In this episode, John and Jason talk with Dr. Omid Fotuhi, a research associate at the University of Pittsburgh and the Director of Learning Innovation at WGU Labs, about the notion of belonging in the evolving landscape of online learning. They discuss the WGU model and how it breaks traditional barriers through competency-based, self-paced education, the critical role of fostering a sense of belonging for student success, the need for institutions to move beyond temporary interventions to address deeper structural issues, and the future of education where learning becomes more independent. See complete notes and transcripts at
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Transcript
We use a combination of computer-generated transcriptions and human editing. Please check with the recorded file before quoting anything. Please check with us if you have any questions or can help with any corrections!
[00:00:00] Omid Fotuhi: The notion and the assumption that learning happens best, as measured by seat time, the number of hours you spend.
<Phone goes off>
[00:00:07] Omid Fotuhi: Ha.
[00:00:08] John Nash: So
[00:00:09] Jason Johnston: rookie mistake, John. Come on. We haven't quite been at this a year yet, Omid. so…
[00:00:15] John Nash: My phone is off, but my Macintosh rang
[00:00:18] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
<Theme Music>
[00:00:21] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston.
[00:00:25] Jason Johnston: Hey, John. Hey everyone. And this is online learning in the second half, the online learning podcast.
[00:00:31] John Nash: Yeah, we're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation we've been having for the last two years about online education. Look, online learning has had its chance to be great and some of it is, but still, a lot of it really isn't. And so Jason, how are we going to get to the next stage?
[00:00:47] Jason Johnston: That's a great question, John. How about we do a podcast and talk about it?
[00:00:51] John Nash: I think that's a great idea. What do you want to talk about today?
[00:00:55] Jason Johnston: Today we are joined by Dr. Omid Fatouhi. Omid, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:01] Omid Fotuhi: Thank you. It's great to be here.
[00:01:03] Jason Johnston: Can we call you Omid?
[00:01:05] Omid Fotuhi: That sounds great.
[00:01:06] Jason Johnston: Okay. Omid is a research associate at the University of Pittsburgh and director of learning innovation at WGU labs. So great to have you here to talk with us today.
[00:01:17] Omid Fotuhi: I look forward to it.
[00:01:19] Jason Johnston: You and I, we met over dinner through the company Inscribe at a conference. And one of the things that, of course, immediately, just made me realize that you were just a great guy is our common love of Canada We talked about living in Canada and talked a little bit about longing to live in Canada again.
And so I appreciated that. And then we connected, of course, over the topic of online and the panel that this company Inscribe, which I can put a link in, great people, cool product. Not paid by them. But I'll put a link to our show notes. But they connected us over this idea of belonging, student belonging online, which is a huge topic.
And we'll get into that because you've done some research. in this area. But first, we wanted to get to know you a little bit and just to chat about that. Tell us a little bit about your current roles and where you are living right now.
[00:02:17] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah, I think the best way to describe my current role is as a fish trying to climb a tree. If you've heard the expression that you shouldn't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, nonetheless, that's what I am. It's akin to what's also known as the Peter Principle, which is to say that if you're trying skilled and competent, you'll eventually be promoted into incompetence, often into management.
And that's not too far from the truth with where I am, except that I've been able to create a pretty unique situation for myself. So I am a trained social psychologist by training. That's where a lot of my thinking and a lot of the way that I look at things comes from. And currently, I'm working for WG Labs which is a R& D arm of Western Governors University, which does focus on how it is that we can create the technological tools and the research base to understand how to optimize learning for students, both in traditional but also online student populations. So that's what I'm doing right now. And the great thing is that throughout my position with WGU labs, I've still been able to engage in conversations like this And invest in ongoing research on the topic of belonging and our conversations with inscribers, just an example of that.
[00:03:35] Jason Johnston: Yeah. And for those listening, you may or may not know WGU huge university, interesting backstory, some interesting Even in the news the last few years in terms of its funding from the government and the back and forth on that, which sparked a huge conversation about regular and substantive interaction.
And anyway, we could go into so many directions with one of the unique things I think about WGU is that it's competency-based. If I understand this, basically, every course that they put out is more competency-based. Talk to us a little bit about that. And like, how do you intersect with that kind of way to deliver online content?
[00:04:19] Omid Fotuhi: mean, I think what I'll mention is the fact that WGU offers an alternative to the traditional design of education. And it's one in which the WGU is able to challenge the prescriptive norms and standards of how it is that learning and assessment take place. And back in 1995, they said, hey, let's do this crazy thing of putting learning online and see what happens.
Fast forward to today, with over 150,000 currently enrolled and over 300, 000 graduates, there is something to that recipe that seems to be successful, that resonates and offers a value proposition to individuals who may not have seen themselves as being viable into the pathway of the traditional online or the traditional higher educational opportunities that many other students would themselves into. Now, when you look at some of the components of WGU, it is a competency-based, fully online, and self-paced learning model, which means that it challenges some of the common barriers to accessing higher education. Those include things like a model of learning that challenges the standard assumptions of what learning ought to be, one of which is that this moderated learning, which is measured by seat time, the number of hours a student spends in the classroom, is the primary metric of how it is that learning should be captured.
