Come fall, universities must expand vision
Traditional learning can be replicated online
Universities and colleges across the country plan to offer fall semester classes online to accommodate students unwilling or unable to come to campus. Some have even decided to conduct all fall classes online.
Unfortunately, when universities moved classes online this spring in response to the novel coronavirus, education suffered. Faculty were confused about how to teach online, many classes had little interactivity and students were dissatisfied.
In addition, schools canceled most extracurricular events and activities, frustrating students and encouraging a tidal wave of petitions and lawsuits demanding refunds of spring tuition and fees.
If universities want students to accept online education as a substitute for on-campus learning, they must do better come fall. This will require investing in teaching-oriented training for faculty. During spring semester, universities typically provided faculty with training and support to help them navigate learning management systems and videoconferencing software. Now they must train faculty not simply how to teach online, but to teach well online.
Doing better will also require universities to make student support services, extracurricular activities and intellectual opportunities accessible so that the online student’s experience is more comparable to what traditionally happens on-campus. After all, much of the learning that occurs in universities occurs outside of class.
This is doable. Consider the experiences that lawsuits filed against the University of Miami and Drexel University claim students did not receive: face-to-face interactions with professors, mentors, and peers; access to facilities including labs, libraries, and study rooms; student governance and extracurricular and cultural activities; and learning, networking and mentoring.
With proper planning and support, universities could provide the majority of these experiences online. Virtual classrooms, study rooms, and offices can facilitate scheduled and spontaneous interpersonal interactions among faculty, students, advisers and other community members. Libraries can provide access to media and research support online. Student organizations and affinity groups can continue to meet and build community in university-supported online spaces. With support and training, faculty can create learning activities that work remotely.
Most importantly, with appropriate technology, faculty and students can see and hear one another and interact in real-time much as they do in residential classrooms. Indeed, the primary barrier to face-to-face interaction is not online education, but large class sizes that make it hard for faculty to see and interact with all of their students.
The good news is that schools looking to do online education right do not need to reinvent the wheel. They can look to existing programs for guidance. For example, the online law degree program I developed with my colleagues at Syracuse University College of Law has provided real-time, interactive classes and a broad array of student services and extracurricular opportunities since well before the COVID-19 epidemic began. Systems we developed to make that possible can now support other schools and programs.
The bad news is that, although a comprehensive student experience can be offered online, many schools are not prepared to provide one this fall. Preparations for online learning in the fall remain largely focused on improving class instruction and making “essential” student services available. Schools have been slow to recognize the need to bring online the comprehensive intellectual and social experience students rightfully expect from higher education.
Perhaps one reason for this limited approach is that university leaders underestimate the possibilities of the online environment. For example, Brown University President Christina Paxson, writing in The New York Times, warned that “higher education will crumble” without a return to on-campus instruction come fall in part because personal interactions among diverse students require an on-campus format and “fierce intellectual debates . . . just aren’t the same on Zoom.” To be sure, there are on-campus experiences (such as communal dorm life and intramural sports) that cannot be replicated online. But universities that do move online for the fall — perhaps because they cannot afford the intense testing, tracing, and isolating protocols Paxson recommends — will shortchange students if they do not capitalize on the full potential of online education to foster deep and diverse connections among students or rich intellectual debates.
If universities want students to walk through their virtual doors come fall, they must expand their vision of online education. Students deserve — and will demand — an experience closer to that traditionally offered on campus.
Nina A. Kohn is the David M. Levy Professor of Law and faculty director of online education at Syracuse University College of Law, and a visiting professor at Yale Law School. She led the development and launch of Jdinteractive, Syracuse University’s online JD program.