Reflections

This fall has been going smoothly, in great part thanks to you, and now eight months into the pandemic, we still continue to learn every day of this semester. I cannot fully express my deep respect and gratitude for the innovations you’ve made in your teaching—some of which will be showcased soon—the virtual conversations you’ve had with students on important topics; the continued outreach by faculty, advisors, staff, and others to help students learn and keep on track; and the successful solutions you’ve provided to unexpected and often major facilities issues. Some things, such as the actual number of in-person classes (despite our original strong plans and numbers), were not unexpected due to the health and safety concerns of students, families, faculty, and staff. We are not unique in this regard, given our historically limited number of residential students.

You may recall my July reference to Bryan Alexander’s book, Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education, released before the COVID pandemic yet it discussed what might happen in a pandemic! He gave an enlightening presentation last week at a conference addressing different educational scenarios on a continuum from “back to normal” (ha!) to “fully remote,” including many we have heard about, such as HyFlex, Blocked Plan, Modularity, Split Curriculum, and Structured Gap Years. Of course, as a futurist, he laid out some ideas of what will happen through 2023:

Fewer campuses
More supporting services
More online practice overall
Possible social de-skilling
COVID careers

COVID curriculum and design
Fewer staff and faculty
Greater digital familiarity
Automation
More and unique partnerships

He also reminded readers of chronic stressors—from illness to economic to social/political—that impact how we do things. It is important to be mindful and to take advantage of all the ways we can help nurture our well-being. It isn’t always easy, but through vigilance and by making active, frequent connections with others, we can combat the sense of isolation that can sometimes overtake us. When I’ve reached out to people I don’t know to discuss some of the challenges we face, they’ve been exceedingly generous with their time and insights.

In his October article, “Remote Learning Isn’t Going Away: It’s time to figure out how to make it more effective,” Steve Mintz writes:

If we see remote learning as part of a permanent restructuring of how higher education is delivered, rather than as a stop-gap response to an emergency, we need to address the four horsemen of the online apocalypse:

Isolation: How to transform an online class into a community.
Engagement: How to keep students motivated and on track.
Rigor: How to ensure student learning outcomes and academic honesty.
Quality: How to make sure that online courses meet minimal standards for accessibility and usability, learner support, interactivity, and robust assessment.

I recommend reading his short piece, which addresses ways to build community, keep students engaged and motivated, ensure students are on track, maintain quality of instruction and rigor, and provide support. You all have what he identifies as key: imagination, vision, inventiveness, and creativity!

The Practical

Fall 2020 Semester

All in-person instruction will be conducted remotely after Thanksgiving.
Access to the campuses will be very, very limited after Thanksgiving, and may change due to new state requirements for health and safety. Frequent updates will be provided, given our rapidly changing environment.
If students express that they are ill and/or experiencing personal challenges that prevent them from attending classes for the remainder of the semester, please direct them to the Office of the Dean of Students immediately for assistance. The office will provide information regarding their options, including the withdrawal for health reasons process.
Pass Fail Policy for Fall 2020: students (if their major allows) can opt to take up to two courses pass/fail but must opt in before final exams. This is different than last spring.

Spring 2021 Semester

Start and end dates will be the same: January 25, 2021 and May 22, 2021.
Spring Recess will be one week later in 2021: March 27 – April 4.
While some spring courses are designated in-person, all of those courses will be taught remotely until March 1 due to health and safety precautions.
The Attendance Notification Policy has been extended to the spring semester.

Review of Full Time Faculty (SPC and DPC members)

The AAUP and the New York Tech administration are working together to try to create a teaching/learning environment that best serves the needs of students and faculty. One critical function is the integration of student feedback into our self-reflections on our course delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it even more important to hear the student voice so that faculty can, if needed, modify their instructional practices and procedures.

Student evaluations can serve as a very useful part of the self-reflection, and this semester the normal student evaluation will be joined by a non-course/faculty specific overall survey. It is critical to remember that only PART A of the evaluation should be included in faculty folders and used by the DPC/SPCs for reviews. PART B is designed to be used as part of the self-reflection process and discussion with chairs only (AAUP contract, page 48) and must not be included in the candidate’s portfolio as they cannot be used for the purpose of faculty evaluations for tenure, promotion, or reappointment.

