The COVID-19 pandemic is a world-historical event. Its impact is systemic, felt throughout a number of countries, regions and peoples with tentacles infused in their respective social, economic, political and educational systems. At a local level, College operations have been dramatically impacted due to the virus with all courses in the Global Studies department conducted remotely from March 2020 through May of 2021.

That said, we want to build and strengthen remote operations for the future, under the assumption that certain elements of  what we are doing now departmentally may persist indefinitely. Therefore:

1. We propose a set of forums engaging outside experts on remote learning to look at best practices in remote education. This could be done in collaboration with the Education Department or other areas of the College. These experts would examine with us a number of topics including but not limited to: remote teaching, technical needs, economic impacts, and building community and collaboration through remote operations among students, faculty and staff.

2. Consider including a line item in the departmental budget moving forward titled remote operations of approximately $1500, which can be utilized for necessary hardware or software purchases to facilitate on-line learning and communications.

3. Consider further remote (DL) course development, hyflex courses, and if formats like RS, BL will become institutionalized in some way moving forward. If so, begin working with administration and other areas of the College to build a variety of learning modalities into our courses beginning with the fall 2021 semester.