And instead, it offers some freedom to some of those constraints. Specifically, it challenges the time-paced, place-based, and standardized testing approach to learning by having this online where you can learn at your own pace, it is competency-based, which importantly is able to capture learning in a way that's much more dynamic.
It allows the inclusion of experiences and learning that you may have acquired in other domains so that testing is a better reflection of the learning in itself as such, as I mentioned, with over 300, 000 graduates and over 150,000 currently enrolled, many of whom are seen as the non-traditional student populations it, it's a strong testament that this model, which is an alternative to the traditional higher educational model, seems to be resonating and working for many students.
[00:06:50] Jason Johnston: Could I ask one more question about WGU? Are you so far down the road now that like you're not even talking about Carnegie hours or about time in your seat or about those kinds of things or how it works there?
[00:07:02] Omid Fotuhi: What I'll say is it's important to unpack what we mean when we talk about students. For me, what comes to mind is a recognition that students are not a monolith group, that they are comprised of many diverse individuals with diverse characteristics diverse needs, and diverse preferences for learning. And if you take that insight and combine it with the understanding that we've all been exposed to recently, given the disruptions of the pandemic, given the advent of AI, given some of the increasing Awareness of the conditions of the more traditional higher ed institutions with their legacy admissions and other admission criteria that, that do selectively benefit some groups over others, but there is this, appetite in this atmosphere of exploring alternative models.
And so I think having schools like WGU that have an alternative model which appeals to a group of individuals who again, in the traditional view would not have seen themselves as being part of the educational process now becomes a reality. And I think As we're at this precipice of the, at this nexus of technology having a greater and greater role on how it is that we take, think about learning that more and more of these alternative models will have value for different subgroups of individuals.
So I think that's the way to think of it. And I also would maybe mention that being on the inside, WGU is also recognizing that it too needs to change and it too needs to adapt very quickly because the model that's worked for 25 years is not going to continue to work unless we want to fall, sort of categorize ourselves in the same way that the traditional higher ed institutions have had, which is to continue a legacy of traditions simply because that's what we started off with.
So that's what I'll say. I think it's an interesting time and I think what works today may not be relevant for tomorrow, but the ability and the willingness to adapt is really what's necessary given that there will be more and more inclusion of diverse groups. into the educational pathways.
[00:09:20] John Nash: That's really good. And it reminds me of the article that you co-authored last year entitled, "Where and With Whom Does a Brief Social Belonging Intervention Promote Progress in College?" This was published in Science over 8,000 downloads in less than a year. Maybe this struck a nerve with folks.
[00:09:53] Omid Fotuhi: I think everyone knows that education is important, and everyone's got a critical eye around what it is, that can optimize the learning experience.
Now, maybe take it 50 years ago, there was this observation that individuals who had high self-esteem also had correlations with better life outcomes, like better success, better academic performance, and better happiness in their relationships. And so there was this movement, the self-esteem movement, that actually encouraged people to now tell students and children that you're great, you're wonderful, and you can do anything.
Turns out that did not work out so well. Because telling someone that you can do anything without the training and the work that has to go into being able to do that might fall short. A remedy to that was what then came on the scene as known as the growth mindset insight. This is a recognition that how you view intelligence has a pretty powerful role in how it is that you stay engaged with difficult things and how it is that you respond to failure and setbacks.
It too had its moment in the limelight, if you will. And unfortunately, it also suffered and struggled from what I would call is an overuse or a sort of, It's superficial application of mindset. Today, it's so ubiquitous in education that the most common rendering of a growth mindset lesson is a teacher saying, "Hey, we know from research that having a growth mindset is good, so you should have one."
Turns out it's not the best way, and the reason why is because now the onus is on the student to demonstrate that they have a growth mindset instead of the investment necessary to help them cultivate the appreciation for the effort. So as that growth mindset is starting to see a bit of a stall in terms of its poignancy.
There's now also a recognition that a similar correlation exists between a sense of belonging and optimal outcomes. And so you can see history starting to repeat itself. What's happening now is that because this observation is powerful and because it's compelling, relatively low cost, that schools and educators are saying, hey, what if we just foster belonging?
What if that's what we do and that will solve all of our problems? So as you're probably seeing and hearing, I'm sharing this with a bit of a caution, because to do any of these this work effectively, you have to be really committed to understanding the mechanisms that threaten a sense of growth mindset, a sense of genuine belonging, instead of unfortunately falling prey to the convenient articulation of the outcome, which is to say, belonging is good, so you should feel like you belong, which by the way, is not even an exaggeration.
I have seen schools who have paid for full size billboards with the word belong exclamation mark as you're driving into campus. So the science article that was published, which should be given credit to dozens of people, including the four primary researchers, Greg Walton David Yeager Mary Murphy, and Christine Lowell, and myself, who co-founded the project, was an attempt to see how and where you can try to scale which is really, again, at the heart of this tension.
