Will Fall 2021 On Campus Look A Lot Like Fall 2019?

We have reached the critical moment when organizations of all types and sizes are putting the finishing touches on Plan A (and B and C) for fall 2021.  

The stakes are different, however, for a university. It is a cliché that the pandemic accelerated trends that were simmering all along. That is certainly true in higher education, where the public health emergency collided with deeply held assumptions about the irreplaceable value of the in-person experience.  

And then Zoom ate the classroom. After decades of sputtering adoption, during which asynchronous online learning was marginalized at the edges of higher education, real-time video filled the void left by the virus.

Now that vaccines are more widely available, we can plan for a future after lockdowns. This should begin with an honest evaluation of what we gained, and what we lost, during this forced year of virtual learning. What are the lessons for the future? Will we extract every bit of value from our experiences as students, teachers, and administrators? 

Or will we retreat to the status quo and try to make fall 2021 look a lot like fall 2019?

As those plans for the fall are finalized, I hope we will honor the last year of painful progress with strategic and diversified approaches. One worrisome scenario is that the rush to online learning at brick-and-mortar colleges will be followed by a retreat, accompanied by a huge sigh of relief that higher education can go back to the way things were before. We will read more about which universities require proof of vaccination than about those that decide to return exclusively to in-person classes. The first is a public health decision, the logical purview of scientists and policy-makers, while the second is one of pedagogy and planning, which should rest with educators.  

This scenario may seem puzzling if you consider only those institutions that have been in the forefront of innovation. Their implementation of high-quality online learning required an investment of time, training, and treasure, plus leadership at all levels. But consider the rest, especially colleges that had no motivation or inclination to dabble in these newfangled alternatives before Covid. Some institutions that went into the pandemic without much experience online could do little more than tread water during the last twelve months. 

Online learning in all its current manifestations — flipped, hybrid, hyflex, live video — has finally earned its place as an important modality of higher education: a mainstay, not a stopgap. Adding to the previous reams of research on the efficacy of online learning, we are beginning to assess some of the important lessons of this year.

Increased participation and flexibility: One study suggests that the so-called quiet minority, the students who rarely raise their hands, are more comfortable and participatory in an online format. Online classes also help students juggle life and education, opening up new hours of work and study and reducing commuting time. 

Scale: Universities often struggle to find enough seats in classes, especially for gateway courses that are essential for degree completion. Large lecture classes are still the default, depressing graduation rates and frustrating students. Online formats increase the likelihood that students can get the prerequisites that they need without the need to build new buildings.

Active learning: From small group breakouts to recorded lectures that provide the ability to listen, reflect, and listen again, to instant polls and collaborative editing, some elements of online courses enrich the learning experience. And who doesn’t enjoy that Harry Potter moment when you are whisked away into a discussion group? 

The challenges of online learning also became clearer this year. All students must have access to the tools that are essential to a secure and equitable learning environment: broadband, virtual backgrounds, quiet working spaces. I understand the oft-expressed frustration with endless pages of little Zoom squares vs. the magic of a small in-person seminar. But that magic is vanishingly scarce in the urban public institutions that educate the overwhelming majority, so let’s not romanticize an experience that is already beyond the reach of most college students. 

An appreciation for America’s universities and the power of residential learning can co-exist with the determination to find new ways to expand access to higher education, bring down its cost, and serve students with new credentials and flexible formats. The physical classroom holds no absolute supremacy over all other teaching modalities. True, today’s tech is painfully limited. True, some faculty prefer to drone on in Zoom classes for their own convenience. (I have to guess that some of those teachers were probably bad news in the classroom too.)

But the tech is improving rapidly — VR for biology, anyone? — and at least some faculty have been surprised and energized by the discovery of new ways to approach their subjects. As Israeli historian and professor Yuval Noah Harari said recently, reflecting on his own transition to online teaching, “Technology is not deterministic.”

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” warns Professor Yogi Berra. I’ve been taking a close look at telehealth for some potential correlatives. Here too, the pandemic forced millions of Americans to do something online for the first time: see a doctor. And, like education, health care has shown a stubborn resistance to adopting the technologies and processes that have transformed other parts of the economy. Telehealth visits went from a tiny blip to more than half of all doctor visits at the height of the pandemic. In-person doctor appointments have now rebounded but telehealth visits have stabilized at levels significantly higher than before.

Telehealth has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. But it is here to stay. As we come out of the pandemic, no health care provider or policy-maker assumes a future in which medical offices will be the sole site for a quality doctor-patient interaction. 

So shut the virtual classroom door at your peril.  As campuses resume their daily pace, let the pendulum swing back to heighten the sweetness of human interaction in the classroom, in the library, in the cafeteria — while we also actively encourage and support faculty and students to pursue the learning journey of the future.   

Post-vaccination, I have my own shortlist of lessons learned and adjusted priorities. More time with family. More home cooking. Judicious consideration of when business travel is essential. Intense appreciation for live music and theatre. A vow never to go to a meeting with a nasty cough or cold. And those high heels have definitely seen their last party.  

Hooray for the new normal.