Mission

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Vision mission

 The New School’s future will be shaped by the core values that have defined
our past: academic freedom, tolerance, and experimentation.

Mission
The New School prepares students to understand, contribute to, and succeed in
a rapidly changing society, thus making the world a better and more just place.
We will ensure that our students develop both the skills that a sound education
provides and the competencies essential for success and leadership in the
emerging creative economy. We will also lead in generating practical and
theoretical knowledge that enables people to better understand our world and
improve conditions for local and global communities.

Vision
We are and will be a university where design and social research drive
approaches to studying issues of our time, such as democracy, urbanization,
technological change, economic empowerment, sustainability, migration, and
globalization. We will be the preeminent intellectual and creative center for
effective engagement in a world that increasingly demands better-designed
objects, communication, systems, and organizations to meet social needs.
Our vision aligns with shifts in the global economy, society, and environment,
which animates our mission and our values:
o Creativity, innovation, and a desire to challenge the status quo will
affect what and how we teach and the intellectual ambitions of the
university itself.
o Social engagement should orient students' academic experiences to help
them become critically engaged citizens, dedicated to solving problems
and contributing to the public good.
o The New School must embrace these principles and innovate to address
shifts in the global economy, society, and environment that require
individuals to grapple with complex problems, pursue more fluid and
flexible career pathways, and collaboratively create change.

Educational Approach
We will fulfill our mission by extending The New School's legacy as a
nontraditional university and community, nimble and responsive to change,
that:
o Focuses on and engages with critical contemporary issues
o Prioritizes humanity and culture in designing systems and
environments to improve the human condition, an approach that draws
on design thinking and the liberal, creative, and performing arts
o Places collaborative, project-based learning at the center of the
educational experience
o Takes full advantage of our New York City location and connectivity to
global urban centers

 Mission and Vision

o University Planning

 TAKE THE NEXT STEP

bstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is a huge challenge to education systems. This Viewpoint offers
guidance to teachers, institutional heads, and officials on addressing the crisis. What preparations
should institutions make in the short time available and how do they address students’ needs by
level and field of study? Reassuring students and parents is a vital element of institutional
response. In ramping up capacity to teach remotely, schools and colleges should take advantage
of asynchronous learning, which works best in digital formats. As well as the normal classroom
subjects, teaching should include varied assignments and work that puts COVID-19 in a global
and historical context. When constructing curricula, designing student assessment first helps
teachers to focus. Finally, this Viewpoint suggests flexible ways to repair the damage to
students’ learning trajectories once the pandemic is over and gives a list of resources.

The last 50 years have seen huge growth worldwide in the provision of
education at all levels. COVID-19 is the greatest challenge that these expanded
national education systems have ever faced. Many governments have ordered
institutions to cease face-to-face instruction for most of their students,
requiring them to switch, almost overnight, to online teaching and virtual
education. This brief note offers pragmatic guidance to teachers, institutional
heads and state officials who must manage the educational consequences of
this crisis. It addresses:

 Preparations that systems could make


 Needs of students at different levels and stages
 Reassurance to students and parents
 Simple approaches to remote learning
 Curricula
 Assessment
 After COVID-19
 Useful resources.

Preparations
Most governments played catch-up to the exponential spread of COVID-19, so institutions had
very little time to prepare for a remote-teaching regime. Where possible, preparations could have
included:

 Ensuring that students took home the books, etc., needed for study at home.
 Tying up loose ends; e.g., finalizing test results and reports. In the northern hemisphere,
many schoolteachers were in the process of predicting grades of year-end exams for
submission with students’ applications to tertiary education. Depending on whether they
made them before or after the formal suspension of these exams, teachers’ predictions
may have been different, creating anxiety for both themselves and their students.
 Staff preparation and training: arrangements for safeguarding; division of work between
departments; mechanisms for teachers to remain in touch collectively for mutual support;
and brief and simple updates on learning technologies already somewhat familiar. Many
institutions had plans to make greater use of technology in teaching, but the outbreak of
COVID-19 has meant that changes intended to occur over months or years had to be
implemented in a few days.

Different students, different needs


The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of students in different ways, depending not
only on their level and course of study but also on the point they have reached in their
programmes. Those coming to the end of one phase of their education and moving on to another,
such as those transitioning from school to tertiary education, or from tertiary education to
employment, face particular challenges. They will not be able to complete their school
curriculum and assessment in the normal way and, in many cases, they have been torn away from
their social group almost overnight. Students who make the transition to tertiary education later
this year are unlikely to take up offers to sit their year-end school exams (e.g., the International
Baccalaureate) in a later session.

