In EP 34, John and Jason discuss with Dr. Judith Boettcher the evolution of online learning, the importance of instructional design, and the centrality of student engagement. The conversation also touches on project-based learning, AI's impact on education, and the critical role of teacher-as-mentor. Tune in for an insightful discussion on making online learning more effective, human, and future-ready. See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com Join Our LinkedIn Group - *Online Learning Podcast (Also feel free to connect with John and Jason at LinkedIn too)* Learn more about Dr. Judith Boettcher on her website: http://designingforlearning.info/about-dr-boettcher/ Resources: PLATO Computer System Judith’s Website Judith’s book: Online Teaching Survival Guide (2021) Jason’s other top Online Teaching Books Michelle Miller “Minds Online” Flower Darby - “Small Teaching Online” Catherine Denial “Pedagogy of kindness” Judith’s article: Student-Centered Learning in Dewey’s Holodeck – It Doesn’t Get Any Better than This—Now! IHE article - The Absurdity of Asynchrony Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License. Transcript We use a combination of computer-generated transcriptions and human editing. Please check with the recorded file before quoting anything. Please check with us if you have any questions or can help with any corrections! [00:00:00] Jason: Today is a fulfillment of a little bit of a dream of mine. Do you know this? So thank you for helping me fulfill one of my dreams. [00:00:06] Judith: Wow. Sounds like excellent planning, Jason! [Intro Music] [00:00:10] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston. [00:00:13] Jason: Hey, John. Hey, everyone. And this is Online Learning in the Second Half, the online learning podcast. [00:00:19] John Nash: Yeah. We're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation we've been having for the past. Wow. Are we going to start our third year of this soon? Yeah. [00:00:28] Jason: I guess so. [00:00:30] John Nash: About online education, online learning has had its chance to be great and some of it is, but still a lot of it isn't. So how are we going to get to the next stage, Jason? [00:00:39] Jason: That is a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it? [00:00:44] John Nash: I'd love to do that. What do you want to talk about today? [00:00:47] Jason: Well, I'm very excited today, John, because we have a very special guest with us. Somebody that I've been reading her work now for a while and it is Judith Betcher. Judith, welcome. [00:01:00] Judith: Well, thank you very much for being here. I'm delighted to be part of your series. [00:01:04] Jason: Yeah, well, it's so great to have you. Judith, why don't you tell us just a little bit about kind of your your background? What have you been up to for the last little while? I know that a big part of your life is online learning and you've done it both in various capacities. So just tell us a little bit. [00:01:19] Judith: well, actually, getting ready for this podcast, I started going back and thinking, and when you're as old as I am, that's kind of dangerous, you realize, and I thought, Oh my God, my first experience with anything approaching online learning was when I was working for a computer company and we were building and designing. What was called at that time computer based instruction. So, as man, as we've moved along here, over these years, I was thinking it's actually online learning has become it actually is a merging of the computer based instruction movement with the traditional distance learning, in the old distance learning correspondence learning. So what we have Today in 2025 is really elements of all of these different movements, starting back with the like I said, the computer based instruction movement. [00:02:11] Jason: Yeah, that's great. And do you mind me asking what year that might have been with a computer based instruction? I just think it's interesting to think about historically our, trajectory with online learning. [00:02:24] Judith: Yes, actually, I will confess that was the decade of the 80s and it was with control data corporation in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And at that time we built computer based instruction and it was designed. For the Plato system, which was a mainframe computer application. And so then I'm afraid I have lived through moving from the mainframe application to the microcomputers, to the now, of course, to the powerful computers that we Carry in our pockets and our watches on our arms, it's been quite a journey to be honest, but after I finished that work at Control Data, that was when I went to Penn State and at that time for a few years there at Penn State. I Managed a group very similar to what it sounds like you do, Jason. I had a group at that time, the folks at Penn State were very innovative and forward thinking, in that we, I had a group of instructional designers and video folks, and, programming folks, and we. Assisted faculty in, we actually would load up a van and put, computers, these huge computers, and take them around campus and set them up and say, wow, look what you could, Mr. Faculty Member, what can, what, see what you can do with these computers. It was quite, it was, it's been quite an adventure to be honest. [00:03:47] John Nash: You bring back memories, Judith, because my dissertation at the University of Wisconsin contained the word microcomputer in the title. Um, that's what the desktop computers were. They were like, just, yeah, it's funny. We still don't use that term because basically we're just all running microcomputer, microcomputers on our desks, but we don't use that anymore. The Apple IIe days. Yes. Right. Yeah. [00:04:10] Judith: Yes. Yes, exactly. But anyway, and to finish up a little bit after Penn State, I moved down here to Tallahassee, to Florida State, and in, in part of this time period, I did start consulting with with faculty who were teaching online at Duquesne University. