Online Learning in the Second Half EP 9 - How are EdTech Vendors Humanizing Online Education? (OLC Innovate 2023 onsite recording)
In this episode, John and Jason walk the vendor floor at the OLC Innovate Conference in Nashville, TN - April 18-21, 2023 and ask the vendors how their product is helping to humanize online education.
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Vendors we talked with:
Join us in the next episode, EP 10, for a live OLC Podcast Superfriends Crossover Episode Extravaganza! And then in EP 11 we will wrap up our OLC Design Thinking Workshop on Humanizing Online Education.
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!
Studio Intro
[00:00:00] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston.
[00:00:02] Jason Johnston: Hey John. Hey everyone. And this is Online Learning in the Second Half, the Online Learning podcast.
[00:00:08] John Nash: Yeah, we are 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's had its chance to be great, and some of it is, but some of it isn't. How are we going to get to the next stage?
[00:00:24] Jason Johnston: That is a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it?
[00:00:28] John Nash: That sounds perfect. What do you want to talk about today?
[00:00:32] Jason Johnston: We are here at OLC Innovate 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee, and yeah, we decided that maybe we'd go out and talk to some of the vendors about some of our pressing questions about online learning.
[00:00:50] John Nash: Yeah, I think going out and talking to the vendors and asking them about our chief wondering, which is, how are you helping to humanize online education, would be a good way to go.
[00:01:03] Jason Johnston: Yeah, it's a really interesting question to ask, and hopefully we don't put too many of them on the spot, but I know a few of these vendors, and I think some of them have probably some good answers because they've already been thinking about this, and they're designing towards humanizing online education.
[00:01:20] John Nash: Yeah, I've noticed that the way in which some of these vendors are pushing the message around belonging and being part of a collective is, it's becoming more prominent. And so, I wonder if the real activities are going to meet that, that, that promise.
[00:01:38] Jason Johnston: Yeah. I don't know that we'll answer all those questions today by just talking to them on the vendor floor, but at least we'll get some insight about what they think and what their main kind of focus is.
The other cool thing about being here at OLC, we've done a couple other things. We had a design thinking session on humanizing online education. We asked that question and that was a lot of fun. And so, we'll wrap that up in a couple of podcasts from now. We'll get some more insights on that.
And then we also met some other podcasters, and we had what we're calling the Super Friends crossover episode where we were able to talk to some of these other podcasters about podcasting, but also about humanizing online education and about how podcasting works in online education and for faculty and instructor development.
[00:02:28] John Nash: Yeah, that was a great conversation, and I'm really looking forward to us putting that out there because it not only covered the platform of podcasting and what role it can play, but then we really got into some good conversations just about what constitutes good online design and even instructor behavior and how you make a great experience.
[00:02:48] Jason Johnston: Yeah. Plus, they were just lots of fun to talk to, so it feels like these conversations, it just didn't feel like work. It was just interesting conversation and great to talk with them. So, I'll have that coming up, and probably that will be the next episode. And then following that, we will do a wrap up of our design thinking humanizing online education episode.
Sound good?
Yeah, that sounds really good. Yeah. For now, let's go to the vendor floor and let's talk to some of these vendors and see what they have to say.
[00:03:17] John Nash: Yeah, let's march the floor.
Floor Recording File 1 – UWill
[00:03:21] John Nash: So, um, well then tell us, uh, tell us your name and the product that you have.
[00:03:25] Vendor 1: Yeah, so my name is Kevin Koski. I'm the Director of Business Development at UWill. Um, we are an online mental health teletherapy platform.
Um, so we're a software platform. We partner with universities to connect students with licensed healthcare providers and mental health providers.
[00:03:41] John Nash: Nice. Uh, one of the things that we've been focusing on in our discussions, uh, I'm a professor at the University of Kentucky, I'm in Lexington. He's at Tennessee Knoxville.
Okay.
Um, we're both interested in online learning, but we're interested in how we might humanize online learning.
Yeah.
And so, your product seems really interesting in going in that direction.
[00:03:59] Vendor 1: Yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting. Traditionally online students don't necessarily have the access to the same level of resources and services that, you know, traditional on-campus students do. And so, um, you know, we wanted to provide online students with the same access to care for mental health as those, you know, on-campus students.
Yeah.
And so, this platform is really easy for students to register. They get to select, uh, therapists based on preferences. Um, so they could go in and select based on gender identity, ethnicity, language spoken, clinical need, and get a direct immediate connection to a licensed counselor of their choice. Um, we're really just trying to, you know, break down the barriers to care, reduce the stigma of asking for help for mental health, and, and helping students.
[00:04:42] John Nash: I've been in a position where I've been asked to refer some of my students to mental health services.
Sure.
And in our program in Kentucky, these students at the time happened to live in another state, so they couldn't avail themselves of the services that were offered by our university.
Absolutely.
[00:04:57] Vendor 1: You're addressing that. Yeah. So, we have, um, over 1,500 licensed counselors in all 50 states with worldwide coverage. And so, you're absolutely right. Um, you know, traditionally those on-campus counseling centers, they have counselors who are maybe only licensed in their state, maybe one or two others. And when students leave campus for breaks, study abroad, traveling, they don't have access to that care. Um, with access with providers in all 50 states, no matter where the student is, no matter what time of day, uh, they could access care.
Yeah.
[00:05:26] John Nash: Nice. What do you, anything you want to ask?
[00:05:28] Jason Johnston: Do you have any good swag?
[00:05:30] Vendor 1: We do. We have a hot and cold pack. You can put it in the freezer; you can put it in the microwave. Uh, we've got some fidget poppers and some leather-bound notebooks, so please feel free to take as much as you want. You'd be doing me a favor, so I don't have to take it back with me.
Thank you. Thank you for talking with us.
Yeah, that was great. Thank you. Appreciate it.
[00:05:47] John Nash: Absolutely.
Instructure
[00:05:48] John Nash: So, hey Brandon, uh, tell us your name and what your, what your product is.
[00:05:51] Vendor 2: Yeah. Hi. Uh, yeah, so my name's Brandon Ira. I'm a senior account executive with Instructure, and, uh, our product is Canvas, uh, platform, Canvas learning platform. So, we've—
[00:06:01] Unknown: Heard of—
[00:06:02] Jason Johnston: Canvas, believe—
[00:06:03] John Nash: It or not.
