
Academic homelessness: How to keep students from disengaging post-pandemic
The pandemic brought abrupt changes to higher education on a global scale. Institutions either canceled courses completely or hurriedly restructured their classes to be taught entirely online.
Although the industry experienced a chaotic onset of reactive online teaching amid a global emergency, it came with some positives, such as normalizing the utilization of educational technology, the growth of digital data to support learning, and more flexibility and scalability. However, there are some challenges that cannot be overlooked. An entire cohort of students suddenly felt a sense of loss on multiple levels: loss of social engagement, structure, control and direction. Essentially, they lost their academic home.