When you see something that works, how do you scale it effectively? And so that science article that really, I think, is absolutely titled, "When For Whom Does Belonging Work?" is really the main insight and the main takeaway is that not that belonging interventions will work in any and every situation, but understanding the core requisites of when belonging fails, or what conditions threaten a sense of belonging, will then give you the pathway and the opportunity to try to explore what are those triggers that cause this belonging uncertainty, and then targeting those things.
And maybe having a belonging intervention is part of your repertoire, but it shouldn't be seen as this magic bullet that will solve all of your problems. And that's the framework I think that's important to as we're talking about these interventions.
[00:14:13] John Nash: I really appreciate your lead up to this, because what it helps us remember is that, and as it's structured in the article that the social belonging is the intervention that then hopefully leads to the real outcome, which is students completing the first year increasing that rate at which they complete versus what you were just saying as belonging with an exclamation point, as though we're being ordered to belong and then I can wash my hands of this and we're done.
[00:14:44] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah. And the other note, and again this is a, might seem like a bit of a tangent and might even seem like I'm working against myself because as I mentioned, I spent about 15 years of my life thinking and investing in understanding how these interventions work. Now, what I'll also say is I would suggest that the optimal endpoint for any psychological intervention is that it no longer works.
That might seem surprising, but if you think of it, any intervention, the word intervention means to intervene to stop something from not harming is actually a band aid solution that is intended to mend any underlying root causes temporarily. And so as you think about our interventions, like a growth mindset, like a belonging intervention, our hope is that they stop working because in the process of understanding when belonging becomes relevant and when it no longer works, opens up the conversation to understanding what are the contingencies in the context that are causing belonging to be threatened and causing people to feel uncertain about the belonging.
So again, you shouldn't rely on these interventions as the solution. You should understand that these interventions will help begin an inquiry into the conditions by which these interventions are needed with the hope that you get to a point where you don't need them anymore because you've solved the underlying causes.
[00:16:18] John Nash: You've signaled, in essence, how we can always be creating a belonging environment.
[00:16:26] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah, and and what's interesting and I think what you all are really focused on with your podcast and your work is having a greater understanding of online learners. I think when you take this theoretical framework of belonging, first it's important to ask what is it? And that, depending on who you ask, you're going to get a different question.
But overall, I think most people will agree that a sense of belonging is a feeling that you are cared for and valued in a particular context. Generally, I've found that this is the one definition that most people can resonate with.
[00:17:01] Jason Johnston: Could you say that one more time for us?
[00:17:03] Omid Fotuhi: Belonging is the perception or the feeling, and I will underscore and bold feeling that you are cared for and valued in a particular context.
Now the reason why I underscore and bold feeling is that it is entirely subjective, which means that I can't give you a checklist of things that as an administrator to do that will ensure that you will create a sense of belonging in all your students. It also, I think, a broader level, highlights the fact that because it's such an individual experience, you also have to understand that context matters.
And much, if not most, of the theoretical foundations of belonging come from studying students in more on campus traditional universities. It's a really great theoretical question now of what is belonging for a student who's learning online? What are the touch points or the connections or the links that are associated with a sense of belonging?
And here's an even more ambitious question. And one that I think I'll leave you with is does belonging even need to happen for learning to be effective? And so that's a really, I think a first principles question for us to think about. Must there be belonging? And if you unpack that for a second, and this is my own little thesis on belonging, which is to say that we have created our society and our organizations to necessarily have these contingencies, these identity contingencies, which is a term that Claude Steele uses, where individuals have to navigate the norms, whether implicit or explicit, and feel as though they can either live up to those norms or whether they are excluded from being included in those norms. So if you look around and you're underrepresented, then you might start to wonder, maybe I'm not part of this group. If you look around and the way that you dress, the way that you carry your hair and your appearance is different.
You start to question if you are performing poorly compared to your peers, you start to question these things. And all of these are contingencies. that make you question whether you do or don't belong. And I think a really interesting opportunity for us is could there be a model in which there is a learning environment in which there aren't as many of these contingencies, in which learning can happen independent of your sense that you are adequate, sufficient, worthy.
That's the next frontier. And I think that's what the incredible promise of online learning carries is that we could potentially envision a world in which we don't need to invest so much in trying to foster a sense of belonging because a sense of belonging comes from your social network at home, your own sense of individual growth and progress, your own self awareness, and you're able to invest in your learning in a way in which your identity is not contingent on how you do or whether you were included within the in group or that culture that is the institution. That's where I would hope to see the future of learning happening, and that's where I think the promise of online learning is one step ahead of more traditional institutions.
[00:20:29] John Nash: I'm interested because I've been either guilty of oversimplifying belonging, or maybe I'm in support of your thesis. because people, and myself included, have talked about Maslow's notions of belongingness, as a sort of this love need, second only to physiological and safety security needs.
When you ask, is belonging necessary for learning, are you thinking about it only as an aspect of the learning cycle for the learner? Or is, because if I feel belonging in general in other places, then have I satisfied that need?
