Online Learning in the Second Half EP 29 - Dr. Ericka Hollis - Teaching in the Digital Age: Cultivating Belonging and Excellence Online
In this episode, John and Jason talk to Ericka Hollis, PhD, about silence as liberatory practice, student backchannels, belonging in the online classroom, and leadership challenges with professional development. See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com
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Links and Resources:- Great list of foundational articles on the Community of Inquiry
- ACUE's Effective Teaching Framework for Higher Education
- John’s paper on online discussions: “A Tale of Two Forums: One Professor's Path to Improve Learning through a Common Online Teaching Tool”
- Dr. Ericka Hollis Contact Information
Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License.
TranscriptWe 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!
Mic Check[00:00:00] Jason Johnston: Hey, John, could I ask you will you tilt your mic back a little bit?
I'm sorry to be so mic-picky these days.
[00:00:09] John Nash: Should I talk while I do that? Here's where it was and now I'm still talking and here's where it's going and now it's here.
[00:00:17] Jason Johnston: Yeah, that's pretty good.
[00:00:19] John Nash: I do appreciate your pickiness. I do.
Silence as Liberatory Practice[00:00:21] Jason Johnston: All right. As you can see, this is pretty pretty tight operation we run here. The Online Learning Podcast. Heh. We basically When we started it, we decided that we would just do what we could do. You know what I mean? And we're having a good time. And I think that, I, we're getting some good responses from it.
I think people that listen and we produce it up to the level that we can manage. And yeah. And this is it.
[00:00:50] John Nash: I especially like the silences. It's a solace, not soul less. It's a SOLACE.
[00:00:57] Jason Johnston: Solace. The silences. Yeah.
[00:01:00] John Nash: Yes.
[00:01:00] Ericka Hollis: One of the effective teaching practices is wait time. Most of the time in education, we don't wait long enough. So for someone to actually think and respond, right? There's research behind that when you jump right in. And so I love awkward silence. I'm really an introvert. Although most of my career, I do things that are very extroverted.
So I'm okay with the pause and the solace, if you will, John. Yeah,
[00:01:30] John Nash: we'll just do Erica Hollis episode and we'll just have it be 40 minutes of no talking.
[00:01:36] Jason Johnston: Yeah. Like John Cage, if you're familiar with his pieces. He sits at the piano and he's got sheet music and it's all blank. After four minutes and thirty three seconds, packs up the sheet music and then goes.
But I feel you on that. I'm an introvert as well. And I'm also, I feel like I'm slower, sometimes slower to respond, especially in a classroom where I'm taking in a lot of stimulus. And so I always found in the face to face classrooms, I would think of really like good things to say, like later two hours later, or good questions to ask, but it was rarely like right in the moment.
It was like, it was always later which is one of the things I liked about online learning is that it was the asynchronous gave some simmer time for me and some time to think about things and to be able to respond some.
[00:02:29] Ericka Hollis: I think that's a fair point. That's one of the reasons I have one of my youngest sister is she has extreme social anxiety, and she has just done so much better in asynchronous online courses, even as an undergraduate student. Just because that works better for her, instead of being like called on in the class, like cold calling, we cold call on people.
And some people are like, yeah, they jump right in. And some people you can see like terror in their face when you call on them. And so I think it's a very good point in thinking about who's in your classroom and what actually works for them. And are you giving everyone like the same level playing field where I feel like in a face to face class, even in a synchronous Zoom class, it favors an extrovert, right?
One that wants to put their hand up. It doesn't really favor those who are still thinking, still processing, in that kind of way. So that's one of the things I do enjoy about it the most from a like, pedagogical, andragogical standpoint, like the process time, the wait time.
[00:03:36] Jason Johnston: So like silence as a liberatory practice.
[00:03:42] John Nash: Oh, I like that.
[00:03:44] Jason Johnston: I think that makes a lot of sense, and even the way that Zoom is made, those , that feel comfortable being seen, and they have their video on, are going to pop to the top, right?
[00:03:57] Ericka Hollis: Yeah,
[00:03:57] Jason Johnston: So those that don't say as much, and don't feel comfortable having the video on, they're going to be at the bottom, or even on the second page, if you have a very large class, or
[00:04:07] John Nash: Or the third page or the fourth page, I've noticed that. Yeah. You have to go way in to find all the students.
[00:04:14] Ericka Hollis: exactly.
[00:04:15] Jason Johnston: That's good. So, we've started already. Thank you. That's a good conversation.
Intro[00:04:22] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston.
[00:04:26] Jason Johnston: Hey, John. Hey, everyone. And this is Online Learning in the Second Half, the Online Learning Podcast.
[00:04:31] John Nash: Yeah, we're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation we've been having for the last couple of years about online education. Look, online learning's had its chance to be great, and some of it is, but a lot of it still isn't. How are we going to get there, Jason?
[00:04:45] Jason Johnston: That is a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it?
[00:04:50] John Nash: That's a great idea. What do you want to talk about today?
