Page 48 - Campus Technology, January/February 2019

2018
A Shift to Learning in the Cloud
About 95 percent of undergraduates returned to Sagrado after the hurricane. But Marxuach estimated that about one in five of those returning students was “really in challenging family or community situations.” Some could come back just once a week (or even less often). Being able to provide on- line access to courses “was a blessing,” he said, because that allowed students to continue their classes remotely.
While the university had already been piloting the use of asynchronous online course delivery, those efforts took a left turn post-Maria. Faculty Resource Network, New York Univer- sity and the University of Cincinnati (OH) quickly developed an online program that those affected by the hurricane could take free of charge to continue earning credits. The faculty vol- unteered their time and the universities their infrastructure and expertise for what became known as “Sagrado Online.”
“This was a great learning opportunity for us, the ability to offer these courses,” said Marxuach. “These are interactive, asynchronous, online courses as a way to provide flexible access to students.” Now the university is in the process of setting up the structures needed for the campus to be able to do this on its own. “It’s no longer a pilot. It’s going to be part of our academic experience,” he noted.
This will be particularly important for the many students who ended up fleeing to the mainland. Take the example of Victoria, a student whose family had to evacuate when a near- by river flooded, forcing them to walk out of their home with water up to their necks the evening of the hurricane. Marx- uach heard her story while visiting a refugee center where
he had gone with a group of nursing students. The team had been there from early in the morning until late at night, and near the end of the long shift, the young woman introduced herself as a student at his institution. She explained that her family had lost everything other than their lives. While the uni- versity jumped in to fill immediate daily needs, eventually, the family headed to Florida, even as Victoria was determined to complete her semester and continue her studies at Sagrado.
Marxuach was clear that the move to the cloud, accom- plished in a matter of weeks, made all the difference to stu- dents like her. “Even today, a year after the hurricane, families have not come back to Puerto Rico, but they want to com- plete their education at Sagrado and the only way they can do it is remotely,” said Marxuach. “The only reason we were able to do that was because we had our systems up.”
A New Taste for Collaboration
The student center turned out to become the heart of opera- tions for Sagrado. Because that facility had generator-supplied power, people could charge their phones and other devices, and once the fiber optic cables to the island were repaired, WiFi was available. Just as important, that’s where all cam- pus operations ended up. On the first floor was the dining hall and a large gathering area, where students converged. On the second floor was another large open space, where the institu- tion temporarily consolidated operations for its academic de- partments as well as its academic and student support units.
“The collaboration, the synergy that developed from ev- erybody being in the same space was really phenomenal.
All those departments were together. All the faculty were to- gether. We didn’t have any faculty offices. Everybody met in the same place,” said Marxuach. “Students would go to one place and everybody was there. You really had the whole uni- versity in the student center, which was a powerful image of the mission for our university of student-centeredness and
Gilberto J. Marxuach Torrós
48
CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | January/February 2019