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...