Start[00:04:53] Jason Johnston: In addition to that, how about we do a podcast and invite really cool, wonderful people from our past to talk to as well. Wouldn't that be cool
[00:05:02] John Nash: That would be cool. Let's get some good old friends on here and have a good yarn about. "What is up in online?"
[00:05:09] Jason Johnston: That sounds good. Today we have with us Dr. Erica Hollis, a good friend of ours from way back at the University of Kentucky. I can say that you're still there, John, but the rest of us have moved on, no, I'm just joking. Erica, welcome.
[00:05:25] Ericka Hollis: Thank you so much. I'm enjoying this already.
[00:05:28] John Nash: it's so wonderful to have you here. It feels like old home week.
[00:05:32] Ericka Hollis: It does. It feels very, I feel very comfortable, and I can't wait to have this conversation with you both. I haven't seen either of you in probably a decade. So, I'm really happy to catch up.
[00:05:46] Jason Johnston: Yeah, all of a sudden, we start talking in decades. This is what happened. Now you're younger than both of us, Erica, but this is what happens as you start to, get up there. You start talking and measure your years and in decades.
Online PhD Backchannels and Support[00:05:57] John Nash: Yeah, so, Erica, it's wonderful to have you here and we do have a bit of a backstory. We first met when you were a doctoral student at the University of Kentucky. Was that 2012, 2013?
[00:06:12] Ericka Hollis: That was 2012, my friend.
[00:06:15] John Nash: Yeah. And I, among all the things I remember from your time in the program I I recall that because we were the first online PhD at the University of Kentucky, we hoped that the students would start a back channel and you all were inside of Google chat. I think subsequent cohorts have chosen everything from Voxer to Signal. And But you and Todd Hurst, I think, wrote a paper, did an analysis of all the chat that went on in the back channel and what makes community in an online, and I thought, we're onto something now here.
I think that was, but I remember that from your time in the program, and now you've gone on to apply that in so many new ways. It's cool. I can't wait to talk about that, but that, that sticks out.
[00:06:59] Ericka Hollis: I definitely remember that. Our backchannel came, you should both know this, came out of necessity. We were in a synchronous class and one of our professors, who I will not name, was talking and someone started the backchannel and said, what is he talking about? Does anyone know what he's talking about?
And people started laughing on screen, right? And then everyone started chiming in the professor is talking about this is what we're doing. And the back channel stayed, it's still intact. Like years later, we've graduated, we still use that back channel. I'm not kidding. Like when someone gets promoted or someone has a question or you want someone to look at something, we still use that back channel.
And it was Google Hangouts now I think it's called Google Meet or whatever Google has changed to. But yeah, it the back channel was amazing. Um, I have four life colleagues I believe. And I would say the community that we built is, it was just so special. Like I haven't seen. anything like that.
And I've tried to figure out how to recreate that in other avenues. And sometimes it goes well and sometimes it doesn't. But giving people the opportunity to figure out how they want to connect and not tell them how to do it, I think is the most important thing, but suggesting that they do.
[00:08:23] John Nash: Yeah, that's carried on. And so in the program, we've done just that. We said, we don't care what you create here or how you create it. Just make one and pick a platform. And then, yeah, it's stuck. It's become a necessity. I think. Yeah.
[00:08:38] Ericka Hollis: Yeah, I would say what's also interesting, too, is we had our own back channel, and then when the next cohort came in, we started another back channel and included them, but we still kept our separate one. So that one's still intact, and the idea was that it would keep building and building upon each other.
[00:08:59] Jason Johnston: Yeah, and I was in a subsequent cohort and we used the back channel approach mostly because of You're going ahead of us and I would say as a PhD student particularly in those early years of building in that coursework and trying to figure out what you're doing.
It was really important and nothing against the program. But I think that the program got more organized as things went along and, even I think as I was leaving, John, you guys were pulling together like materials that were very clearly we want everybody to know,
[00:09:35] John Nash: Yeah, we have three metrics when we know things are going right in the program is that students say that the faculty have their back, that they are not alone, and they know what to do next.
[00:09:47] Jason Johnston: yes. And I think there are ways in which the first two, because. The faculty were great, very personable, and very approachable. I think none of us had question about the first two. I think a lot of times we didn't know what was going on with the third one. Even if it was really clear to faculty and the teachers, we weren't really sure what to do next.
And I think that was one of the great strengths of having that back channel as well as just that support. We were all working adults trying to make this happen, and it was crazy, really, to try to think about working full time and getting this stuff done.
And it was the support of that back channel was really helpful. So, Erica, you and I, we met at University of Kentucky as well
for me and a person that really helped ease my concerns about going to the program as well as just on the front end really helped me know how to guide myself into it because, and I think about this when anybody is going into a new, level of education, right?
I didn't have anybody in my family that had ever gotten a PhD before and I was fairly well educated even at that point and been around higher ed, but I still didn't really understand the inside word a little bit. And that's where it was so important to talk to you because like I was looking at this coursework and I was trying to figure out if I could really learn what I wanted to with all this.