That's, I never heard of it. Is it—
[00:06:04] Vendor 2: New? That's, in the education industry, uh, or arena, there are a few people who have heard of Canvas before. Yeah. I recognize us.
[00:06:12] John Nash: So, the focus of our podcast and the episodes we've been doing have been asking a question about how we might humanize online education. And I'm wondering, yeah, what your thoughts are on how Canvas helps advance that and what are you guys thinking in that regard?
[00:06:28] Vendor 2: Yeah, so humanizing—a question I'm asked often from, uh, you know, administrators, faculty, LMS admins—is how can Canvas help with student success or retention? So, I think humanizing is a part of that, and one of the ways Canvas really helps with that is, uh, increasing the quality and quantity of touchpoints between students and instructors. So, we know that's a main, uh, predictor of student success, and we have the ability for students and instructors to communicate with one another, you know, via messaging. Uh, video is a big, uh, resource for us also.
[00:07:04] John Nash: So, yeah, talk to us more about touchpoints. I mean, I think you mentioned a few. Is that what you're thinking about is like channels or say—
Yeah.
From your perspective?
[00:07:11] Vendor 2: Yeah, so to me, increased touchpoints, quality and quantity. So, quantity as, you know, how often is an instructor and a student communicating.
Right.
How is an instructor able to do so, especially in an online environment, right? You're not seeing a student or a set of students regularly in the classroom. So, uh, you know, of course there's email.
Yeah.
But that's, so you could have quantity there, maybe not the quality. So, there is a video resource within Canvas that allows instructors to record messages in assignments. In our SpeedGrader, they can record. So instead of just returning, uh, a paper and saying, "Hey, this is a great first draft. Work on X, Y, and Z," they could record that. The student could respond with a recording as well. Uh, it could be just a communication, written communication. Um, so yeah, I think it's going a little deeper.
[00:08:01] John Nash: Nice. Is there anything you think a couple of veteran Canvas users should know that we probably don't or might not know?
[00:08:09] Vendor 2: So, I think one of our newest products is Canvas Credentials, which was formerly Badgr Pro. So now we have, uh, the ability to get into this, uh, digital badging and micro-credentialing space. So that's something we're really excited about, uh, you know, as we see a greater push for continuing education, so not just in undergrad or even a post-grad degree, but lifelong learning and the ability for folks of any age really to continue to learn and then share that, uh, experience, that learning experience, on a social media site or something.
[00:08:44] Unknown: Nice.
[00:08:45] John Nash: Cool.
[00:08:45] Jason Johnston: Tell me—I'm familiar with Canvas Analytics and have used it. Do you think this is a move in the direction of humanizing online education, or is it somewhat dehumanizing education online because you're looking at a lot of data points?
[00:09:02] Vendor 2: Right, so it depends on what you use the data for, right? That makes—that really determines whether or not you're humanizing or dehumanizing. So, if you boil a student down to their data points, then you're going in the opposite direction of humanization. Whereas we encourage institutions to utilize data points to support students, right? Not to categorize them, but to make them more successful.
Um, you know, and, and like, like Credentials, for example, we're digitizing their accomplishments so that they are able to share it with the wider world, right? So, it just depends on how you're using the data, but I feel like we're using the data for the benefit of students and the benefit of humanity.
So—
[00:09:53] Jason Johnston: That's great. Thank you. And you are?
Oh yeah.
[00:09:56] Vendor 3: Um, my name's Marcus Vu. I'm a solutions engineer at—
[00:09:58] Jason Johnston: Instructure. Thank you. And do you consent to be recorded and put on a—
[00:10:02] Vendor 1: Podcast?
Uh, yes, I do.
[00:10:04] Jason Johnston: Thank you, Marcus.
Thank you, Marcus.
[00:10:06] John Nash: Cool. Um, hey, last question. Do you have any good—
[00:10:09] Vendor 2: Swag? Yeah, we're out of pandas, but we do have—the bags have been really popular.
Uh—
[00:10:15] Jason Johnston: Fanny packs. We were just talking about fanny packs yesterday. Well, no strap.
[00:10:18] Unknown: They're like—
[00:10:18] Vendor 2: Little gear bags. Some people have said it's a toiletry, like a Dopp kit. I, I thought it was, yeah, like put your cords in, your competitor swag.
There you go. We have socks also.
Socks—
[00:10:30] Jason Johnston: Well, thank you very—
[00:10:30] Vendor 2: Much. Appreciate it.
Yeah, thanks. Yep. Yeah. Give us a listen.
Yeah. Yep.
Proctorio
[00:10:35] Unknown: How's it going?
[00:10:37] Vendor 2: Melissa, John, Caroline.
Hey Caroline.
[00:10:39] John Nash: Adrian. Adrian. John Nash. Uh, Jason Johnston. Jason and I co-host the podcast Online Learning in the Second Half. And, uh, we are wondering if we could ask you a couple of questions for our podcast. Nothing heavy, swear to God. You don't have to call a VP or anything like that.
[00:10:54] Unknown: A couple of questions?
Sure—
[00:10:54] Vendor 5: Sure, sure.
[00:10:55] Vendor 4: We'll answer as best—
[00:10:57] Unknown: We can.
[00:10:58] John Nash: So, um, well, yeah, what's your name and what do you do and what's your product?
[00:11:03] Vendor 5: I'm Melissa Deweese. I'm the Director of AI Ethics at Proctorio, and we have an online proctoring solution.
[00:11:08] Vendor 4: Nice.
[00:11:09] John Nash: Yes. So, the focus of Jason's and my podcast is to think about the question of how we might humanize online learning.
Mm-hmm.
And we're talking to people on the floor today, asking about how their work is moving us all in that direction. How would you take that question to think about how, um, your product is helping humanize online ed?
[00:11:32] Vendor 5: That's a tough question. Well, our product—humanizing online ed? Well, I, ours is more of accessibility accommodation.
Mm-hmm.
So, like, we actually give, uh, access to people that wouldn't have access to online learning in like remote areas.
Yeah.
