In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss the latest CHLOE (Changing Landscape of Online Education) survey report put out by Quality Matters and Eduventures Research, based on responses from more than 300 online leaders at US colleges and universities.

* CHLOE 5 Survey Report: The Pivot to Remote Teaching in Spring 2020 and Its Impact* Tyton Partners / Every Learner Everywhere Survey Report: Time For Class

Hosts:

* Phil Hill* Jeanette Wiseman* Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Hello, welcome to COVID Transitions. I’m Phil Hill, and I’m here with Kevin Kelly and Jeanette Wiseman. We’re talking about the CHLOE report, the fifth one that’s coming out on Monday when will publish publishes podcast.That’s the Changing Landscape of Online Education (CHLOE) that is put out by Eduventures and Quality Matters. There’s a lot of interesting insight in this survey that I thought it was worth us discussing.

In particular, to me, this survey provides the most usable context of any, except for maybe the Tyton Partners – Every Learner Everywhere is the other one I would put in this category where there’s useful context behind the survey that could be actionable by schools. What I mean by that is they don’t just go with the simple narrative of everybody’s going to Zoom. Students don’t like online this. They actually [00:01:00] provide a lot of context about what percentage of faculty and students have never had an online course in the past? And how does that affect this?

What are the multiple tools that are being used? Almost all the data is broken out by two year public community colleges versus four year in private. To me, it just has some of the most useful context of any of the surveys out there, say, the Tyton Partners. I would put that in the same category. I think it’d be useful for us to discuss this. I guess I’ve already shared my lead. This has context and this is a very usable survey and we’ve got a ton out there. So we’re starting to get into the point of, well, what can you do with these? Let me get your initial reactions. How how usable and what was your impression of the overall survey report, Jeanette?

Jeanette: Well, first, I think we need to point out who was [00:02:00] surveyed, because I think that makes an important distinction for this one, because it’s a little bit different than we’re getting students or faculty survey, For this report, which is a little bit further. Not as many as they usually do. What I’m reading is they mostly survey chief online officers for this report, for the survey. This time they only did three hundred and eight, although they did break it down across the different types of institutions that you listed.I will admit I’m getting a little bit of survey fatigue, and I shouldn’t be, since you guys are really doing more of the reporting on that, especially you, Kevin. I thought it was really interesting. I also think important to read the report because I think there’s some insight there that’s not just part of the numbers, but they call out some really important distinctions, which I think some people aren’t doing. I agree with you that it’s an important one. I think there is a lot of insight. I think between the lines sometimes [00:03:00] in this report is even more important than the actual numbers.

In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss the growing pushback from many in the academic community to colleges’ and universities’ reopening plans, focusing on two recent articles arguing that we’ll be all online in the fall.

* Inside Higher Ed article mentioned: “Flimflam: College in 2020”* Chronicle of Higher Ed article mentioned: “This Will Be One of the Worst Months in the History of Higher Education”

Hosts:

* Phil Hill* Jeanette Wiseman* Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Welcome to COVID Transitions. I’m Phil Hill, and we’re back again with Kevin Kelly and Jeanette Wiseman. And great to talk to you guys this day, even though it’s been a very interesting week.

Jeanette: Hey.

Kevin: Hey.

Phil: Let’s jump right into the topic, which I have to say ahead of time, it seems like the pressure in higher education has really been ramping up over the past few weeks on the decisions about fall plans. And that’s somewhat predictable. We talked in our podcast called Enter Darkness about how the fall was going to be entering into this period of uncertainty. And people would second guess you, no matter what the choice was, for an institution to open up. But I don’t think I really had in mind or understood just how intense a lot of the pushback was going to be.

And this week, we wanted to talk about a lot of the academic community pushback on [00:01:00] school plans for reopening a particular looking, as an example, two Op Eds that were published this week. They were really calling out, saying that colleges who were planning on any form of face to face reopening, having any students on campus, that it’s just going to end in disaster. And it’s a major mistake. And one of the Op Eds was at Inside Higher Ed. It was published this morning – today is Friday – by Ryan Craig. For each of these I’ll set up the premise, as they did it. His post is titled “Flim Flam: College in 2020.” And jumping ahead:. 

