In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools across the globe turned to edX Online Campus to help ease the emergency transition to delivering digital learning content to students. As the next academic term approaches and organizations begin to imagine a “new normal,” it’s clear that a sustainable online learning strategy will be a top priority.
“I believe that there will always be a place for in-person learning, but this pandemic is illustrating that online learning must be a key pillar of every university’s strategy,” said edX founder and CEO Anant Agarwal. “It is essential for creating business continuity and also has unique pedagogical benefits over in-person learning.”
In this post, learn how your college or university can leverage Online Campus to be resilient in the face of abrupt shifts and become well positioned for the future, where a winning online learning strategy will be essential to success.
Watch our webinar, Transforming the Higher Ed Classroom, where we explore best practices and tips for implementing a blended learning model on-campus with experts from edX, San Jose City College, and the Universitat Politècnica de València.
Developing online content is rigorous, time consuming, and resource intensive. Focus your faculty time on areas that provide the most student value by augmenting instruction with edX courses as a digital resource for asynchronous learning.
Think of edX as your out-of-the-box digital lecturer, textbook, or teaching assistant. By using ready-made digital content from edX, lectures, assessments, and other work can happen outside of class. Instructors can tailor their level of course facilitation to their specific needs and spend more time on student support and mentorship, individualized attention, reinforcing ideas, and helping those who are falling behind, while others continue to progress without impediment.
San Jose City College (SJCC), for example, uses edX courses as foundational prerequisites and supplemental digital resources. In a flipped classroom approach, students watch online lectures, work through exercises and problem sets, and proceed through class at their own pace. By offboarding much of the lectures, assignments, and grading to edX, SJCC is able to open the class to even more students.
In addition to augmenting existing offerings with digital resources, use edX’s robust course catalog to attract and engage more students with new learning opportunities where high levels of faculty facilitation are not required. Immediately add high-quality online content in in-demand subjects like blockchain and machine learning and leverage edX courses as prerequisites, electives, and intersession programs.
At the Universitat Politècnica de València, for example, Online Campus made it possible for students whose internship programs were cancelled during COVID-19 shutdowns to maintain momentum by taking online courses in relevant topics instead.
Learn more about how SJCC and the University of Valencia use Online Campus in our webinar.
Businesses across industries use edX every day to offer professional development and upskilling opportunities to their employees—and universities can too. In addition to supporting faculty with access to more digital resources and expanding online catalogs, use edX courses with faculty, staff, and alumni for professional development and lifelong learning. For example, at IIT Bombay, administrative staff members are taking courses related to accounting, marketing, and leadership.
Learn how you can work with the edX Online Campus team to provide more options, expand your reach, and open your doors to more students.
“Everything edX and our partners have been building over the past eight years has prepared us for this moment to lead universities and students around the world in navigating our ‘new normal.’ Together, we will deliver impactful online learning experiences in the upcoming semester and beyond,” Agarwal said.