COVID-19 is accelerating many trends
Responding to the pandemic and preparing for the future
Moving it all online
COVID response has involved digital transformation and a holistic assessment of student needs and the responsibility of the university in a community for everything from education and research to workforce development
- Digital transformation of the university
- Online versions of university events and activities
- New student and faculty documentation sites
- New online orientation to UNM's Learning Management System
- Instructional Continuity Task Force
- Tuition-free summer bridge courses
- Moved the Center for Academic Program Support (CAPS) to online services. For Fall 2020, server 2,982 Students with 34,298 visits and 8,422.8 contact hours.
- Partnered with Taos Municipal Schools to provide time management and test prep workshops for K-12 students, parents, and families
- Faculty Early Alerts System
- Student Faculty Facilitation
- Student needs assessment survey
- Expanded faculty support: 13 Departmental Consultations, 750 instructors registered, 425 Workshop/Webinar /Open Lab attendees, 50 One-on-One consultations
- Inclusive Access and Open Educational Resources
- Adobe Sign for digital signatures and workflows
- $8.5M in CARES act funding distributed to students
Campus Investment
- ADA closed captioning support from Verbit/Kaltura REACH automated captioning credits: $105,000. Including signed interpretation and other accessibility measures, the university spent $500,000 on accessibility accommodations. Generally, it costs the university about $20,000 to support each deaf student in this environment.
- Kaltura REACH automated Captioning: $10,000
- Additional Zoom licensing: $17,779.91
- Respondus Monitor and Lockdown Browser: $9,945
- LMS hardware and storage scaling: $133,800
- Laptops Summer 20: $249,426, Spring 21: $166,225
- Hybrid Classrooms: $409,371 for microphones, cameras, document cameras, and room cabling
- Large Lecture Halls lecture capture changes: $112,007
- University Community Parking Lot Wireless Expansion, $30,000
- Hotspot cell charges: $4,000/month
- Not included in this report are labor, PPE, and cleaning supplies for students and staff supporting these in-person support initiatives.
UNM Learn Growth
- Peak concurrent users: 14,285 (59% increase)
- Active user accounts in 2020: 39,565
- Spring 2020 sections: 4,766
- Fall 2020 UNM Learn Instructor list: 1,876
- Summer 2020 sections: 855
- Fall 2020 Sections: 5,338 (vs. 4,538 Fall 2019)
Kaltura (streaming Video)
UNM Fall 2020 statistics through November 3
- Plays: 755,359
- Played Entries: 38,090
- Unique Viewers: 20,236
- Minutes Viewed: 7,917,437
- Unique Contributors: 5,581
- Added Entries: 52,405
- Added Minutes: 1,339,440.9
- 23,000 minutes closed captioned
186 Years
Zoom meetings at UNM August - November 3
- Licensed users: 8,882
- Active users (meeting hosts): 9,003
- New active users: 3,523
- Meetings: 214,569
- Meeting minutes: 97,693,407
- Meeting participants: 1,745,297
- Webinars: 265
- Webinar participants: 19,749
- Recordings: 22,615
Laptops
“Is there any way you could provide those of us students with no way to accomplish our online courses with a laptop or tablet, either by donation, for loan, or at a discounted price? I am really struggling.” —NM Community College Student
- 250 laptops purchased and repurposed to create a long-term laptop checkout program.
- Many departments and branches also supported their own check out programs
Internet Hotspots
“[My] program is entirely online this semester which if fine except I live out in the country so no reliable internet service AND my daughter is online schooling also. Is there any kind of booster or extender the school offers so I can fully participate in my classes?” —NM Research University Student
- Partner with the City of Albuquerque WiFi on Wheels
- High speed WiFi to UNM parking lots
- Identified low cost internet options
- Identified free public WiFi locations across the state
- 50 checked out to Pell Eligible students
- $50,317 financial aid awarded to 253 students for connectivity
- College of Arts and Sciences provided $162,783 in direct funding for Student Success and Access grants since March 2020, helping 159 applicants.
- College of Arts and Sciences provided tuition assistance to students experiencing COVID hardship (Summer 2020 - $61,900 on tuition for 62 students; Spring 2021 – up to $150,000 in assistance planned).
