Pedagogo

Part 2: Fall Semester or Fall Sequester? Making the Academic Year Successful

May 19, 2020 ExamSoftMedia Season 1 Episode 5
Pedagogo
Part 2: Fall Semester or Fall Sequester? Making the Academic Year Successful
Show Notes Transcript

This week, we're continuing the conversation with academic leaders about how to define and achieve success in fall amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. This week's guests are John Murray, Provost at Barry University and Aaron Cyr, Director of Assessment and Evaluation at Arizona College.  John and Aaron talk about how to define success for Fall and beyond, how to maintain rigor in assessment and in preparation for accreditation during the COVID-19 pandemic, and more. 

Britt: Pedagogo, a show that brings education to your ears and metamastery to your assessments. With several insightful interviews, today's episode explores that question of uncertainty on every educator’s mind, what's the plan for fall? Pedagogo brought to you by ExamSoft the assessment software that keeps security and integrity in your exams while providing you actionable data for your outcomes when creating the testing seems tough. ExamSoft gives you rainbows so you can pass your students with flying colors.

Allison Case (00:31)

Welcome back for another episode of Pedagogo. This week we continue the conversation on “Fall Semester or Fall Sequester: Making the Academic Year a Success”. The impetus for this was my desire to “phone a friend” and ask them “what in the heck is your plan to succeed for fall?” And so, I did just that. Today I sit down with John Murray, Provost at Barry University and Aaron Cyr, Director of Assessment and Evaluation at Arizona College.  To kick us off this week, take a listen to my conversation with John. 

 

John Murray (01:01)

Thanks for having me on. My name is John Murray. And I am the Provost at Barry University in Miami, Florida. I've been here for almost four years. Uh, prior to being Provost I served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana. Barry is about 50% undergraduate students and 50% graduate students. We have a law school, we have a school of pediatric medicine, everybody is, you know, gearing towards celebrating the end of the academic year. So, I love that and that's what's going on right now, this week. 

 

Allison Case (01:45)

Talk to me a little about how you're looking at fall. 

John Murray

We're, we're thinking a lot about it. It is our intention to return to on campus classes in the fall. And to do that in the context of being safe for our students, faculty, and staff, really our entire university community. We are taking in information, just like everybody, from our federal level, state, local level, how can we function now and then how can we potentially function in the fall? And creating contingency plans for a variety of scenarios. 

Allison Case 

Yes, absolutely. I echo that hope for you and for everybody that we can be back safely and in what feels more normal.  John, you bring up a good point. Your contingency plans. Just talk me through some of some of your contingency plan? 

John Murray (2:44)

Yes. Well, thank you for the question. And we are very much in the thick of, of doing this and, we're engaging in really vigorous contingency scenario planning. I think, when you have a big institution with lots of people and an organization, you have to really take things in pieces and that's really what we're doing.  We've created a set of task forces and, I'm in charge of the academic planning one, but we have to think of other ones too. We have to have a health task force which takes into account, if it's very, very dangerous, if we still have to be in a remote environment and you have to stay in lockdown, then what do we do there? If we can free that up a little bit and be face to face, then as you pointed out, how many people can be in a room? Uh, do we need to wear masks? Do we need to schedule class, I mean it's going to point to the group that I'm working with, which would be a heavy concentration on scheduling or, how we would interact with one another and which people may need to stay home if they're a vulnerable population. So, we're working together to come up with that portfolio of plans that can help us go from all the way from completely remote to completely face to face and everything in between.

Allison Case 

How is Barry University, how is your office defining success for Fall?

John Murray 

It's a great question. And one I think we should always be asking ourselves. I think we would define success as strong enrollment, continued service to our campus community. Uh, that, that's really very, very important to Barry. To keep our campus community alive and, and to help us do what we do best. You know, that's why we're here. So, success would be strong enrollment, continued service.  That being said, though, success is also supporting, connecting, informing our community through this time of disruption, which really has been unprecedented. We've never, we've never been in situations like this before or any situation, so we really have to take care of one another. So, I think that should be part of success as well. We are a human organization and, just, beyond just doing what we're supposed to do, as per our business model, we're also a group of people that really have a connection with one another and communication under these stressful times is just really, really critical for that.

