Throughout the spring term, faculty across the country had to swiftly transition from in-person to remote instruction in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the term comes to a close, what can institutions learn from their experiences as they begin planning for the fall?

We have partnered over the past month with dozens of colleges and universities to provide much needed student survey data in real time to inform intervention, retention, and support strategies. To further bolster decision-making going into the fall, we are today announcing the Ithaka S+R COVID-19 Faculty Survey.

This survey is intended to help colleges and universities improve their engagement with and support for their faculty members in this period of disruption as a vital contribution towards planning for the fall. It covers research and teaching practices at a distance as well as institutional communications. It includes coverage of both the tools and approaches that faculty have employed in providing online instruction. And, the instrument will also focus on faculty as researchers, as we know that many are facing challenges in accessing and producing scholarship at this time.

The participation process is highly streamlined to allow participants to launch this survey as soon as next week. We have developed a click-through participation agreement, a simplified implementation process, and templates for the invitation and reminder emails we will send on your behalf to your faculty. See our FAQs for additional information.

Each institution that participates will receive three live dashboards of results: one of aggregate findings and two of stratified findings based on selected demographic groups. Once the survey closes, we will provide the final reports as well as the underlying dataset. 

Institutions are considering a variety of scenarios for this fall, including having the semester entirely online, delaying the start of the term, splitting the term into sections, and allowing faculty at risk to remain at a distance. To both inform these decisions and the types of supports that faculty will require, this faculty survey will be available for fielding in May and June.

If you have any questions about participation, please be in touch via email (christine.wolff-eisenberg@ithaka.org) or phone (212-500-2369). We look forward to working with you in the coming weeks.