How a Ship Must Turn: A Systems Analysis of One University's Distance Learning Plan in Response to a Global Pandemic

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Y

5

COVID-19; Pandemics; School Closing; Distance Education; Educational Technology; Technology Uses in Education; Private Colleges; Online Courses; Barriers; International Programs; Foreign Countries; Student Needs; Participative Decision Making; College Administration; College Faculty

United States; Europe; Asia; Africa

1528-3518

Webster University is classified as a large masters granting private not-for-profit university. The institution has a home or a central hub campus in the Midwestern United States and enrolls approximately 9,700 students. The university exists on four continents with actual campus locations as well as affiliated partner campuses. Students attend classes online or at one of the 60 military or metropolitan campuses across the United States. Students also pursue Webster's programs from more than eight international campuses in Europe, Asia, or Africa as well as affiliate campuses. In this conceptual paper, the author examines the pathways through which Webster University deals with the continuing challenges posed by COVID-19 during March to September 2020. With a unique mix of distributed regional U.S. locations and international campuses, Webster University offers a distinctive case study of distance education and distributed communication in the global education context. Distinctively, Webster University has deepened distance learning to protect the core programs and student service offerings of the institution. Distributed communication has been rapidly standardized and organized to meet institutional responsiveness to global stakeholders. And the net effect of these two approaches has been an ongoing transformation of instructional delivery, operations management, and communication across the institution. By applying a systems approach to the operations and communications engagements prior to and during COVID-19, the case study reveals rapid and ongoing change. The focus of the analysis are personal journal notes, excerpts from select institutional communications, analyses of rapid responses surveys and other content analysis. Prominent themes in this study include tensions around institutional learning and knowledge management that has been applied to stabilize educational service offerings. Deepening distance learning modalities to meet student learning needs also figure prominently. Attempts to foster institutional resilience through operational shifts toward remote work is also a prominent theme. The rapid engagement of focused communication across a distributed network in order manage institutional shifts also figure prominently. Finally, a reliance on an elastic team-based deliberative process for decisionmaking and institution listening also emerge as important to institutional viability.

ERIC

2021

EJ1289576