In a “normal” summer, we would be busy getting existing
classroom information technology (IT) and audio-visual (AV) systems upgraded,
we would be installing new AV equipment that had been planned and purchased
over the past year, and probably performing a ton of faculty and staff computer
upgrades, all in preparation for a busy fall semester. But as we all know, things are far from
normal this year – and probably every year going forward.
Summer this year does offer us a bit of a breather as we
assess how best to begin our fall semester of teaching at the University of
Utah SJ Quinney College of Law. Our goal
is to hold in-person classes, but in a much different environment than we ever
have before. We can also take a look at
what was in place that helped us get through the last few weeks of this past
spring semester, how we have transitioned into an fully online summer semester,
and what things are missing as fall semester looms in the not-so-distant
future.
What was in place and worked well?
Back when we were facing the last pandemic scare -- remember
H1N1 back in 2009? -- our law school decided to take steps to leverage the
crisis and implement changes that would make the law school more nimble.
Lecture capture video. First, we implemented a lecture capture (LC) video
solution. This was no easy undertaking,
and the technology and processes to support this service have gone through
numerous changes over the decade since we first implemented it. But through careful change, we have made this
service an expected amenity at the law school.
Both students and professors alike have come to depend on the
availability of daily recorded lectures to deliver information for absent
students and for review purposes. Initially,
our pre-COVID LC solution process was highly dependent upon physically teaching
in the law school building. As we transitioned to fully online teaching and
learning via Zoom, whether our professors consciously thought about it or not, they
were accustomed to being recorded and having their lectures available for
students in their classes. And students
expected that they could access these materials asynchronously to review and
prepare for the next class or for an exam.
Just having this mindset in place was a huge advantage as we went to
online classes literally overnight in March 2020.
Aggressive computer replacement/move to laptops. Second, we began an aggressive computer
replacement plan that sought to place a laptop in every faculty and staff
office. The goals of this project were
to:
·
Create a completely mobile workforce for the
College of Law – support for a possible remote work initiative.
·
Develop computer savvy workers, as people took their
computer equipment home and learned more about how to use it out of necessity.
·
Develop a more connected workforce – just due to
the fact that they have their work computer with them at night or over the
weekend, they check-in to “work” things more often.
·
Eliminate the dual computer assignments and the
management overhead associated with someone having a desktop (primary) and a
laptop (secondary).
·
Have a person’s computer become an unnoticed
amenity. The fact that everyone has the same “level” of computer makes it no
more unique than the light switch in your office – it’s simply a necessary
utility.
·
Support energy efficiency plans of our
then-future new law school building (which is now platinum LEED certified).
This laptop standard has been in place for so long at our
law school, that I do not even remember when we last evaluated or purchased a
desktop computer. Since all faculty and
staff were completely familiar with their own assigned laptop, all 100+ faculty
and staff members simply took their assigned work technology home and began
working with familiar technology the very same day they were booted from campus
and our law school building due to Covid-19.
This proved to be one of the most successful technology plans
implemented at our college. We always
planned for the privilege of working remotely, not necessarily the reality of
being required to work in a social distanced environment. Of course we have everything in place on
college owned computers to make this remote work solution manageable; e.g.
inventory management agents, active antivirus and malware solutions, and remote
support agents all give IT services a complete view of where our machines are,
who is using them, whether the software on them is up-to-date, and the ability
to get to the equipment and assist with repairs of problems.
Move to cloud-based solutions. Last, and probably the least noticeable by
non-IT focused individuals, we worked over the last decade to move all law
school information services to cloud-based solutions. We didn’t want any system
or information needed to “run” the law school dependent upon a piece of
physical equipment that was located at the law school. Email was moved to large hosted campus
solutions, data storage to a campus-approved cloud environment, Learning
Management System (LMS) needs moved online to a campus-supported platform, and
exam solutions to an online cloud provider.
All faculty and staff have been trained to leverage all of these
services over the past decade, and as we moved off campus to perform our daily
work efforts during Covid-19 shelter-in-place, access to information was never a
concern.
What was lacking and what were we missing?
For all the things that simply worked and that went
unnoticed for the most part, there were some things that we, like many teaching
institutions, had to advance rather rapidly.
Expanded use of Zoom Meetings. We already had Zoom Meetings in our IT toolset,
and we used it weekly for conducting interviews or including remote
participants into large meetings. We
even employed Zoom Meetings when faculty needed to teach remotely, although
this was a rare need. Nonetheless we
were familiar with this platform pre-Covid, and benefited from its end-user
ease of use and understood how to manage Zoom meetings (host vs attendee). As we moved online in March 2020, we rapidly
ramped up Zoom user licenses to manage the number of classes being offered and the
number of professors who needed to host those meetings. At first, faculty support staff handled all
of the scheduling and hosting of class meetings, but as staff also needed to
attend coordination meetings using Zoom, and professors became much more
comfortable with the Zoom meeting management requirements, Zoom license needs
exploded.