So, I think that would help with people being brought together, getting education. They can also collaborate on our, on our site too, if they have like work products or projects together. So, I think that helps humanize, like they have the interaction, they have the accessibility, they have, they can relax in their own environment. So, I believe that's helpful.
[00:12:03] John Nash: So, I'm a professor and I teach online and run a program, but you're over—
Um, he's Director of Online Learning and course production, but yeah. Do you have a—
[00:12:13] Jason Johnston: I just, uh, I just really want to know what kind of swag you have. That's why I'm here today.
[00:12:17] Vendor 3: Uh—
[00:12:18] Vendor 5: You're out. You're out. We have Proctorios, which are Cheerios, but they're Proctorio. They're—
[00:12:24] Vendor 3: Actual—they're cereals. They're a cereal. Yes, they're cereal.
That's pretty—
[00:12:27] Unknown: Fun. That's pretty clever.
[00:12:29] Jason Johnston: Yes. That's great. Well, we'll, uh, if you don't mind, I'll, I'll take these back. We'll, uh—
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, buddy. I, my kids are big cereal people, so, you know, we'll, we'll let you know how, what they think. So, thank you so much.
[00:12:41] John Nash: Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you so much.
You're welcome. Thank you.
Brightspace
[00:12:52] Unknown: Are we here to see Brightspace? How are we here?
[00:12:59] Unknown: Um, I thought we were here to see D2L.
D2L—
[00:13:01] Vendor 4: D2L is the overarching company, our LMS. Brightspace.
Oh—
[00:13:06] John Nash: Gotcha. I'm John Nash, University of Kentucky.
[00:13:08] Harmonize 1: I'm Jason Johnston, University of Tennessee.
[00:13:10] John Nash: John. And we also do a podcast called Online Learning in the Second Half, and we're walking the floor with a mobile unit. And just wanted to see if you'd be all—if we ask—
[00:13:23] Vendor 4: Softball questions?
Yeah, absolutely. So, on top of working at D2L, I also have a, uh, digital media agency that me and other colleagues run. So, I'm very connected to this. So, this is, this is the kind of stuff we want. So, talk—
[00:13:36] Jason Johnston: That's super smart. I mean, as you know, podcasting is huge right now.
[00:13:40] Vendor 4: D2L podcasts. Well, uh, it's a teaching and learning podcast that we've started creating. Uh, one of our CAOs, um, uh, Kristine Ford, she's leading the charge, and it's all about thought leadership. It's not talking about D2L, not talking about Brightspace—well, D2L—but not talking about Brightspace platform functionality. It's about what does the educational world need right now. What is the state of the market, what is the state of the student experience? So, like, they're talking, they're talking about all that. And then we have K–12, higher ed, corporate. A whole bunch of variety of use cases.
[00:14:15] Jason Johnston: That's great. What's the podcast called?
[00:14:16] Vendor 4: So, it's called the Teaching and Learning Studio, where you can easily access that. You don't have to be a Brightspace user, you don't have to be anything but someone who is a lifelong learner and interested in education, and you're going to start engaging with really cool content and really cool people doing exciting things.
[00:14:36] John Nash: So yeah, tell us your name and what do you do?
[00:14:38] Vendor 4: Uh, so my name is Justin Mullin. I'm a solutions engineer, and essentially what I do is learn everything I can about institutions who are working through evaluations and like working through various competitors, taking those use cases, learning everything possible about what you need, why you need it, and then showing you how we can bring those solutions to your institution. So not just being like, here's a demo of why, why we're so great. Here's a demo of like all the people who use our product and, and we've had market share and things like that. It's about what you need, actually hearing people in that experience.
Yeah.
Yeah. So, so that's, that's my role, is to bring that to life. We also have that on the client side as well. So, once you get over the line, you still have that solutions, that technical support.
[00:15:27] John Nash: So, one of the overarching wonderings that Jason and I have on our podcast is, uh, how might we humanize online education more so than we are at now? I mean, some of it's really good. We've got a long way to go in others. Where do you see D2L and Brightspace in this, in this space around trying to humanize online ed?
[00:15:48] Vendor 4: Yeah, so the way to start that is, I think, gamification and actually getting really creative. So, we had a session yesterday, uh, called The Great Escape, where actually one of our clients built an escape room within Brightspace using our release conditions and learning paths so that you can actually have this really exciting experience, but also like an escape room in an LMS.
Sorry, what?
But that's how creative you can get with these items and, and, and bringing gamification into the platform. So, there's, there's tons of options for building that engagement, bringing it to the real world. Video capability also within Brightspace, making it a native capability so that you always have access to providing, you know, if on feedback, you're providing student feedback, you can add videos as well. I'm not a person who enjoys text, but we provide that option to be able to create, you know, video notes and templated feedback. Um, we have, you know, virtual assignments, virtual classroom. So that's one of the ways where we're bringing people, trying to engage them in the platform, but also make sure that it happens entirely within Brightspace. So, we're a mobile responsive platform, which means that as long as you have access to a browser and an access to internet connection, you can access Brightspace, without any loss of feature functionality. It's all about making sure students have access to their learning consistently.
Nice,
[00:17:09] John Nash: Nice. Anything on your side?
[00:17:11] Jason Johnston: You know, my biggest question really, and this is a hard one, so I hope, I hope you're ready for it.
Okay.
Um, what kind of swag do you have to give away here on the floor?
[00:17:21] Vendor 4: We are a Canadian company, which means for our swag we have moose. So, I'm going to step away from this podcast for a moment. I'm going to go grab you guys a couple moose.
Ah, moose. That's exactly, exactly. So, I'm going to—
[00:17:36] Unknown: Slip into this cupboard, get you guys a couple.
[00:17:38] Jason Johnston: Oh wow. I happen to be a Canadian as well.
[00:17:40] Vendor 4: You happen to be a Canadian as well?
[00:17:43] Unknown: Where are you from?
[00:17:45] Vendor 2: Uh, west side of Toronto.
[00:17:45] Vendor 4: No way. I was actually, uh, born and raised in Brampton.
Oh yeah, from Brampton. Well—
[00:17:52] Unknown: Oh, come on. This is, this is wild. Um, we're in Tennessee and we're bonding over the GTA. Yeah, that's funny.
