Higher Education’s Big Rethink is a multi-layered community of practice that has followed the dramatic story of higher education’s adaptation for Fall 2020, Spring 2021, and beyond surrounding the challenges of the COVID crisis and the national consciousness around racial justice. Higher Education’s Big Rethink continues to explore the complex planning, preparation, and execution phases surrounding sustained change and presents the far-reaching action plans and consequences for institutions and the future of higher education.
What is the Potential for Sustained Change within the Future of Learning and Equity?
What is the Way Forward for Racial Justice Innovation and Transformation?
What is the State of the Teaching and Learning Agenda?
Higher Education’s Big Rethink is a signature initiative of the Georgetown Master’s Program in Learning, Design and Technology (LDT). With the support of Baker Trust for Transformational Learning, the Big Rethink provides a distinctive experiential learning context for the LDT Program connecting students, faculty and alumni with the higher education community, confronting the most compelling questions that are shaping the future of higher education.
A free digital publication exploring the impact of the unprecedented events of 2020 and the potential for transformation in higher education—produced collaboratively by graduate students and faculty in Georgetown’s Program in Learning, Design and Technology.
Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, the idea of “opening” has loomed large and led to many challenges and questions. The crisis also has generated a set of transformational openings:
Harvested and edited from a series of interviews with higher education leaders, Openings lays out the landscape of challenges arising from the events of 2020, and offers the foundations for a transformative agenda emerging from the COVID-19 crisis and events related to racial justice.
As part of the Big Rethink, Georgetown’s LDT program is collecting COVID stories from the educational designers and developers, who are at the leading edge helping to move their institutions forward and prepare campuses for teaching and learning in the Academic Year 21-22. We believe that educational designers and developers have a critical role to play in Higher Education’s Big Rethink.
On January 29th, 2021, we hosted our first #COVedStories event. Using Twitter to host this discussion and solicit accounts of tremendous transformation, the higher education community was able to share accounts of the technological issues, change management, scaling support, pedagogical strategizing, resource challenges, and more that are changing the higher education community. This is our first community Twitter chat, but not our last. Please join our future chats and share your experiences!
The stories of educational developers and designers, collectively, give us a first important insight into the latent potential for innovation and transformation in the current crises—both COVID-19 and racial justice.
Questions about the initiative can be directed to Randy Bass, LDT faculty; Vice President, Strategic Education Initiatives, Georgetown University. Email: bassr@georgetown.edu
Questions about registration can be directed to Anne Musica, LDT Program Coordinator, Georgetown University. Email: anne.musica@georgetown.edu