“The story of every mark who encounters a flimflam man is a carnival version of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. First, the flimflam man approaches the mark. Second, temptation, followed by a small payoff to demonstrate the scheme’s purported effectiveness. Third, the hard sell to go all in. Finally, a sudden unanticipated crisis or change of events that results in a complete loss.Millions of college students are now on this sucker’s journey. College students and their families are perfect marks. They’re told a degree is the only pathway to good jobs. After a remote spring and summer best characterized by the great They Might Be Giants lyric “If it wasn’t for disappointment/I wouldn’t have any appointments,” they’re primed for the temptation of a return to campus and normalcy.” [00:02:00]

That’s the end of the quote. The second one is from the Chronicle of Higher Education, and it’s from Robert Kelchen, and his is titled “This Will Be One of the Worst Months in the History of Higher Education”.” It actually builds off of a Twitter thread that he put out that got a lot of attention. So in his first two paragraphs: [00:03:00]

“Summer is usually a period of relative calm for most of American higher educa...

In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss the emerging debate about opening plans. Are schools that plan to “reopen” really trying to go fully (or even mostly) in-person, or are they going hybrid? Should they?

Hosts:

* Phil Hill* Jeanette Wiseman* Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Welcome to COVID Transitions. I’m Phil Hill, and again, I’m here with Jeanette Wiseman and Kevin Kelly discussing higher education’s challenges, dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s been two weeks since we were last here. I had a failed attempt to do a compilation podcast that just didn’t work out. But it’s great to talk to you guys again and be back online with the same subject. So how have you guys been doing the past two weeks?

Jeanette: I’ve been doing pretty well. I mean, keep an eye on, but keep checking on what side you don’t even know. Keep track not I don’t know. I do it. OK, maybe I get a little crazy. And Kevin.

Kevin: Same. Hanging in there. It’s been a busy week. Online event with Inscribe and plenty of work to go around, but excited to be here.

Phil: And it’s interesting also just the context is change around us. In the past week in particular, we’ve seen a dramatic rise in [00:01:00] cases in the U.S. of COVID-19 positive cases. And that I think it’s quite relevant to what we’re talking about because it gets to the point of view. We’re not quite sure of all of the patterns and we can’t take anything for granted with this pandemic.

But specifically, what we wanted to talk about today is that it’s becoming apparent as colleges and universities come out with their plans that the majority are planning on some form of in-person experience for fall 2020 in the US. And that as we look at the data – the Chronicle of Higher Education has a page out with a lot of data – and we’ve taken that, coded it and provided some visuals.

And it’s useful information, but it’s also a little bit misleading, partially because there are very few schools who are truly going back to in-person. [00:02:00] What’s really happening is if somebody is open reopening their campus and going in person, what they really mean is hybrid, that there is a proliferation of hybrid modalities where there’s a mixture of online coursework, face to face student, why things are changing up. But there are some level of in-person, but it’s not back to what things used to be.

So in one of the visualization blog posts, I provided hopefully a correction that Chronicle data and I grouped in person and hybrid together and saying this is really hybrid by with some form of in-person experience in the fall. But as you look at it, that is the majority case in the US, it’s not schools planning to be remote or fully online in the fall. And you’ve got pockets. California is the state [00:03:00] that’s got the greatest percentage of schools or going fully online, and there’s some in the Northeast. But by and large, it’s hybrid at the same time. We’re starting to see more articles where people are pushing back on the idea of reopening.

And it’s almost taking on a moral tone that’s not necessarily useful. So we’re even seeing articles where people are saying the only responsible choices to go fully online, you can only do this fully online.

I think it would be more productive to have a conversation about the various levels of hybrid and what’s likely to work and what...

In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, Kevin Kelly, and Kevin’s cat discuss another pre-existing trend that has been accelerated by COVID. Team-based course design and teaching.

Hosts:

* Phil Hill* Jeanette Wiseman* Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Hello, welcome to COVID Transitions, where we discuss the various reactions by higher education to the COVID pandemic and how it’s changing education. I’m Phil Hill and I’m here with Jeanette Wiseman and Kevin Kelly. And it’s great to talk to you again.

Jeanette: Hey.

Kevin: Hey.

Phil: So this week I wanted to talk about a trend that’s really becoming more obvious to me. And when we talk about trends. One thing I’ve seen with covered is that it tends to accelerate pre-existing trends more than creating brand new trends.