[00:21:04] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah, that's a great question, and it's actually incredibly critical to understand that framework of needs and optimal functioning. Like any basic need, imagine if you're hungry, right? If you're really hungry, then you and I can't have this conversation, because you're focused on your hunger, you're distracted, you're depleted.
And that's exactly the way to think about these needs, is that it's only when they are absent or frustrated that their predictive effects emerge. It's more of the absence of these needs that becomes critical and important, as opposed to their presence. And I think all too often, we've been a part of a culture where we're like, we just need to, nourish this and have more of it.
And maybe that's a good thing. But that's a distinct question from its absence. It's if you go to a party, If you don't know anybody, you're not going to stay there. But if you know that one person, then that's all you need. You just need that one person that will introduce you and you feel like, alright, I have someone to talk to.
But if you have nobody, that's when it matters, and that's when you're not going to be able to focus, have conversations, even step into that party. And the same is true for belonging. The same is true for psychological safety. The same is true for physiological safety. that these needs only matter when they are threatened.
And again, I think this is where I go back to the conversation we're having is, why is it that we've created Institutions that, that question a sense of belonging, and rather than accepting those as, things that students have to learn how to navigate, maybe the question is, how do we redesign the institution in such a way that it doesn't threaten your sense of belonging?
How do we do that?
[00:22:56] John Nash: How might we have institutions that ensure there's no absence of these needs?
[00:23:02] Omid Fotuhi: Exactly. How do we, yeah, exactly.
[00:23:05] John Nash: Can I take your party analogy to an online learning class?
[00:23:08] Omid Fotuhi: Sure.
[00:23:11] John Nash: Yeah Yeah good. That's all I wanted to know. It was a yes or no question.
[00:23:16] Jason Johnston: I think you could start in something like, "Say you're the DJ of this party."
[00:23:21] Omid Fotuhi: There's being I love psychology for many reasons. I actually began in psychology for what a lot of graduate students or early researchers use as the reason for doing research, which is more me search than research, right? Psychology gave me a pathway to understand myself.
And through that, I was able to really better navigate how I'm feeling, how I'm thinking, how I'm behaving, and a better understanding of the world. There's a wealth of understanding and frameworks within psychology that help us understand a lot of complex issues. One of the foundational theories of human behavior and motivation is called self determination theory.
And essentially, that theory is, as far as I can tell, one of the best comprehensive models of why it is that we invest effort in a voluntary way. And there are three components of why it is that we would do this. One is that we have a sense of competence by doing something new and hard, but that the acquisition and the mastery of that skill helps to reinforce our self view as being capable and able to do something.
The second is that we have a sense of autonomy, independence, and choice in what we're doing and why we're doing it. If we strip that away, then all you have is conformity, and that's not conducive to optimal learning or optimal performance. And the third is relatedness. We are social beings at the end of the day, and it's hard to undo that hard wiring.
And so this is the one that I want to just maybe unpack for a second, because I think. It's one of those unspoken tensions, right? There's a prospect in which you can imagine online learning or maybe even AI driven learning where it's entirely independent and individual. You just imagine the world in which you don't need teachers, you don't need classes, you can just learn on your own.
And a lot of the critics will say does that mean that's the beginning of the end of society, that we just don't need each other anymore? I will posit that based on the foundations of psychology that's not likely to happen because at the end of the day we will also only invest in the acquisition of learning if it helps us better relate to other people.
That ultimately we're gaining this learning to exchange with others in a way that it's beneficial. Maybe I want to get your thoughts and you want to get my thoughts and collectively we create new thoughts together. Maybe it's part of a commercial agreement that I am employed because of the skill set that I have, but it's still related to this notion and this need of relatedness.
And one of the pushbacks that I have around this you know, fear mongering that if we just pursue online technology driven learning that we're going to get to a place where everybody's entirely independent and society will fall apart. I think there's some, boundaries to that notion. And honestly, I don't see that happening because of these fundamental needs that we have in the fact that we do care about these exchanges with other people really critically.
[00:26:22] Jason Johnston: One thing in addition to that as well, we've been doing asynchronous, independent learning since humans were around, really, and certainly since Gutenberg, right? This is all of us have learned asynchronously, independently from books. And I think this is always going to be part of what we do.
I think that there is a, maybe some layers to this as well, that we'll find ourselves in various domains of learning. Some of them will be more social, some of them will be less social. But I love what you're saying and I love what you bring to this as well. And I think I failed to mention, or we failed to mention before that you have a PhD in social psychology and I love what you bring to this, not just, I know a PhD is not the end all of your learning that you've learned a lot since I'm sure.
But it, I love that you bring that perspective to online learning that you're looking at it, not just from a education standpoint. Mine's more, my learning is much more from an educational end of things, but it falls in line with a lot of what we're learning as well about andragogy, these things fall in line, or even some of our more recent talks about liberatory practices inside of the classroom, thinking about the students.
Agency and what it is that will allow them to pursue their own their own learning and guide the knowledge that they're acquiring.