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And as I, start was consulting and meeting with them, I started developing these tips and ideas and best practices. And as you can anticipate, it was all of that work, the tips and the practices. When I found myself repeating myself over and over again, that was when I decided, well, maybe a book would be a good idea. So that was kind of the genesis of the survival guide for teaching online. [00:04:58] Jason: And that's really how I came to know you, Judith. and I was talking to John about this. Today is a fulfillment of a little bit of a dream of mine. Do you know this? Of being able to have you on the podcast. A little bit of a goal. So, [00:05:09] Judith: No [00:05:10] Jason: yeah, because these are the four books, and I'm being honest about this. Well, three, these are the three books, actually, over a long time I've I have recommended to people. And then I've added one, in the fall Michelle Miller's "Minds Online." Flower Darby's Small Teaching Online, and then your book, the Online, Teaching Survival Guide. And then recently added, because it just came out in the fall, Catherine Denial's Pedagogy of Kindness, which is not an online book, but is such an important book, I think, particularly for this day and age. So those are my four book recommendations for people that want to get going online with practical tips and not so much from a development standpoint, more from a teaching standpoint. So first year we had Michelle Miller on the show, and then last year we had Flower Darby and Catherine Denial on the show, and now you are joining us today. So thank you for helping me fulfill one of my dreams. [00:06:08] Judith: Wow. Sounds like excellent. [00:06:15] Jason: Well, and it wasn't actually too calculated, except that, as John and I are talking just about what kinds of, people and conversations we want to have on this show, we realized we started almost two years ago. And, we realized we kind of just jumped into things. We started talking about making your online courses more human and creating student agency. And we talked a lot about AI and about some of the risks and challenges and opportunities around that. And we haven't really gone back to talk about more foundational teaching online. Because it's online learning in the second half, we're kind of positioning it as looking back on the first half of online learning. Now, , we know how to dump information on people now online, right? We can do it. What do we hope for in our second half of online learning? And as John and I are peering into our second halves of life and well into our second halves of lives, we're thinking about that in terms of online learning. So , that's a long introduction to say this is one of the reasons why we have you on today. So, [00:07:19] Judith: Well, let me just mention, I did start listening to the podcast on the Pedagogy of Kindness, and I didn't get very far because I ran out of time this morning, but I look forward to going back. It sounds like a great, perspective to add to our designing. And in fact, then, to add to that. The whole reason my website is called Designing for Learning is that's my passion Whenever I started working with faculty, trying to ask them the question is what is it, what are the outcomes, the takeaways that you really want your students to take away from a course I'll see if I can remember this. Remember there's that five minute short video of the person, who tried to summarize the college education in five minutes, and he said, okay, here's what I learned from Spanish, como esta, and that was it, that was the total impact, from the whole Spanish, sequence. And similarly, so just when we have our wonderful students, who'd commit to time and energy and focus. What, in fact, and how will they change as a result of those experiences? And I think if we really want to service our students and serve them well, we have to be ready to answer that question. If somebody says, Okay. I'm going to take this history course, just what is, how am I going to be different? What am I going to know? What am I? How am I going to think about this going forward? And just what am I going to get out of my course? So going back to how do we design the learning experiences to achieve those goals? But to be, and then to be very explicit at the beginning of a course as to what is going to happen, what, in fact, will the students gain from that. [00:09:07] Jason: Yeah, that's great. [00:09:09] Judith: I, I actually have a granddaughter who is she's, I've got a number of granddaughters, but anyway, the one I'm going to refer to is 19 years old and a long story, but rather than going to the full four year experience, she wasn't quite ready for that, she took some courses at the community college and she just shared with me the other day, I thought, well, I'll give her, give Carolyn a call, okay, and say, and ask her for her opinion. And she said, some of the courses are designed and a faculty member will just stand up there and start talking. And what the students do is they turn on their computer, a bit like we're doing here now. And they turn on the video, they turn off the camera but leave the audio on, and then they go off and do, they take a shower, and they eat pizza, and do everything else, and then just checking in every now just to appear that they're there, and then at the end it's all over, they'll push the button, and then they'll go back and actually read out of a textbook, or read something, maybe do the discussion board. So my first response there is, Oh, my God, gosh, I really wish we could have an instructional designer work with that