According to the Brookings Institute,90% of students in economically-developed countries are participating in online courses this fall, whether they are using a hybrid or fully virtual model. Because of high numbers of digital adoption, this upcoming semester has huge ramifications for education and may lead to institutions moving to more online course opportunities post-pandemic.
At Impact, we are prepared to not only assist in clear, effective communication across your learning management system but to improve support for new online learners and provide reports on how your LMS is being used by faculty and students. We see that higher education is modernizing and we want to provide the help to bring forward pedagogically focused digital teaching solutions. Whichever style your school has chosen for this year—virtual, hybrid, or on-campus—we have just the right tools for you.
Impact Tools for your COVID-19 Strategy
Virtual (Fully online teaching and learning practices)
When we do not have the luxury of chatting with faculty on campus or holding in-person events for LMS training, Impact's tool adoption reports can give a birds-eye-view of how the LMS is being used and identify pain points for faculty and students. Impact data monitors can allow you to observe who is using which features in your LMS and target in-line messages to encourage the adoption of underutilized online tools, and supply relevant support materials to help them to use it better.
Additionally, you can use Impact reports to identify non-active users within your LMS before the start of the term. You can target these users with helpful reminders, messages, and support videos to decrease your number of support tickets and virtual training sessions during the early days of the fall semester!
Hybrid (A mixture of both online and face-to-face teaching methods)
While the hybrid model gives us the best of both worlds, faculty and students can suffer from mixed messages about which classes are to be held online or in-person. With Impact, you can send messages specifically to certain departments or classes that will be meeting for sessions in-person to inform them of on-campus policies or any sudden changes to the protocol. By targeting your messages to select user groups, you can avoid any confusion among students taking classes strictly online.
Hybrid campuses may also be having conversations about keeping certain classes online in future semesters. The Impact reporting features provide rich data about LMS usage and can significantly impact decision making about these longer-term changes to online learning. For example, you can use Impact reports to present data about the adoption of EdTech tools, like video conferencing platforms.
Using Impact, you can measure and compare LMS usage data after spring closures to see how engagement has changed in the term. This data can then influence the placement of targeted Impact messages and materials to seamlessly support users who need help at the start of the fall semester and throughout! These big picture visuals of data can help you plan for the upcoming term and future online education.
On-campus Courses (Courses that require on-campus sessions)
Last-minute changes to class schedules to accommodate extra cleaning time, mask policies, and distancing guidelines in the classroom all affect the academic experience for students returning to campus this fall. Because students and faculty will be receiving COVID-19 messages and updates through multiple communication channels, you can specifically promote messages related to on-site, academic life right within your LMS by using Impact!
For example, does your faculty need to have updated attendance records for contact tracing? You can remind them with Impact messages right within their LMS dashboard to ensure they take consistent attendance records.
You can use Impact to send out scheduled messages throughout the semester to remind students of COVID-19 safety guidelines.
With our “out of the box” campaign materials set up specifically to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, your institution can immediately address the outbreak with customized messages for students and instructors. Although this fall term will be challenging in several ways, taking on new modalities and learning tools should not cause stress and frustration. We want to make your digital semester as easy as possible in these unprecedented times.
