Providing thoughtful and data-driven support services and continued flexibility for faculty, staff, and students will be keys to success for Wisconsin technical colleges as they move on from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new UW–Madison research findings.
The findings were presented in a new research brief released this month from the Crisis as Catalyst for Change and Innovation (CCCI) project, which is housed at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER).
The analysis came from nearly 80 interviews with educators in various roles across Wisconsin’s technical college system conducted from January to July 2022. It outlines several recommendations for creating and sustaining a “humanizing and equitable” technical education.
Those recommendations include:
- Keeping flexibilities like online coursework for students, remote work for faculty and staff, and release time for faculty involved in DEI initiatives available.
- Acknowledging the challenges of the past few years and offering faculty spaces for conversation and connection about those challenges.
- Collecting data about students’ needs to make informed decisions about new service offerings.
The CCCI research project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and is scheduled to run until May 2024, is led by Xueli Wang. Wang is the Barbara and Glenn Thompson Endowed Professor in Educational Leadership and a professor of higher education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (ELPA) at the School of Education.
Turina Bakken and Mary Ellen Kraus of Madison College are co-principal investigators. Also part of the team are WCER researchers Kelly Wickersham, Amy Prevost, and ELPA doctoral students Xiwei Zhu, Ayse Okur, Peiwen Zheng, Nicole Contreras-Garcia, and Maria Widmer.
The project’s first research brief, which was released last fall, outlined ways in which Wisconsin technical colleges adapted in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The new brief delves deeper to examine those adaptations.
“We recognized that challenges persist as the pandemic continues to loom,” the new brief states. “To seek credible, promising solutions, we delved deeper into the experiences of institutional leaders, administrators, faculty, and staff as they engage in adaptations and innovations.”
Some of those adaptations included creative use of technology, such as virtual reality for healthcare classes, and building technology training into coursework to ensure students are able to use the new tools necessary to learning in remote settings.
Read the full research brief here.