FeedbackFruits Higher Ed Weekly Digest 12/6

Starting this week, we bring you the most popular content of the higher education community for the past week. You can send your suggestions for the future articles to elena@feedbackfruits.com. Enjoy!

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Must-Read Articles

In the light of the George Floyd incident and uncertainty that COVID-19 brought to our lives, this week was busy for the higher ed community.

1 - Three college leaders on hope, despair and the killing of George Floyd

The death of George Floyd has reminded all of us that racism is still a worldwide issue, and especially when “this event is not isolated, and is not singular.”

This article is useful for everyone to learn how universities try to communicate with their students and faculty about this traumatic event. Institutions are, in fact, considering different ways in which they can show support to their students while taking into consideration the pandemic social distancing limitations, as inviting them to rallies and in-person forums and discussions are not viable options.

It was the highlight of the week for us, as the issue of racism is explored at a deeper level within the higher education scope.  

2 - Keeping Current Students Engaged During a Global Crisis

Moving from one crisis to another, we found this article that is useful for universities to understand what they can do in order to keep alive the feeling of community among students during the coming Fall semester. Education and college experience are going to look different for everyone, no matter what study model each educational organization decides to choose, being it remote learning or in-person classes. The ideas presented in this article can help colleges and universities understand how they can keep their students connected and how to keep the community alive.  

3 - What is course design and why it can make the difference between learning and yawning in class?

We published this article earlier this week to help teachers understand how a course can be designed in order to boost the students’ learning experience. Numerous simplified but extremely valuable and effective steps are presented which explain how a course can be redesigned in a fresh and innovative way, as well as helping teachers and instructional designers during the process of building a better course plan, to meet the needs of the current circumstances. Even if you are not a teacher or a university administrator, this article will be able to entertain and tickle any curious mind that is interested in a better educational system.

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Must-Listen Podcasts

Is there anyone who is not following at least one podcast? See our top-picks below.

1 - Working Out The New Norm: Edtech Under Lockdown

This insightful podcast episode tackles the education experience during lockdown in the UK. This friendly conversation between three college and university employees is engaging with many difficulties that the educational system was faced with the outbreak of the pandemic. In this podcast, they talk about their personal and professional hard times, as well as the problems that students and educational organizations had to deal with during the lockdown. However, the podcast guests also find the time to emphasize what they have learned and how all these struggles can guide towards better education, expressing their deep appreciation on how everyone involved in education is doing their best. The sense of community and mutual support was what really saved the day. 

2 - Learning in a time of pandemic 

This second podcast episode invites everyone to explore and better understand how the paradigm of education is changing due to the pandemic. We recommend it as it can help teachers and university management to reflect on how education is being challenged from multiple points of view.

The guest, Remi Kalir, assistant professor of Learning Design at the University of Colorado Denver, together with the producer and the host of the podcast talk about how this might be the right moment to redesign the educational system into one that better fits the needs of students and society from multiple perspectives. 

Some of the questions they try to answer during the podcast are: 

• What was not already working for students? 
• How can digital pedagogy create more humanizing, more social connected and more equity-oriented classrooms?
• What does it take to make that happen? 

They strongly recommend everyone involved in education to ask themselves these questions, as they believe it might help to co-create a better educational system.

Events To Attend

Continue learning about higher education through engaging events and conferences, even in an online format.

1 - Scaling up and providing access to video-based services in higher education / June 17th - 18th 

We recommend everyone involved or interested in the future of higher education to attend this two-days free online conference. All the discussions are going to revolve around the challenges worldwide universities have been dealing with in the past few months, what lessons they have learned, and how they can move forward and what changes can be expected for the future of video-based services in higher education. 

2 -Distance teaching and learning 2020 Conference / August 3-7 

Are you a teacher, an educational researcher, an educational designer or part of an ed-tech corporation? No matter what your level of involvement with education is, this conference will help you build an international network, listen and interact with experts in the field of distance education and online learning. And most importantly, you will familiarize yourself with new and emerging technologies specifically designed and developed for online teaching and learning.

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Must-Watch Videos

This list would not be complete without this terrific video!

Final Words

A lot is changing in the higher education community right now and we know that it is difficult to keep up. We will try our best to keep you posted with some of the most popular content that we find helpful for the community. You can subscribe to our newsletter for more exclusive content below. See you next week!

Ever wonder how teachers are coping with all the difficulties they had to surpass from the beginning of the rapid transition from offline to online teaching, due to the pandemic? 

Search no further. We found the perfect song cover made by Michael Bruening, an associate professor at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. He is confessing all the ups and downs with the help of his guitar - and his singing skills - in a hilarious but genuine manner.