 

Allison Case (05:19)

Talk to me a little bit about the plans to maintain rigor or if any of your programs are trying to get or maintain accreditation in this online environment. What if discussions around that look like? Because this is certainly a novel challenge.

John Murray 

Absolutely. You're so right. It has been very much on the top burner of conversations I have with the team that I work with, which is really the Academic Deans and our faculty Senate. And we want to make sure that we're delivering the quality education that students have come to expect. Uh, we want to make sure that we're doing that even though our platform has had to change a little bit. We have to make sure that we are keeping things as rigorous and high quality as we can possibly do that.  We've done a number of things. Certainly, keeping that at the forefront of our conversations. It just naturally has gone there. Just as we've had to adjust to a remote delivery, up come issues that would, that would really interact with the notion of quality, let's say proctoring, right?

John Murray 

Exam proctoring. We have of course a number of programs that involve very high stakes tests, board exams or pre-board exams. You know, in our law school or with our podiatry school for example, we found, when we went remote and we did not have the ability for it to be on campus, normally proctoring would have taken place on campus and we would have faculty and people to observe students taking tests. Well, suddenly, that went out the window. And so, we had to come up with a new solution. Uh, we had to get software and tools to help us with that. That was an adjustment. But it's very much tied to your question about quality and accreditation. We want to make sure that we're doing what we need to do. So, we really had to pivot in that situation. And use that problem, it was really reminding me of, that's just an example of one of many issues that have to do with quality.  So, there was the proctoring issue. Other conversations that we would have that center around quality is what we're doing here is we are saying and working with the Deans who work with the faculty, we are delivering academic instruction here.  It happens to be in a particular kind of platform, but it is still high quality. We still need to pay attention to how we're doing what we're doing, making sure we are gauging how well students are learning, and, and adjusting accordingly, just like we would be doing face to face. So, I think we have to be sensitive to that as we move into the fall, right? In fact, I think we, I wouldn't say we do it anymore cause we've been doing it enormously, but it's, it continues to be very, very important to be able to know that you're engaging in good, solid, quality instruction and doing what you need to do to maintain your accreditation.

Allison Case 

Absolutely. What considerations did you take into account? There's tons of proctoring services out there. It's challenging to certainly squeeze in a new tool or resource into the budget, but it sounds like proctoring became an evident need. 

John Murray (08:25)

It was huge.  It was kind of an emergency. I mean we had a particular model that we were using and then up came these scheduled exams that had to be done. So I think, I go to the experts, my team who does this, and it has to interact with our LMS, it has to be accessible, it has to be doable by our students. And I mean, of course it, in retrospect it's like, well we just kind of did it and we sailed through it.

John Murray

It really, none of that is easy because first of all just discovering you have the problem is associated with probably a lot of drama and it's like, “whoa, we're, we need to fix this” and “how are we going to do this”? So, you have to come together, you have to engage in problem solving. You have to pull in numbers of people from across campus. Well we have our distance learning team, our student affairs folks, our students and the folks in the academic side who are closest to them. You have to pull all of those people together in order to hear each other and to be able to vet the right, first of all, air the problem and clarify it, and then come up with the options that you've got in front of you.

John Murray 

And of course, there's a budgetary issue. How are we going to do this? And of course, as you brought it up budgetarily, it's a scary time. You don't want to spend money that you don't, can’t count on or, or you know, you want to just be very, very careful of your resources.

Allison Case (09:48)

Yeah, sure. How confident are you that the proctoring software was, was worth the budgetary expense, in the realm of all possible needs that could be satisfied? Are you satisfied with spending money for that tool?

