Karen Costa (she/her) Profile picture
Jun 22, 2020 14 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Running list of questions and concerns I have about #highered's #funkyfall:
To quote @BryanAlexander: "How many infections will a campus tolerate before ceasing in-person education?"
Will people who show symptoms that are typical of fall return to campus (e.g., cough, runny nose, etc.) be sent home? Who will make that call? Is it a teacher's job to tell a student with who's coughing to leave? Will anyone be left in class if this is the case?
Will contingent faculty and p/t staff be paid if they get sick? Most do not have sick time of any sort. They get paid if they work/teach.
Are campuses at all prepared to deal with the unprecedented level of trauma and toxic stress that people will be bringing back with them to campus?
If campuses opt for HyFlex, and no students come to class, does the professor have to come to campus to teach them via Zoom?
What about people who refuse to use masks and follow social distancing guidelines? Who will be responsible for addressing those people? Teachers? Will there be a no-mask red alert button to push?
What about people who are more vulnerable to COVID-19? Will they be given flexible options to work and study?
If density is the name of the game here, what prevents students from gathering in extremely dense off-campus gatherings, and then bringing the consequences of those gatherings back into the classroom?
Oh! If you bring everyone back, and then a spike shuts everything down in the middle of the term, will you be refunding students their housing costs?
How much money is going to be spent on preparing for return to campus? Is that the best use of those funds? If you spend hundreds of thousands on PPE and other measures, and have to close in two weeks?
Is your institution telling you that your choices are a) a return to campus or b) institutional collapse? Is that true?
I don't know. I just feel like at an institution of teaching and learning, you put the people who teach and learn in the driver's seat and empower them to lead.
For the record, there are few things I want more in this moment than for everyone to be able to return to campus safely.

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More from @karenraycosta

Oct 31, 2022
I wrote about ADHD, #AtomicHabits, ableism, Ungrading, and all the things.

#HigherEd
#ADHDTwitter
#AcademicTwitter

karenraycosta.medium.com/systems-arent-…
TLDR: ADHD is a life-threatening condition. Systems, routines, and structures keep me alive. Ignorant critiques of these strategies are ableist. Let's do better. Happy Monday!

#HigherEd
#ADHDTwitter
#AcademicTwitter
If you'd like to learn more about ADHD, there's a podcast for that!

#HigherEd
#ADHDTwitter
#AcademicTwitter

theadhdgallery.com
Read 5 tweets
Mar 31, 2022
Low attendance is understandable as we continue to recover from a global disaster while simultaneously experiencing repeated impacts/surges.

We have to design/adapt for this reality. Not for the fantasy of “back to normal.”

#HigherEd
#TraumaAware https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/images/fema-ccp-g
collective trauma: “a cataclysmic event that shatters the basic fabric of society”

#HigherEd

karenraycosta.medium.com/is-covid-a-col…
Faculty, staff, and students should not be left in the wind like this to wonder why this is happening. It’s infuriating tbh, and #HigherEd continues to be its own worst enemy.

We have to prioritize well-being and talk about trauma.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 3, 2022
Okay here goes nothing. A new thread 🧵about #CourseHero.

My name's Karen, I've worked in #HigherEd for 20 years, and this is the absolute last thing I want to talk about today. But, I'm compelled in the face of what I see as immense harm being done to students.
Yesterday, I wrote a piece about Course Hero. You can read it here:
karenraycosta.medium.com/we-dont-need-a…
I want to be as transparent as possible and encourage you to take nothing I say at face value. Don't trust me. Trust what you see.
To that end, here's how I've profited thus far from talking about Course Hero, for any who might wonder about my motivations. $1.19. Profit report from Medium s...
Read 16 tweets
Jan 24, 2022
great #OnlineLearning isn't necessarily media-rich. it's connection-rich.

the LEAST engaging online courses I've taken have been media-rich and connection-poor.
I see a lot of #HigherEd LD postings that seem to misunderstand this. That worries me.

pedagogy before tech
people before pedagogy

#OnlineLearning
btw all of this is covered in the research on effective #OnlineLearning particularly the work of xu and jaggars scholar.google.com/citations?user…
Read 4 tweets
Nov 19, 2021
so I woke up thinking about the "rigor wars," as one does
and I kind of feel like the debate over rigor, not to be dramatic, but it feels symptomatic of a (the?) battle for the soul of higher education
I want to give this "what do we talk about" a v.2. -our own educational trauma -the way we were taught -lack of
Read 10 tweets
Nov 18, 2021
I don't disagree with anything in this piece. What I find really interesting is the assumption that those of us who are advocating for caring pedagogy, grounded in a balance b/t support and challenge, have at any point become less rigorous.

#HigherEd
#ToxicRigor
And that to me is the mark of #ToxicRigor. When someone points to flexibility, humanizing, and support and says, "You're dumbing things down" or "You've sacrificed rigor," there's just no evidence of that, so something else is up.

#HigherEd
Read 8 tweets

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