Strategy for Instruction: NJIT Responds to the Pandemic in Forward-Thinking Fashion
Last year, as the COVID-19 pandemic began its inexorable march across the country, NJIT, along with higher education institutions nationwide, faced an unprecedented challenge: how to best move to fully remote instruction, both quickly and safely. Immediately, the university drew upon its technological resources and know-how to provide a virtual learning experience for its more than 11,000 students while completing the spring 2020 semester as scheduled.
Within a span of two weeks, the Digital Learning and Technology Support team at NJIT helped prepare faculty to teach online effectively and assisted students who lacked the means to engage. More than 150 document cameras, tablet laptops and drawing tablets were distributed to faculty, and dozens of computers were delivered to students in need of virtual access to their classes. Additionally, over 6,700 Webex sessions were held and nearly 2,000 videos were created through Kaltura, a platform enabling live and on-demand video presentations.
Making modifications to the spring semester would turn out to be just the start of a more than six-month-long undertaking, to not only finish the past academic year but also ready for the next one. NJIT’s initial COVID-19 Task Force handed over the reins to a Pandemic Recovery Steering Committee that comprised more than 80 individuals and a Pandemic Advisory Committee that featured broad representation from the campus community.
“Since first presented with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, senior administrators have worked alongside the Faculty Senate’s leadership, individual faculty and staff members, union representatives, health care experts, students and others on committees and subcommittees, and through consultation, in order to draw upon diverse and informed perspectives and make difficult decisions in the best interests of our university community,” noted NJIT President Joel S. Bloom.
Among those perspectives and decisions, which proved critical to the development of an overall Pandemic Recovery Plan, was the resolve to implement converged learning together with traditional online instruction. Converged learning, pioneered by NJIT since 2013, essentially breaks down the distinction between face-to-face and remote learning, with students attending the same class at the same time either in person or virtually. With this model, students have the same educational experience regardless of their physical location, and professors can see, interact with and work simultaneously in real-time with all attendees.
As NJIT Provost and Senior Executive Vice President Fadi P. Deek emphasized, NJIT always has invested in technology that allows students to learn from the classroom, the residence hall, their home or wherever it is most convenient for them to do so. Between March and November 2020, utilization of Webex and Kaltura increased, with upwards of 163,800 sessions and more than 31,800 uploaded videos, respectively.
With regard to classroom occupancy this academic year, he explained that no more than 18 students are enrolled in any in-person course, versus the usual 30. Of this reduced group, only nine students at a time are permitted to attend in person, with the other half of the class participating remotely. Students with concerns about coming to the classroom can continue to learn virtually, while those eager for face-to-face instruction can engage accordingly whenever possible.
Inside the classrooms, other measures are being taken to ensure the safety of students and faculty, including designated seating to facilitate social distancing, sanitization of seats and desks after every use and increased air exchange in buildings. Additionally, face coverings are required for all faculty, students and staff, and plexiglass screens have been installed as an extra physical barrier between students and instructors.
“We know from available research that in-person learning is an important component of a STEM curriculum, and our students have made their strong desire for such opportunities clear,” Bloom pointed out, adding that more than 7,000 students registered for at least one or more converged courses for the fall semester.
Victoria Youssef, a first-year biology major, is one of those students. She regularly attends her chemistry and calculus lectures and chemistry lab in person, while participating in her humanities course, freshman seminar and biology lecture and recitation remotely. Her experience with converged learning is going well, she says, with her teachers posting more resources, recording their lectures and providing assistance via virtual office hours.
“I love the fact that I have the convenience of learning either at home or in school, depending on my schedule and whether or not I want to go into school,” said Youssef, who commutes from Livingston, N.J. As for being on campus, she remarked, “I feel very safe in all of my classes, because every seat is assigned a color and I am always 6+ feet apart from everyone.”
“The importance of having students, faculty and staff on campus cannot be understated. We all are integral to the NJIT community,” Deek stressed. “We’ve had to make a number of behavioral, physical and technological modifications. We’ve had to adopt new principles for learning, working and living. … But the students are, by choice, in the classrooms.”
Did You Know?
When the Spanish flu caused Newark schools to close in the fall of 1918, NJIT (then known as the Newark Technical School) remained open for radio classes conducted weekday evenings for the government, according to Newark Evening News. As written in the paper, there was “an attendance of about fifty at the radio classes and as the course is only six or eight weeks, and new groups come in as rapidly as others finish, it was decided that because of these facts and because it is federal work requiring haste, this department should remain open.”