[00:27:50] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah, these are the foundation blocks of understanding motivation and learning. And so I love that you're thinking about all of this. I will mention that given the current popularity of belonging, which I think is worth noting, that almost every institution will have some component of belonging or equity within their vision statement or their mandate.
We are at an interesting juncture where online institutions are also interested around how do we foster and create the conditions and the interventions that are able to create the sense of belonging. And so I've been pulled in, my team has been pulled into this question a lot, and we're starting to do the foundational research of doing exactly that, is to identify the triggers and the conditions by which belonging is put into question.
Because once you understand those levers, then you can start to create a program that targets those levers and having access to WGU and their student populations, we have had an incredibly accelerated rate of learning already but there's still a lot to learn, right? We mentioned earlier, what is the nature of belonging?
What is belonging really if the contingencies are removed or minimized like it is for WGU? In which case, what is the utility of belonging, if any? So these are the questions that we're wrestling with and gaining a lot of insights. And it's great to see that there are a lot of institutions who are coming to the table with these kinds of questions.
We've had partnerships with ASU, with SNHU, trying to tap into these same questions. But I imagine there's still a lot of organizations that are grappling with these same issues. And I love that you all are doing this work too.
[00:29:28] Jason Johnston: Yeah, and you mentioned that big billboard that was great, that said belonging, exclamation mark. It made me think of a research colleague at University of Kentucky Dr. Lanisha Connor, who I learned a lot from, and she said one time, "you can't declare a safe space. You just can't, just by saying the first day of your classroom, this is a safe space." It's and it also reminds me of the office, where, one day Michael Scott declares bankruptcy, and so he just steps out into the office and says, "I declare bankruptcy."
It's " Michael, that's not the way it works." And you can't declare a safe space. I like what you said about thinking about the conditions and interventions. Could you speak to each of those a little bit more, either what you learned from this study or from your own learning there at WGU?
[00:30:20] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah. And again, if you'll indulge me, I'll go on a little bit of a historical review. Much of this work is founded on some of those seminal and pioneering work of Claude Steele. Back in, I think, the 80s and even some into the 90s there was an observation known as underperformance. And specifically what that was is, There is an observation that as students begin a new phase of their learning, so they transition either from high school to college, for instance, or some transitional period, that given that those students from wherever they came from had almost identical credentials and grades, and yet they started in this new environment and consistently and predictably along the way.
Some of the underrepresented demographic variables that we know would now demonstrate poor performance compared to their peers. Now again, I want to emphasize that based on their past metrics, this shouldn't have happened. And yet there's something that's happening that as they transition to this environment is leading to this underperformance.
And this began the question of what are the forces? What are the factors that are leading to this underperformance? Because based on past. performance, we wouldn't predict this. And so Claude Steele and some of his colleagues, Joshua Aronson in particular designed an experiment in which they invited men and women into the lab.
And they told these these participants that they would be doing a relatively hard Math test, which was pulled out of the GRE and the participants, both men and women, were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the one condition, they were just told, you're going to do a math test, it's pulled out of the GRE, so go ahead and do your best.
And again, even though these participants were selected because they had identical scores in college, and they had identical levels of interest in mathematics, When they were brought into the testing environment and told to do this test, women underperformed compared to men, replicating that underperformance effect.
Now, in the other condition the participants were told you're going to do this math test, but in addition they were told, although we know that in standardized testing sometimes women underperform compared to men, but guess what? Our team has devised this test in such a way that this does not happen with this particular test.
And so given that same test this time the difference between the genders did not appear. The men and women performed exactly the same way. So this was one of the first examples and demonstrations that there are forces, invisible forces within the context that individuals contend with, that lead to performance differences.
So these term, again, identity contingencies, the conditions in a situation that one must navigate based on one's social identity. can have a pretty powerful effect. In particular, one of those identity contingencies is known as stereotype threats. That is, if you perceive that there is a negative stereotype about you or your group that you become worried or at risk of confirming, then that places an additional level of tax and cognitive burden that you have to contend with in addition to the task at hand.
While you're sitting down and doing this test, you might start to hear your internal thoughts going, hey, this is a test, you're here with your peers, it's a math test, and maybe women are not supposed to do as well. And as you're starting to start focused on the test, you hear this internal chatter, and maybe you might even Retort and say, Hey, stop thinking about this.
It doesn't matter what these notions are. It doesn't matter that John next to you might judge you negatively. You're still engaging in that chatter. And your emotional system is also activated. You're also anxious. And you're also more vigilant to see if people are going to look at you if you do more poorly.
All these things are robbing you of the cognitive resources necessary to do the task ahead. And of course, that becomes the mechanism by which you underperform, and not a reflection of the fact that you are not as skilled or as prepared to do the test. These are what are known as identity contingencies, or the conditions in an environment that predictably impacts certain groups in predictable ways.
And so that's important to note, that there are these conditional factors that systematically impact individuals in different ways. And I forgot the second part of your question. You said there was a conditions and the intervention, is
[00:35:07] Jason Johnston: And then the interventions, yeah.