John Murray (10:03)

We definitely had to do it. So, although, maybe in the end of, go several months out and see what we could have spent money on and all this, but this was really something that had to happen. Uh, these are, it, it met an immediate need, that was not going away and that needed to be done. And so, I will, I, I'm, I'm confident that that investment was necessary, and it worked. We were able to do that . And of course, we're still in the middle of it, right? We're not done. When you have a medical school, like we have a pediatric medical school, we are now in a different kind of reality. We have students that have to, we have to abide by certain kinds of standards of the way that they're tested and the high stakes exams and just not in that program, but in other ones, in others as well.

Allison Case (00:10:38)

So, John, how did your implementation go with you? Basically, you know, had this sudden need, you pulled together your team and kind of built this use case quickly and, kind of talk to all your stakeholders. How did implementation go in such a fast turnaround? Were you able to get success in a fairly short time period?

John Murray (10:59)

It, it went well, thank goodness. I won't say it went completely smoothly because there's a lot of negotiation and a lot of problem solving. So, sometimes it feels when you're in a situation like that, it's one step forward, two steps back, but in the end, you just persevere and support one another and get the right information. So, in the end, we made, I'll say, the purchases and then we had to get the support, right, the technical support. We have to be able to tell people how to use it and how to convey, all the, all the parts of this orchestra that have to come together in order to make this work. So that's how you manage when the, when tensions are high, and your environment has been compromised. Like in the case of the COVID crisis. We've, and this is a good example of that, but the team really worked well together.

Allison Case (11:47)

Yeah. Oh, that feels good. That you can rely on them when push comes to shove. Is it possible to kind of purchase tools or resources or solutions, is it possible to fix the problems in real time and in a way that that works? 

John Murray 

In this case of, we're all in a sea here of disruption. situation with the proctoring is an example of having to make a purchase, adjust what you're doing in order to work.  Maybe a year from now look at this as a fairly small issue that comes up, but in the moment, it never feel like that. And I live in that world of back-to-back zoom calls, um, and constant phone calls, and struggling with working together in a way that you're not used to when you really could use the face to face connection.

John Murray (12:43)

It's very frustrating and very isolating and, and it can feel hopeless. That's a serious word. But I think at, at its worst it can feel that way. 

John Murray

How do you manage decisions in the context of not knowing? And that can feel very, unnerving and disruptive. So, I think, if we're talking about kind of, from a leadership perspective, it's a matter of breathing. Don't go down that rabbit hole because it's really hard to come back and it's not all that productive. Just keep, keep pushing along, keep asking questions, lay it out on the table, problem solve as you can, and realize it's not all going to be perfect because I mean we're not aiming for perfection at this point. We're aiming for getting on the other side.

Allison Case (00:13:26)

I love that. it's just great to hear you saying to breathe, keep pushing, keep moving forward, keep working together and just solve the problems that are in front of you.

John Murray (13:38)

Yeah. And keep perspective. That's another thing that's helpful.  Not all problems are enormous. It's very hard. It's very hard, especially when you're really stressed out and when it's, when it really is a big deal. Uh, and you don't know when you've got all the possible things in front of you. It's like, gosh, it could be, a complete train wreck or we might not have a train wreck. And when you don't know, you catastrophize. I think recognizing that catastrophizing is a little helpful, but it isn't all that helpful when you're trying to solve some problems. So you need to be able to know when that's happening and recognize it for what it is and then step back and say, “wait a minute, I made me not be able to handle and manage the massive problem, but I can't fix this one small thing that's in front of me now”, and work with others. Anyway, it sounds, I sound like a hallmark card. Uh, but these are true, these are the, this is, we're all living this, and I think it's really helpful to hear other people, say that, and you gotta reach out for support, to, to get questions answered. You don't have to know everything, right? Uh, ask the right people to, to help get you down the path of, of solutions.

 

Allison Case (14:53)

Looking forward, out of all of COVID’s disruption, are there any silver linings for Barry University?

John Murray 

Wow. I love that question. And you know what, I've thought about it a lot. And, and, throughout this whole experience, I think there's a lot of silver linings here. And one, I'll just reach to, is taking a really good look at what we were able to do. One silver lining is how, one of them is about the community and the community came together. As a Provost, and then as a former Dean, I remember trying to get initiatives off the ground and, and they require, sometimes some arm twisting and some negotiation and some working with people and it takes, weeks and tons of meetings and this and that and lots of pushback, and here and there. And maybe in six months you're, you've started, it's very amazing when, when you're in a situation like this where there was no choice, there was no,  all it was, was a problem to solve.

