How UMass Boston Got So Remote

Looking back on Spring 2020 over three years later, it is not easy to recall the severity of the crisis UMass Boston experienced as the pandemic first began taking its toll. But one thing we do know is that the university and the entire nation suddenly found itself in an unprecedented situation. Fortunately, it is not an overstatement to say that the response of Learning Design Services, Classroom AV/Tech, and the entire IT team was nothing short of heroic.

The first decision UMass Boston administrators made was that despite having to close the campus, the Spring 2020 semester would not be cancelled. Somehow, someway, the academic class schedule had to continue, and it was up to the Learning Design team to figure out how, and as quickly as possible.

So, what gave UMass Boston the ability to pivot with such incredible speed? Associate Chief Information Officer Apurva Mehta and Learning Design Services Director Paula Thorsland were both quick to say it was preplanning for unexpected closures of the university. For several years prior to 2020, Learning Design Services had been working on something it called an “instructional continuity plan,” which meant a system that would allow class instruction to continue even if a snowstorm or some other natural disaster forced the campus to close for a day or more. Part of this plan included making the Blackboard learning management system modality available in every class, university wide. “We went from only giving Blackboard courses to faculty who requested them to giving courses to all faculty. If everybody had a Blackboard course from day one, they could put all of their materials online. What we developed was a face-to-face environment that was able to move online for any unforeseen reason, and when the pandemic raged on, we called this new modality “remote learning,” Paula said.

While the university was at least partially prepared for a brief emergency shutdown, it’s something else dealing with an unprecedented health crisis which is closing campus for the foreseeable future. So, in zoomed Zoom. “We just needed to get Zoom up and running and start making sure that people knew how to use Zoom,” Paula said. That Zoom was already in use by staff at UMass Boston was helpful but making it available for all students and faculty wasn’t that simple. Licenses for everyone to use Zoom had to be acquired, and a system of tech support had to be put in place so faculty could learn how to use it in a classroom setting.

At this point, the absolute disaster that cancelling the Spring 2020 semester would have been was averted, and the academic calendar and schedule was stabilized with amazingly little class time being missed. However, Learning Design Services knew that its work was not done. Attention soon shifted to the quality of the remote learning experience. There was the sense that remote classes could not be taught the way in-person classes were. Students could not be expected to learn as well or be as engaged in a three-hour class taught remotely as they would in the classroom, so Learning Design Services began researching and developing ways to make remote education as effective as traditional classroom education.

Finally, it was not long into 2021, and certainly by the 2021-22 school year, when there was the realization that remote learning was here to stay, even as the impact of the pandemic was at last dissipating. The fact is that remote (now often called “hybrid”) learning was proving itself to be so useful and popular among students and faculty alike, its use has grown substantially from 2020 to today. Central to this development has been the adoption of the BeaconFlex hybrid learning system, which has been installed in classrooms across campus. Remote learning is now considered essential throughout higher education and Learning Design Services and Classroom AV/Tech has continued to make sure that UMass Boston has the highest quality, both technically and pedagogically, remote learning in the country.