File 2 – PowerNotes
[00:17:58] John Nash: Hi. Um, well, tell us who you are and what you do.
Sure, sure.
[00:18:03] Vendor 6: So, I'm Brett Peterson. I'm the Product Manager for PowerNotes. Uh, so we're, we're research and writing and academic integrity suite of tools. So, we let students capture information on websites, anything in the browser, so websites, PDFs, ebooks, whatever. You highlight text that you want to capture, we generate a citation for it, take the quote and the citation. You save that to an outline. You can take notes about it. You can add your own freeform notes. All of which means that right at the point of capture in your research process, you're already starting to form schema for your final output, right? So, we're supporting, kind of subtly supporting, a really solid research process under the hood.
Um, but also because we're a software company, every time you save something in our database—like we're a cloud-based tool, right? —so every time you save something, we know who saved it and where and when. So, when ChatGPT came out, and we said—everybody got very interested in AI detection—we said, well, wait a second. We don't need to detect AI. We can just show the work right here. Here's all the research I've done. Here are my notes about it. Here are the notes and research turned into cogent thought, and then here's that cogent thought turned into a paper. And here's how that final paper reflects back on my research. And so, if there's an academic integrity question, we can just say like, here's all the evidence for or against, right? Like, hey, here's nine-tenths of your paper totally matches up to you, your research. And then there's five pages at the end that was turned in at two minutes before the deadline, um, that has nothing to do with your research. We're going to throw a red flag on that one. Right. So that's, that's kind of what we do. Me personally, I'm a former entrepreneur and now working with a different—with a startup for somebody else's—which is wonderful, um, as a product manager and, and loving it here. I've been here for all of a year.
[00:19:29] John Nash: Yeah. Nice. So, the sort of overarching wondering that Jason and I are chasing on the podcast is, how might we humanize online education?
Yeah.
What do you think about that vis-à-vis PowerNotes?
[00:19:43] Vendor 6: Great question. Yeah. Couple of things. I think part of it, I mean, humanizing anything requires more human involvement, right? And so, with PowerNotes, um, I would say we would emphasize our collaboration tools. So, sharing group projects. I mentioned we keep track of everything. Well, we expose that to teachers. And so, you can say for a group project, for example—bane of those is that one person there carries the whole group, or one person slacks off and the rest of the group carries them, right. Doesn't happen anymore because we can show who added what to the outline and when, who did the research and when. It's all—the process is transparent.
Right.
And so, I think that's actually part of humanizing things, is if you focus on the output, then whatever happens to get there is by definition not what's being focused on. Right. And so, there's all kinds of shortcuts or cheats or—let's take that out of like hyper-emotional language—but like, negative paths people can take to get there, right? Of which somebody carrying the group or somebody slacking off are one, are two small examples, right. But the focus on the process: are we working together in a group? Am I as a student learning something about my research and is my professor looking at that? Right? If I'm scoring the process rather than the products, there's a whole, much more opportunity for interaction between the teacher and the students, the students with each other, even the students with the, engaging with the, the information there, they're doing, right. If we're process focused and rewarding process, then we're promoting better, I will say, more humane behavior in education. If we're really focused on products, you might get that, but you have a lot less guarantee.
[00:21:12] John Nash: So, I was listening to the EdUp AI podcast last week. And your CEO or your founder was on there.
Yeah, Wilson.
Yeah, Wilson, that's it. And I have to admit, I was really impressed because, uh, well, it wasn't even thinly veiled. I mean, you guys are a Turnitin disruptor and, what's the guy in Toronto that's got the AI detection?
Oh—
[00:21:37] Vendor 6: GPTZero. That guy.
Yeah.
[00:21:39] John Nash: Yeah. You're, you're that-guy-buster.
Yeah.
And, and which I think is fine actually. Um, and, and, but the podcast really helped me reframe what I feel as a, like a dissertation advisor about the importance of what it means to be able to express yourself clearly in writing. And I think, what Wilson said on there almost made me do a 180 now because he said something to the effect of, why do we let the words get in the way of the ideas?
Yes.
And that what ChatGPT and the large language models are doing are allowing us to have more interesting conversations about ideas and then go ahead and get them expressed. And what your tool is doing is showing the thinking along the way. And I think that's kind of impressive.
[00:22:20] Vendor 6: Thank you. Thank you completely. Thank you. That's very high compliment actually. I appreciate that. There was—I was at the Academic Integrity Conference in Indianapolis about a month ago for the International Center for Academic Integrity. Great group. Really had a wonderful time there. And I was at one of the presentations on AI, and there was a professor from Canada who, who brought up a similar point. She said, as professors we, we have historically focused on generating beautiful words, creating beautiful prose. But with AI, that's no longer important, right? Like creating beautiful words is, is trivial. And so how do we, how do we move past that? I think you're, you've hit the nail on the head, right. Let's move to the ideas, right?
Yeah,
[00:22:52] John Nash: Yeah. Well, I'm stealing Wilson's ideas. So, uh, at 9:38 this morning, the University of Kentucky sent a note to all faculty about upholding academic integrity and ensuring fairness, semicolon, AI detection.
Oh goodness.
And the University of Kentucky is a Turnitin customer, and they have put AI detection into these systems of theirs. Uh, and we don't confidently know much about the accuracy of AI writing detectors at this point.
Oh goodness.
And so, yeah, this is, it's really getting interesting now, and that's why we're interested in talking to people with tools like yours.
[00:23:30] Vendor 6: Well, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Because we were already capturing what was happening, the process, right. Because we're already capturing the process, we, we made this shift in academic integrity when Chat came out. And, and I think, I don't want to repeat myself too much, but I think that's—there's really a paradigm shift in this adversarial—from this adversarial "I gotcha after you turn it in" kind of thing, right. Turnitin's a great company with some great people and great engineers. I talked to them at the academic conference. I don't need to bash them. I don't like their paradigm, right. The paradigm is very reactive and very punitive, frankly, right. Let me, let me get you, right. And I'd much rather have that be preventative and have it be focused on process where we say, if, if you're seeing a student and they're pulling things into their outline and they're not citing it appropriately—which is hard to do with our software anyway, for the record, I don't call that; we try to make that difficult to start with—but if they're paraphrasing badly or if they're, they're not transforming things well enough, our insight into the process lets you see that in advance. So, if, if you're, if you need to be that involved with a student who is, who's on probation, for example, right, and you're trying to teach somebody and they're really not getting it. There's a difference with bad actors, right. We have a bad actor who willingly and knowingly is, is, is cheating and, and committing fraud. That's a different story. But nine times out of 10, that's not what's happening in academic integrity. It's much more likely that the student is screwing up and trying to learn. Let's do that before the term paper's turned in, right? Let's look at that in, in flight, right. And then the other part is, I heard at the Academic Integrity Conference was, I mean, in Florida, students are legally allowed to have a lawyer now on any academic integrity investigation, right. So, right. Which means, which then turns schools into courtrooms.
