educating through adversity
Electronic Education Digital services come to the rescue during coronavirus closures
L
ike many educators nationwide, Texas A&M University, San Antonio associate professor Theresa Garfield immediately started leveraging commercial tools for distance learning when students were told not to return to campus after spring break this year amid the coronavirus outbreak. “Being able to reach across a virtual platform and connect personally
50 BACK TO SCHOOL | 2020
through Zoom, WebEx or Blackboard Collaborate allows students to not only see and have meaningful interaction with their professors but also with each other,” she says. By mid-April, education researchers at Entangled Solutions were estimating that 4,234 higher education institutions had been affected by the outbreak. Twenty-seven states had ordered or recommended school building closures,
affecting approximately 25.2 million public school students. There are no official numbers yet on how many colleges and K-12 districts pivoted to distance learning. But with virtually all of the nation’s students at home, it was evident that educators had shifted en masse to adopt new forms of connectivity. Teleconferencing company Zoom saw a massive uptick in activity, >
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BY ADAM STONE