Recommendations for Community Colleges in a Post-COVID-19 World: What Worked, What Did Not and Assorted Commentary on Lessons Learned in One Community College

ABSTRACT

Northwestern Connecticut Community College is a small rural community college that quickly pivoted to offering almost all classes and services over video conferencing and other online means because of the COVID pandemic. The college offered faculty training in online pedagogy and offered students a variety of resources such as laptops, food, and Wi-Fi-hotspots, to keep them progressing in classes. These efforts worked as enrollment was the strongest in Connecticut, the online courses did not exacerbate underlying racial gaps, and course pass rates had minimal decrease. Frequent communication from college leadership assisted in successful roll out of all innovations. The implications of this study could be used to highlight the new needs of community college students in a post-COVID world.