EDUCAUSE COVID-19 QuickPoll Results: Help for Students

As the COVID-19 pandemic upends higher education in 2020, institutions are relying on digital alternatives to missions, activities, and operations. Challenges abound. EDUCAUSE is helping institutional leaders, IT professionals, and other staff address their pressing challenges by sharing existing data and gathering new data from the higher education community.  This report is based on an EDUCAUSE QuickPoll. QuickPolls enable us to rapidly gather, analyze, and share input from our community about specific emerging topics.¹

The Challenge

Most colleges and universities have transitioned rapidly to remote teaching and learning, student support, and other institutional services. Students are working to finish their academic terms and complete their coursework while they are also adapting to new modes of learning, interacting with faculty and other students online, figuring out how to use institutional services remotely, and ensuring they have the needed equipment, software, and network access. Institutions are pursuing several tactics to help make students' transition to fully remote access easier and also more affordable.

The Bottom Line

Institutions reported that bandwidth and/or Wi-Fi access is presenting students with the most difficulty, followed by acquiring the devices necessary to support remote learning.² Most institutions are responding with equipment loans and access to free or very-low-cost services. Institutions report somewhat more students are having difficulty accessing institutional services (with the exception of advising services) than they are transitioning to fully remote learning. Most institutions have developed safety nets for students who need food, housing, and/or financial help. The particular types of support options available to students vary by institutional type.

The Data: Identifying Students' Transition Difficulties

Students' transition to fully remote learning has been only somewhat difficult. Over one-third of institutions (36%) reported that students were having moderate or extreme difficulty getting the bandwidth and/or Wi-Fi they need to continue their academic work (see table 1). Access to equipment or devices was next, at 26%.

Table 1. Students' Transition to Fully Remote Learning

How difficult would you say it has been for students at your institution to transition to fully remote learning in each of the following areas?	Moderately / Extremely Difficult	Somewhat Difficult	Not at All / Slightly Difficult
Accessing bandwidth/Wi-Fi	36%	27%	37%
Accessing equipment/devices	26%	29%	44%
Collaborating with other students remotely	18%	24%	58%
Using library resources remotely	16%	22%	63%
Using remote learning applications	14%	28%	58%
Consulting with faculty remotely	14%	25%	61%
Accessing course materials, such as OER and course texts	11%	20%	69%

Note: Not all rows sum to 100% due to rounding.

Students' transition to fully remote institutional services was more difficult. Accessing internships or practicum placements presented the greatest difficulty, by far (see table 2). The widespread disruption of organizations and companies has probably upended many standing internship and practicum agreements, so in this case there is probably little that institutions can do. More than one-quarter to more than one-third of institutions also reported that students had moderate or extreme difficulty in accessing remote health services (including mental health services), emergency aid, and housing/food services. Only 16% of institutions reported that students were having moderate or extreme difficulty using advising services. Many institutions have invested heavily in student advising technologies in recent years, and those investments are more important now than ever before.³

Table 2. Students' Transition to Fully Remote Institutional Services

How difficult would you say it has been for students at your institution to transition to fully remote access to institutional services in each of the following areas?	Moderately / Extremely Difficult	Somewhat Difficult	Not at All / Slightly Difficult
Accessing internships or practicum placements	66%	16%	18%
Accessing health services	37%	22%	41%
Accessing mental health services	29%	25%	46%
Accessing emergency aid	27%	29%	44%
Accessing housing/food services	26%	23%	51%
Accessing career services	23%	23%	54%
Accessing financial services	20%	23%	57%
Accessing advising services	16%	20%	64%

Students at some institutions are struggling more than others. Respondents at over one-third (37%) of institutions didn't view their students as having much difficulty with any of the areas noted in the survey.⁴ Private institutions were least likely to report that students had high levels of difficulty in any area. In contrast, 20% of respondents viewed four or more areas as creating difficulties for students. For community colleges, the rate was even higher: 30% of respondents at community colleges rated four or more areas as being moderately or extremely difficult for students.

Institutions are helping students with a host of issues. Respondents listed a number of additional challenges, generally pertaining to personal stressors, technology issues, and pedagogical and learning issues.