Even those part-way through their programmes will be anxious until they have clear indications
of how their courses and assessment schemes will be restored after the crisis. Many in the
COVID-19 cohort of students will worry about suffering long-term disadvantages, compared to
those who studied “normally”, when they move to another level of study or enter the labour
market. Statements from tertiary institutions that they will apply admission criteria
“compassionately” may not always reassure.

While approaches to remote learning will clearly differ as between elementary (primary) school
and tertiary education, the needs of skills-sector programmes (Technical and Vocational
Education and Training–TVET) need special attention. The graduates of such programmes will
have a key role in economic recovery. Providing the practical training they require through
distance learning is possible but requires special arrangements. The Commonwealth of Learning
is a useful point of reference for TVET in developing countries.

Reassurance to students and parents


These are anxious times for students and parents. Uncertainties about when life will return to
“normal” compound the anxiety. Even as institutions make the changes required to teach in
different ways, all should give the highest priority to reassuring students and parents—with
targeted communication. Many teachers and counsellors will have to provide this reassurance
without clear information from examining bodies and institutions about the arrangements for
replacing cancelled examinations and modifying admissions procedures. Institutions should
update students and parents with frequent communication on these matters. Teachers and school
counsellors may be better than parents at assuaging the anxieties of students in deprived
situations. All, however, can access help lines and resources outside the school system that
specialize in addressing emotional and psychological challenges.

Fifty years ago, various jurisdictions created “open” universities in order to equalize opportunity
by extending access to tertiary education through distance learning. Sadly, the current imperative
of continuing schooling by hasty transitions to remote learning may have the opposite impact.
Institutions and educational systems must make special efforts to help those students whose
parents are unsupportive and whose home environments are not conducive to study. Where
households are confined to their residences by COVID-19, parents and guardians may be deeply
anxious about their own economic future, so studying at home is not easy, especially for children
with low motivation. Such homes often lack the equipment and connectivity that richer
households take for granted, compounding the problem.

Simple approaches to remote teaching: Use asynchronous


learning
Just as institutions take steps to inform, reassure and maintain contact with students and parents,
they must also ramp up their ability to teach remotely. This emergency is not the time to put into
effect complex institutional plans for distance learning that were meant to be implemented over
months or years. The witticism that “if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly” has validity.
Teachers should work with what they know. Giving full attention to reassuring students is more
important than trying to learn new pedagogy or technology on the fly.
The most important adjustment, for those used to teaching in classrooms in real time, is to take
advantage of asynchronous learning. For most aspects of learning and teaching, the participants
do not have to communicate simultaneously. Asynchronous working gives teachers flexibility in
preparing learning materials and enables students to juggle the demands of home and study.
Asynchronous learning works best in digital formats. Teachers do not need to deliver material at
a fixed time: it can be posted online for on-demand access and students can engage with it using
wikis, blogs, and e-mail to suit their schedules. Teachers can check on student participation
periodically and make online appointments for students with particular needs or questions.
Creating an asynchronous digital classroom gives teachers and students more room to breathe.

Similarly, video lessons are usually more effective—as well as easier to prepare—if they are
short (5‒10 minutes). Organizations offering large-enrolment online courses, such as
FutureLearn, have optimized approaches to remote learning that balance accessibility and
effectiveness. Anyone asked to teach remotely can log in to a FutureLearn course in their subject
area to observe the use of short videos. Teachers might also wish to flag relevant online courses
to their students.

Curricula
What curriculum should teachers use for remote learning during the COVID-19 crisis? The
response will vary by jurisdiction. Some have prescriptive national curricula, whereas others give
wide discretion to teachers to choose programme content. General advice is for teachers to keep
two objectives in mind. While it is important to continue to orient students’ learning to the
classroom curriculum and the assessments/examinations for which they were preparing, it is also
vital to maintain students’ interest in learning by giving them varied assignments—not least,
perhaps, by work that sets the present COVID-19 crisis in a wider global and historical context.
Some schools are encouraging students to engage with the crisis by preparing hampers of food
and supplies for vulnerable families or writing letters to elderly residents in care homes.

For such enrichment, teachers can draw on the abundance of high-quality learning material now
available as freely usable Open Educational Resources. The OpenLearn website, for example,
contains over 1,000 courses at both school and tertiary levels. There is no dishonour in teaching
through good materials prepared by others.