Student Support
- COVID-safe services, transitioning university offices online, student needs assessments
- Mental and social support
- Scaling systems
- Licensing software
- Transforming computer labs
- Checking out laptops
- Supporting connectivity (parking lot access, hotspot checkouts, scholarships)
Faculty Support
- Instructional Design
- Technical Assistance
- Online resource guides
- Technology provisioning
- Student Faculty Facilitation Network
- Accessibility tools
- Remote participant tools for 150 classrooms
- Included as a teaching tool (academic bios) for new graduate teaching assistants - (EDPY 583)
- Included as a teaching tool (mini motivational syllabus) for graduate students in the College Teaching Seminar (EDPY 630)
- Used for final report by graduate students participating in the year long "Enhancement of Teaching Assistant Effectiveness in General Education Courses" Initiative.
- Faculty/Instructor Development Workshops (1 hr-In Design in the Classroom) and Course Design Institutes (2 days-Innovative Inclusion with Adobe Creative Cloud)
- Faculty/Instructor Digital Literacy Innovation Awards
- Possible area of focus/support for Remote Teaching Fellows initiative
“I could not imagine how much time and effort you have put into these well organized sessions and how much work you are doing now (e.g., responding to faculty’s emails, leading zoom meetings, etc). I am very grateful you have put together such informative and practical workshops with so many good models for us to use in our own classes. As I wrote previously, I really appreciate your including both research studies (e.g., literature review) discussing evidence-based online strategies as well as articles presenting specific teaching methods.” —Instructor, Department of Special Education
Everyone will be happy when public gatherings are safe again.
But what will "Normal" look like?
- We have learned some things worth keeping
- We have grown accustomed to some conveniences
- Businesses have changed a lot
- Automation and Remote work are part of our future
- Shift to online commerce may not go back
It starts with partnership and is about more than software
Modern storytelling is produced and consumed across a variety of mediums and formats
Communication in the age of distributed mass media
Text, raw data, graphs, still matter...
Creative, adj. (from Oxford English Dictionary)
- Having the quality of creating, able to create; of or relating to creation; originative.
- Inventive, imaginative; of, relating to, displaying, using, or involving imagination or original ideas as well as routine skill or intellect, esp. in literature or art.
But, I'm not artistic!
Information and Digital Literacy is now one of UNM's Essential Skills for General Education
Courses that include the skill of information and digital literacy should begin to prepare students for upper division college courses, the workplace, and civic life.
Credits:
Created with images by engin akyurt - "Coronavirus" • CDC - "This illustration, created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reveals ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses. Note the spikes that adorn the outer surface of the virus, which impart the look of a corona surrounding the virion, when viewed electron microscopically. A novel coronavirus, named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China in 2019. The illness caused by this virus has been named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)." • Mufid Majnun - "simulated covid-19 patients are in the ICU room" • Kelly Sikkema - "Young girl practicing kids coding on iPad" • Erik Mclean - "untitled image" • Mathew Schwartz - "Shot at the New Jersey Institute of Technology" • NASA - "untitled image" • WikiImages - "human leonardo da vinci the vitruvian man" • sweetlouise - "school video conference digitization" • Gabriel Petry - "VHS tape I found on my bedroom" • Charles Deluvio - "Work from home (Video call edition)" • Windows - "untitled image" • Franck - "Internet/Safe/Wifi. Use this image for free. Check my profile." • Tra Nguyen - "Physics teacher" • 6689062 - "business computer mobile" • kiquebg - "technology hands agreement" • Romain Vignes - "Focus definition" • Tyler Easton - "Numbers" • Mika Baumeister - "untitled image" • Giorgio Tomassetti - "Electricity Bill" • Alessandro Bianchi - "light bulb on black background" • Jordan Sanchez - "Our son, Ezra River and one of the most beautifully designed balance bikes for toddlers - made from oak - BrumBrum." • Clint Patterson - "I'm prepping for my Halloween IOT project and my desk is filled with electronics, structural channel, pneumatic cylinders, and actobotics. This phase is when the creativity really comes to life when code on the internet affects objects in real life. It's a messy process, but worth it in the end."