[00:35:09] Omid Fotuhi: In the example by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson, they also learned that if they reframe the meaning of the situation, that they lighten the weight of the identity contingencies, the conditions of the environment, then that can free you up.
That can free up the cognitive resources that otherwise would have been available to you. So if you calm the anxiety, if you calm the worry in your mind, then you can perform better. Now I've been doing this work in psychology with a specialization on mindsets, motivation, and performance for over a decade.
And over the years I actually get a question a lot that, that where people and usually students will say, "Hey, knowing what you know and understanding the research like you do, what is the optimal psychological state of learning? Is it one of an intense focus? Is it one of being in flow? One of deep curiosity?"
And I'll respond that based on my understanding and reading of the literature is that the optimal psychological state of learning is actually one of simply being okay. One of just having your cognitive resources and your thinking be calm so that you can engage in processed learning in an optimal way.
So you can be critical about the information that does make sense or it doesn't make sense. You're not bogged down by all of this chatter in your mind about what other people might be thinking. That is the optimal condition of learning. And so as we think about the conditions that tax your cognitive load, that's where we focus on.
Now, as it relates to interventions, The process of identifying when these contingencies have a negative effect is also a pretty robust process. So my colleagues and I realized that although the theory is sound, one theoretical framework may not be relevant for all groups in all conditions, which is to say that any intervention won't necessarily be effective for any group in any condition. And so there's a lot of customization and tailoring that has to happen. Like my colleagues, Jeff Cohen and Julio Garcia, who's passed away unfortunately did did articulate a framework called the three T's framework that an intervention needs to be tailored timed and and timely.
Which is to say that you have to understand who it is that you're serving. when, and for what underlying cause. And that's why these interventions are relevant. You're probably hearing me talk about interventions in a very tentative way, a very careful way, much like you would expect an academic to speak about things, but it is important because while I could stand here and say, "Hey, belonging interventions have been shown to be effective, just scale them. Growth mindset works. Tell everyone to have a growth mindset."
That's not the lens or the position I'm coming from. But what I, where I am coming from is if you are able to identify those contingencies within the environments that put into question your adaptive mindsets, then that becomes the foundation of exploring how that manifests for different groups in different environments, which can then lead to the design of an intervention. And it might be one of these psychological interventions, it might be a structural intervention, it might be a financial intervention, based on where the evidence leads you.
[00:38:35] John Nash: It's almost as if you're saying, if I was catching correctly your previous comments, that the interventions should be tailored, but also carefully thought of in such a way that they don't themselves become a program. Is that fair?
[00:38:52] Omid Fotuhi: Yes, I think to use the interventions as a crutch can be problematic because what you're not doing is solving the underlying conditional root cause.
If, There is a resulting program. Hopefully it's focused on the environment. I'll share with you that we've done some work in a number of contexts, but one of the projects I'm working on right now is with the Pitt Law School at the University of Pittsburgh and that's a beautiful demonstration of the evolution of how these things play out.
We began by first identifying that students who transition into the graduate program of the law school contend with a lot of these these forces that make them question whether they can do it that put a layer of stress on them that is chronic and constant. Unfortunately, it disproportionately impacts those who are contending with negative stereotypes.
So we began the process of having conversations with students, understanding when and how these factors impact them, which led to an intervention that demonstrated positive effects. So one might actually want to just stop there and say, "Hey we've uncovered the root causes. We now have an intervention. So let's just roll this out in perpetuity."
But that's not the end goal, I would say, because what you would hope to do is once you have the intervention, that becomes also a point, a data point of insight that helps you have conversations with your administration and your faculty about why students are having these experiences and why they might be benefiting from the intervention in such a way that the program becomes the faculty training, the administrative support, the structures that might put into question whether it's, whether or not students feel comfortable.
And as an example, through this work, we were actually able to eliminate a grading policy that was causing a great deal of stress for students at the Pitt Law Program. So that's the program. The program should be a policy or a structural reform that the intervention and the customization process inform.
[00:41:03] John Nash: Yes, you've made me wonder a lot about these things from an organizational standpoint. And I'm in a department of educational leadership studies. So we're constantly thinking about how is the organization, how is the organization set up and how our leaders are articulating change inside that. And so at large universities, we see, very big at times, student success programs. And I wonder now after talking to you, this has been really enlightening, to what extent some of those programs inside those student success initiatives really are actually just interventions working against the behemoth of the organization that has things in place so that if it thought about fixing those things, then some of those student success programs wouldn't be necessary.
[00:41:50] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah, and I would I would encourage that line of inquiry is to constantly be vigilant for. Is this a temporary remedy or is this a structural reform that hits at the root cause of what's happening? The caveat here is that, again, different programs and models will work for different groups in different contexts.
If you think of the more prototypical student journey, one who's just finished high school, is moving out of their hometown and their home, and moving into a new campus where their identity is forced to make a very rapid transition into a new place, into a new environment, into a new role, into a new social context, then actually having a pretty heavy handed support system can be really helpful, right?