So there was an article I wrote in 2012, it e-Literate, and it turned into an EDUCAUSE Review article. It was really about faculty teams and multi-functional teams doing course delivery of design. The point of the article was arguing against the false dichotomy of face-to-face versus online, saying that there was actually a  [00:01:00]landscape of models that were emerging and starting to change how higher education worked. And on the left axis, it showed that one of the biggest differences is defining who is actually creating and designing the course – that it’s no longer just individual faculty. Whether you have design teams that include faculty or even multi-functional teams that have media experts and structural designers, faculty all working together. Bring that to today’s conversation, and what I think we’re seeing quite a bit more is this team-based work for faculty. In particular, dealing with it and how do you handle such changes in the education environment when at the same time we have real resource restrictions that we’re working on?

That’s the topic that we wanted to discuss today, [00:02:00] whether this is a long term trend or not towards team-based course design and team-based teaching. To get started. Kevin, Jeanette, I’d like to hear, are you noticing the same trends? Are there any examples you can give on where you’re seeing more of a team-based approach as a reaction to how we get prepared for fall 2020 in particular?

Kevin: Well, I saw it happening a little bit before COVID hit, when the Pathways grant for the California Community Colleges, working on career and technical education courses online. They put together teams to come up with curriculum to give each other feedback. Again, it’s something I brought up in previous podcasts where they used to have that model in the army in the 40s, where they had a subject matter expert, a producer, and multi-media person. Basically they would put together learning experiences as a team. And [00:03:00] these days, we have put a lot on the instructor’s plate where they have to be paying attention to everything under the sun. And as we head toward things like hybrid flexible courses, they’re going to put additional cognitive load not just on the students, but on the teachers. It’s going to take a team in order to make these things happen.

Phil: You mentioned the example of the community colleges, the Pathways grant pre COVID. Have you noticed an uptick in this type of approach since since the pandemic has come around?

Kevin: On the POD listserv, the POD Network listserv, they have talked about having institutes where, again, faculty come together, they design their courses in a cohort,

In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss the concept of Chronocentrism as applied by John Watson to an education context. What if a lot of the common predictions we have turn out to be wrong?

Hosts:

* Phil Hill* Jeanette Wiseman* Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Welcome to COVID Transitions. I’m Phil Hill, and I’m here with Jeanette Wiseman and Kevin Kelly talking about the transitions that higher education is going through due to COVID-19. It’s been a good week for me. I will say leading off that I was able to go away for the first time and had a meal, a lunch with my wife. It’s part of our anniversary. Out in a real restaurant with real server, so it’s been an exciting week for me. How are you guys doing?

Kevin: I’m doing just fine. I had a birthday this week and doing some good stuff this weekend, taking a class over Zoom. If you can believe it, for how to fingerpicking the blues.

Jeanette: Really? Oh, that’s impressive.

Kevin: We’ll see.

Jeanette: We were hoping to go camping this weekend, but still in New Mexico you can’t camp unless [00:01:00] you find a private campground. The overnights are still not allowed, which we were going to do. But it is so hot here that I think we’re just going to stay home. Except for if we could, we could. Maybe we’ll send the girls outside.

Phil: Well, we had our lunch in ninety five degree heat. I did not complain since I was just so happy to be out with other humans. What we’d like to talk about today builds on something that we mentioned two weeks ago. Two weeks ago we were discussing the community colleges and how their enrollments seem to be going up, and then we also looked at Arizona State University showing dramatically increased enrollment for the summer. And at the same time, it seems like the conventional wisdom had become, based on surveys, that enrollment was going to be dropping somewhere between 10 and 30 [00:02:00] % across all of higher education. We asked the question “at a certain point, we need to question, are these surveys right? We shouldn’t take that those are gospel.” We might be developing a conventional wisdom that’s just wrong. And at the same time, there was an article that came out yesterday from John Watson at the Evergreen Group, a consulting and analysis firm that works mostly in K-12. But I think this post was excellent. “Will post pandemic school be different? The case against.” And essentially what he does is refer to an article that came out in the Atlantic that essentially says, “I predict your predictions are wrong.” And it points out how often we actually look at our times as unique, and that we’ve never faced anything like it. And so there’s [00:03:00] a tendency to overestimate the significance of long term changes based on our current crises. And we’ll go over some more of the details.

John took the argument to bring up – what if so many of these arguments are wrong, and that we’re going to be a lot more normal than we thought we would be once we get into the fall or even beyond that, that we’re not just having fundamental transformations? I think it’s an interesting question and very interesting article. And point out that Moody’s came out today with their estimate of enrollment for the fall. They’re predicting that total enrollment goes up. Now they’re predicting that the rough enrollment revenue, or tuition revenue, goes down overall, but enrollment could actually be up. We have these contradictory signals.

