CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

As many artifacts in this collection have suggested, the switch to online learning was abrupt for faculty, administration, and students alike. A week to transfer an entire university system to a digital format, especially when many community members did not have reliable internet access, was not enough time. As such, the City University of New York (CUNY) required a second adjustment period, or 'recalibration,' postponing classes yet again for faculty and students to acquire necessary resources for online instruction. Sent on March 23, 2020, this email from Chancellor Rodriguez summarized the rationale behind such a decision.

This item is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) Distance Learning Archive, a group project developed as part of Matthew K. Golds Spring 2020 Knowledge Infrastructures seminar in the Ph.D. Program in English at The Graduate Center, CUNY, in partnership with The Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate Program. The project's goal was to resist or trouble the discourse of catastrophe around the shift to online learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by documenting the lived experiences of students, faculty, and staff across CUNY's 25 campuses. Further, we wanted to document the moment of crisis response with a critical approach to educational technology.