And you were like, don't worry about that. Yeah. Just find somebody to connect with that can be your chair and just tell them what you want and it's going to be fine. You'll figure it out kind of thing. And it felt like on the front end that maybe that wasn't possible just by looking at the web pages.
And then you really were a huge mentor for me and encourager. So thank you for that. First of all. You're probably one of the reasons and meeting John and some of the other faculty, of course, but you're one of the reasons why I actually took the plunge to do my PhD And then the other thing was already your work in online learning.
I learned so much from you at University of Kentucky. You're already doing boot camps with people. You were the first that I found at University of Kentucky that was doing more of a standardized kind of templating with people and trying to help people with canvas, try to think about quality matters approach to online learning.
And yeah, you're just a super super helpful for me in those back in the day, back in those University of Kentucky days.
[00:12:25] Ericka Hollis: Thank you so much, Jason. That, that's a lot done back there, but I really appreciate it. And I love mentoring you. Anyone that is thinking about this program, I'll talk to them and tell them the truth. And the truth was, Jason, that, You are a doctoral student, but this is your program.
You need to get out of it what you need, and the faculty are there to help you figure that out, but if you have a somewhat of an idea of what you wanted to study, so some of , our colleagues in our cohorts were K 12 focused. And some of us were higher ed focus. So think about who do you need in your circle and thinking about what you want to do in terms of if you want to study online education and higher ed for me, I wanted to look at online higher education leadership.
So then who do I go to for that? Who can help me with that? And the faculty's job is to guide you along, but you're so right that you do need that support. Because we all struggle with imposter syndrome, imposter phenomenon. And so, am I really on the right track? Am I doing this the right way?
And, like all of those things that happen. When you're in a learning space, it really doesn't matter if you're getting a PhD or working on an undergraduate degree. Everyone goes through, those challenges. And so, I'm so glad that I had that conversation with you and that you reached out to talk to me.
And I'm so glad, even happier, that you decided to do the program. And I think you were a valuable asset to the University of Kentucky. I think the work that you were doing there was so vastly important for the institution. And so I'm just grateful for your work and You as a colleague, because I've been able to send people, after I transition, I was able to send people to you that still were, you know, asking me questions that I could send them over to Jason and I know that you would take care of them and that they would be in good hands, particularly faculty who sometimes don't necessarily want to ask for help.
There's a delicate balance there. For those of us who do faculty development, right? Because all faculty wanna put their hand up and say, I don't really know what I'm doing. But if they come to you, they you wanna make sure that you are approaching them and what they're trying, figure out what they're trying to do and so that you can help them get there.
Most of the times that requires a very good active listening. Which I would say is one of the most important things any of us can really focus on is like listening to what the person is saying. And so in that conversation with you, that's what I was trying to do. What are your real concerns here?
It's a great program. I'm in it. It's a great program. I wouldn't be in it if it wasn't great. So what are you really concerned about here?
[00:15:10] Jason Johnston: That's good. And it's, it's interesting to think about those kind of moments. It doesn't feel like it was that long ago, of course now, but I just, so picture, where your office is and talking with you and having that, that face to face conversation and yeah, so, so pivotal.
And it's been a good reminder to me, as people come along. Just to be Just to be open in whatever I tend to talk to more about because I'm not in a college. I'm more in a centralized academic unit.
I find myself, talking with a lot of instructional designers and people talking about, their futures and people connect with me on LinkedIn. And I try to always be available for people as much as I can, just, for that very thing, just to try to tell them the truth and I appreciate you modeling that.
Ericka Background[00:15:53] Jason Johnston: So what so where have you been since the University of Kentucky and talk about that a little bit. We'd like to both maybe catch us up a little bit if there's anything we don't know, but a little bit for our listeners so they understand who you are and then get to what you're doing currently.
[00:16:10] Ericka Hollis: Sure. So, I left the University of Kentucky not really wanting to move, so everyone should know that. I really had a hard time leaving, but my spouse had a wonderful opportunity and we moved to Massachusetts, and lo and behold, I landed a job at Harvard. And in the Graduate School of Education, aka HUGSES, like how we refer to it.
So I landed a job there as the Assistant Director in the Teaching and Learning Lab. And I'm thinking, lab, this is going to be exciting, I was thinking like maybe it's going to be like the dLab at the University of Kentucky. And what I really found out is that my role and what I was doing was basically, I had a team of instructional designers, video people, and all of those types of people, and they were wonderful and so very good at what they did, but what we produced quality wise, it was really glossy, it looked great, but it was for the entity that actually made money. So a profit making part of the organization, and it really wasn't competency based. So, let's just say I'm going through these online learning modules, they're really well done, to your point earlier, Jason, they meet the quality matters standard, the courses look great, but have they really learned anything?
Did I really move the needle in terms of their actual thinking and what they need to do to be better superintendents, to be better principals, to be better educational professionals? And I couldn't say yes that my team was doing that, but that's also not what we were tasked to do. We were tasked to create these things and put them out there basically so we could make money, they were branded with the Harvard brand.
