Learning and Instruction

Offering a range of instructional options for students, faculty

In welcoming Purdue’s largest freshman class ever in August 2020 — 8,925 first-year students contributing to record enrollment of 45,869 — students and faculty had a range of instructional options during the 2020-21 academic year, with a curriculum comprising in-person, hybrid, hyflex or fully online learning.

• New, resilient pedagogy models blended in-class, hybrid and fully online features to ensure continuity of instruction for students and faculty in any eventuality, such as a student needing to quarantine after COVID-19 exposure.
• 17 academic case managers (ACMs) provided a system of support for students to help them maintain academic progress while quarantined or isolated.
• 5,200+ student cases were assigned to an academic case manager.
• Students assigned an ACM were more likely to have earned 15 or more credit hours than those who chose not to work with an ACM.

Resilient pedagogy tenets

Recognizing that not all students would be able to attend class in person for some or all of the school year, students were allowed to choose whether they wanted to take courses on campus or online. Instructors redesigned courses to be resilient amid uncertainty while meeting Purdue’s same high standards of rigor and excellence.

• Online offerings included a subset of available undergraduate courses, intentionally selected based on past enrollment, broad use across majors and plans of study, and input from department heads and associate deans.
• 4,816 undergraduate and graduate students opted for a fully online experience during the Fall 2020 semester, primarily students outside the U.S. who were unable to get to campus because of travel restrictions. For Spring 2021, 3,141 students opted for the fully online cohort.
• 640+ instructors took part in resilient pedagogy redesigns. Priority was given to courses that had the highest enrollment, were taken by new students and were part of the core curriculum.
• Special focus also was given to large lecture, lab-intensive, experiential, writing-intensive and project/team/design courses. All classrooms were equipped with Boilercast lecture-capture for live and recorded videocasts of all classes.