With the current transition to Brightspace, we need to be mindful of the challenges we're facing, the ways in which distance ed is growing and how to support one another in the transition to Brightspace.

"Never let a good crisis go to waste."

Commonly attributed to Winston Churchill, we know that Churchill didn't say this. Rahm Emanuel, however, (in)famously said of the financial collapse of 2008, "Never allow a good crisis go to waste. It's an opportunity to do the things you once thought were impossible." Emanuel was hit pretty hard at the time with people accusing him of exploiting a moment of national financial devastation for political gain, but quotes about finding opportunity in moments of adversity aren't exactly rare.

There's a reason for that. And the global pandemic that has exacerbated an already downward trending enrollment pattern as well as an explosion of distance education (DE) classes at SCCC can be read as a moment in which we definitely need to find opportunities for change and growth.

Read on to learn about

1. the challenges facing the college
2. how we're working to help manage the DE explosion
3. most importantly, the specific supports that the FA, the college and SUNY have to offer you as we transition to Brightspace.

Steep challenges

You may have seen this addressed in a June 4, 2022, article in Newsday titled "For LI's community colleges, steep challenges ahead," for which SCCC President Ed Bonahue as well as FA President Dante Morelli and I were interviewed regarding our thoughts on the shift to significantly more DE courses. As I say in the article, we are in the thick of things, doing the important work of supporting our faculty and students during this seismic shift.

While some assert that the solution is to convince, or even force, students to just come back to campus, it's clearly not that simple.

We've known that fewer students are going to college for the past decade. NPR reported in December 2019 that "over the past eight years, college enrollment nationwide has fallen about 11%" and that every sector of higher ed has felt that pain. And since fall 2019, there's been an additional 13% decrease in enrollment in community colleges, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.

The decline in enrollment that we are seeing at SCCC, a loss of about a quarter of our enrollment over the past decade, fits right in with the state and national trends; there's no denying that this is really happening. Yes, part of it is how we're coming down off the recession peak, but there's more to it than that. We know that the causes are complex.

• There are demographic changes, with birthrates falling across the nation since 2007, and Long Island hasn't been spared much, which leads to a decline in the number of students graduating from high school (see New York's status on pages 6 and 10). The Chronicle of Higher Ed and other sources make plain that things are going to get worse in terms of birthrates.
• As the economy improves and starting wages have climbed, that too impacts prospective students' choices; when they can earn at least $15/hour now for jobs that paid just $7.25/hour a decade ago, that's a significant difference. A short-term focus on earning now tends to be more appealing to working class students than the long-term investment of college leading to career.
• As noted in a 2019 Gallup poll, fewer Americans are convinced that higher education is very important; that number dropped to 51% in 2019 from 70% in 2013. They're also indicating that they do not wish to take on such massive amounts of debt for a degree that they may not complete and that, even if achieved, doesn't necessarily ensure upward social mobility.
• Pandemic-related fallout continues to plague higher ed in general and community colleges in particular, and student learning losses due to the tumultuous mix of on-site and remote learning have led more to arrive at college less prepared than ever before which exacerbates retention and completion issues.

So we know there are complicated issues and deeply concerning impacts—most notably the profound concern about how this might affect racial and other equity efforts from the past decades, which is a primary reason why the FA co-founded the JEDI Institute with college administration last year. But one thing we can do is focus all of our attention on improving our access and retention statistics and head into this DE shift with our best efforts on improved student success.

Managing the DE explosion

I've served on the college Distance Education Committee (DEC) for 17 years and typically we process anywhere from ten to 15 DE course proposals in a given semester. This spring, between late April and May, our DEC subcommittee on course proposals reviewed a staggering 131 DE course proposals.

One hundred and thirty-one.

I chaired the DEC subcommittee on course proposals and emailed every single course proposer for any and all revisions needed to ensure that their proposed syllabi not only had been sufficiently revised for the intended DE modality—fully online, hybrid, Sufflex or real-time online—but also adhered to the standards set by the VPAA office.

Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs Lauren Tacke-Cushing had attended all but a couple of our DEC meetings this academic year and made plain that she expects careful quality control throughout the DE proposal and approval process—and beyond.

To our FA members' credit, nearly every single proposer revised (and revised again, if needed) until the syllabus met the standards distributed by the VPAA office each semester. Fortunately, most needed just a few revisions, sometimes just to clarify in their attendance policy that in online classes, attendance is based upon student submission of assigned work, in keeping with the July 2021 US Department of Education regulations.

I am grateful to our members who worked quickly and diligently to make sure everything was in order, for some of them even before they started the college's eLearning Academy. And given the volume of thank you emails we received, expressing gratitude for the careful review and specific suggestions, I know that our members are eager for more support so they can do the right thing.

Our diligent DEC members have been working harder than I've witnessed in 17 years to address these and other concerns and challenges, and the good work continues.

