By Susan Fourtané, Fierce Education
“The idea is to design a classroom where an instructor can see both worlds — the virtual class and the physical class.”
That is how Greg Flanik, Chief Information Officer at Baldwin Wallace University (BW) in Berea, OH, summarizes how its 3,400 undergraduates and graduate students, in addition to hundreds of faculty and staff members, experience higher education in the post Covid-19 era.
“I think it is important to remember that there is a significant difference between a course designed to be online vs. BW’s current delivery method which is remote instruction,” Flanik said.
“BW’s classroom access through technology upgrades for both instructors and students has continued to build on BW’s core strength of personalized instruction and meaningful classroom connections. The flexibility to design a course that incorporates both synchronous remote instruction with parallel in-person instruction creates a seamless transition through the use of technology without losing the personal instruction quality found in the BW classroom,” he said.
In order to reach their goal, Baldwin Wallace’s network infrastructure now includes two 10 Gbps Point-to-Point Ethernet circuits, which connect to two separate data centers to form a redundant fiber ring, a third 10 Gbps Ethernet circuit delivers network diversity, and a Dark Fiber connection.
This represents a considerable growth since back in 2014 when they first purchased a 1 Gbps connection from Everstream, a business-only fiber network service provider, according to the university. “You need a robust network to be able to deliver the product – and Everstream does that for us,” said Flanik.
For Flanik, the way they have engineered their network and infrastructure has been the result of the need to accommodate the accelerated shifted learning models across the educational landscape. “The HyFlex Model is gaining traction within higher education both to meet the immediate needs of faculty and students while also planning for methods to implement in the next three to five years.”
With the HyFlex Model, which presents the components of hybrid learning in a high-flexibility course structure, the courses are delivered simultaneously both in-person and online by the same faculty member. “The instructor and students each can choose to attend class in-person or join remotely from one class to the next.”
Flanik says that professors interact with in-person and synchronous online learners through platforms such as Microsoft Teams or Blackboard Collaborate. For the Fall 2020 semester, BW engineered 15 proof-of-concept classrooms that utilize Everstream’s backbone to deliver these HyFlex learning services.
“The high-flexibility approach to a course is designed to help instructors make the all-important connections between students, the instructor, and the material. Seamless movement between remote instruction and in-person instruction may serve the individual student’s needs, but it also facilitates the connections necessary to make the instruction meaningful,” said Flanik.
“An instructor that is able to connect with students online as well as in the classroom is just as important as the student-to-student connections made in both delivery modes. An instructor that can easily move between their remote instruction and in-person instruction helps keep those students connected and engaged in the material,” he said.
In terms of technology, Flanik explains that these classrooms have an 86-inch interactive screen where the instructor can write and draw on, a master monitor to control the view of the class, a wall-mounted display so that in-person students can see their remote classmates along with touchscreen monitors to access our learning management platform.
There are cameras on both the instructor and the class, a microphone array on the ceiling, and an integrated speaker system. Plus, professors can record the whole session for students to view later.
The University’s future plans include to scale the model to the over 150 remaining classrooms across campus. Through this investment, Baldwin Wallace will expand its reach and better serve adult students, graduates, and corporate workforces.
For Flanik, the future of course design has been changed, and for the better.
“Although technology changes demanded by the pandemic in classroom and course instruction seemed disruptive at first, the lasting impact of those changes have now equipped instructors with even greater tools to design courses that use both in-person, remote, recorded, and other tools to best deliver instruction.”
“Access to instruction is greatly improved, traditional in-person instruction, although traditionally the preferred method of instruction is now part of a suite of instruction modes that can reach students where they are, help keep classes connected and resilient to everything from pandemic interference to snow days. Technology improvements that can help keep students on their path toward timely graduation is a win for our students and the University,” said Flanik.
To be prepared for the unexpected, BW’s redundant network was designed to solve challenges from the impact on day-to-day growth and operations to disaster recovery planning. Here is where the importance of the network comes into play.
“Our enterprise-grade network delivers low-latency, high-speed connections that are ideal for higher ed institutions like Baldwin Wallace University that are taking the initiative to meet new demands and prepare for the future,” Brett Lindsey, CEO of Everstream told Fierce Education.
According to Greg Flanik, the redundant network connection solved for moving a number of key administrative functions into the cloud, and for the university’s plans to continue migrating functions into the cloud.
Already BW’s admissions, human resources, and payroll platforms are hosted in the cloud, and its virtual desktop environment is next on the cloud migration list. “A single point of failure would prove disastrous to University operations.”
Everstream’s network solution also provided a safeguard for BW’s disaster recovery plan. “We previously had one data center on campus and built a mini data center on the other side of campus,” Flanik explained. “The thought was if one campus building was impacted, the other facility had us covered.”
When the university began to plan for disaster scenarios that could impact operations more significantly, BW partnered with an off-premise data center.
“Now, we back-up our production sites in real-time – every hour – and run at 50 percent capacity each at our on-campus data center and off-campus disaster recovery site,” Flanik says. “If there is a failure on campus, we could roll the remaining 50 percent over to the other site and vice versa.”
Indeed, BW is one step ahead preparing for the worst as well as being ready for tomorrow’s learning today.
Discover how Everstream’s backbone enables the University to prepare for the future here.