This post is provided by guest blogger, Callie Surber, graduate student at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, MS in Training and Development program.

Almost one thousand higher education administrators and faculty responded to a survey in mid-May 2020 on Covid-19 impacting their spring semesters across college campuses in the United States. The survey results were described and reported by A. W. June in the most recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. One of the main focuses was on instructional design and the fallout from suddenly shifting to online delivery. From the survey, “70% of the administrators who responded plan to invest their college funds in training in online teaching” (June, 2020).  Almost all the survey questions pointed to designing classes online for the fall for maximum effectiveness. Only a nominal amount of those surveyed plan to outsource their design and teaching to an outside firm.

My main critique of this article and summary of the survey is that it only scratched the surface of how much of a disaster the spring semester was for most of the respondents and the students they served. I was waiting for the author to dig into some of the commentary that they provided during the survey, and it ultimately was not included. The Chronicle of Higher Education is hosted on a paid content platform which can only be accessed through a paid subscription. Ultimately, instructional design felt like an elephant in the room for this article. The survey topics and individual questions danced around the need for quality instructional design regardless of a current pandemic.

June, A. (2020, June 04). Did the scramble to remote learning work? Here’s what higher ed thinks. Retrieved June 06, 2020, from https://www.chronicle.com/article/did-the-scramble-to-remote/248928?cid=wcontentlist_hp_latest