And it's not, I'm not knocking them. This is just once I entered into the job, that's what it was. And there was a disconnect between what I thought the job was and what was really happening. And so that didn't really align with who I am and why I decided to get a PhD, right? I care about teaching and learning and moving the needle.
Like, I care about that vastly. And so it really didn't align with what I was doing. And so I walked away and kid you not, I walked away with no job. I just left and people were like, "Are you crazy? You left your job at Harvard?" I was like, it was driving me crazy. So I don't want to be in a work environment where it doesn't really align with who I am and what I care about, but also am I putting out high quality learning for people?
And so I walked away, no job. I was out of work for a while, like almost eight months, which is very uncomfortable. If you have been a person like me, who's been working since they were 15 and sometimes multiple jobs. So I didn't have, a job. I was doing some things on the side, but not really a day to day. I came across a job ad at Regis College looking for someone to help with faculty development, but in the job description, it said that you needed a nursing degree.
And I was like, they really need my, they're, they desperately need my help. They don't even realize that they need someone like me. You don't need a degree in the subject matter to be able to do these things that are on them. So I wrote a very convincing letter, had a great interview process.
I think the job started off as a, like a director. By the time I actually started, it was like an associate dean. I had met with so many people over and over. And so the job grew, my responsibilities grew the more and more that they were talking about me. And I had a wonderful experience at Regis. Regis is a private Catholic college located in Western Mass.
Had a wonderful time. Working with the faculty there. They're so special. They love their students. If you think about where Regis is in, in higher education, particularly geography, thinking about Massachusetts, right? So Regis is in Massachusetts. Massachusetts is like the higher education Mecca.
You throw a stone, there's a university, right? So the students that were going to Regis are not students that were going to Harvard, MIT, BC, BU, right? They're very special students that want to be at a smaller institution that's faith based. And so I had a wonderful time working with the faculty there being really mindful of who their student body was and how do we help them achieve their goals, both online and in the classroom and hybrid. So we had over 1000 online students, which was crazy for a school our size that had about a little over 3000 students total. So about a third of our students were online.
And so online grew so quickly that a lot needed to happen in terms of leadership, but in terms of standardization, but in terms of faculty development and actually getting faculty to teach those classes. So it was a very exciting time at Regis. And while I was there, I was promoted to assistant provost.
And so I was in charge of the Center for Instructional Innovation and also I was responsible for all faculty development across modalities, and regardless if you were an adjunct or a tenured professor. So that was my responsibilities at that institution.
While I was at Regis, I discovered ACUE. So ACUE is the Association of College and University Educators. And while I was there, I was able to use some Title III funding to be able to do some professional development for some faculty. And when I looked at the product and I saw what we actually had, what their offerings were, I was blown away because I know solid design, right?
I've been doing online learning for years. I've been creating them. I've had teams to create them. And I was really impressed with what they were doing. So I was able to launch a small group of faculty to do a professional development course around fostering a cultural belonging. And it was a beautiful experience for those faculty.
From there, we had a faculty learning community that kind of spun off from there. And so it was very well done. And the magic sauce in ACUE is unlike any other professional development that you do, they make you implement the practices while you're doing them. You implement while you're learning. So over a 10 week, 8 or 10 week time, you implement 8 or 10 new practices.
In real time, don't walk off and then come back and say, Oh, yeah, I decided to do that. And so you see if it's working or not. And of course, all the practices are evidence based. And so, I learned all about ACUE and I was like, I drunk the ACUE Kool Aid, right? So I was into and I was like, this is great.
So we did a micro credential on fostering a cultural belonging, but then we also did a comprehensive credential called Effective Teaching Practices. And so I was able to co facilitate that program with one of my instructional designers who was new. So it was a great experience for her to get to know the faculty and also for us, the faculty to become familiar with ACUE.
So we did that and it was pretty good and I loved it so much and I was so good at it. I had a hundred percent completion rate. Can you believe that? For faculty for something that lasted 10 weeks, they couldn't believe it. And so they invited me to go to conferences and speak with them and tell them like,
how did I get the faculty to be able to do this and all of that? And so when they had a job opening for the senior director of academics, I applied. And so I started that job on December 1st. And I've been doing that since. And so I have I lead a team of seven academic directors over the nation that essentially make sure that the faculty course takers implement those practices that are in the courses. I felt like I talked a lot. So let me know what follow up questions that you all might have about that. But that's like my story.
[00:24:39] Jason Johnston: Yeah, that's great. So just to put in context, so you've been at ACUE for just a little over two months now at the recording of this. And what do you do in this role now? Sounds like your first connection with them was utilizing some of their professional development at Regis , and now what you'd currently do in your role?
[00:25:01] Ericka Hollis: Yeah, that's a great question. So what I do now is I lead the team of academic directors and that team is an esteemed group of higher education professionals, all of which have been either teaching or in higher education for at least 15 years. So our team is responsible for the actual implementation of those practices that are in each one of our courses.