Right.
Which is, I mean, I didn't really sign up for ed tech to become a lawyer, right. Wilson's a lawyer and he's great. I'm not, and I wouldn't be, right. So, so just let's take that whole equation out. Let's have a different paradigm where we say, here's the evidence, here's the evidence of learning. And if we focus on the process—I mean, I'm going to be a little bold here—if I show, if I see a student has a really good learning process all the way through from research to conclusion, I don't really care if three sentences came out of ChatGPT, right. If I see a—but if I see a student who comes up with this beautiful prose that has nothing behind it, I have no idea if learning has happened or not. And so, it's that, it's that shift, right. Like, on the detector side, speaking of that specifically, um, I always have to—I smile and wince a little bit when I see detectors because one of the ways you train machine learning models, which all the AI tools are among that group, right, is they're called adversarial models. So, you have one model that says, hey, generate this thing. Another model says, hey, can you tell if that was generated or not? Turnitin and other detectors are literally doing that for all of ChatGPT, any large language model, right. So, they literally—those two models then square off against each other and get better and better and better. And you always have this arms race that's now, it's fantastic for the AI tools because they get free training for their tools. They say, okay, spin it up against Turnitin and see if it passes, right. I mean, cool for the world, I guess, in terms of technology, but that's a mess. I don't want to get into that, that arms race, right, that battle.
[00:26:36] John Nash: Really cool. I think, uh, you have the most important question—
[00:26:38] Vendor 6: Of all.
Yeah. This one's a toughie.
Okay.
You ready for this one?
Please.
Um, what kind of good swag do you have here at your booth?
Ah, so we are short in the swag department, except that I—our swag is immediate gratification. So, I happen to have two pieces of chocolate left for the two of you, so I'll pass that to you.
Not bad after lunch.
Yeah, yeah, after a lunch mint.
[00:26:57] John Nash: Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Hope you'll check us out.
Yeah.
So, Online Learning podcast.
[00:27:01] Vendor 6: Gladly. Thank you very much. Can I get you guys both cards?
Yeah, please.
Thank you.
File 3 – Harmonize
[00:27:06] Jason Johnston: So, you're okay with being on the podcast?
[00:27:12] Harmonize 1: Absolutely.
Okay.
Thrilled to be on the podcast.
That's good. Well, you want to start?
[00:27:16] John Nash: Yeah, sure. So, uh, well first tell us your name—
[00:27:19] Harmonize 1: And what you do. I'm Alan Manley and I'm the Director of Sales at Harmonize.
[00:27:23] John Nash: And what's Harmonize do?
[00:27:24] Harmonize 1: Well, Harmonize is a course discussion and collaboration platform that you can integrate with your learning management system in order to promote better student engagement. So instead of the boring discussions you get by default in Canvas, Blackboard, whatever the LMS is, with Harmonize you get a more social media-like interface with the ability to set multiple due dates for a discussion, integration with Turnitin for ChatGPT and plagiarism detection. A lot of cool features.
[00:27:53] John Nash: Cool features. Um, so one of the overarching wonderings that Jason and I have on the podcast is this idea of how we might, how might we humanize online education. Where do you think that fits with what Harmonize wants to—
[00:28:09] Harmonize 1: Achieve? Yeah, absolutely. I think in online education, it's very easy to feel disconnected, to feel siloed, like you're all alone there. And I think especially, you know, if you're an online student, you're in an online course and all you see is a bunch of written text people are writing, but nobody's really communicating with you. When it comes to building course communities, having students do things like creating videos—in simplest way to do it, first week of the semester, introduction to the course, introduce yourself, create a video. Everybody gets to actually know each other personally. And especially, I think, the onus of responsibility is more so even on the instructor. If you're an instructor and you're teaching an online course, first week of the semester, create a video of yourself. Let people know that—don't let them know necessarily where you got your PhD from, but like, what are your interests? Like, what are your hobbies? And I think that helps like everybody to feel more comfortable and you feel that community and like you're actually a part of something.
[00:29:13] John Nash: Really good. Do you have anything you want to ask?
[00:29:15] Jason Johnston: So, what do you think is unique about Harmonize that helps to achieve some of those—
[00:29:20] Harmonize 1: Goals? Yeah, so when it comes to Harmonize, what we know from students is that students today use social media.
Okay.
So, they are used to a specific form of platform, uh, a kind of platform for communication. And what you see in the learning management system, in the discussions, doesn't really mimic what they're doing in their everyday lives when it comes to social media. So, when you have a platform like Harmonize that can—you know, you paste a link and you get that preview, that picture. Uh, you click one button to create a video. Uh, you create a poll with one button. Um, being able to have that more social media look and feel really separates Harmonize from, from some of the competition, from some of the rest of the tools you'll get out there. Um, it's a great collaboration tool, and for instructors as well. I mean, the ease of grading, we get compliments all the time. I mean, we were, we were in a presentation yesterday with the University of Tennessee–Martin. He said he saves two-thirds of his grading time using Harmonize because with Harmonize, you don't have to manually check: did they, did I do—I think they used ChatGPT here. Do I—do I think they plagiarized? Now you get all that built in. Um, you can see that they're actually meeting their milestones. You know, they're getting their posts done by Wednesday, then coming in and making their comments later on in the week. So, it's both from an instructor and student side. There's just a lot of benefits that I think really help.
[00:30:52] Jason Johnston: Thank you. All right. My final question is, uh, really important.
Okay.