Resources

Mid-Semester Feedback

Feedback is a vital part of the learning process, and it works two ways: students need feedback from us to learn more effectively, and we need feedback from students to teach more effectively. The Center for Teaching and Learning has updated its popular Mid-Semester Feedback program. Now, you can ask CTL to administer the survey for you, as before, or you can add it to your Canvas or Blackboard course shell, personalize it, and administer it yourself. For information and to sign up, visit https://bit.ly/35EwR5x.

Learn from the best! Take workshops from external partners:

Deepen your skills through workshops tailored to your interests. The CTL has purchased a limited number of workshop passes with the Online Learning Consortium and with Quality Matters. Topics include:

Designing with Accessibility in Mind
Strategies for Facilitating Live, Online Sessions
Designing a Flipped Classroom
Designing Your Online Course
Teaching Online: An Introduction to Online Delivery
Addressing Accessibility & Usability

For more information, see the pages of listings for Online Learning Consortium and for Quality Matters. From there, follow the link to the sign-up form.

Academic Technology Services

Along with the CTL, Academic Technology Services (ATS)—New York Tech’s new department for IT Services—is on the continuum of support services for faculty.

Training Sessions: Build your skills with new technology-based tools!

The ATS’ theme is KISS—“keep it simple, sweetie’—with short, just-in-time, and to-the-point relevant topics on Canvas such as “Assignments;” “Recording in BB and Canvas;” and “What are Modules and Pages in Canvas?” These 30-minute sessions include 20-minutes of instruction and 10 minutes for questions. The follow-up one-page web handouts, called SMORE, include a short video and a brief bulleted list of instructions—click on only the information you’re interested in!

Upcoming trainings:

Using Turnitin in Canvas
Wednesday, November 18 and Thursday, November 19, 2:30 – 3 p.m. (EST)
Due to popular demand! Here’s a preview of Turnitin training.

Past trainings

Here are some recent training sessions that might be of interest to faculty with upcoming exams. Just click on the titles to view presentations and videos:

Respondus 4.0. Respondus 4.0 is a tool for exam conversion for Canvas. This session includes step-by-step directions on how to format test questions and how to import a Word document into an exam on Canvas, as well as other helpful resources.
You can download Respondus 4.0 software for Windows-based computers at our Software Downloads. If you need assistance downloading the two files, please contact Service Central or enter the Academic Technology Services Zoom room for live personal assistance. (Go to nyit.zoom.us, click "Join" and enter Meeting ID: 516 686 2222, 9 a.m. – 8 p.m. Monday – Friday). The team is happy to assist you.
Canvas training on Quizzes and LockDown Browser

Other recent sessions:

ATS Support

Working collaboratively with CTL and the faculty, ATS will assist in the development of an ecosystem of technology-based tools that can be used in the classroom or online to improve student engagement and create innovative learning experiences that support teaching, learning, and research. From Procurement (e.g. Labster) to working one-on-one to integrate Voice Thread into Canvas, ATS will collaborate with faculty to find technology-based tools that enrich course materials and assist in the delivery of online content. ATS is here to assist faculty in solving issues or exploring ideas that provide New York Tech students with unique learning experiences:

Coordinating investments of digital tools and resources to enhance teaching, research, and scholarship.
Collaborating with faculty, schools, and administration to design, develop, produce, and launch online courses and programs.
Providing and supporting technology-enabled services that enhance education, research, and scholarship.
Developing technology-enhanced learning spaces and conference room design to meet teaching and learning objectives.

Canvas Updates

Fall Semester

The Canvas Implementation Committee has made great progress. Canvas has been very well received in the community. Of the 1,443 courses in fall 2021, 1,391 are using Blackboard or Canvas. Here’s the breakdown:

Blackboard: 730
Canvas: 661
Not in LMS: 52 courses (42 faculty). Some of these are Cycle B courses.

Considering Canvas only became accessible in late August, this is a very impressive number indeed! Kudos to the faculty who have jumped in with both feet.

The tasks of the committee include:

Creating a template for the course shells.
Blackboard course migrations to Canvas
- All online, blended Blackboard courses for 2 years: 212 courses
- Fall 2020 requests: 175 courses
Canvas checklist for faculty and students start and end of the semester.
Canvas Updates website.
Documentation and video for exporting Blackboard courses to Canvas.
Newsletter to faculty on committee updates.
Clarifications of cross-listing policies (first subcommittee meeting: October 27).
Creating a Blackboard exit strategy:
- Course retention policy to be discussed and established.
- All Blackboard courses to be migrated to Canvas and will be completed by May 31.

The implementation committee will disband once Blackboard migration is complete.