There's a lot of learning in addition to the academic content that is required and beneficial. And so in that case, it may not be a a band aid remedy. It might actually be part of core foundational needs that sustain the student's development across their journey of learning. Also, but I love how you're framing it is, how do we disentangle that?
How do we understand when it's just a patch versus a core need that we're serving?
[00:43:07] John Nash: Yes, exactly.
[00:43:08] Jason Johnston: Yeah, I really like your, I really like your approach to environment versus program that help support belonging for those that need it. I think people just love to grab onto silver bullet solutions, and I'm sorry, Omid, but you may not get a lot of keynotes if you're a little more open handed about solutions.
You know what I mean? Like the keynote people are the ones that come up with this grand idea that these are the five things that are going to absolutely change without question in every environment that you are in or, take this to your school and you'll see, these incredible results in a year kind of thing. But, and I say that jokingly because I think I really like your approach, and I think that is actually a more effective approach as we look into different educational environments, and we think about different kinds of students and being responsive to them, thinking about the environment, what would help, and then being responsive to them within those environments, it may not be the same thing at WGU that it is at University of Tennessee, that it is at University of Kentucky, and then it's not going to be the same, In the College of Education, as it is in the College of Psychology, that is for first year undeclared folks, and so I, I really appreciate your approach there.
[00:44:30] Omid Fotuhi: And I also appreciate your comment. I realize I'm not going to retire based on the number of keynotes I'm invited to based on my or tentative approach. That being said, having thought about belonging and having had conversations with hundreds of institutions, there are some common recommendations that I can offer for any institution that might want to think about how do we foster a greater sense of belonging?
Or as I've been framing it more recently, how do we ensure that we're not threatening a sense of belonging? One of those has to do with an organizational vision or approach that at its core does one thing really well. Which is to say that you are able to take a position of interested inquiry for the students that you're serving..
How do you understand the individual experiences of the students that you're serving, and what are the mechanisms to ensure that you continue to have that understanding? I think making assumptions can lead you astray, but ensuring that you have a pathway and a channel to the student voice on a continual basis is a really good starting place.
In many of my partnerships, we've either instituted surveys that are standard, they go out once a year and analyze. We incorporate focus group conversations that keep us updated into the qualitative narratives that students experience. But also, from a systemic perspective, how do you empower your faculty, your administration to prioritize that perspective taking?
As you mentioned, quite beautifully, that you can't declare a safe space, you also can't declare a sense of belonging, but if you recognize, based on the definition that I shared, that the best definition is that belonging is the feeling that you are cared for and valued, then you are valued. The best way to actually nourish that feeling is by feeling like you are appreciated, by feeling like you are understood, by feeling like your input is valued in this community.
And how that happens is not by telling someone that you're valued and you're appreciated. Instead, it's this sort of positioning of interested inquiry. How do you ask questions that convey to students that, "Hey, what you think and what you do matters. We want to learn from you. What are the things that you're thinking about? What are the things that you're investing? We want to support those things."
So there's a lot of structural and programmatic effort that can go into authentically conveying to students that they matter in this place. And so I think that's the one thing that I would suggest is A, understand and take that position of interested inquiry to really have that connection with their voice and their experiences.
And in so doing, ironically, that becomes one of the best vehicles of fostering that same sense of belonging that you're trying to understand. Because when you do invest in authentically listening and understanding, that's what conveys to someone that you care. Claude Steele reports of his first experiences in graduate school, where he actually was the only African American Black student in the program.
And so he was contending with a lot of stereotype threat. And what he noticed after a while was that his office was down the hall and his advisor was on the other side of the hall. That his advisor would frequently walk across the hallway, come into his office, and ask him questions about the research that they were doing.
" Hey, what do you think of this? How's that going? What can we learn about this? What would you recommend about this particular thing?" And that constant questioning that was conveying, hey, I care and I believe in the value of your input is exactly what helped Claude Steele manage the stereotypes that maybe he shouldn't be there.
Maybe he can't cut it there. He was able to see genuinely that someone valued his perspective. And so that was a powerful intervention or component of what it is that fostered the sense of belonging. The other thing that I'll say, so the first is a mechanism to understand the student voice.
The second is messaging. and an intentional approach and understanding of the language that we use. I think in institution or any aspirational environment, we want to motivate aspiration, we want to motivate progress, we even want to motivate excellence. But what do we mean by these things? So excellence, if you don't really define it, might be implied as the singular pathway towards a singular outcome. As opposed to, but it could mean, which is a diverse set of experimentations, of failures and successes through the inclusion of diverse perspectives that leads you incrementally to one step further. So when we talk about this is an institution of excellence, what do we mean? So being intentional about the language that we use.
What is the vision and mission statements that we are articulate to our students, but what matters to us? Do we matter that we have the highest number of Nobel laureates in within our graduates, or does it matter that we're committed to an ongoing pursuit of truth and growth? So these kinds of articulations and messaging matters.
