COVID Transitions Podcast Launch

We’re stuck at home, no business travel in sight, and it’s time to explore a new (to us) medium. Call it 2004 meets 2020.

COVID Transitions podcast logo

With all of the important news breaking around COVID-19 and its impact on higher education, and the difficulty of catching up on all of the analysis we typically cover by this blog, we have been figuring out how to better align our public commentary with the unique situation we face this year. We have had requests or suggestions of creating podcasts in the past, and now seems to be the time.

What we are launching is the MindWires COVID Transitions podcast, which is available in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Google Play, Spotify, and by direct RSS feed. This show allows us to discuss the big transition towards online and hybrid education driven by education’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, using a conversational approach in longer form than we typically cover in the blog.

We have two episodes up already. The first episode covers the big change we are seeing from just reacting to the mass movement online over the past month or two to a focus on what will happen in the Fall 2020 term. The second episode covers hybrid education, looking where schools might use a mix of online and face-to-face modalities – within a course or within a program – as a method to allow greater flexibility in these uncertain times.

The full transcript for each episode is available in the show notes and at the podcast posts.

This diagram has ended up being a roadmap of sorts, and the show discusses various issues embedded therein.

Graphic showing four phases of higher education response to COVID-19 in terms of online learning adoption.

We’d love your feedback on the show, and we plan to figure out an interactive element – e.g. addressing audience questions on the show – as we move forward.