This is the key to a lot of the ways we are evaluating people all day long, right? When it comes down to it on the podcast, whether or not they make it on the podcast. Uh, what kind of good swag do you have at your booth—
[00:31:06] Harmonize 1: Today? Well, uh, most of the swag has been taken, but, uh, I will tell you our most popular item by far was a, was a charging—one of those charging ports where you, where you hook up the USB, and there are three different charger types, whether you use an iPhone, whether you use an Android, whatever it is, you know, you got your charger. But unfortunately, we ran out of those pretty early on. Real hot-button item. We do have a couple of breath mints.
Uh—
[00:31:31] Jason Johnston: Um, are you trying to say something, Alan? I'm going to take a step back here.
[00:31:35] Harmonize 1: Oh, no, no, no, no. Just, uh, just pointing out the swag.
[00:31:39] Jason Johnston: Breath mints are always good. I'm in. Okay. We'll take them. We'll take them.
Thanks so much, Alan.
Thank y'all.
Inscribe
[00:31:44] John Nash: So, oh, well, tell us who you are and what you do.
[00:31:47] Vendor 7: Uh, my name is Katie Kapler. I am co-founder and CEO at Inscribe, and we are a virtual community platform. We create online spaces to connect students with peers, faculty and staff so they have a place to turn anytime they need help, they need advice, or they just want to connect with other human beings.
Nice.
[00:32:05] Harmonize 1: Well said too.
[00:32:07] Vendor 7: Thank you. Oh, it's like I've been saying it a few times today.
[00:32:10] John Nash: I know. Well, I, I, I listened to—speaking of podcasts and—well, but I listen and watch a lot of Chris Do. I don't know if you, you know, he's a, he's a sort of a business guru for creatives—he's a—and so, but, and he's been talking a lot about how creatives really need to get their taglines together and what they do, and be clear and, uh, I've been talking simplify, simplify, simplify. And so yeah, that was very, very—
Yeah.
That's awesome. I get what you do. Um, so one of the overarching wonderings that Jason and I have as we march through our podcast is how might we humanize online ed?
Oh wow.
How do you think Inscribe walks that line, uh, and helps us humanize online ed?
[00:32:51] Vendor 7: It's like you wrote that question just for me. I love it. Well, so one of the things that is true about online is it can be a very isolating experience, and I actually think that one of the misconceptions around online and non-traditional students that has been pervasive for many years is that they don't need, they don't want, and they don't care about connection with other students in their online learning. The reality is that could not be further from the truth. Not only do they crave it, but it actually is also demonstrated that when you have peer connection and you have better relationships among your peers, you are more likely to be successful and persist in both the short and long term. So that is very much what we're all about. We want to say to students, outside of what you're prescribed to do in your class, or what you're told to do in group projects, how do we create spaces for you to create, to connect in a very authentic way, especially with fellow students in your program?
Nice.
[00:33:44] John Nash: And so, what do, what do those connections look like in their, in their best form?
Yes.
[00:33:49] Vendor 7: So, they're varied. Um, so certainly some of those connections are social in nature. So, um, sharing where you're from, talking about the pets that you have at home, um, and those sort of social connections often spill over into things like, you know, I haven't been back to school in 20 years. I haven't done math in 30 years, and all the anxieties that come out. When you create spaces for students to talk to each other, it is beautiful, the vulnerability that they're willing to bring to these locations and the ways in which their fellow students jump in to support them and help them. The flip side of that is a lot of the connections are also very just practical and tactical, like, when is this assignment due? Or how do I turn it in? Or does anybody get what's going on in homework number four? And certainly, you can get answers about those things from faculty or other individuals, but there's something about getting that answer from a fellow student. They speak the same language as you. They might reinforce that they also were struggling with that. And so, when you, when you have the ability to see what other students are struggling with or dealing with, that also, you know, it gets at things like imposter syndrome and lack of confidence, which frankly are very pervasive in the non-traditional student population.
Yeah. Cool.
[00:35:06] John Nash: Um, you know, I'm thinking about as you're describing this, uh, in, uh, I'm a Director of Graduate Studies in a program that is an all-online doctoral program, um, standing next to one of the graduates of this program. And, uh, we, uh, because it's all online and people are far-flung, we accidentally sort of found out that it was important for the students to have what we call now just as a backchannel. And we don't force it. We just say, make a backchannel. We don't care how you do it or what platform you use. And as you were describing these, these connections, it sounds a lot like what they're doing in this thing we call the backchannel. Um, and so I'm wondering, to you Jason now, as you were a doctoral student who had a backchannel. What was your platform, by the way? Do you—what'd you guys?
[00:36:08] Jason Johnston: Uh, we used Voxer.
Yeah.
That was—we were the weird ones. They, they went on to Voxer. Some were on Telegram. They all started on Google Chat. I mean, just, they all went somewhere. Discord, right?
Yeah.
Nobody was running Discord yet, but, um, but did it do that? Did it do what, what, um, can you—
[00:36:12] John Nash: Describe it?
[00:36:12] Jason Johnston: Yeah, I would say it did in, in a lot of ways without—
[00:36:25] John Nash: Without any effort on our part to say, you guys must do this, because we just, we just crossed our fingers. We do know that we need to be out of this. We are not here. We'll never go see it. And then sometimes we saw the memes they made about us.
[00:36:48] Jason Johnston: We were very careful about not letting any professors into our—although we were positive for the most part. It was not a griping session because of our experience, because we were all having a positive experience. But it was also a confusing experience. And so, there was a lot of trying to understand what's going on and is so-and-so ghosting me sometimes? Is, you know, what are we supposed to do next? Those kind of things were happening a lot—
[00:36:48] John Nash: In that backchannel.
I wonder now though, this is great that you have this, because I guess we're lucky that we said you guys should have a backchannel and then it just sort of worked as the culture. Because I think each successive cohort comes in and goes—they'll go, the old ones are saying to the new ones, what’s your backchannel going to be? And so, but if we didn't, I could see us maybe thinking about doing this, or I'm saying, should we do Inscribe now, or would we do damage to a little weird cultural thing we've got now, which is this vibe we have, which is like, you guys going to make your backchannel.