faculty member and really design a course that really will engage the students will make them part of a conversation and go from there. So, we're fortunate. We're talking about the first half and the second half of online learning. One thing that we've lacked I think with faculty is the knowledge of pedagogy. In fact, that's the very first part of my book tries to focus on, okay, I know you guys haven't had a course in pedagogy, but here are the core ideas, the core principles about how people learn and a lot of faculty don't just don't get any exposure to that and therefore they just and just grade and that's it. So whatever we can do going forward, you were asking the question, how do we make the future of online learning more human and more connected? I think we really need to work with faculty, work with curriculum and really do serious design for learning according to basic pedagogical. Principles. [00:11:10] John Nash: I love that. And I think you've struck a chord where I've long noted that, well, the second half of life or online learning in the in sort of the first half, there was a sort of a transmission model or I forget who said this. It's "shovelware" we're just going to shovel what we did over here onto the online area And do it over here. [00:11:30] Judith: I have to, John, I have to interrupt. It turns out it was Alistair Fraser at Penn State University who coined the term shovelware. [00:11:38] John Nash: Thank you so much. There's the other great reason we had you on today. And so, doesn't it seem as though the, particularly with COVID, but long before that too, when there was a movement towards moving coursework online that it truly laid bare how important instructional design is. Because once you get online, as you noted, it's very easy for things to slip and then we've sort of missed it. It's a good instructional design is just good instructional design, whether you're face to face or online. [00:12:11] Judith: Absolutely. Absolutely. [00:12:14] Jason: having a lot of discussion over the last few weeks or so around a inside higher ed article by a professor Robert Zaretsky, who, it's titled the absurdity of asynchrony and he basically talks about how awful online learning is and this that and the other But as you read it, anybody that designs and is part of online learning recognizes what happened. He was thrown into an online learning class two weeks before the semester started. No design, as you pointed to Judith, just the importance of having thoughtful instructional design on the front end, be thoughtful about what it is that you're trying to do. And some of why we're having these conversations here and then concluded from that. Online learning is horrible and nobody else should do it either, basically. And unfortunately, this is where some of our instructors are. Some people again post COVID, some of them learned that, "Hey, I actually can do this. There is some advantage to this and there's, it's not all good, but we can build upon what I've learned already." but other people, they did remote teaching. And they just felt like, oh, "I just can't wait to get back in the classroom where real learning takes place" kind of thing. And so this is one of the things that we're battling all the time because we're recognizing and it sounds like some of your perspective as well. [00:13:40] Judith: Well, if you go back and look at a course when I first went to college, which was obviously a great, a very long time ago, there was remember that formula. If you're in class for one hour, you're supposed to dedicate two hours outside of class for every hour of class. So if you think about it. Those two hours of outside dedication and study were actually part of some of the stuff we do with online learning. So the, when we started moving to online learning, the component of a course was, that went online, was really just that one hour, of instruction. Instruction or the as it turns out 30 hours of instruction So it's another way of thinking about again designing for learning. What are the students doing as far as listening to the faculty member or meeting with the faculty member? Versus what are they doing on their own? And then also then the third part of it is, what are they doing in conversation or dialogue with other students? Actually, if I could go back and remember, oh, it was the, an analysis of John Henry Newman's book on the idea of a university, where he talked about, that most learning actually happens outside of the classroom. That it really happens when students are thinking and conversing and talking and expressing their ideas. With other students. So that there's the formula there. It's I think it's one third, one third, and one third there as well. So we've got historical precedents for the kinds of basic pedagogical principles we ought to be helping faculty analyze and figure out how does this apply to my course. [00:15:19] Jason: Yeah, I was part of a few people trying to reshape our definition around those Carnegie hours here at the University of Tennessee. Because of that, it just doesn't, it doesn't apply. I mean, it's just a different application. It's not about butts in seat. For a certain amount of time, [00:15:37] Judith: Right, right. [00:15:38] Jason: It's different, right? You activate your students in a different kind of way online. That is harder to pin down in terms of those time spent. [00:15:49] Judith: Yes. That actually brings back memories of what I was trying to do with the legislature here in Florida in 1995 when we were trying to get approval for online learning.. [00:16:02] Jason: As you were describing that, I thought about a space in your book here, if we turn towards the book, where you talk about how our online course is unique and you talk about a few major differences, which I completely agree with. You talk