In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss some of the practical issues faced by students, instructors, and institutions when implementing HyFlex models.

Hosts:

* Phil Hill* Jeanette Wiseman* Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Hi, I’m Phil Hill. And welcome to COVID Transitions. This week, we have a special episode that’s focused on the growing interest in hybrid formats for fall 2020. And specifically with the HyFlex model that’s being discussed at many campuses. We wanted to take some time to address some reader questions and in particular, look at the practical implications of preparing students as well as faculty and course designers for these new methods. Jeanette Wiseman and Kevin Kelly had an opportunity to talk about these details. We hope you enjoyed this episode.

Jeanette: Hey, Kevin.

Kevin: Hey, how are you today?

Jeanette: Okay. I feel like we need to have a little theme music playing at this point, since Phil’s not here to do it.

Kevin: Well and his voice is so resonating, so we’ll have to do our best.

Jeanette: How has your week gone?

Kevin: It has been a little bit nutty. He had two online events for over a hundred people, and my niece was supposed to graduate on Tuesday. When I sent her a text saying I was thinking about her, and I know it was supposed to be her big day, and we’ll figure out a way to celebrate your achievement. She said, Thanks, Uncle Kevin. It means a lot. Praying that COVID clears up by my college graduation.

Jeanette: Now, my godson graduated from the Naval Academy last week, and we were really looking forward to helping him celebrate that. So not being able to do that was disappointing for sure. So what were your webinars about this week, Kevin?

Kevin: One was with the group, I’m on the board, the Association of Authentic, Experiential and Evidence Based Learning paired up with e-Portfolios Australia.

Jeanette: Well, sounds like you were busy. Also had some blog posts and some really good comments and questions on this blog post this week.

Kevin: Yeah. And I think one of the most interesting questions stemmed from the blog post about HyFlex course design, and the person said, hey, our campus is considering HyFlex, and you have a very compelling bullet point about preparing students. But what does that look like? What should we be doing to prepare students for success in the HyFlex environment? And that to me said, OK, well, I guess we’ve got to put some more out there.

Jeanette: Yeah, absolutely. We can.

Kevin: Something we can discuss today.

Jeanette: I think so I think there’s a lot of people really curious about not only how did they do the HyFlex or the hybrid classes and planning for fall, but what EdTech students need to know. And what did they need to do to be prepared coming into really different learning environment? So do you have any pointers for instructors and schools looking to try to make sure that their students are ready for something that’s gonna be different?

Kevin: I do. I do. And I also have pointers for students themselves. I know we have an active listening group of students who love this podcast and it’s growing in popularity. For teachers and campuses, I think there are a couple of things they can do. One is to break it down. I don’t think it’s enough to put in a course catalog. That, of course,

In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss multiple campus and system plans for Fall 2020, with many schools going public with reopening (hybrid) or staying online announcements over the past week.

Hosts:

* Phil Hill* Jeanette Wiseman* Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Welcome back to COVID Transitions. I’m Phil Hill and I’m here with Jeanette Wiseman and Kevin Kelly for another week of discussions about higher education and the changes we’re going through. This week, somewhat of a follow up to our discussion last week. Last week, we noted that now that Cal State University, with its four hundred and eighty thousand students, announced it was going to be mostly online for fall 2020. We were expecting to hear quite a few announcements coming forward, that you’d get a lot more, as Kevin was describing, if somebody is out on the dance floor now, other people can get out there. Indeed, we are starting to see quite a bit of news coming out. So we wanted to cover what’s happening with the news and what the changes are. It’s certainly been an exciting week from what I’ve seen, news wise, if you can call this type of information exciting.

Jeanette: Well, lordy, momma there’s not very much consistency. It doesn’t seem like, that’s for sure. With all that’s expense.

Phil: That’s part of the excitement. A lot of these you couldn’t have predicted or certainly I couldn’t have predicted the way they went. Let’s run through some of the news and just get your thoughts on what’s actually happening. So last week, we covered with California that there were some preliminary news about the University of California system, much more definitive news from Cal State system and then the California budget. Well, there are two things that have happened this week. First of all, the California community college system. Kevin, describe what you saw there and what do we know about why they’re actually making the decision they’re making?

Kevin: Well, I know originally the chancellor had said that it was still going to be up to the colleges in one of those Wednesday webinars that they hold to discuss COVID circumstances. They had basically set it up as such. But I think in the meantime, it’s been a little bit more guidance to have more virtual.