[00:37:16] Jason Johnston: But some of the advantage we had is that it was a leadership program, educational leadership program. And so, the, we had a few of us that were pretty, pretty familiar with getting something started and trying to get people to adopt something for the positive of good outcome of a group. And so, we kind of took that in upon ourselves. I am thinking about lots of spaces where people just don't have that yet.
Right.
And, and so if you all had—I mean, that's all the facilitation you did, and you weren't checking up on us to see if it was still going on two years later. And it was. Um, and it is still now actually, but not on Voxer. We've moved on to other platforms. Um, and so if you're trying to really make sure something happens, I think that there's some, uh, instructor and administrative leadership that, that probably would need to take place to, to ensure that it's—
[00:38:10] Vendor 7: Happening. Well, and I think, um, I mean, to your point, you're in a graduate program. It's probably a somewhat smaller program. Um, a lot of the work we do—we work with graduate students. We also do a lot of work with undergraduate level, and what we found is they are, they're going to Discord, they're creating sometimes these side spaces. Sometimes they're more gripe sessions than anything else. Um, but they tend to be a little exclusive. So, when you're working with a bigger population, not everybody's welcomed into that space. Not everybody else is invited. So, it's good to have a place that everyone has access to. Um, depending on the type of community that's being built, sometimes faculty or administration are more or less active, but even still, the insights that they gain by being in those spaces and seeing what students are talking about and worrying about, I think, is invaluable to them as well. And sometimes if these spaces exclude them, you don't get the benefit of that learning.
Yeah.
[00:39:02] John Nash: I'm glancing over here at your banner, but I see—I'm a DGS, and so I think, you know, enrollment—if, if there's crossover. So the, the good things that occur when a student cohort can get to know each other online and build a community, but then there's the, just the, just enough appropriate crossover where the DGS or the undergraduate studies director can facilitate an academic problem or an enrollment issue or can get a word out because nobody's reading email, but I know you guys are on your community and you're—is that, am I feeling that's kind of what's going on here?
[00:39:33] Vendor 7: A hundred percent. And sometimes students do want the voice of, um, authority, I guess, for lack of a better term. Like they want to know that this is the official and the sanctioned answer. And sometimes there are issues that get raised that students can't resolve on their own. So having that cross-pollination of leadership and peer and student-driven, um, is really what makes them, I think, ultimately thrive in all those different areas.
Nice.
[00:39:56] John Nash: Cool. I think Jason has the hardest question of all.
Okay.
You—
[00:39:59] Jason Johnston: Ready for this one? What kind of swag do you—
[00:40:02] Vendor 7: Have? At our booth today, we have—so we all have young kids—fidgets, mini-Rubik’s cubes, pens, stickers. So, we are like the favorite of grandparents and, um, families with young children. We'll have to dig some up for you so you can take them home.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Absolutely. Thank you, guys. Great to talk to you.
Studio Ending
[00:40:25] John Nash: Wow. Jason, that was amazing. I learned a lot about what's out there now in the market.
[00:40:32] Jason Johnston: Yeah, it was pretty cool. I think I would say I was pleasantly surprised by the speed of some of the answers. You could tell people have been thinking about some of this, and that they obviously have aspects of their products that are really tuned towards humanizing education.
[00:40:50] John Nash: Yeah. Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised how many of these folks are really starting to think about how their products come off in the space of belonging and creating community and mental health, for instance, specifically with UWill. I wasn't familiar with them before we talked to them, and I was pretty impressed with the way they're thinking things through.
[00:41:13] Jason Johnston: Yeah. Yeah, that was interesting. And it's that other level of humanizing online education, right? Because we, I think you and I, think about the classroom often. So, we think about how we are going to humanize our assessments in our, our learning modules, in our interactions, and create more teacher presence and more student interaction, all those kinds of things within the classroom kind of structure. And really, they're thinking about there's a larger piece to online learning that has to do with your mental health and your, your, your own personal wellbeing. That if somebody's not doing well, then it's going to be really difficult for them to learn online.
[00:41:55] John Nash: Yeah, a really good point about how the level of sort of abstraction away from the classroom moves, but still there have to be these infrastructure pieces that on-campus programs have but may not be available to programs that are seeing students from around the country or around the world. As we discussed with them there, there are state-level regulations related to how therapy can occur, and so it can be a block for on-campus services if you live out of state.
[00:42:25] Jason Johnston: Yeah. Yeah. So, it's good that they're thinking about it, and I think institutions are thinking about that right now. And as well, we talked to a couple of larger LMS vendors there, so that was interesting. And then a few other vendors that are more trying to personalize the online space as an add-on to the LMS or as separate from the LMS. And, and then one that was looking at proctoring solutions in terms of, of working with students in terms of assessments. And so, I felt like we got a pretty good kind of smattering, if you will, of, of different kinds of solutions in the space.
[00:43:02] John Nash: Yeah. One thing that struck me after we walked the floor is, as a faculty member, how out of touch I am with the bigger decisions that get made about selecting an LMS. We've been using Canvas for a very long time at my institution, and I didn't have a huge role in deciding that we went to Canvas. But I had—so, for example, my—I raised a few eyebrows amongst my instructional design friends down there that I made in Nashville when I told them I'd never heard of D2L until I saw—
Right.
The booth.
Who are these guys? And getting to talk to them was cool. And to understand that there are other players—I mean, I can remember when Instructure was the Blackboard killer. They were setting up tents at the Blackboard convention and they were, right. And now I think they're a little long in the tooth, and now new—there are new folks coming on board that are trying to be the Canvas killers because there are still features that could come along to make Canvas better. And whether or not Canvas gets on board with that remains to be seen.
[00:44:04] Jason Johnston: Yeah. And I don't know if you have seen this in terms of adopting technology, and we've talked about this in past podcasts, is that in some ways, technology is always set up to disappoint us. It never quite fulfills all the features that it promises. And so, as we get into it, we start looking over the fence at what grass is greener on the other side. And so, it feels like with even some of these larger aspects of online learning, the LMS, they go through seasons. They have the honeymoon stage, and everything seems great, and then they plateau and things get a little, maybe just a little stale, right. And then they start looking over that fence at, at maybe some of these other solutions. And yeah, I wonder how that will go for companies like Canvas and others as, as this feels like there's always a room for upstarts to, to come along.
