Transforming Teaching and Learning” column, and to offer some thoughts about how colleges may be factoring those views into their plans for the fall.
The gist is this:
- Presidents weren’t wowed by their colleges’ performance in delivering instruction this spring.
- Their worries about how effectively they can teach online, and students’ potential dissatisfaction with that learning, are part of what’s driving most of them to physically reopen their campuses this fall. (Yes, money is a major factor, too.)