John Murray (00:16:00)

We were able to pull together, like many universities, and can reconfigure what we had to do for our students, and we did it. So, I am very inspired by that, and fell in love with my community kind of all over again when this happened. So, there's that. On the other side, I see a silver lining with respect to online education and the flexibility, I say online, but really, it's the platforms in which we relate and teach our students, has, it's got me all stirred up a little bit. I'm thinking, I'll sometimes be wondering in a random moment, “gee I wonder if we could, serve our students better or, maybe there's a new, group of students that would want to come to Barry if we offered the program a program in this other way”, whether it's completely online, whether it's in a hybrid blended.

John Murray (16:49)

This has really made me rethink, not rethink this, but think about it again and feel hopeful about that. In  fact, I was thinking about, I may have read this, but isn't it interesting where you can now take this experience where everything was forced to go remote and we, and my phrase is, we kind of “bubble gum and duct taped” some things together to make it happen and make it happen with integrity. I think we can ask the question, “hey, is there anything that we, we had to adjust that, we could then go the next step and turn that into a more fully online, legitimately online, course?”

John Murray 

I mean, not every course is meant for that. I mean, there are certain kinds of experiential face to face kinds of experiences that you just can't do that with, very easily, at least. But maybe there are some where we wouldn't have considered it before. We could consider it now. I think that's very much a silver lining. So anyway, you know, I find myself thinking about things like that. So, and so other than that, I see the potential in what the community is capable of, and then what other doors has it opened for us? Those are good silver linings from this experience.

Allison Case (18:06)

You know in talking, too, a lot of faculty have been inspired almost because once the shock wears off, it is a unique opportunity to be forced to reconfigure and try new things. 

John Murray 

Yeah. I think we need to do that. If you're not a person who “goes there” and thinks about “what meaning can I make out of this situation”,  not to be Pollyanna-ish and being kind of cookie and delusional about it, but to be, you know, “wait a minute, there is some, there's something to be garnered from this experience that can help us”. I think that's a really useful approach, in the midst of solving the problems, in the midst of the storm, you need, it really is helpful to take a moment, take a sidestep and go, wait a minute, “there is something good here that we can use. Let's, let's write that down. Let's put that over to the right here and and come back to it”. So, that's a good way to get through it.

Allison Case (19:05)

Well, I agree, and I think a lot of faculty who would never have considered online education, or a virtual classroom had been thrust into it and at least given some exposure to it. So, it no longer sounds like this, this out of reach or this, crazy thing to consider. So, even if a lot of faculty never go back to virtual classrooms, the fact that they've done it, they've tried and they've seen, kind of in the most stressful times what it could be, really plants a lot of seeds.

John Murray (19:39)

I think it does. I hope it hasn't left a bad taste in some people's mouth, but you know, I suspect it has for some cause for whatever reason, you can't get into everybody's situation. 

Allison Case 

I was talking to someone the other day that said, this is not a virtual classroom, this is emergency remote teaching. 

John Murray 

Yes, yes, exactly. I found myself, um reacting when the term “online”, it's like, well, has your school gone online? It's like, no, I'm not going to say that.  We have already have some programs that are truly online. But this, what we did with face to face classes, is not put them online. We, we transformed them so that they could be taught remotely. Now maybe that's splitting hairs, but I don't think so. Really truly online courses, they have a, there's a methodology, there's a platform, there is a standards and there's all kinds of characteristics that, that we're not doing here. Uh, this was really a pivot, that was scenario driven by their current situation. So, it's a little bit different.

Allison Case (21:00)

Absolutely. Where do you see education heading in this post COVID-19 world? 

