A study on how small businesses are responding to the first wave of COVID-19 could help identify strategies to overcome similar crises in the future, says a UWindsor business professor.

The Odette School of Business’s Kyle Brykman is leading a study on how companies can lead and engage their employees through these unprecedented times. The goal is to determine best practices to help businesses withstand the pandemic’s economic fallout.

“We know that small businesses have been hard hit,” said Dr. Brykman, who specializes in business resiliency. “If we don’t study this now, we won’t be prepared the next time around.”

Small businesses are the backbone of the Canadian economy. According to the most recent numbers available from Statistics Canada, 8.3 million Canadians, or almost 70 per cent of private-sector workers, earn their livelihoods in workplaces with fewer than 100 employees.

Figuring out how to make small enterprises more resilient is crucial to Canadian society, Brykman said.

He is collaborating with UWindsor’s Francine Schlosser, who specializes in entrepreneurship and innovation, on the research project. Together they hope 100 employers in Windsor, Essex County, and elsewhere in Ontario will participate. The survey is open to any business with more than two employees.

To participate, business owners fill out an online survey.

The survey asks about the COVID-19 experience for businesses — did they shut down, operate on reduced hours, limit or cancel travel, or require employees to work from home. It asks how much of a cash buffer the business has, whether there have been layoffs, and if anyone in the workplace contracted COVID-19.

It also asks more subjective questions that delve into the confidence level of employees and how well they solve problems and cope with challenges.

There are questions about communication to gauge how well employers are keeping workers informed.

“We want to know what the best companies are doing now to re-engage employees when things get back to normal,” Brykman said.

The project will conclude with an interactive webinar and white paper for participants to directly benefit from this study.

They will also share in $1,000 worth of gift certificates, Brykman said.

He said he doesn’t want to hear solely from businesses adversely affected by the pandemic.

“We know that some businesses are actually thriving right now. We want to hear from them, too.”

Brykman has received funding for the project through UWindsor’s Office of the Vice-President of Research and Innovation and the WE-Spark Health Institute, a research partnership involving the University of Windsor, Windsor Regional Hospital, Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, and St. Clair College. It is one of 21 local COVID-related projects WE-Spark is supporting through its COVID-19 Rapid Response grant program.

—Sarah Sacheli

When the editorial board of the Journal of Teaching and Learning asked Nick Baker, director of the UWindsor Office of Open Learning, to guest edit an issue on digital learning in higher education for its spring 2020 edition, he thought the timing was great.

“The journal felt it was time to address all sorts of digital practices and open opportunities for people to discuss the related issues,” Baker recalls.

“None of us could have predicted just how perfect the timing would end up being, with the emergence of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 leading to global-stay-at-home orders and the sudden need for emergency online learning.”

The journal, based in the University of Windsor’s Faculty of Education, recruited Baker and Gareth Davies of the University of Highlands and the Islands as guest editors. The 10 papers published Friday range from exploring the use of virtual reality for learning biochemistry to involving students in creating Open Educational Resources.

“The range of global ideas is timely and varied,” says education professor Kara Smith, the journal’s editor. “This issue on digital learning research in higher education contains articles that are among the first few to emerge in a peer-reviewed publication on the challenges instructors and institutions have experienced during the global pandemic, moving from a face-to-face milieu to a wholly online environment.”

Baker believes the publication will find a wide audience.

“Never has the spotlight on digital and online learning shone more intensely,” he says.

While the pandemic poses challenges to educators and those supporting the development of engaging online learning, Baker sees an upside.

“The rapid move to online teaching has created an opportunity to re-examine curricula and pedagogies that have long been entrenched in our institutions and programs,” he says. “The global higher education community has come together to try and work through these challenges, with many sharing openly the existing resources they have, as well as those they are rapidly creating on an unprecedented scale.”

Find the entire special issue on the website of the Journal of Teaching and Learning.

Black Canadians are especially impacted by mental illness stigma, making it less likely they will seek help for psychological concerns, says Renée Taylor. A doctoral student of psychology, she produced a video explaining her research into the subject, which won her a spot as one of 25 finalists in this year’s SSHRC Storytellers contest.

“I was ecstatic when I found out that I was one of the 25 finalists!” says Taylor. “I had never won a competition that rested so heavily on my creative ability before, so it was extremely exciting for me.”

She had heard last year about the competition, in which Canadian post-secondary students share their discoveries in a three-minute presentation illustrating the impact of social sciences and humanities research, but at the time, her project was not yet funded by the agency.

“One of my own research projects was recently funded by SSHRC, so I decided to base my entry on that project,” Taylor says.

Her work explores the factors affecting the willingness of Black Canadians to use mental health services: “I am particularly interested in the cultural, social, and psychological factors such as stigma, cultural norms and expectations, perceptions of mental health service providers, etc.”

Watch her entry, entitled “How afrocultural beliefs mediate the relationship between stigma and attitudes toward psychological help-seeking.”

Also qualifying in the national top 25 are Taylor’s fellow psychology student Kathleen Wilson and kinesiology grad Sara Santarossa.

Five winners were originally to be announced at the 2020 Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences, which has been cancelled this year due to social distancing protocols. All finalists will be recognized next May at the 2021 Congress held at the University of Alberta.

Given the higher rates of COVID-19 infection in the U.S., a quick return to pre-pandemic border rules would have little popular support in Canada, but we need to start finding solutions now or risk long-term harm to the country’s economy, researchers from the Cross-Border Institute warn in an opinion piece published last week.

Bill Anderson, Marta Leardi-Anderson, and Laurie Tannous ask “What is the path to easing and ultimately eliminating border restrictions, without endangering public health?” in their piece for TheFutureEconomy.ca, a Montreal-based web publication that presents analysis on improving Canada’s competitiveness and sustainability.

“The conditions that precipitated the border restrictions in the first place are not going to disappear,” they write, while noting that given the internationalization of supply chains, trade is highly dependent on cross-border travel.

“The point is that being there still matters, and for Canadian business, being there often means crossing the border.”

Read the entire article, “Cross-Border Personal Mobility in the COVID-19 Crisis.”