We have multiple courses and, certification and all of those things. So our group ensures that the course takers have the best possible experience that they can have. But also that they're implementing those practices so you can think of us as the implementation team almost so, like in online learning, there's like an art. They're the people that build the courses. They're the people that recruit someone to take the courses. We're the team that ensures that the courses are taken. We have the right people in the course, the people are getting what they need in the course. And then, someone does evaluation.
So my team just, we implement and we implement well. So we have metrics around that. So I'm responsible for those metrics and, all the individuals on my team.
[00:26:17] Jason Johnston: So you're almost like a separate teaching and learning institution in some ways. I don't want to say this to say that it's competition with others that have teaching and learning institution, because you probably collaborate with a lot of teaching and learning departments within universities to provide training as my guess.
But you're really, you operate it as this kind of almost like a third party. Entity like that. Does that sound about right? The delivery end of the professional development?
[00:26:45] Ericka Hollis: You're spot on Jason, you're spot on. So we meet a lot with CETL directors, centers for teaching and learning. And what we do with them is think about how our programming runs parallel or how it can work with what you're already doing. So, if your faculty are going through this national certification, and by the way, our certification has been endorsed by ACE, the American Council on Education, it's been vetted, right?
And we have. A lot of research around it that we do annually. So if you think about it from a teaching and learning center, if you use this as a base or part of what you're already doing, part of your framework that you're doing in your center, we can then partner with you on those things.
So some of the things that spin off or maybe a faculty learning community, or, out of the five modules, maybe of those five modules, you do lunch and learns around those five topics or other things like that. So I don't see us as necessarily in competition with them. I see this as like a foundation for which those teaching and learning centers, especially those that are small.
So I don't know if those of your listeners, but some of us are in teaching and learning centers. They're like two people. Or it's one person or it's one staff and a faculty member that gets a course release. It's not a comprehensive center where you have tons and tons of staff, so think about what you can actually build, what you can actually produce that's of quality, that's been research based.
So that's how I see it, as us partnering with them and using us as part of that, not as a competition. But we do get that question a lot so, if we use ACUE, then what do you need me for? That, that type of thing. But that's not how I view it.
Belonging and Humanizing Online Learning[00:28:32] John Nash: Erica, you were talking a minute ago about belonging and that's almost become a synonym for Jason and I and a lot of work we've been doing the last year, some people we've been hanging out with this notion of humanizing online learning. It's hard now to talk about humanizing online learning without the word belonging coming up.
And so I'm wondering where your head is at on this with regard to how you think we can make online classes feel more like a place where students feel belonging and less of an information dump.
[00:29:02] Ericka Hollis: That's a beautiful question, John. Thank you for asking that question. I think there are a couple of things that I want to just put out here. The first one is, good teaching is good teaching regardless of the modality, right? So if you think about the things that you, that we do that are in a face to face class that we consider good teaching and making our students belong, how then do you do the same thing in an online environment?
Or how can you do that in an online environment? Or Can something in the online environment connect you to your student, making them feel even more like they belong in a situation? I think that's the first thing we should think about okay. And then the second is, do you really know who your students are? How can you create an environment? Where people feel like they belong if you don't know them, if you're only thinking of them as an avatar on a screen or an icon, there's a real person behind that name, right? a faculty member and I'm teaching the course, if you say really mean things to me in a discussion board I feel that because I'm a real human being behind that.
So I would think about how can we as educators. really get a sense of who's in the course. Do you really know the learners in the course? And like, how do you do that? There are tons of ways to be able to do that. You can have questionnaires, you can have a synchronous meeting.
You can do a like wish wonder. John. I've been using like, wish, wonder for years in terms of feedback is something that I learned at the University of Kentucky.
[00:30:48] Jason Johnston: I wondered if you would say one sentence about the like wish wonder it feels like something I should know, and it sounds intuitive, but if you, even a sentence just to explain what that is
[00:30:59] Ericka Hollis: So what do you like about what's happening? What do you wish was maybe a bit different? And then sometimes we would do wonder, what are you still wondering about?
And so I use this all the time. I use it in terms of give feedback to people that I lead. I use it to give feedback to even to my partner on like wonderings, like you said that, but I'm still, I still have wonderings about this thing. So it's become a part of my vernacular and just how I function in terms of giving people feedback.
But I also think it's a wonderful tool for learners when we're trying to get them to give others feedback and critical, actual critical, feedback on something like a critique, instead of just saying, Oh, yeah, I like, I really like what you did there. Like, why did you like it? So give me two likes. And what do you wish maybe was different.
So that wish requires them to give some kind of substantial feedback, not just I like it, and I thought it was great. And then if you push the envelope a little bit more wondering, so what questions do you still have?
did I learned that technique at Stanford from Bernie Roth, Doug Wild and the late Rolf Faste, who were old guard in the mechanical engineering design division and, that's the standard feedback mechanism for getting feedback in a design thinking cycle and
[00:32:14] John Nash: and it's, you're right, Erica. The lovely thing about the wish is that it allows you to provide a criticism, but it's. always phrased as a wish that I have for the situation, not something I don't like about what you did. And so, and the backside of this that those guys taught was the only answer you're allowed to give to the like, wish, and wonder is "thank you."
