This story is published on Columbia Missourian.
Columbia College has offered online education for 20 years and virtual classes for five.
Now, because of the pandemic, the college is offering students a flexible teaching model for the fall semester.
The High-Flex program will allow students to choose each day how they want to attend classes, in-person or virtually. That means they can choose to attend in-person classes on a particular day and switch to virtual learning whenever they like.
“We plan to provide an excellent education to our students and want to keep people safe,” said Piyusha Singh, provost and senior vice president of Columbia College.
Singh said the approach gives students the flexibility they need to take care of their own needs.
Singh highlighted the difference between virtual learning and online learning. “Online classes are asynchronous, while the instruction of virtual classes is happening between the teachers and students at the same time.”
Singh said the college has offered multiple training opportunities on teaching virtually that included information on technology and the pedagogical requirements of teaching remotely.
The college has more than 800 undergraduate courses offered through the online program, along with 29 online degrees and more than 4,702 online program students nationwide, according to data on its website.
The college also gets a lot of transfer students.
The numbers haven’t changed much since the pandemic began, Singh said, as enrollment in its online programs has remained steady. Only time will tell if new students will gravitate to its online program once they decide whether or not to return to other universities in August.
She said the college has drawn on its experience with online and virtual programs to make instructional plans during the pandemic.
“We’re just taking the things we’ve done together before and putting them together differently,” she said.
Carli Buschjost, a senior majoring in biology at Columbia College, said the new teaching model can benefit both professors and students.
“Professors can teach in different ways, and students can choose their ways to learn. I think it will bring up more opportunities and keep everyone safe and comfortable in this situation,” Buschjost said.
Buschjost said she will take as many in-person classes as possible in the fall semester because she prefers traditional classes.
Columbia College has been preparing for in-person classes in the fall. Classrooms and dining halls have been restructured to ensure students maintain 6 feet of social distance. “If there’s a classroom that can’t have more than 10 students at social distance, we will lower the class capacity,” Singh said.
Students will also be required to wear masks to attend in-person classes. The changes aren’t over, Singh said.
“We all need to learn to respond to the accelerated pace of change,” she said. “And I really think that Columbia College is modeling that for our students. We’re in a very intense situation, and rather than just do the same old thing, we’re using a crisis to see where we can innovate and how we can support our students in different ways.”
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