John Murray 

Where is education heading? My goodness. What a great question, man.  There's going to be a lot of scholarly writing and analysis about this situation in the future.  I don't know if we're going to do a, a, uh, 180 and it's going to be completely, completely different. I actually don't think that's the case, but I think it will change. Uh, we have had a taste that, the Higher Ed community on the delivery end of it has had to adjust to the situation. It has sensitized us to what has to happen to, in order to deliver instructions in this way. So, I am really interested and the analyses that will come out post-hoc about this to, that will inform pedagogy, that will inform, opinion, and public opinion.

John Murray (21:47)

Because there are so many other factors, societal factors that co uh, that commingled with, with education. I mean, we're also taking a huge, financial hit, employment-wise as a country on this. So, it's hard to know what's due to what here, the causal factors. But education, education has had a taste of having to completely pivot and we have done it, which will make a real difference. So, I'm not sure where we're going to land in the end, let's say two, three, four years from now as a function of this. But I don't think we're going to be the same. I really don't. We know of our capacity to change and this is a perfect illustration of it, and we will be changing. We will be changing. It's absolutely necessary.

Allison Case (22:32)

Well, and then our pedagogy will be, we'll have been informed by this crazy experiment and this crazy shift and that there can be lessons learned or gleaned from that. Where if anywhere, do you think you're still, your team is still putting the pieces together? Where's there still room for answers that haven't manifested themselves yet?

John Murray 

Oh, oh I think there's still a lot of room for answers. I mean we, we’re, as we were talking about earlier, I mean we've, we've been solving the problems that have come in front of us. The big unknown right now is what will the Fall look like? How will new students and how will returning students, be affected by this? Will they want to come back in the same vigor and enthusiasm that they had in the front end of this? We don't know the answer to that. We're still engaging in a lot of scenario building, a lot of problem solving, a lot of thinking through “what if this, then what if that”, how will we respond as a, as a university community, how will we respond as a financial entity, to all the different possibilities? So, we have to, we have a lot of work in front of us, to do that. And time will reveal the parameters of this situation, and we’re gonna struggle through it because we want to know now, and we can't know now. We have to do what we can, given the data we have to make the best decisions we can. And, and manage the anxiety that goes along with it.

Allison Case

Just like the leaders I spoke to last week, Barry University is planning to be on ground in Fall provided they can do so safely, and having the hard conversations about making that possible. Including creative scheduling, face masks, and a facilities plan to support a healthy return to campus. But Barry is also using the input from its tasks forces to plan for every eventuality as well. Did it give you comfort to know that Provosts and other faculty members have to fight the urge to catastrophize? It did me.  And how about hearing John’s perspective on making hard budgetary decisions when real solutions can’t wait?   We are human, we can’t know it all, but we can rely on our peers, and make the best decision possible with the information we have. 

Allison Case 

My last interview today is with Aaron Cyr, the Director of Assessments and Evaluation at Arizona college. If you're into data, Aaron’s your guy. Arizona College is a year-round program, featuring three 16-week semesters, back to back. So, when I caught up with Aaron, he was on his 1-week hiatus before the 16-week summer term began. No summer off for this guy.  I asked Aaron about Arizona College’s remote testing response whenever classes first went online.  Let’s jump in there. 

 

Aaron Cyr (00:25:19)

So, yeah, so we paused testing initially. And we kind of had two different plans in mind. Um, the first plan was, because we didn't have any remote secure testing solution at the time. We thought we can just adjust our tests. So, let's minimize the amount of multiple-choice questions, let’s assume that all of our tests are open book, that students are good at using, you know, their textbooks we’ll just, we already had, a pretty well-defined testing policy as far as timeframes.

Aaron Cyr 

If a student is trying to look up every single answer, that takes a lot of time. Right. So, they have to kind of rationalize what they're doing. So, and then we just, I thought about, well let's just include more essay questions, more of the alternative style questions, ‘cause that's going to at least still be able to meet our outcomes while not having that proctor there the whole time.  

 

Allison 

After planning for operations without a remove proctoring service, Arizona College was able to quickly acquire and train on a remote proctoring service for their high stakes assessments. Let’s listen to how they proceeded with virtual classrooms and remote high stakes assessment once they had a proctoring service in place.  