There's a lot of research also in the importance of messaging during critical feedback. When you give feedback. Are you articulating that what matters is that you perform well or not, or that what matters is a demonstration of effort and that I'm committed to you in this journey of learning and growth that the faculty can do? As you think about the curriculum, who designs that? Is it solely the faculty or could there be a co creation experience with a student? As you think about even something as simple as office hours, there was an intervention where we had faculty rename office hours from office hours to drop in hours. And that had a profound effect because now it doesn't feel like I'm walking to this space where there's a structured set of expectations where I have to have well crafted thought out questions for the faculty to demonstrate that I'm able to be able to be in this class or can I just drop in and have a conversation? So there's a lot that goes into language.
And then the third thing that I'd recommend is an appetite and a culture for experimentation and evaluation. Despite the best of intentions, you could target having mechanisms for understanding your students, for designing interventions, for crafting your messaging, but what are the metrics that you can actually look at to objectively tell you whether you're incrementally making progress or not?
So there's a researcher practitioner model that you can think about employing. There could be some mechanisms that you could incorporate. So I would recommend those three general guidelines or recommendations for how any institution can incrementally get closer to fostering greater belonging.
[00:51:24] Jason Johnston: Can I just say, I take back what I said about the keynote. I'm so sorry. You just nailed the Online Learning Podcast Keynote. You just nailed it. So thank you for that. And I recognize as well that by even making that joke, I, I may have not fostered a sense of belonging.
I might have added to the negative chatter in your head that you could do a keynote. You absolutely can do a keynote. We're going to put your LinkedIn in the notes. Anybody that's listening, you hear the kind of quality that Omid could bring to a keynote, please reach out to him. Okay, John, go ahead.
[00:51:58] John Nash: Omid, I like in the second point you made talking about messaging, I'm recalling George Lakoff's work around framing, except in this case, what you're discussing is not trying to shift political thinking, but rather being thoughtful about what goes into people's minds when you use certain messages and whether it's playing against you when you want to have a certain outcome.
[00:52:22] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah, and again, I think With any language, with any kind of communication, I could have one meaning that is what I intend to convey, but message intended is not message received. And so again, I go back to that first strategy of how do you have access to the student voice to understand from their perspective what they are hearing?
You could have the best designers, the best psychologists, best interventionists help you craft what you think ought to be the best vision statement for your institution. And yet, if you don't ask the students how they're experiencing that, you're missing the critical gap there. So I think having an intentional Commitment to thinking critically about messaging is great, but also calibrating with the student voice throughout the design process. But that's right, I think, again, the core message here is that oftentimes, even despite the best of intentions, message intended is not message received. And what matters is message received.
[00:53:28] Jason Johnston: Omid, this has been a great conversation. I think that could be a good place to land. For those listening, John and I have been furiously taking notes in our Notion, our shared Notion partly because we're learning so much and this is really helpful information. And we really appreciate you bringing your expertise to the table today.
We'll, our notes and links and, things that you've heard along the way here into our show notes, onlinelearningpodcast.com.
And so just to close off though, Omid, do you have any kind of final words for those listening?
As part of our conversation today about belonging online, we have a variety of listeners tend to be instructional designers, administrators that are working in in online learning. I talked to somebody this last week who's in a writing center that works with faculty and students in a writing center.
And so what kind of would be some of your final words to, to our listeners and moving forward?
[00:54:27] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah, and I appreciate you all inviting me to have this conversation. If anything, you've really motivated me to invite more people to what I'm currently trying to make more explicit. And it's been part of the theme we've been discussing here, which is this notion of a sense of belonging being chained to some of the contingencies in our environment, that my sense of worthiness and self regard might at times feel dependent on how I'm doing in work or in my career or in my education or based on which groups I'm a part of. And what I'd like to start doing is may be championing is that there's a possibility in which we can take greater ownership of our own sense of belonging with the equipment of the proper tools that I think can take us there.
And I'll quote Maya Angelou for this because it was her quote that, that really got me to realize the possibility. And she says that you're only free when you realize you belong in no place. You belong every place, no place at all. The price is high, the reward is great. And with that line, she's saying that you can essentially find a way to connect with your own sense of worth in a way that is internally driven that doesn't rely so heavily on these contingencies.
Now, my work is both understanding the situational contingencies that threaten or put into question an individual's sense of belonging, but it's also the pursuit of empowering individuals to understand their own agency and also navigating this internal dynamic. that to a certain extent we have some say into how it is that we perceive ourselves or we let others perceive us.
So that's probably what I'll say as something that I'd love your listeners to connect with me on and obviously any keynote invitation would be welcome. But it's been great to be part of this conversation. I love what you all are doing. I think the online learning is a wonderful frontier of how we can robustly test a lot of the assumptions about the core conditions of learning and I love that you all are part of this.
[00:56:55] John Nash: Fascinating. I love the way you stated that. That inspires me to think about it that way as well. Thank you.
[00:57:00] Jason Johnston: Yeah, I think that's so empowering across multiple Layers of administration and for students themselves and for those even instructional designers able to put together courses to think about. So thank you so much. So great to have you. Good to see you again and get to talk with you.
[00:57:17] Omid Fotuhi: likewise. Good to see you both.
Online Learning in the Second Half