Personal stressors

• Self-directed learning and time management
• Finding appropriate locations
• Keeping up with classes while dealing with the many stresses in their lives brought about by COVID-19
• Challenges away from campus (unemployment, housing insecurity, family illness)
• Maintaining community
• Psychological strain of remote/isolated learning

Technology issues

• Accessing Starfish
• Logging in to Zoom
• Specific applications (e.g., MS Office)
• Use of LMS
• Navigating the LMS
• Software
• Lab-based study
• Access to specific software for disciplines restricted by license
• Remote access to software and specialized tools
• Engineering software
• Technology support
• Ability of IT staff to work remotely and support the institution
• Help desk support
• Software and system reliability
• ID login management
• Printing

Pedagogical/learning issues

• Faculty not prepared or not knowing the technology
• Dealing with faculty members' lack of technology skills
• Change of pedagogy and course design to address full remote learning for all traditional programs
• Difficulty engaging with faculty and content
• Testing and online Exams
• Testing academic integrity
• Managing time zone differences
• Time zone differences
• Learning psychomotor skills
• Accessibility for students using assistive technology

Other institutional services

• Forms not online
• Student support services (advising, CSI, tutoring, enrollment)
• Accessing fitness/athletic services

The Data: Making Students' Transitions More Affordable

Institutions are stepping in to help students make their transition to fully remote access more affordable. We asked about seven tactics.

• Most institutions (81%) are offering or planning to offer loans of laptops or other devices. This high level pertains to all types of institutions.
• Most institutions (81%) are also offering rosters of options for free or very-low-cost services. The exception are private bachelor's institutions, of which only 56% were offering or planning to offer these options. This tactic is particularly common among public bachelor's and private master's institutions (92%).
• Support for food and/or housing is the third affordability tactic, with 75% of institutions offering or planning to offer this support. Public bachelor's institutions (89%) are the most likely to be extending such help, and private master's (64%) are the least likely.
• More than half of institutions (57%) are offering or planning to offer direct financial assistance. Private masters are the exception, with only 43% of those institutions offering or planning to offer it.
• Many institutions are loaning hotspots (47%) to address students' bandwidth or Wi-Fi access issues, although use of this tactic varies quite a bit by institutional type. Only about one-third (32%) of private master's institutions are loaning or planning to loan hotspots, whereas more than half of public bachelor's (62%) and public (55%) and private (54%) doctoral institutions are loaning these devices.
• Over 40% of all types of institutions are extending financial assistance by facilitating the purchase of equipment and buying/mailing it out to students, Exceptions are associate's (30%) and public master's institutions (25%).
• Finally, 28% of institutions are negotiating with vendors to lend or sell no-cost or heavily discounted equipment. This practice is rarest among public bachelor's institutions (14%) and most common in associate's (30%) and private doctoral (33%) institutions.

Promising Practices

Institutions are doing their best to help students successfully complete their academic terms. Respondents noted some additional tactics their institutions are pursing:

• Paying work-study students a portion of what they would have earned
• Offering drive-up internet in parking lots
• Delivering live, online help for faculty and students
• Implementing robust training and support
• Moving Wi-Fi hotspots to provide service in parking lots
• Giving students options for withdrawal, grades, and housing
• Tutoring
• Maintaining social distancing in computer spaces
• Providing e-texts or mailing textbooks

Institutions are committed to helping their students successfully complete their academic terms and connect and collaborate with faculty and other students. Some institutions have more widespread challenges than others, often due to the types of students they serve. All institutions are taking actions to help.

Notes

1. QuickPolls are less formal than EDUCAUSE survey research. They gather data in a single day instead of over several weeks, are distributed by EDUCAUSE staff to relevant EDUCAUSE Community Groups rather than via our enterprise survey infrastructure, and do not enable us to associate responses with specific institutions. ↩
2. The poll was conducted on April 1, 2020. Respondents represented 267 institutions. The poll consisted of seven questions and took most respondents less than two minutes to complete. Poll invitations were sent to participants in EDUCAUSE community groups, including the CIO, Women in IT, LAT (leading academic transformation), and Community College groups. Most respondents (248) represented US institutions. Other participating countries included Australia, Canada, Colombia, Finland, India, South Africa, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. An appropriately diverse range of institution sizes and Carnegie classifications participated. ↩
3. Susan Grajek and D. Christopher Brooks, "How Technology Can Support Student Success during COVID-19," Data Bytes (blog), EDUCAUSE Review, March 24, 2020. ↩
4. For each institution, we summed the number of areas that were rated "extremely difficult" or "moderately difficult." The resulting totals range from 0 to 12, out of a possible 15 areas. ↩

---

Susan Grajek is Vice President of Communities and Research at EDUCAUSE.