Coronavirus Forces Universities Online
Coronavirus Forces Universities Online
Compelled
to close their campuses to limit the spread of coronavirus, U.S. universities
with Chinese branches move at lightning speed to take teaching online.
By Lindsay McKenzie
February 25, 2020
After celebrating the Lunar New
Year earlier this month, thousands of students at U.S. universities in China
have resumed classes. But the campuses are eerily quiet, and classrooms remain
empty. That's because classes have moved online in the wake of the coronavirus.
The
transition from face-to-face to fully online wasn’t one leaders at institutions
such as Duke Kunshan University and New York University Shanghai had planned
for. Preparing to teach a course online for the first time usually takes
several months. Faculty at institutions in China have done it in less than
three weeks -- a remarkable feat.
“It’s been highly stressful, but at the same
time, the clarity of the crisis has brought us together,” said Clay Shirky,
vice provost for educational technologies at NYU in New York, who was part of
the team that helped colleagues at NYU Shanghai launch their courses online.
Faced
with the decision to either close the Shanghai campus and suspend teaching
indefinitely or try and keep students on track, leaders at NYU chose the
latter, said Shirky. “It took us a while to realize that we really needed to
move the semester online,” he said. “Looking back, I wish we had made the call
a little earlier.”
Hopeful
that students would be able to return to campus after the holidays, NYU
Shanghai planned to reopen on Feb. 3. When travel restrictions were
introduced, the semester's start date was pushed to Feb. 10. Then the
Chinese Ministry of Education ordered universities across the nation not to
reopen their doors, leaving faculty with a tight deadline to move classes online.
So
far, things are going surprisingly well, said Jace Hargis, director of the NYU
Shanghai Teaching and Learning Center. He has been closely monitoring progress
since classes began Feb. 17. Initial student feedback has been good, and
faculty members report feeling increasingly confident in their ability to teach
online, he said. The vast majority of faculty -- 88 percent -- did not
have significant experience teaching online previously.
“Before
day one, a lot of faculty said they were feeling a bit anxious. They weren’t
sure what students would think,” said Hargis. “Now they’re feeling a lot
better.”
NYU
Shanghai faculty aren’t just located in China. Many traveled all over the world
during the recent holiday. Now flight restrictions in and out of China mean
they can’t go back to their homes. Students, too, are scattered across the
globe.
Working across different time zones
has been challenging but not impossible, said Hargis. “Ten years ago, we
wouldn’t have been able to do this -- the technology wasn’t there,” he said.
High-speed internet and advancements in videoconferencing technology made
communication much easier.
Through
webinars, specially-created online resources, one-on-one consultations, drop-in
online office hours and many, many emails, an international team worked with
NYU Shanghai faculty to move almost 500 classes online.
“It
was a lot of overtime for three weeks, but time well spent,” said Xiaojing Zu,
library director at NYU Shanghai in an email. “We already had a collection of
ed-tech platforms and tools and tested pedagogies we had been working with
faculty to utilize. It was a matter of introducing these tools and methods to
more than one hundred faculty in a short time.”
Training
sessions focused on teaching faculty to teach with two video-sharing platforms,
Zoom and VoiceThread, said Hargis. These tools enable faculty members to teach
synchronously or asynchronously as they see fit. To break down the workload,
faculty were encouraged to focus on preparing the first two weeks of the
14-week semester. Faculty and students have access to a chat service that
operates for 16 hours a day if they have any questions or need help.
For
some instructors, moving courses online was a challenge. But so far, the
distance learning effort is yielding promising early results.
For
example, Hargis said he worked closely with visiting assistant professor of
mathematics Leonardo Rolla, who is currently based in Argentina. “We suggested
a lot of things to try and create a caring classroom culture online,” said
Hargis. Rolla created an introductory video walking students through the
syllabus. He then asked each student to make a video introducing themselves.
For their first assignment, students had to film themselves explaining how they
would solve an example exercise. Almost all created high-quality videos, with
one student sharing that he actually preferred these activities to face-to-face
teaching.
Scott
Warnock, director of the university writing program at Drexel University, was
asked to lead a workshop to help a small group of NYU Shanghai faculty members
foster pedagogies specific to teaching writing online. Teaching writing online
isn’t straightforward, but there are lots of ways you can engage students using
discussion boards, he said. You can assess a student’s ability to present
an argument, for example, by asking them to respond to provocative statements
such as “students should pay more for college." Warnock likes to post
these statements under a pseudonym such as Dr. Logoetho. “It’s tongue-in-cheek and playful. It’s one
of my students’ favorite exercises,” he said.
At
Duke Kunshan University, faculty had a similarly tight window to put their
courses online. Classes started online yesterday after just three weeks’
preparation, said Scott MacEachern, interim vice chancellor for academic
affairs at the university. “There were a lot of discussions between DKU and
Duke around whether we could really do this, and we decided, yes, we can. Duke
has a lot of capability online, and DKU is just 18 months old at this point.
Our students and faculty are pioneers. We wanted to keep the energy up.”
NYU
and Duke are not the only universities to take classes in China online.
Universities across the country are embarking on similar efforts, many utilizing free content from new national
massive open online course providers. Coursera, a U.S. based MOOC provider, has
made its courses freely accessible to Duke Kunshan students. Matthew Rascoff,
associate vice provost for digital education and innovation at Duke, said the
offer has proven very popular with students. Online learning at the degree
level has long been restricted in China because of concerns about regulation
and quality, but Ministry of Education rules have been relaxed to ensure
students "keep learning, even with classes suspended."
Whether
China's temporary embrace of online learning results in long-term change,
remains to be seen. Rascoff is hopeful that at Duke Kunshan at least, the
experience will be beneficial. The experience of teaching online can make
instructors better teachers in any environment, he said.
In
addition to ensuring faculty and students are safe and healthy,
Duke Kunshan and NYU Shanghai have made it easier for students to
transfer to other university campuses or postpone their classes. Both
institutions have made funds available to students to ensure they have access
to high-speed internet and working laptops, tablets or smartphones.
At
Fort Hays State, faculty have worked hard to ensure the content they take
online is accessible to all students, said Andrew Feldstein, assistant provost
for teaching innovation and learning technologies at the university. Fort Hays
offers several degree programs through two partner Chinese institutions. “We
made making everything mobile-friendly a priority, which added to the
challenge,” he said.
It’s
been an extraordinary team effort to get ready for the start of the
semester, said Feldstein.
Professor
Andrew Feldstein (R) and colleagues at Fort Hays State University
"The
first thing I thought when I heard the campuses were closed was that this could
be a real opportunity for us," said Feldstein. "Often we're slowed
down by processes that we don't even question anymore. This allowed us to look
at everything in a new light."
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