Aaron Cyr (26:32)

So now it's, you know, we're fully prepared for remote examinations in future semesters. The good thing about kind of our culture in our organization is, you know, we had our faculty give us feedback right afterwards saying, hey, you know, “I wish you would have done this a little better” or “spoken to this”. 

 

Allison Case

Smart, right. 

 

Aaron Cyr 

And then, you know, we took our feedback that we received and then kind of went down the same road and that one was much smoother because we had that feedback. 

Allison Case 

Those best practices and lessons learned. That's awesome. How are you and the leadership at Arizona college looking at fall and your next long semester? what are you envisioning?

Aaron Cyr (00:27:28)

What we're planning on right now is basically through June, we're assuming that we're going to be remote through June. And we've implemented a lot of different resources and strategies, and many of them we had kind of already had plans to do. We're also right in the midst of a curricular revision is why we already had planned on doing a lot of this. You know we have a lot of resources and activities available.  The biggest question, and it's kind of out of our hands, is what is going to happen with the hospitals and clinicals and getting them their hours? And for that, we just are altering our content in how it's laid out so that a lot of the hands-on skills where, or clinical hours, we’re kind of front loading, you know, the virtual sims in the beginning.

Aaron Cyr (28:10)

So, we can get as many of those hours done and then hopefully, we'll have a clearer picture or idea, you know, come middle of summer to see kind of where we fall as far as clinicals go.

Allison Case (28:20)

Okay. I, that's clever. So, if I understand what you're saying, you're doing your virtual simulations and kind of frontloading the more didactic coursework, so that in your Fall semester, hopefully things have opened back up and that's when you can really have that clinical, hands-on, hospital interaction.  You mentioned some resources and strategies that you've been planning on for a long time and COVID kind of had y'all press the go button now. Can you talk to me about some of the resources and strategies?

Aaron Cyr 

You can call me an optimist, but this COVID, you know how, however, how bad it is, it's kind of like a flip classroom dream, um, because the evidence is there that flipped classrooms are highly successful. Um, but we still get stuck in this rut where we're doing the same old lecturing. And so, we're taking, you know, subject matter experts from our college and using them to kind of decide what content and how it should be taught. The biggest question that we have, and it's kind of out of our hands is, um, what are the board's going to decide as far as the clinical experience and allotting of hours.  We've discussed what can we do, we have the virtual sim resources and what can we offer? You know, as far as skills, um, we actually have some pretty, we've had a lot of like nonconventional ideas, you know, even like thinking of, I think goody bags of items masks and gloves and all this stuff that we can kind of hand off.

Aaron Cyr (29:42)

You know, have students just drive up, give them a brown bag full of resources and then you know, do virtual skills. And so that's kind of something that we've been pulling as far as ideas with. There was also, I was recently speaking with, some peers in NLN, but basically they discussed with hospitals and talked with them as far as, can these students, you know, who are just about to graduate, go and have an interview with the hospital and you know, if they succeed in the interview, they're going to have a position after they're graduating?  And the hospital then will take over that clinical role, for the last semester. 

 

Allison Case

Clever

 

Aaron Cyr

So, they're going to get the clinical hours and then go into immediately after they graduate, pass the boards, and then they have a position right, available. 

Allison Case

Right, like an internship. Right.

 

Aaron Cyr (20:35)

And so I guess the main theme of all of this is, you know, this is definitely a time to be flexible and that's kind of how we're approaching the summer session and the Fall, you know, it's, it's doing things on the fly, something changes, you have to roll with it because you know, everything is kind of up in the air right now and we're not really sure how a lot of things are going to pan out. 

 

Allison Case

So, let me ask you this, Aaron. How is Arizona college, quote unquote, “defining success”? What does success look like right now?

 

Aaron Cyr

I mean, for, for me in the data aspect, it's, it's a lot of that same, right?