But "thank you" is a coded term, which means I caught it, I got it, and if I decide to do something with your feedback later, I will. So now all the agency on taking the feedback and doing something with it is still on me as the receiver of the feedback. I don't have to do what you say. And the person giving the feedback's been taught to phrase it in a way that it's usable, but also it's a way that they own it, not put upon the recipient.
So, yeah, it's lovely all around.
[00:33:08] Jason Johnston: That's great. That's a great tool.
[00:33:10] Ericka Hollis: I love it. And I'm reminded of a quote that I remember from that time, too, is feedback is a gift. You don't return it. Thank you for pointing that part out, John, about the, you get to decide what to do with the feedback once you get it.
[00:33:26] John Nash: it's, that's very empowering. And then you don't feel bad about what you're hearing. It's always still with you to decide. You have all the agency.
[00:33:35] Ericka Hollis: There's a ton of different ways that you can connect with your students. to make sure that they feel like I see you and you're a part of this learning environment, because that's what we're trying to create when we get people to feel like they belong, this learning community. We want them to participate as learners. So there's that piece. So good teaching is good teaching.
Who are you? And then once you're in the course, how are we providing opportunities for the learners to relate to each other. Like learning is social, right? And so if I'm in an online learning environment and all I do is create papers and I don't do discussion boards, I just write, and there's only an interaction to me and the instructor.
That's not making, really making me feel like I belong. So if we think about the community of inquiry framework this is a great example of one way to show belonging. How do I use all of those circles to really produce this environment where the students feel like they belong? Are they getting an opportunity to like have their voice heard?
Are we giving them choice on what their options are? So, let's just say it's a final project. Is it just a paper? Could I do a paper or a podcast or a presentation or something else? I think those, giving them a variety of choice, also makes them feel like they belong and like their voices are heard.
So, these are the things that I think about when I think of how do we make sure our learning environments make the learners feel like they belong? There are a number of things that we can do, and I would say some of them are small, right? So it's not like you have to go off and change everything that you're doing, but I think about James Lane, small teaching, right?
I think about Flower Derby, small teaching online. There are certain things that we can do to help produce this, but we have to be intentional. with creating that space and not just think that it'll magically happen. It makes me think of you, John, that article that you wrote many years ago about the discussion boards like build it and they will come.
That's not how a discussion board works, right? If you don't have a really good effective prompt that people are just going to chime in, right? You have to create a prompt. What are they responding to that gives them the opportunity? So, those are just some of my thoughts on that. What do you all think?
[00:36:10] John Nash: I think you bring up a good point. Two things that come to mind. First of all, go back to the discussion boards. You're right. If you build it, they will not come. So many of them were built for decades. And I wrote that article in 2012, it got published in 2012, I wrote it in 2011, and so discussion boards were happening inside Moodle or other places, and it was basically like, okay y'all post once, reply twice, and then, but then that was the grade.
But why, what were we talking about, and why were we talking about it? And so, and then the other thing is you said at the top of this, which is that, I think it's interesting that the push to bring good teaching online has really rekindled conversation around what is good instructional design and you're right back to your teaching point right but so good instructional design is just good instructional design, no matter what I want to hear Jason's thoughts and I want to come back to the discussion boards and when we talk about AI, but yeah, what are you thinking?
Community of Inquiry[00:37:16] Jason Johnston: Erika, you talked about the community of inquiry model, which I think is a really strong way to think about online learning Garrison , is the one, fellow Canadian, of course was the one who brought this to mind for me, and it's for those listeners that maybe haven't really heard a lot about this.
It's the one where it shows these three overlapping circles that talk about different presences. So you have, depending on who you're reading, talks about the teacher presence, the student presence and the content presence in the, those circles overlapping into this educational experience in the middle.
Or they talk about it as social presence, that's a student, cognitive presence and teaching presence. You mentioned that. , just in short, , what's so great about the community of inquiry and in terms of the work that you do?
[00:38:08] Ericka Hollis: That's a really good question. I think what's so important about the community of inquiry is it really shows us that learning does not happen in a vacuum. Multiple factors in any educational learning experience, right? There's the actual content. We're learning something. To your point, Jason, we're learning something about something like cognitively where we need to be dialed in.
We need to be tapped in. But at the same time. Of that where we're learning, there's this social atmosphere that's also happening. So social in terms of me and the instructor, if I'm a learner, the me and the instructor, it could be me and the other learners, it could be me in the content, the things that I'm thinking about, right?