The web address to access Brightspace is sunysuffolk.edu/mylearning.

A college brief came out on May 25 from Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs Lauren Tacke-Cushing so you should review that information. A target date of June 15 has been set for when you should start to see your courses appearing in Brightspace.

Faculty will have immediate access once their courses are created, and students will have access on the first day of the fall semester (unless you choose to open your courses early). One exception will be cross-listed courses; in those cases, you'll receive a blank Brightspace shell so you can build while the issue is resolved. In addition, immediately following the first load of faculty, everyone will have a single blank shell where you can learn Brightspace and practice building without impacting your real class websites.

You'll have several forms of support from the FA, the college and SUNY.

Union support

1. Brightspace Basics — In March 2020 when the pandemic hit, I spent the two-week spring recess helping colleagues learn the basics of Blackboard so they could pivot to remote learning and created a series of Blackboard Basics files which I posted on the FA website. Now I am diligently working on revising those as Brightspace Basics. These are separate, discrete instruction sheets so you can access only the ones you really need. I'm still working on this, but you can see what I have up and hopefully you'll find some of them useful: FA Brightspace Basics.
   
   
2. Brightspace Faculty Fellow (BFF) — The college is revamping what we have in Appendix J of our contract as DE faculty peer mentors and calling the program Brightspace Faculty Fellows. There will be one per campus, and I am the designed BFF for the Eastern Campus. The BFFs start in late August and will work throughout the fall semester. Before August, however, I am happy to work with anyone at the college who wants to meet on campus or via Zoom for some assistance in learning Brightspace (to the degree that I'm available, of course; we do have a couple family trips planned!). I know from nearly a decade of running our campus Teaching and Learning Center and serving as one of the DE peer mentors that sometimes having a colleague sit down next to you or do a screenshare is just what's needed to help clarify certain steps or resolve problems. Feel free to contact me this summer: eatonc@sunysuffolk.edu. I'm happy to help!

College support

1. Brightspace Help — In addition to the Brightspace Faculty Fellows program described above, which starts in mid-August, you can email any questions you have to the college's Brightspace implementation tech support team: brightspace@sunysuffolk.edu. There's also a Brightspace for Faculty page on the SCCC website as well as some materials on Brightspace for Students.
   
   
2. Brightspace Ambassadors — There are about four dozen Brightspace ambassadors at the college, which are colleagues who have very kindly volunteered to provide some collegial support to peers in a less formal role than the BFFs described above. You can find a list of the ambassadors in MySCCC (click Suffolk Online, then Faculty Resources). Please note that they may not be available this summer, which is why I'm offering to help out in June and July. Just email me!
   
   
3. ITS Trainings — Information Technology Services will host some June and July workshops on course archiving and course migration. The archiving workshop will show you how to preserve your Blackboard student work for your own access since Blackboard is going away in December, so if you'll want to see actual student submissions after that point, don't miss this. (The college's bulk archiving solution won't be accessible by general faculty and won't maintain actual student work.) For the second workshop, the college will bulk migrate all courses from fall 2019 through summer 2022 into Brightspace for you. However, doing the migration yourself allows you to select the specific content that you want to migrate from Blackboard to Brightspace, which gives you more control. Attend these workshops by Christina Johnston-Eustace to learn more.
   
   
4. CIP Trainings — The Center for Innovative Pedagogy will host three workshops on Brightspace. Zoom links and login info for all three are in an SCCC email called "Brightspace Summer Series" sent on June 13. You can call CIP for additional information: 631-451-4524.

• June 16, 2 to 3 pm: A Look at the Brightspace Orientation for Students and Other Help Resources
• July 14, 2 to 3 pm: Getting Ready for the Fall Semester with Brightspace
• July 18, 2 to 3 pm: Open Forum for Faculty Questions

SUNY support

1. SUNY Trainings — SUNY is doing a variety of trainings, and I have heard from colleagues that they find some of them quite useful. Check them out!
   
   
2. SUNY Help Desk — The Open SUNY Help Desk that has been so reliable in the past will continue supporting Brightspace. You can reach out to them in several ways:

• Check their website: online.suny.edu/help (support hours may change by semester but generally are all EST: Mon to Fri 7:00 am to 12 midnight, Sat 10 am to 8 pm, and Sun 10 am to 9 pm)
  
  
• Call tech support toll free: 1-844-OPENSUN — easy to remember once you realize that's 844-OPEN-SUNY without the "Y" — or, if you prefer the digits, call 1-844-673-6786
  
  
• Submit a support ticket: sunyonline.teamdynamix.com.

There's no doubt we've been through a lot in the realm of DE over the years, shifting back and forth among learning management systems and engaging in serious debates about the role of DE at the institution. But, as always, we will pull together and move forward because that's simply what we need to do for our students.