Aaron Cyr (00:30:18)

It's if we can provide our students with the same quality and level of education, um, that we were doing on ground.  Then I feel like that's a success falling in itself. Um, you know, the data and, and NCLEX pass rates and stuff, that all comes as long as you're providing the education now. That's the biggest key if we can continue to meet our outcomes, provide the students with the tools, the resources, the supplies, keep them calm in this era of chaos, then I think we're doing very well. 

 

Aaron Cyr (00:31:24)

One thing that we really try to do is make sure that, you know, any resource, any activity, everything is mapped. if you do the front-end work, it all pays off in the end. And this is, a lot of what I look at with my position is, all of our assignments, activities, we want to make sure that there's some way that we can say, this is why our student, and this is how they're meeting this program, outcome, course, outcome.

Aaron Cyr (31:56)

I don’t think anyone's saying we should have less data for this. So, right, right. so that's what we're doing, and being remote or being on ground, it shouldn't really make a difference. The only caveat that you should think about when you're going remote is, if you're implementing more activities, then you just need to think, prior to implementing them, “how are we implementing it,  how is it meeting our outcomes and how are we evaluating it”? Like I said, our assignments, all have rubrics. Our assessments are, are all mapped to, you know, our categories, BSN essentials, program outcomes. and that's just something we're constantly working towards. And, the data gathering is still business as usual. So, once the semester's over, I crunch all that data, put it into my spreadsheets so that we still have it. 

 

Allison Case (00:32:50)

Well, what a fantastic message to send your students is every single activity, assignment, assessment has a purpose and it's not wasted, because certainly assessment right now can be very stressful on students. Can you talk to me a little bit about maintaining, kind of, rigor and maintaining accreditation in this online environment?

Aaron Cyr (33:04)

Whether you're on ground or remote, you have to continue the same level of evaluation and assessment, regardless. So, any assignment, new resources that you're implementing, map ‘em, outline them, create rubrics for them. Really look at what you're giving to students and is it meeting the program outcomes, and can you prove that? So, you have to make sure that you're still adequately providing for the students and for the higher accrediting bodies.

Allison Case (00:33:39)

And it sounds like data is what does that for your program. 

Aaron Cyr 

Yeah. Data is definitely what does it and it’s making sure that it's all, you know, full circle. If something doesn't work out, you have to be okay with saying, you know, “okay, well this didn't work out”, but it doesn't mean that that is worthless or the data's bad. It's just if you're going to change it or improve it, show that you changed it and improved it or show how you did it, right? So, all of that is what these accrediting bodies look for. They want to make sure that you're, you're always looking for that quality improvement.

Allison Case (34:13)

I could not agree more if you're responding to the data in a timely manner, in a logical manner, that's really what they're looking for. And in doing that, inevitably over time, you, you take ground and you make gains if it's built into the fabric of the faculty, right? If that's how your program operates. Yeah.

Aaron Cyr

Right. I mean, all of these changes, activities, resources should always be faculty driven. it shouldn't come top down because like I am not directly teaching anymore. So, why would I be the one that is dictating what faculty are doing?If a faculty that said tells me that something is not working, you know, who am I to say, no, you have to continue doing this, right? Right. Let's work together and let's see how we can fix this. And that's where you always get your feedback and, and use the COVID-19 dilemma that we're in right now, use this as a time, a proponent of change, right? If something's not working now, what better time than now to try something new?

Allison Case (00:35:09)

So, Aaron, let me ask you this. You know, I know everybody's trying to cut the budget. Is there any tool or technology or product or service that, that working the way you wanted it to?

Aaron Cyr 

So, we, in all honesty, haven't had a lot of things that have not fully worked out. it was like I was saying earlier, something isn't working, it's not necessarily a bad resource or a bad tool. It's just maybe, we're implementing it in the wrong way. I mean, what we're really looking for is, usage and is that really value-added? A big problem that we see is, a lot of people will go through almost like resource fatigue where you have, so many resources and especially now, right, we're all getting 20 emails and there is a point in time where you have too much, and then things stopped being used and stopped being utilized. It’s more so looking at what you have and see if you can use it better. 

 

Allison Case (00:36:03)

Were there any other technologies or tools or products or services that became evident that were worth adding despite the budget headaches?