To handle this mass transition to Zoom-based instruction, we
implemented group and 1:1 Zoom training – via Zoom. Professors would attend a group session via
Zoom to learn how to manage the basic aspects of a Zoom meeting. They could
then schedule a 1:1 session to cover more detailed uses of the platform. The fact that the college has its own AV
support team fully trained in video conferencing solutions, and well versed in
Zoom specifically, turned out to be our ace in the hole.
Increased use of online scheduling tools. Due to the increased need to schedule Zoom
training support, we increased our use of online scheduling tools. We have employed the use of Acuity Scheduling
for years in support of admissions visits, office hours for students, and
community legal clinic assignments; but now we needed to leverage this online approach
for scheduling support resources for efforts where people had been used to
simply walking into a support person’s office. Now we had to make resource
availability visible and schedulable. We
turned to Calendly to advance this need.
Again, we already had these concepts in mind, and the necessity of the
situation simply advanced the process.
This is a difficult change for people used to concierge type service,
and some people still desire an immediate video conference connection akin to a
virtual office walk-in.
Move to virtual events coordination. Events!
Oh, this is an ever-changing target.
The law school hosts over 500 events each year, both big and small. We use the Zoom Webinar platform, but this
had been used only a couple of times in the past 2 years and we had not
developed standards for how we produce events in this manner. Now, starting in March, suddenly all of our events are virtual events
and we have been scrambling to develop improved processes for producing them properly
to add value to the participant and viewers.
We can certainly host more events due to the availability of the platform
and people (they don’t have to travel and our virtual space is always available);
but it is a daily challenge to figure out how to brand the event, add value for
the law school, and manage the “overload” of virtual event requests coming in
daily . We have shifted our events staff
personnel assignments and combined them with the AV staff to create a new
virtual events coordination team. People
who are used to coordinating onsite logistics, such as caterers and setup
staff, are being retrained to work directly with session presenters to take
them through Zoom trainings in preparation for participating in virtual
panels. This is an ongoing process for
certain.
Improved work coordination. Lastly, we have had to find a better way to
coordinate our work on a minute-by-minute basis. IT teams have always leveraged team chat
tools; at our law school, the IT and AV staff heavily depend on the Slack team
collaboration platform to coordinate and communicate our every effort. But the rest of the staff and faculty are
entrenched in the “fire and wait” email process for coordinating and
collaborating. Not only is email too
slow, but it wastes a ton of time and is very disruptive to the workflow process
in a remote work environment. In the
first few days of coordinating the online Zoom classes efforts, we quickly
adopted and moved communications to the Microsoft Teams platform. This system
was easy for people to learn and made cross-team coordinating efforts a
breeze. IT has tried to implement
collaboration efforts using these types of tools in the past, but without a
good crisis, there is little appetite among non-IT personnel for adopting such
change. Now many faculty and staff have Teams up, and communicate more in this
manner (and with better results) than we do with email.
What are we still missing?
Additional camera equipment. We are still adding equipment to classrooms
in preparation for a hybrid approach to synchronous teaching this fall. These include the addition of cameras in the
front of the room, so that remote lecturers can be provided with a view of the
in-person class participants that they are presenting to.
We are also working to route the existing back of the room
camera view, currently used only for lecture capture, and provide this view for
class participants who choose to watch and participate in class remotely. This effort is also an attempt to give the
remote students equal opportunity to participate in class by being seen by the
presenter and in-person students alike.
These are not easy technology changes and will require much
advanced coordination to make the experience work for all involved.
There are many things that we cannot achieve in education by
just deploying more technology, no matter how much effort and money we put into
it. We are working hard at improving the
current situation by focusing on our student experiences, along with their
wellbeing and safety. All the while
working to attend to individual faculty and staff, and implementing new
processes to support our college’s mission and goals for our students and the
broader community at large.
Guest blog author Mark Beekhuizen has
been managing Information Technology (IT) and Audio Visual (AV) services for
the SJ Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah for a bit over a
decade. Before venturing into IT support for an academic unit, he managed
a rather large team responsible for IT operations and support for the
University of Utah Health Sciences Center (hospitals and clinics), and before
that, 15 years working Department of Defense contracts, and before that, his first
professional job was as a member of the US military.
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