about faculty role shifts to coaching and mentoring talk about asynchronous. And then one of them Yeah. Is learners are more active and you talk about how their dialogue is actually increased in online learning. This has been my experience. Like if you think about, being in those large lecture halls where, I'm fairly chatty here, but get me in a room of 100 people. And I just figured there's other people that, that are going to fill up the space and I'll just sit back and let them say it. If I was a student in a hundred person class. You may never hear anything from me in a lecture hall, Even though I may have things to contribute and I think about things, versus my online experience, I took two degrees online and it gave me an opportunity to be able to, express myself because there is space for everybody to do that versus the amount of time in a lecture hall room for a student express themselves is very small compared to the number of students there. [00:17:16] Judith: Well, that's true. And in fact I think that brings up the Element of the different personalities of students. There are some students in 100, personal classroom that they don't mind just jumping up and talking off the cuff, whereas I share with you the idea that "I, Hey, I want to think about that a little bit. , and what do I really think about that? And how do I express what I think? So taking a little more reflective time. and within the online "environment, I think there is room for both types of personalities to shine. [00:17:49] Jason: One of the other things I really like about this book and it's a space that I've come back to over and over again and used as part of different aspects of training that I've done , with faculty and so on over the years are the four phases that you talk about in your book. Would you be able to briefly describe those for us first? And then I had a few questions about them as we think through the four phases. [00:18:12] Judith: Sure. In many respects, I personally like that four phrases too, because it emphasizes some of the ideas of planning. In fact, in some respects, a course might be compared to an event. So, in some Okay. an event of such magnificent, importance. And so, It emphasis, The first phases, the four phases emphasize the importance of planning before the event even starts. So you've got all of that planning happening. And then there's also when the students first come, you have this great excitement. Okay, we're together, we're going to do this. People get excited. I was always excited. You get a new book, you find really fascinating articles. Oh, I get to read about so and so or whatever. And so there's this great excitement at the beginning, but there's also all that planning and being very specific again about your outcomes, your takeaways, et cetera, and sharing that with your students, we couldn't go down the path of, the importance of having a really fantastic syllabus and a content framing for the course because there's not time for that. So in the first part of the phase of the course, the faculty is very, the, all the planning happens, people are excited, they're getting to know each other. Then phase number two is kind of getting started. Then that's when the students, in phase one and two, where students are really doing the knowledge and focusing on Core concepts. And again, they have been identified. This is what we want the students to really learn. And those are the, um, articles, resources, experiences that are focusing on those core concepts. And then in phase three, well, everything overlaps, of course, but then students start. I really like in online learning I like teams of two and three. Where students actually like we are doing today, forget these groups of four and five and six or whatever, I like teams of two and three and they start working together and they start planning their own projects. There's one of the other charts in my book. I was, as I was kind of going over this on, I'm customizing content resources where you've got the core concepts in the center. And then as you move out, the students start self selecting resources that fit their particular interests and everything. So as the course. The students themselves customize the course. And then by phase 4 is when students really share what they have learned, what they have done is important. And then do that wrap up, and then a celebratory event. One of my faculty that I worked with ended up having the students send noisemakers and other kinds of things to, in the final celebration, to really celebrate it. So the four phases of the course, it's really, it has a beginning. It has a middle where the students really get involved in the content, and then you've got the students really being much more active and dedicated towards their personal interests, and then you've got your wrap up. So it becomes this nice package, so to speak. [00:21:23] John Nash: Judith, I really appreciate that framing because as I talked to colleagues and I also reflect on my own teaching online and when I think about Canvas, so much of the planning phase is about just how do I get all this into Canvas? And then I default to thinking about, well, what are all the modules? And then if I have a 16 week course, all right, I guess I'm going to have 16 modules, if that's how I decided to do it. And then that's sort of how I think about the framing. And so this meta framing is super useful. In my design courses, we talk about flaring and focusing, and so it's the same sort of thing. We think about this, there's an arc that's happening above the modules that. I need to be more attuned to about where students minds are likely at as we take this journey and I, that's a, that's helpful. [00:22:10] Judith: Was, rethinking about things too, I thought about the concept of, I don't know whether, um, It's