Phil: Yeah, I think we’ve seen a lot of the campuses already coming out saying that they were going to be virtual for fall 2020. Then the chancellor came out on Monday and essentially said he was endorsing the decision that most colleges were going to be virtual. That’s a way I had seen the news represented. I found it interesting that part of the rationale was simply finances. We’re community colleges, we recognize we probably can’t afford some of the mitigation requirements that we expect to see if we were going to try to open the in-person classes. Just the ability to afford plexiglass and social distancing and testing and all the changes seem to be a major factor there.

Jeanette: I also think, though, from a community college standpoint, strategically it makes sense. I think that not only California, but beyond being able, community college has two things going for it. It’s usually commuter plays. There’s not a lot of community colleges that have a big resident population.

It’s a place where it would be easy to go online. Then additionally and I think we saw some of the news reports this week that also talked about this that students aren’t sure what they’re going to do next year.

In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss multiple news items coming out of California that could be an early view into nationwide reactions – Cal State system remaining (mostly) virtual through Fall 2020 and California’s revised budget and its impact on higher education.

Hosts:

* Phil Hill* Jeanette Wiseman* Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Well, welcome back to the podcast COVID Transitions. I’m Phil Hill, and again I’m here with Kevin Kelly and Jeanette Wiseman for another episode. Welcome. And I probably need to get started saying, Jeanette, any updates on how your husband’s doing and how your family is recovering?

Jeanette: Thank you, Phil. We’re doing really well. He’s recovering nicely. The bruising is still there, but surprisingly not as bad as you would think. I think it may be a few more weeks till he’s feeling completely back to normal but thanks, we’re all doing well.

Phil: I like that intro because now people who are just starting to listen to this episode are going to have to go back one episode and get started earlier. So that’s that’s good.

Jeanette: Yes. That’s a good tease.

Phil: Yes. Yes. And Kevin, how are you doing? I know that look like you had some impressive work you were doing last week with the stained glass window outside. So how are things going in your household?

Kevin: Well, we did that work outside over the weekend, and then I haven’t seen it since. It’s been it’s been busy. And Phil, if you’re going to entice people to go back and listen to previous episodes, they should have to go find it.

Phil: Oh, it’s a treasure hunt. Well, this will be our sixth episode of COVID Transition. At least now listeners will know how many they might have to search through.

As for me, probably one of the more disappointing days I had is when I needed to take a break from being in the office so much, and at lunchtime, I took the dog to go walk on the beach and rediscovered that we have our beaches closed from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. It was very difficult to convince the dog that we couldn’t walk down the stairs. He’s not as concerned about the fines that they levy out here if you go on the beach at the wrong time. Sort of first world problems. But that was a challenge for us.

Jeanette: Sorry to hear that. I didn’t know that had happened.

Phil: Yes. Well, I felt dumb, too. Of course I’d know this, but once I get there, I’m like, ‘oh, I can’t even go down the beach.’ But that’s something I might even turn to what we’d like to talk about today, which is problems in California, or opportunities in California. Basically all things California.

A lot of the news this week has centered on the announcement by California State University system that they are opening primarily online for the fall. We’ll go into more details of what that means, but most classes will be online for all 23 California State University campuses for Fall 2020. And that obviously has repercussions beyond just the system.

And I like the way that they actually mentioned this in the Wall Street Journal coverage, where they noted that “five percent of Americans holding a college degree graduated from a Cal State school.” It puts it in perspective how influential that is. And at the same time, the University of California, one of the other public systems here,

In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss additional details on the Hybrid Flexible model (HyFlex). We then address how institutions that have already invested in the social infrastructure to support quality hybrid and online teaching are likely to fare much better than under-resourced schools (in terms of eLearning support and culture).

Hosts:

* Phil Hill* Jeanette Wiseman* Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Hi, I’m Phil Hill, and welcome back to COVID Transitions. I’m here talking to Kevin Kelly and Jeanette Wiseman. Before we get to the topics of the day, we are lucky to have Janette with us today, because there was a family medical emergency that she’s been going through. That really raises a question about how life affects us during this time of COVID. But, you know, without sharing details, but Jeanette – anything you wanted to share with the hospital experience and what it does to families?

Jeanette: Yeah. I will share a little bit so it’s not so cryptic with people probably thinking it is worse than it is.

