{"id":19459,"date":"2020-06-22T14:41:43","date_gmt":"2020-06-22T14:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/pegasus\/?p=19459&post_type=story"},"modified":"2025-04-18T03:45:48","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T03:45:48","slug":"remote-possibility","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/pegasus\/remote-possibility\/","title":{"rendered":"Remote Possibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summer 2020 | By\u00a0Maureen Harmon<\/em><\/p>\n

On Jan. 21, 2020, the state of\u00a0Washington identified “patient\u00a0zero” \u2014 the first confirmed case of\u00a0COVID-19<\/a> in the United States. By\u00a0early March, Washington claimed the\u00a0most cases in the country, and the\u00a0University of Washington moved all\u00a0its classes online after a staff member\u00a0off campus tested positive.<\/p>\n

Tom Cavanagh was paying\u00a0attention. The vice provost for\u00a0digital learning<\/a> at UCF had begun\u00a0monitoring early on what UW \u2014 a\u00a0public research university similar to\u00a0UCF but with nearly 20,000 fewer\u00a0students \u2014 would do.<\/p>\n

“They were the first university to\u00a0make that decision,” says Cavanagh.\u00a0“And that’s the one that got our\u00a0attention.”<\/p>\n

Cavanagh could see the coming\u00a0tide. Should COVID-19 begin an\u00a0eastward creep \u2014 and there was no\u00a0reason to believe it wouldn’t, having\u00a0first been identified in China before\u00a0moving through Europe and into\u00a0the states \u2014 more than 69,500 UCF\u00a0students would be finishing the\u00a0semester from home. He gathered\u00a0his team, and they worked to create\u00a0a website with resources for faculty\u00a0should UCF need to follow UW’s lead\u00a0as the virus spread through the U.S.\u00a0“The plan was to build a website and\u00a0just keep it offline,” says Cavanagh.\u00a0“And then should something happen,\u00a0we would press the button and make\u00a0it go live.”<\/p>\n

But the tide came quickly. “By the\u00a0time we finished the website, we\u00a0were already pushing it live \u2014 maybe\u00a0a little sooner than we would have\u00a0been comfortable with \u2014 because\u00a0the Board of Governors had made\u00a0a decision while we were on\u00a0spring break to go into a remote\u00a0instructional mode,” Cavanagh says.<\/p>\n

The Board of Governors’\u00a0announcement came on March 11,\u00a0only five days after UW made its\u00a0decision. Remote learning at UCF\u00a0was set to begin on March 18. That\u00a0meant the team that usually supports\u00a0200,000 credit hours for online\u00a0learners had to be ready to support\u00a0700,000 credit hours \u2014 or an\u00a0additional 6,600 courses \u2014 in about\u00a0a week. The website couldn’t launch\u00a0soon enough.<\/p>\n

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\n[blockquote source=”Charles Dziuban, director of UCF’s Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness” cite=”” color=”” css_class=””]”Clearly, we’ve had to scramble, but we had all the pieces in place. We knew you had to have student support. We knew you had to put in place, immediately, all kinds of support mechanisms for a large population of faculty to make this rapid transition.”[\/blockquote]
\n[divider][\/divider]<\/p>\n

But Cavanagh and his group had\u00a0history in their corner. With more\u00a0than two decades of embracing\u00a0online learning, and 87 percent of\u00a0UCF students having taken at least\u00a0one online or blended course in\u00a02019\u201320, moving students out of\u00a0the classroom and onto the internet\u00a0wasn’t uncharted territory. UCF dove\u00a0headfirst into an area it had been\u00a0perfecting for 24 years.<\/p>\n

That website quickly became\u00a0two: “Keep Teaching<\/a>,” a website for\u00a0faculty with workshops, lectures and\u00a0tips for getting a traditional class\u00a0off the ground online; and “Keep\u00a0Learning<\/a>” for students, with links to\u00a0information about proctored exams,\u00a0announcements and notifications,\u00a0and guides to Zoom.<\/p>\n

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Faculty Creativity<\/h2>\n