By Pavel Pilpenko and Dillon Hulse
Academic Technology Services officials and professors have been working together to transfer Long Beach State to alternative instruction methods for the rest of spring semester to enforce social distancing practices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
School officials hope to maintain academic continuity, however, concerns about the transition have cropped up.
To combat those concerns, ATS has given students access to more free software and provided teachers with guides to help them learn how to utilize all the tools available.
Student Virtual Lab, which was previously only available for students enrolled in classes where the faculty requested access, is now available to every student via the single-sign-on site.
“The student virtual lab was built jointly by the Division of IT and Academic Technology Services in 2016,” said Dennis LuPresto, interim executive director of ATS. “There are currently 400 virtual computers in the virtual lab. Based on faculty’s requests, there are 13 software programs installed on the virtual computers: ArcGIS, AutoCAD, Mathematica, Minitab, MATLAB, Python, Orange, R, RStudio, SAS, SPSS, Visual Studio Professional, and MS Access.”
Sustaining the influx of users might become a problem, but tech departments are confident.
“In general, BeachBoard and ZOOM are very stable,” LuPresto said. “We’ve experienced a few service interruptions in the past; however, these have been caused by outside dependent services and not directly from BeachBoard or ZOOM.”
ATS is also advising instructors and students on how best to utilize technological tools like BeachBoard and ZOOM during periods of alternative instruction to ensure that the tools being used match up with each instructor’s unique subject and classroom environment.
The university’s website also includes guides for how faculty and students can use various tools for communication, assignment distribution and collection.
“Every instructor’s teaching style is different; we provide resources and recommendations, but the faculty has the academic freedom to implement them the best way they see fit,” LuPresto said.
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