My husband was on top of the ladder yesterday and fell. It was a pretty high ladder, and he hit his head, had a skull fracture. He wasn’t at home when this happened – he was at his place of business, just cleaning things up.

What’s really scary is once somebody gets into the hospital, that’s it. It’s sort of like a dead zone. I had no idea what was happening other than he was taken in the ambulance to the hospital. And it’s really scary. It was a scary 12 to 14 hours. Luckily, we have a friend who’s a physician who was able to go and be with him and advocate for him a little bit.

I think it just speaks to you’re not going to the hospital, you’re not going to the doctors at this time. When you do it’s a very different place to be. It’s a very different experience to go through. And you feel really helpless. He’s fine, though. He’s going to be OK.

Kevin: I’m so grateful that he’s OK. And I hope he continues to … to heal quickly. I wish I had less experience with this, to say that sounds so unique. But every time it’s proven to be true that someone needs to be an advocate, because health care has changed so dramatically where the focus is less on the patient and more on completing tasks.

It also makes me think about – to pivot slightly toward our topics – our students and even instructors today who are trying to deal with emergency remote teaching while addressing family needs. I co-teach my online course with someone who’s down in the L.A. area, and her mother had a stroke and recently passed away, and she couldn’t even visit because of the restrictions around hospital visits. The whole experience of not being able to, to be with your own mother in a time of crisis, not being able to attend the funeral except for FaceTime. It speaks to the need to remember the human side of the virtual world that we’re in with these stay at home orders.

Jeanette: What I’ve noticed is that we as humankind are being robbed of ritual. When you hear of things like no funerals. And now we’re looking at May graduations aren’t going to happen. Birthdays aren’t going to happen. Weddings aren’t happening. And that’s major component of being human is not something that we’re able to celebrate or grieve with, or to just be supportive in some ways that we’re used to. We’re having to find new ways to do that.

In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss how different the Fall 2020 decision will be for campus decision-makers than was the Spring 2020 move to remote. The recent move was easy, in a way, with a binary choice and little second-guessing. Fall will be different.

Hosts:

* Phil Hill* Jeanette Wiseman* Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Welcome

again to the MindWires COVID Transitions podcast, where we discuss the

challenging era or were in with educational institutions transitioning to

remote learning and online modalities and dealing in general with the COVID-19

induced crisis. And I’m here with my colleagues again, Jeanette Wiseman and

Kevin Kelly. And Jeanette, as I’m sure you guys will notice, has received her

new microphone. So how are you?

Jeanette: I’m

doing much better. Hopefully everyone can hear me a little bit clearer. Hi,

guys.

Phil: Oh, yeah.

And Kevin, how are you doing? You’ll have your new microphone sometime over the

weekend. But through your cheap set up, how are you doing today?

Kevin: I’m a

cheap date and I’m doing well. It’s sunny here. And even though I haven’t been

outside in days, it looks nice.

Phil: It’s funny

as we talk about the microphones. I was surprised just how hard it was to get

the basics. It turns out that decent quality microphones for your laptop is

somewhere on par with toilet paper, decent paper towels, hand cleaner. Just the

things that we found are extremely difficult to find and have to find it from

different sources and ship them long distances to find them. So I’m glad we’re

getting set up here.

Jeanette: Yeah.

What? It’s like getting flour right now. Right now. Yeah.

Phil: And you get

excited with some of these basic who? I found a source. I know how to do this.

I had that recently with Costco and tissue paper or Kleenex. I was like, oh, I

can’t believe I found it. I was so happy.

Jeanette: And now

it’s there’s definitely I feel like a channeling my Depression era grandmothers

right now and saving things. But I also feel really excited over those little

things since we’re making so much at home.

Phil: Well, I

hope we can appreciate the good things in life. And that’s why I find what’s

good out of this. What we wanted to talk about today was looking at what’s

happening in the community. There has been an explosion of conversation over

the past week to week and a half in terms of what institutional plans are for

the fall semester.

So we’ve all always known this had to happen, and we’ve

written about the fact that this is likely going to be high pressure in April

and May. But in typical Higher Ed fashion, I think you have a lot of herd

behavior. And what’s happened now is so many schools are not just talking about

should we go online, should we reopen the campus? Is there something in

between?

But they’re starting to talk about this topic in public. But

they’re doing it an interesting way. So one of the post I wrote recently, Cal

State Fullerton, made news where what came out of NPR and many other media

sources, including the L.A. Times. I’ll read from NPR, and this was from last

week. “On Monday,