So all of these things are happening at the same time. And then. Where do you as the instructor, where do you fall into that? So if the learners are learning something, they're interacting, they have some goals, and then they're also socially connected to what is happening in some kind of way, we're tapping into that. they're exchanging, then you have the faculty member who is actually leading and providing the space for those. So the faculty actually sets the tone with how they might think about how to set up the social presence, how to set up the cognitive presence, like What are you teaching them? And then how are they getting there?
Are they doing it by themselves? Are they working in small groups? Are they doing a think pair share? Are they doing these types of things? So that's why I think it's so critical, specifically to learning in general, but to John's point earlier about belonging. This is how we get to belonging by doing these things and doing them well, thinking about what's happening in those three circles, because the magic is when they all overlap.
That's the educational experience that we want them to have, which is the best possible educational experience that they can have. So that would be how I would think about that and challenge others to think about that.
[00:40:17] Jason Johnston: I like that so that belonging doesn't just become some sort of expressed desire in your class. Oh, I want everybody to belong. Everybody should belong. Everybody, please belong. It actually becomes a framework or like almost a rubric.
You can think about these different aspects, how you might improve that within your online class that would contribute to students really belonging and feeling really connected in there.
[00:40:41] Ericka Hollis: Exactly. Jason, I mean, do you think we have educators that are really out there saying, thinking about their students, looking at them saying, you don't belong here? That's normally not the approach that we're taking. Like, when students are coming to an online program or coming to any program, we, as the instructors, think, yeah, you do belong.
Let me just get you to your goal. To your point earlier in our conversation about what you wanted to do. The faculty, their job is to help you get there, right? So you do belong to that particular program. And so I think that's something that we need to be more aware of. I would say explicit. I don't think we do that in higher education to tell people that they belong.
I see you, you belong here and we need your voice because we learn better when there are a variety of different perspectives. We know that there's so much research out there on that. And so if we are doing that, Thinking about the best possible learning experience. It's for everyone to be able to bring their voice to that.
And so that they do belong.
[00:41:48] John Nash: To Jason's point a minute ago, it's not that we're putting out there saying, I want you all to feel like you belong, but rather as an instructor, and as someone who's articulating some kind of design of instruction, if I'm cognizant of bringing about social presence, teaching presidents and cognitive presence, belonging should follow.
[00:42:07] Ericka Hollis: that is fair.
[00:42:11] Jason Johnston: Yeah. And to your point I have yet to meet a teacher that didn't care, which is amazing. Like you would, honestly, like I, you would think along the way that you would just meet this kind of maybe a typified, terrible teacher that doesn't really care about their students. I have yet to actually meet one that I've worked one with in higher education, but I've, I have met a lot of teachers that aren't as intentional as they probably should be or haven't as, as thoughtful about how they put all everything together for the sake of their students.
And so I think that's where a lot of this comes in. Yeah, that's good.
Leadership Challenges[00:42:55] Jason Johnston: So taking it up the next level, I was curious as we're wrapping up here you have occupied multiple spaces that move the needle when it comes to learning online, right? Working directly with students, doing a lot of professional development, working as an instructional designer and developer, working directly with faculty applying quality matters, all the different things, and you have Found yourself in now more of a leadership position of managing and organizing and leading the folks that do a lot of the groundwork and the development and the reaching out and the teaching and so on.
, what are some of the challenges for you in this leadership space that you're in right now when you're like a step removed from the things that you're very good at, the very, the technical things that you are good at, but now you are helping to lead other people to do the more technical things.
[00:43:50] Jason Johnston: What are some of the challenges for you right now?
[00:43:53] Ericka Hollis: I love, I could talk to you all for, love these questions. There are a couple of challenges for sure. The first one that comes to mind is financial. challenges, right? Higher education is just in a different space than it's been before. And so getting people to understand how important effective teaching practices are
And spending money on that, as opposed to spending money on other factors that we think impact student success.
We know from tons of research that one of the most important critical factors in student success is the faculty member.
[00:44:32] Jason Johnston: right.
[00:44:33] Ericka Hollis: of the modality, right? We know that there's there's no no one needs to keep trying to vet that. We know that for sure. So then my biggest challenge is, so why aren't we investing in the faculty to be able to teach better, to create these learning environments where the students feel like they belong?
We should be focusing on that. So that's a huge challenge. I think, and then the other bigger challenge is I don't think that higher education sees the value, we don't put the same metrics on effective teaching practices like we do other things, for example research or writing papers, like we don't quantify effective teaching in the same way as we value those other things.
So when it comes time for tenure and promotion or time for something else, we're looking at all those other things in addition your distribution of effort, right? teaching on that? Because we already know, I just said, that the most important factor is you as the faculty member. So my biggest challenge is how do I get this message out so that people focus on effective teaching practices?
In that they value it in such a way that they spend time. And money on helping their faculty become better,
[00:46:01] Jason Johnston: Yeah. We know we only get better at things when we spend time on them, time and effort , practicing those things and learning about those things, right? It doesn't just happen in a vacuum. And it may over time, as you do things, you trial and error, but yeah, how powerful professional development can be.
