Preparing for the possibility of a pandemic, Colorado schools and universities are starting to talk about what online learning could look like in the event that physical campuses need to be shut down over growing coronavirus infections.

As the number of confirmed cases of the new coronavirus rises across the United States, hundreds of academic institutions have shuttered, with major universities in Washington state, California and New York shifting to online coursework to protect their students.

As of Tuesday afternoon, 11 cases of the respiratory disease COVID-19 had been confirmed in Colorado. Three of those are in Denver.

The impact to schools in Colorado so far has been limited. St. Anne’s Episcopal School in Denver closed a few hours early Friday after alerting parents that a parent of a student tested positive for the new virus. The school was to remain closed through Tuesday.

But leaders at some academic institutions are preparing for the possibility of a longer-term, temporary closure in which students would still be able to learn outside the classroom.

At Denver Public Schools, no districtwide closures have been announced, but officials are finalizing a plan to provide options for students to learn remotely if necessary.

“Key components will include ensuring access to devices, home internet access and leveraging our district supported online learning platform,” said Lauren Durkee, director of special projects in the Department of Technology Services, in a statement. “Our plan looks at using all viable options, which includes utilizing smartphones, where possible, since we believe they are more readily available across our students.”

Looking out for the most vulnerable

At Metropolitan State University of Denver, the onset of Colorado’s first confirmed cases last week flipped a switch among officials to go from anticipating and brainstorming a plan to actively preparing for new coronavirus impacts, said Larry Sampler, the school’s chief operating officer.

On Wednesday, MSU Denver will hold a virtual town hall hosted by President Janine Davidson.

“That will be focusing on how we continue our mission and at what point does the risk to our students outweigh continuing our mission,” Sampler said.

At this point, Sampler said there is no agreed-upon trigger for closing the downtown Denver campus, but he said a confirmed case among someone in the campus population would spark a senior-level conversation to determine the best course of action.

In the event campus leaders determine closing is the best decision, Sampler said MSU Denver is focused on its most vulnerable students.

“Those without homes who rely on the campus food pantries,” Sampler said. “If we close our buildings, are the food pantries still going to be accessible? What about hourly employees? If we do begin to close down the physical campus, we’re going to have a lot of hourly employees who desperately need their paychecks. Maybe we could reallocate some of those hourly students assigned, so instead of, say, working in my office, maybe I allocate them to help faculty members who are not terribly computer literate in migrating their coursework from in-campus to online.”

Matt Griswold, MSU Denver’s vice president for online learning, began his role in April building up the campus’ capacity to teach online.Colorado schools and universities prepare for possibility of remote learning as coronavirus spreads

“We, previously, had an 18-month timeline to encourage faculty to make their classes available for online learning,” Sampler said. “Now we said, ‘We need you to be able to do that in two weeks.’ ”

Moving the classroom online

On Thursday, Colorado State University Provost and Executive Vice President Rick Miranda sent an email to CSU employees about pandemic planning.

The Fort Collins institution is developing a self-service website to provide resources for faculty and instructors to keep teaching if the university limits person-to-person contact or to accommodate those who are unable to report to campus.

Miranda encouraged faculty and instructors to start preparing their courses for potential online instruction through the Canvas platform, which the university already uses.

“Central IT is also currently working with Canvas to scale online instruction, if that becomes necessary, to accommodate online lectures and other features,” Miranda wrote in the email.

Giving the faculty leeway

At the University of Colorado Boulder, Associate Vice Chancellor Dan Jones said the campus’s resilient faculty members will be given the option to use whatever technology they feel fits the learning objectives of their students in the event of a campus closure. Options could include transitioning classes to the university’s existing online platform — also Canvas — or setting up online video conference meetings, among others.

“We’re really giving faculty the leeway to figure out different approaches that make sense to a particular type of class they have,” Jones said.

Many academic institutions also are putting out guidelines for student and employee personal travel, as spring break looms.

“We strongly urge you to forgo travel to areas with active community transmission or high-risk countries as designated by the CDC,” CU Boulder said in a message to the campus community on Monday. “If you choose to travel to a country with widespread, sustained transmission, as designated by the CDC (Level 3), you will be asked to stay home for 14 days from the time you left an area with widespread, sustained community spread.”

For the most updated information on Colorado universities’ response to the new coronavirus, visit the institutions’ websites and keep informed about the virus through reliable sources such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.