From Our Colleague Dr. Nader Vossoughian, associate professor in the School of Architecture and Design:

The Canvas LMS is without question the most substantial and consequential infrastructural improvement to education at New York Tech that I have seen since first arriving at this institution in 2005. The interface is seamless. If you can handle Gmail, you can handle Canvas. The integration with Zoom is fantastic. I love being able to save my lectures and seminars to the cloud. Canvas automates a number of tasks that I once had to handle manually, from the processing of exams to the entry of exam results into my student grade book. I can reach students quickly and easily through the Canvas portal. Students can upload photographs of themselves to their Canvas account, which allows me to learn their names quickly. Canvas is fantastic for accreditation purposes, as it stores and faculty student data in an efficient and readily accessible fashion. Its storage capabilities are incredible. I have uploaded countless dozens of .pdf files and videos at this point, and I have not come close to exhausting my storage quota, which has spared me a lot of frustration. The calendar features allow me to enter exams and test dates easily. Canvas posts reminders for me when I need to grade essays. It contains so many time-saving features; I’m sure I’ve only begun to scratch the surface here.

Fans of Blackboard will argue that Blackboard can also perform many of the tasks described above. I want to emphasize, however, that part of Canvas’ beauty is the intuitiveness of the Interface and its seamless integration of outside software and informational resources. Graphically, navigation options are presented in a clear and hierarchical fashion, allowing me to identify quickly what I’m looking for. Given that Canvas page layouts and navigation features are relatively standardized across universities, I can turn to a short YouTube video or two if I’m trying to understand a particular Canvas feature. I’m happy that there are numerous redundancies built into its interface, which means that a user can accomplish tasks using a variety of different means.

I have not heard back from students yet about how they feel about Canvas, but the fact that it is has not been brought up yet—that our learning management system doesn’t take up precious time in class—is very encouraging. Learning new educational software should not be the focus of my energies as a teacher. I’m happy that Canvas gets that, and I am grateful to NYIT for taking the leap and adopting this new system. The benefits for us as a university will be tremendous, not just during COVID, but for many years to come.

What’s Next

With your dedication, ingenuity, and caring, we have moved quickly into embracing new technologies to help our students in their courses. We were guided by the May survey, where they rated components of the “new” learning experience important to them. I have spoken with faculty, here and elsewhere, about the wonderful efforts employed and how students are responding. Cooperation between individuals, groups, departments, administrative units, and others to solve problems and share experiences is widespread.

The Online and Continuing Education Advisory Group meets twice monthly and is finalizing a charge; discussing and recommending key items and areas to meet pressing immediate needs such as online credentials and partnerships with experts and industry to make our offerings—both existing and new—sought after and of high quality, and relevant to current and future workforce needs. Access and affordability for qualified students as well as plans to reach new markets (e.g., adult and nontraditional learners) will be also front and center.

In other areas, a new group on adjuncts is being formed, while the steering committee for our three-year strategic planning is moving along well (there was a 52% response rate on the survey from Sova Solutions—thanks to all who participated).

In these challenging times, with their hard sequalae of Zoom fatigue and new technological interactions, I welcome your ideas and suggestions to help moderate their negative impact and support well-being. Please know I am not alone in thanking you for your efforts to do the best for our students and your colleagues.; I’ve heard many similar comments of appreciation.

In closing, I share a piece of an article on play and playfulness by Professor Lisa Forbes I found interesting and valuable, as well as relevant for life both inside and outside the classroom:

In the spring of 2020, I conducted a research study on students' experience of incorporating play in learning. I quickly realized that even I had underestimated the power of play. Play has the ability to create connections and reduce stress. It is student-centered and humanistic and allows students to overcome their anxiety and their fear of being vulnerable. Play primes students for learning. It is a vehicle for the application of theory and the acquisition of new skills, and it results in longer-lasting learning. Perhaps the biggest take-away from the data is that play in learning is a bit like climbing the first step of a staircase before you're certain the next step is actually there.

Even when play doesn't seem to directly connect to the content of your course, it can still be the catalyst that ignites an invaluable learning process—one that you never would have experienced if you believed that play is trivial. Through my research, I found that play creates relational safety, removes barriers to learning, and awakens intrinsic motivation. Once play ignites these vital aspects, students become more engaged and learn on a deeper, more personal level.

Best wishes for the rest of 2020!

Sincerely,

Junius J. Gonzales, M.D., M.B.A.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs