Zooming Toward the Future: The Challenges, Strategies, and Opportunities of Distance Learning

To help the Jim Joseph Foundation and the field better understand how pivoting to distance learning has unfolded for Jewish education and professional development organizations, Rosov Consulting interviewed nine program providers from the Jim Joseph Foundation Professional Development Initiative (PDI) cohort, along with five other Foundation grantees that operate in overlapping fields. The interviews explored the initial choices organizations made and how those choices evolved over time. We investigated the challenges that programs faced when moving online, whether and how they were able to address those challenges, the positive “silver linings” of being forced to reimagine how they do their work, and which dimensions might continue once people can gather in person again.

This report synthesizes the key themes we heard in these conversations, categorized into the challenges programs have faced in the pivot to distance learning, the strategies to overcome them that have proved most effective, and the opportunities (both predictable and surprising) that have emerged from the crisis. We conclude by sharing organizational leaders’ perspectives on how they envision the “new normal” in a post-COVID world.

Zooming Toward the Future: The Challenges, Strategies, and Opportunities of Distance Learning, Rosov Consulting, September 2020