And yeah, and you're speaking right into a lot of conversations I'm having right now, part of an online pedagogy group for the University of Tennessee. Of course, it's an R1. John's at an R1. It falls down the list of priorities, the end of the day is like I would do this professional development, but It's not going to be as impactful on my promotion and tenure as putting out this paper.
And so I'm going to put out the paper instead, and I wish that faculty, particularly the ones that really want to be getting better at teaching didn't have to make that choice. It didn't have to be an either or, and I think that a lot of that does come back to some of those resources, but also focus and emphasis and priority given by the upper leadership, it does need to change as well.
[00:47:02] Ericka Hollis: Right. So that's where we need to move the needle in higher education, right? So beyond just the classroom, right? We need to challenge the higher education leaders to show the value in effective teaching, if we can move the needle there. Then faculty will focus on it, but until we do, then they're going to focus on what they're getting rewarded for
[00:47:28] John Nash: It doesn't help either that end of course evaluations are broken. And the level of rigor around which those metrics really play a role in making decisions is problematic.
[00:47:41] Ericka Hollis: in 100%. But we shouldn't even be just waiting until the end of a course to get feedback from students, right? We should be getting feedback from students throughout and then iterating on what's working and what's not working for them. But how many faculty do we know actually do that? not part of their thinking
[00:48:01] John Nash: no it isn't. It's not part of the thinking because also, yeah, teaching has become a little bit mechanistic across the higher ed enterprise. And so, so many traditional practices stay in place because it's just the way we've always done things, like the end of course evaluation.
[00:48:16] Ericka Hollis: But think about like how learning has to evolve and change. If I just want to learn something or think about some content, I can Google that or I can get AI to create me a lesson on that. I don't need necessarily a faculty member to do that. So then what is the role of the faculty? What are they actually doing?
They're doing those things that we talked about earlier in those circles. They're providing the content and putting something around that and providing the space with the social interaction to be able to do that. And I think if faculty aren't doing that, then what are they doing?
[00:48:55] John Nash: yeah. Fair question.
[00:48:58] Jason Johnston: Yeah, that's great. I think we're going to have to wrap it up there. That's a really great final focus around the leadership of faculty development moving towards higher excellence in, in teaching online. And thank you for all you do from your end. We'll put links in to ACUE and how can people connect with you if they want to.
[00:49:22] Ericka Hollis: sure. So if you would like to reach me you can find me at ehollis@acue.org or my Twitter handle is @ethollis and connect with me on LinkedIn.
[00:49:42] Jason Johnston: That's great. We'll put all those links in there. And our website, of course, is www.onlinelearningpodcast.com . And we'll put all the show notes, everything we've talked about today, transcript, but also some of these themes with and some resources. John and I, when we're looking through and editing, we always backfill it with resources.
So please check out the the website with these contact connections and resources as well. Thank you so much. It's been so good. We're gonna have to do this again. I feel like we just touched, just barely dove down on so many topics. And this felt like only the first course of a of a buffet. Like I went, I did my first lap to find out what there is. But I'd like to go back and dig into, some of my favorites here. So we're gonna have to do it again, okay?
Attempted Stop – Some Talk about AI[00:50:28] Ericka Hollis: Oh, sure. We didn't even talk about AI,
[00:50:30] John Nash: didn't even talk about
[00:50:31] Jason Johnston: know. Here we are at the end, and we didn't even get talking about it. Maybe it'll be a relief for some people though to have a podcast.
[00:50:39] Ericka Hollis: you all been talking about AI a lot?
[00:50:42] Jason Johnston: Yeah, we started this podcast just about a year ago, where all of this was taking off.
And it was, we kept talking about how we weren't going to talk about it every episode. And then we kept talking about it.
[00:50:53] John Nash: So actually we thought that this is probably the last episode. We're really gonna talk about this.
[00:50:58] Jason Johnston: Yeah.
[00:50:59] Ericka Hollis: So this is something that I like to tell people about online learning in a lot of cases. Think about this. People in developing countries. Do not have running water. Okay, some of them, but they may have a mobile device where they can learn. So online learning is a game changer. I may not have a toilet that I can flush, but I can learn something with this.
And so I think we've just scratched the surface on what online learning can do. I feel like there'll be so much more to come, like we've just now gotten the basics down to your point, Jason now I know what's available. I need to go back and then I feel like AI is just gonna it to the next level.
So that's where my thinking is on that. But online learning, we've barely scratched the surface on its potential.
[00:51:55] John Nash: Looking forward to talking about this more.
[00:51:57] Jason Johnston: Okay. We'll do it.
[00:51:59] Ericka Hollis: We'll do it. I love it.
[00:52:01] Jason Johnston: This is so good, Erica. Thank you so much for taking your time. It's so good to see you and talk with you.
[00:52:06] Ericka Hollis: Talk to both of you anytime. We'll talk to both of you.
[00:52:10] John Nash: Wonderful. Thanks.
[00:52:11] Jason Johnston: Bye.
[00:52:12] Ericka Hollis: Bye bye.