Business
Coronavirus Forces $600 Billion Higher Education Industry Online
As the pandemic shutters campuses, schools scramble to provide distance education.
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Analisa Packham, an economist who studies health and education, would seem ideally suited for teaching in the age of Covid-19. Yet last weekend the 30-year-old assistant professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville realized she had a lot to learn—about technology.
Packham taught herself two popular software programs for videoconferencing, Zoom and Kaltura. She plans to hold office hours via Skype and produce TikTok videos to explain the importance of food stamps in the current economic crisis. She’s already recorded a video lecture for her 41 students, but is far from satisfied with it. “If I was a student, I would not want to watch this,” she says.