 

Aaron Cyr (36:10)

Yeah, I mean it's a consideration for us, do we want to purchase more resources, tools, if we're all going back on ground in two months, and then we have all these things?

Aaron Cyr

So, I think that's something that you have to think about is, if this is a solution that I'm going to be implementing now, am I going to continue to use this after we're on ground? Because, because if I'm going to use it while we're on ground and great, it's going to be beneficial to me in the years to come. But if I'm only going to use this for a month or two, is it actually necessary or is it just kind of a, you know, a little bit extra fluff? 

 

Aaron Cyr 

And you have your faculty buy in because I mean, who's going to be delivering the product, right? You can either, you know, purchase four new tools and not really use any of them that well. Or you can purchase one tool, really know it and understand it. Faculty love it, and then that's going to maximize everything. And that really helps with the buy-in to make sure that they're on board, with the new tools and resources. Because if you're just rolling things out without really having them be well versed in it, then ultimately, they're probably not going to use it ‘cause they don't see the benefit in it, you know. 

 

Allison Case (00:37:19)

Right, right. Well, and it sounds like you have leadership that's open to taking suggestions from faculty, um, into consideration as potential solutions.

Aaron Cyr 

Right. It's, that culture that you want to build and foster, it doesn't matter what your title says, we all have something to give, and put on the table and we're all in this field for the same reason and we're all just trying to, you know, deliver what's best for the students in a high level of education.  

 
Allison Case

Where do you see education going, kind of post COVID?  

Aaron Cyr

I hope that we look at this and we analyze it and we say, “you know, this online thing, if done properly isn't too bad”. I definitely always will see the merit and on-ground, you know, education, but there are a lot of resources and tools and methods that we can do a strong flip classroom, fully online, and still provide high quality education. And it, that, in turn, should only reduce overall cost of education because we don't have to pay for the site. So, I'm hoping this is a push into the future of education where we can see that online, different um methods of administration, and how we really think of the deliverables of education will change and alter because I do think that there are plenty of avenues that we can definitely improve on.

 

Allison Case (00:38:49)

Amidst all of this positivity, what do you think is the greatest risk facing the future of higher education? Kind of during this change or maybe after?

Aaron Cyr 

You know, you can always, you know, give into the fear of what might happen or what could happen. But that's all, you know, hearsay pretty much, right? So, we have to, we have to look at what can I control, what can I change  and like I always say, right, is a, is it, is it actually evaluating the outcomes? You know, is it assessable? So, you know, is there something proving that?  And that's what you have to do.  Now's the time for positivity, to move forward and to always look on that horizon in the future.Have that vision to say, okay, even though some crazy things are happening around us, how can we make the best of this? 

 

Allison Case (39:36)

Thanks for tuning in to Pedagogo today. I hope these past two episodes have given you some good ideas for success in fall, some confidence, and some reassurance. These are scary and uncertain times, but despite the chaos, we have leaders and faculty who are making lemonade out of lemons.  If you’re stuck, don’t hesitate to reach out and ask for help. As always, I’m your host Allison Case. Stay safe and stay well. 

Britt (40:00)

Pedagogo brought to you by ExamSoft, the assessment software that keeps security and integrity in your exams while providing you actionable data for your outcomes when creating the testing seems tough. ExamSoft gives you rainbows so you can pass your students with flying colors.

Keeley (40:34)

This podcast was produced by Allison Case, and the ExamSoft team, audio engineering and editing by Adam Karsten and the A2K productions crew including me Keeley Karsten. This podcast is intended as a public service for entertainment and educational purposes only and is not a legal interpretation nor statement of ExamSoft policy, products or services. The views and opinions expressed by the hosts or guests of this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of ExamSoft or any of its officials, nor does any appearance on this program imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Additionally, reference to any specific product, service, or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by ExamSoft. This podcast is the property of ExamSoft worldwide and is protected under US and international copyright and trademark laws. No other use, including without limitation, reproduction, retransmission, or editing. This podcast may be made without the prior written permission of ExamSoft.