Do You Have an Alternative to Online Courses during the Pandemic?
Higher education organizations from Washington to Massachusetts have already gone to all-online for the remainder of the school year. Your school might have to as well. But what about next year? Medical professionals are giving no indication that the coronavirus epidemic will have exhausted itself by then.
Converting colleges and graduate schools to an all-online format for academic year 2020-21 will produce extreme difficulties. Consider some factors.
Most professors are inadequately trained in instructional design (ID) and best practices for online courses. Most schools do not have enough (or any) dedicated staff specializing in instructional design. Early reports suggest that ID people are at capacity.
Investing big in online delivery has a checkered history. There are significant hurdles to scaling such an operation, including costs. There are horror stories.
Unless you’ve been doing online courses for 20 years or more, you’re probably behind the curve. If you want to go quality, your competition is Clemson, Creighton, and Ohio State. If you want to compete with the budget colleges or budget seminaries, you better find a way to get to a sub-10k tuition.
All-online is a marketing nightmare. Bragging that you offer all your courses online will elicit a yawn from prospective and existing students alike.
That’s where it’d be nice for you to offer an alternative during the pandemic. Sevensided has effectively set up that very thing for other schools. Its competency-based, network-based design is set up for the COVID-19 world, offering critical features:
Blend of online, live events, and real-world. Sevensided helps you offer courses that are effective hybrids. The competency structure welcomes the integration of asynchronous online delivery with features such as breakout sessions, live teleconferences and “micro-internships.”
Flexibility. Students tackle work at their own pace. If they want to go through quickly, they can. If they need extra time to get competent, or if they get slowed down by illness, they don’t need to drop out.
Safety. You can ensure that students are kept safe by giving them the right learning avenues. They choose their real-world interactions, allowing them to be wise and responsible agents in the midst of the pandemic.
It’s not too late to implement competency-based, network-based courses for fall. Select schools are planning pilot courses. If you’re interested in a free resource about how to renovate courses this way, click here.