Harvard-MIT’s edX initiative offers guidance as others prepare
Online learning is decades old, but few students, teachers, or administrators had personal experience with it before the rise of the pandemic in March, when the entire American education system was forced to rush online. Pretty much all agree the results were mixed, at best Now, with COVID-19 surging in parts of the country, colleges and universities are preparing for fall, struggling to find a balance between ensuring the health and safety of teachers, students, and staff while providing a robust education experience. As of July 27, about 49 percent of colleges are planning in-person classes, 13 percent (including Harvard) are planning to remain online, and 35 percent are looking at hybrid models, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s updated listing of 1,260 colleges. But the situation has been and will likely remain pretty fluid. Anant Agarwal, founder and CEO of the pioneering online initiative edX, created by Harvard and MIT,...