Assessment
End-of-year examinations in the northern hemisphere have been cancelled or suspended by many
examining bodies (e.g., the International Baccalaureate Organisation), with a knock-on impact in
the southern hemisphere. This has left millions of students, even those who do not relish
examinations, feeling left in the lurch. At this moment (April 2020), as COVID-19 still rages in
most parts of the world, these bodies are unable to say when they will resume normal operations
and how, if at all, they will provide results for this year’s cohort.
Institutions versed in distance learning often start the process of course construction by designing
the student assessments that will be part of it. This is a way of clarifying learning objectives and
content that teachers making a sudden transition to remote operation should consider adopting. It
will help them determine the parts of the standard curriculum on which they will focus as well as
their aims in including other topics.

After COVID-19
Until countries can judge when the trade-off between economic activity and public health will
enable them to ease restrictions on normal life, anxiety about the extent and duration of the
special COVID-19 arrangements in each jurisdiction will continue. Moreover, the return to
normality will not be a simple one-time transition to life as it used to be. Jurisdictions will assess
risks differently and all will take precautionary measures against second and third waves of
COVID-19 outbreaks.

Institutions, teachers, and students will continue to look for flexible ways to repair the damage
caused by COVID-19’s interruptions to learning trajectories. In this context, the open schools
(e.g., India’s National Institute of Open Schooling; the New Zealand Correspondence School)
and open universities (e.g., The UK Open University; Athabasca University, Canada)—most of
which have continued to operate through the COVID-19 pandemic—can sometimes provide the
variety of courses and flexibility of time and place of learning to help students get back on track.

Although institutions that normally teach face-to-face in classrooms or on campuses will likely
return to that mode of instruction with some relief, the special arrangements they put in place
during the COVID-19 crisis will leave a lasting trace. The expansion of online learning in
tertiary education will further accelerate, and schools will organize themselves more
systematically to pursue the aspects of technology-based learning that they have found most
useful.

All institutions will derive benefit from the mechanisms that they have put in place to continue
their educational and training missions in a time of crisis.

INSPIRATIONAL
MODULAR CLASSROOMS
With a focus on creating dynamic and diverse teaching spaces for the education sector, our
modular classrooms create inspirational learning environments, placing students at the heart,
allowing their development to take centre stage.
BESPOKE SOLUTIONS FOR THE EDUCATION
SECTOR
We help schools address place issues and budget constraints by creating bespoke builds that
deliver flexible, modern teaching spaces that encourage outdoors education, helping children
reconnect with nature.

Our education portfolio has grown exponentially in recent years. In which time we’ve completed
a wide range of projects from special educational needs classrooms to purpose build libraries,
dance studios to gyms, meaning we’re uniquely positioned to provide a solution tailored to you. 

INSPIRATIONAL TEACHING SPACES

The environment in which you teach and the environment in which you learn can hugely
influence just how well in perform. Teachers and pupils alike benefit from more inspirational
and motivational classroom spaces in which to teach and to be taught.

DESIGNED TO ENHANCE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE


We place design at the very heart of our modular classrooms. A recent study has pointed to the
physical characteristics of classrooms impact pupils’ learning progress, which is why we take
every consideration from light to temperature, air quality to acoustics to ensure that we do all we
can to create a classrooms that will  boost children’s academic performance.

CASE STUDIES

As one of our fastest growing sectors, educational builds continue to draw attention from schools
due to their cost-effectiveness, speed and ease of construction and suitability to meet the
increasing demands for sustainability in school builds.

VIEW OUR CASE STUDIES

SECTOR EXPERTISE
In our 15 years we've completed 1,800 educational builds cross the UK. These projects have
provided diverse spaces that have allowed schools to address a lack of classroom space, to
increase their outdoor leaning provision, and provide inspiring environments for little minds to
learn. 

In this time we've created many unique builds and overcome a number of challenging projects,
each with it's own particular demands. We've created modular classrooms addressing very
specific educational needs and dance studios that require particular attention to be paid to
everything from the acoustics to the lighting. 
All of this has allowed us to grow and to become better at what we do.

START YOUR NEXT EDUCATIONAL PROJECT TODAY

Featured CASE STUDIES

EDUCATION

WILKINSON PRIMARY SCHOOL


REF: ED22
A new, natural space…


EDUCATION

KIRKLINGTON SCHOOL
REF: ED27
A meadow roof adorns…

EDUCATION

WILKINSON PRIMARY SCHOOL


REF: ED22
A new, natural space…


EDUCATION

KIRKLINGTON SCHOOL
REF: ED27
A meadow roof adorns…

EDUCATION

WILKINSON PRIMARY SCHOOL


REF: ED22
A new, natural space…


EDUCATION

KIRKLINGTON SCHOOL
REF: ED27
A meadow roof adorns…

VIEW ALL CASE STUDIES

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