COVID-19

Crowdsourced Document Tracks Institutions' COVID Strategies for 2022

• By Rhea Kelly
• 12/20/21

With the Omicron variant spreading rapidly across the United States, colleges and universities face a familiar dilemma: Will COVID force a pivot to online when classes begin in the new year? A new project kicked off by futurist Bryan Alexander aims to crowdsource the answer to that question in a shared Google spreadsheet.

A number of institutions have already announced plans to start January classes online, including Harvard University, the New School, Stanford University, the University of Denver, the University of Illinois-Chicago and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Alexander reported in a blog post. "Each has its own timing and other campus restrictions, but all greet the new year with online teaching and learning," he noted. Other universities have publicly stated that they are still considering the online vs. on-campus options.

The Google spreadsheet invites anyone with information and sources to list an institution's name, whether it's on a quarter or semester system, and its COVID strategy, along with associated documentation links. It is meant to serve as a living document, updated in real time as colleges and universities respond to evolving circumstances.

"The more eyes on the problem the better," wrote Alexander. "We can update the Sheet as events transpire and we learning about them, amending previous entries as things change. People can add new categories of information and ways of displaying them as you all have time. Hopefully we can all learn from each other."