[00:44:59] John Nash: Yeah, I think you're right. And one thing that drove this home for me was our conversation with Instructure when they said that they had incorporated badging now into the main mothership of the Canvas LMS. There are so many different plugins, and I wonder if they're going to start to think about where the most popular ones are and then just buy those and bring them into their infrastructure. Yeah, badging seems very interesting to me. I've been in three or four semi-serious conversations at either the department or even the college and university level about badging at our institution. And they all went nowhere because it was just a little too complicated and we weren't sure which platform to use. And then, so I think bringing these sorts of things in. So, I wonder what's the next feature that they'll bring in that seems popular?
[00:45:47] Jason Johnston: Yeah. We know the feature that is popular right now, but we didn't see much of there, which is AI. We've been talking about a lot. I think, I think given that this is happening in, in April, I think many of these companies—I think many of the upstart companies aren't quite there yet to have established a space on this floor. And so, we didn't really see a lot of AI solutions, like solutions that were mainly more productive learning AI solutions that, this is what we do. We did see a couple solutions that are incorporating AI now, and they were advertising that.
[00:46:24] John Nash: Yeah, I think we saw a couple of the vendors talk about the way in which they were going to help institutions and instructors detect the use of AI in student work, and we saw one vendor in particular that was interested in thinking about how AI can be a helper in the process of showing work. And I think that those were opposite spectrums. You can hear it in the way the PowerNotes representative talks about how detecting AI as a gotcha policy is not part of their regimen, that they want to help instructors figure out how AI can be part of a learning process and that students can show their work versus Proctorio, let's say, or even, I think, was it Harmonize a little bit?
Yeah.
We’re plugging in things to let teachers catch people using AI under the presumption that AI is bad.
[00:47:22] Jason Johnston: Yeah. Yeah, it was interesting. Those were some interesting conversations that we got into, I think pretty quickly with some of these vendors. It was interesting. The really, the other part of our findings was really important, which was the swag—
[00:47:34] John Nash: The most important question of all.
[00:47:37] Jason Johnston: Yeah. To see what kind of swag. And so, we got—some of the things we got: breath mints, a cold pack, fuzzy moose, fidget popper. We got a little non-fanny pack. We thought it was a fanny pack, but it was like a—
[00:47:50] John Nash: I think it's a little gear bag.
[00:47:51] Jason Johnston: A little gear bag, yeah. Got some socks, and we got—from Proctorio, they had created these little mini boxes of cereal that were cute, called Proctorios.
That was funny.
Yeah, it was funny. A couple candies from people that had left candies, and a pen, I think, from people that had run out of swag by this point in the conference. But we—so we are talking about all these different companies. We are not receiving payment from any of these companies, so—
[00:48:38] John Nash: Absolutely not.
[00:48:38] Jason Johnston: Is that clear? So, we try to keep a clear, a distant third-party kind of view of these companies so we can be critically—critically assess what they're doing. However, we did get swag from some of these companies, and so we do have to put that out there. Small swag, nothing like AirPod Pros or anything like that.
[00:48:56] John Nash: No. Tiny swag, like knockoff brand York Peppermint Patties, not real York Peppermint Patties.
[00:49:21] Jason Johnston: Exactly. So, nothing that could really sway us too much in one direction or another. But what do you think, what were your—what's your top swag marks for the conference?
[00:48:56] John Nash: I have to be truthful. The plushy moose from D2L is my winner. It's cute and super soft. And I, yeah, I like that one. Although the fidget poppers, I think, might be interesting to my slightly post-adolescent children. I didn't quite get it, but it's like having bubble pop, but you just turn it over and push all the bubbles down, made out of silicone.
[00:49:21] Jason Johnston: Yeah.
[00:49:21] John Nash: What about you?
[00:49:21] Jason Johnston: Yeah, again, I think moose got the top picks. One, it was really cute. My daughter, though, she's a teenager, appreciated it and, and also just had a great conversation. It was hard not to appreciate this from, uh, from growing up in Canada and getting to talk to somebody who sounds like lived just, just a few minutes down the street from where I grew up and having that Canadian moment and with the moose connection. So, it was hard to beat. Although the breath mints were, after talking to a bunch of people on the floor, the breath mints were very helpful. A very practical gift at the conference, I believe.
[00:49:59] John Nash: I agree. And they came in a super thin, credit-card-sized container to dispense them, which took me a minute to figure out how to open. You have to break down the side corner. But it would fit inside my little everyday carry pouch where I have other little thin things. So that was handy.
Yeah.
[00:50:17] Jason Johnston: Super easy. And I believe those were from Harmonize. Am I right on that?
[00:50:21] John Nash: I think, yes. Yes, they were. Yeah.
[00:50:24] Jason Johnston: Yeah. So that's good. That's our wrap up. Anything else to say about OLC vendors or some of the ed tech space—
[00:50:32] John Nash: People? I think I would love to hear the reaction of our listeners to what the vendors had to say. I don't think that our question is the one that they get every day, and I think they handled it pretty well all around.
Yeah.
But I'm wondering if they hear anything between the lines or anything that we missed, or questions they wish that we had asked. Because this is a big part of where online learning is going. There's always going to be big packages, big systems that universities are going to buy, and it's going to be based upon the, the ratings and beliefs of the faculty and instructional designers that, that use these things and walk these floors. So yeah, tell us what you heard in this. I'd love to know.
[00:51:12] Jason Johnston: Absolutely. And onlinelearningpodcast.com, you can find all of our podcasts there as well as links to our LinkedIn page, Online Learning podcast, LinkedIn group. You can find this podcast posted there and comment below. You can always hit us up as well on LinkedIn. If you have any questions or other comments or if there are other things that you think we should be talking about, feel free to send us a message.
[00:51:37] John Nash: Yeah, definitely. Cool. Jason, it's been fun walking the floor with you.
[00:51:41] Jason Johnston: Yeah, this was good, John. My, my feet are tired, but my heart is full. How about you?
[00:51:47] John Nash: Yeah, that's it exactly. You captured it.
[00:51:51] Jason Johnston: That's good. Good talking to you.
[00:51:52] John Nash: Yep. Talk to you later.
Bye.