It is just a matter of time until your campus will be closed.  It will probably be temporary, perhaps only for the rest of the semester.

Whether by snow and ice, wind, fire, flood, civil disorder, bankruptcy or global pandemic you may be certain that your campus will be closed at some point. It is just a matter of when and how long the closure will last.

Closures provide a real time test of higher education without the assumption of shared space and time. Instructors and administrators are forced to consider the pedagogical requirement of face to face classes.  Many academics are now engaged in an exploration of digital alternatives, previously dismissed as substandard.  A global pandemic is a gut check for higher education.  Faculty, students, and their institutions will learn from this experience and be better prepared to live on a planet with 7.8 billion people.

Why does campus matter?

Is a closure affecting your learning, your teaching, and your scholarship?  Here is a link to share your thoughts (in about 250 words or so) on Why Campus Matters to you.

Please consider writing three times:  1) as you first grapple with the absence of the old normal, 2) after you adjust to the new temporary, and 3) after you have returned as close as possible to the old normal.  Let’s call that the new normal.  What will that new normal be?

Please share this link.  Why does campus matter to you?

Why campus matters

Frisson – the sudden passing moments of insight and shared community that are at the core of the lived campus experience.  It is the recollection of a fleeting moment of understanding colored by the light and sound of the place.  It is an awareness of shared presence, such as of the cellist before, during and after any sound.  It is a feeling of community and yet it is personal.  It is made possible by shared time and space.  It is there for students and teachers.

 

As we move further into the digital stream, we will better understand the importance of sharing time and space.  That common experience of place has been assumed in the design of courses, curriculums and campuses.  It has been that way since students gathered in the shadow of a tree to learn from the master.  You really had to be there.  Frisson.

Michael Haggans, March 11, 2020

Campus Closed was originally posted September 2, 2014.  This post has been adapted from an unpublished manuscript  Campus Matters:  Place in a Digital World

Michael Haggans, 2020

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