Our digital future

When COVID-19 forced Concordia to shut its doors, a massive effort was launched to transition classes online. In less than two weeks, students were completing coursework virtually.

But with a potential vaccine still months away, another challenge loomed for the fall semester.

“We asked faculty to turn things around in about a week [last March],” says Anne Whitelaw, BFA 87, GrDip 92, PhD 96, interim provost and vice-president, Academic. “Now we’re asking faculty to entirely transform the way they deliver course material in three or four months — it’s important to underscore that eConcordia courses normally take about a year to develop.”

Moving courses online, Whitelaw emphasizes, involves more than repackaging and streaming material.

“Aside from the obvious technical differences, you simply cannot sit in front of a camera on Zoom for three hours in the same way that you sit in a classroom. The way the material is taught has to be completely rethought.”

She says that training faculty and giving them the tools to teach online has been a major focus for the university and a learning process for everyone.

“Most of our faculty are now fully engaged in experiential learning. As a university, we spend a lot of time thinking about research and innovation, but we rarely have the opportunity to have such an in-depth conversation about teaching. I believe this will be a silver lining of the pandemic for our university.”

Concordia well positioned

Whitelaw says a big part of the successful pivot was a strong pre-existing digital strategy.

“We were already thinking about ways to use digital platforms to support and streamline our work.

But to be clear, we’re not looking to use this as an opportunity to become an online university.”

The lion’s share of the planning and oversight falls on the shoulders of Sandra Gabriele, PhD 04, vice-provost of Innovation in Teaching and Learning, and the small, formidable team at the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL).

“I always describe CTL as the little engine that could,” says Gabriele. “They just keep turning out ideas and content that frankly astonishes me.”

Many of the initiatives Gabriele and CTL implemented were pending projects that were fast-tracked.

“Most of what we put into place had funding lined up. This includes upgrading Moodle [a free and open-source learning management system], which used to have a clunky interface and really wasn’t user-friendly. The latest version is much more visually pleasing and has great features — including far greater accessibility for our students with disabilities.”

‘It was a massive logistical undertaking’

Gabriele says that Concordia’s fall semester will be a combination of synchronous — real-time — and asynchronous — on-demand — learning.

“This hybrid model is the foundation of what we call active learning. Students get to really dig into the content, take it apart and push the boundaries.”

The goal, Gabriele adds, was to make course content as accessible, digestible and interactive as possible.

Accessibility was vital because some students live in different time zones, while others work, act as caregivers or share study spaces with roommates or family members.

“What we’ve been stressing to faculty is the need to create three kinds of engagement,” says Gabriele. “Engagement between students and professors, either as individuals or as a group, student engagement with the course material and, finally, student engagement between themselves — something that we know is vital to the university experience.”

Though the bulk of classes will be online, some courses requiring hands-on work will be taught in person with strict guidelines.

“Our environmental and safety team walked through every single lab or studio space to assess accessibility, how many people can safely be in the room or pass in the hallways, how the transition between classes will take place and so much more. It was a massive logistical undertaking.”

‘A richer and deeper learning experience’

While CTL and the rest of the university have been transforming Concordia’s academic landscape, Laura Mitchell, executive director of Student Services, and her team have been busy readying a virtual campus experience for students.

“Our biggest priority was to ensure that services and resources that are normally available to students continue,” says Mitchell. “I’m very proud of how we’ve managed to accomplish that.”

Much like CTL, many of the online initiatives implemented by Student Services were projects that were either planned or forecast, such as Future Ready — a program to help grads transition into the workplace.

“Attendance for our Future Ready workshops has gone through the roof,” says Mitchell. “There’s a real appetite for online programming from our students and we expect it to continue even after the pandemic.”

Though COVID-19 has disrupted higher education across the country and the world, Gabriele believes the situation presents an opportunity.

“Comparing online with in-person learning is like comparing a novel to a movie. Each medium, when done well, provides its own beautiful and engaging experience. One of the outcomes of the pandemic is that we’re having a new dialogue about the different ways we can use technology to provide our students with a richer and deeper learning experience.”