where it is in the book, but on online that my tip 85 talks about book ending and that's the idea that when you actually as part of that whole arc process is that what you bookend by having starting potentially with a problem or a case study or a scenario at the beginning of a course. And then throughout the course, you get, gather and acquire, for hopefully, the skills and the knowledge and the, perspectives, and then that towards that phase four, you apply and figure out, okay, what are the various possibilities? There's always more than one way to solve a problem. What are the various ways, perhaps, solving or addressing this case? So again, you have this larger I like your word arc, the larger arc then of the course. And the students, again, then can feel, oh, well, they can remember that, well, in that course, we did X, Y, and Z. We solved this kind of a case over that kind of a problem. [00:23:15] John Nash: Yes. [00:23:17] Jason: The other thing that I'm really glad you mentioned was how, though there are these kind of four phases, they do overlap and it's not like you're in the course. And you'll be like, "okay, everybody, all students now move from the early middle. Now we're moving into the late middle. And this is exactly what late middle is going to be about." Could you talk a little bit more about why that there's an overlap or how that's managed from a instructional standpoint? [00:23:48] Judith: I think maybe the best way to talk about that is, that one of the very first changes in moving from in person to online that, faculty experienced is the elimination of tests. That we really, as we look at assessment, we move from that testing and multiple choice and however, or even short essay kind of things to move it to projects. And in that four phases, you actually start identifying a project very early on, and that's when you start meeting with one or two or three other people, to really talk about what are the various possibilities of projects and. Having a, a kind of a community collaborative effort, posting about those ideas and then in phase two is when you really start examining what resources you need, what kinds of things are, is your project, does your project require you to do, I mean, when students start, started early on building videos, rather than writing papers, I know somewhere else in the writing I did is that, you don't always have to do assessment even with a written project. It can be other kinds of projects. It can, in fact, be a podcast, interviewing one of their, an expert on another topic, so well, what do they need to, what tools do they need? What knowledge do they need in order to do that kind of a project? So you actually, and now that I even think about it now, the whole course is a way of starting a project, investigating what you need for the project, and then applying it, and then sharing it. And that's how Apply, hopefully, some of the knowledge that they are gaining. [00:25:28] John Nash: I see that being very powerful on a couple of levels, not only the sort of chief learning intention or an outcomes you have for the discipline of the course, but that by doing the project work, you have almost this benevolent hidden curriculum of all the, skills and capabilities and knowledge that come with working on a project together. Thinking through a problem with a team that are all transferable to other work that they'll do outside of your own course [00:25:59] Judith: Yeah that's nicely, really nicely put. [00:26:02] Jason: I love project based learning in general, and I kind of always thought that was partly my own temperament and the fact that I just didn't do that well on tests, like standardized tests were not my example of my best foot forward for what it is that I learned or. you Or my trajectory in life. [00:26:22] Judith: But I come to realize that actually a lot of people really like project based learning when it works and a lot of people find it really valuable, especially as they, as we think that we are, as we think about developing students, not just for a life of being a student, but for the life of being a worker, adding something to this, the rest of the world and doing something outside of school outside of learning. You know, If we focus on having students do some of these types of projects, by the way, they do collaborative work during the, the course, but the project itself is an individual project, which avoids all that stuff about, responsibility, who does what with the teamwork and all the rest of it, so you, the end product is in fact an individual. goal. But then that can be added into and become part of a student's portfolio. So as they, proceed again through life, they can go through and say, hey, I remember that project. And when applying for applying for an internship or some type of job, they can bring in that type of thing and have that demonstrate. [00:27:29] Judith: So I think it's pretty powerful. And it's a, again, starts to address the challenges of, engagement. I know I've seen a lot off a lot of email recently about how do you engage students? So I think it helps to address some of the engagement challenges of online learning too. [00:27:45] Jason: . I had one more question about the four phases. And then maybe we can get into talking a little bit about the future of online learning. You described phase three, the late middle, as letting go of the power, and we've had a lot of conversation. in our podcast about student agency, about giving students more kind of direction and is there a, is this really the same or is there a kind of a different, more time specific power change happening in a late middle? Or are they related in some ways in terms of, Allowing students like to be a little more self directed and those kinds of things. How does that, how do those two kinds of ideas, overall idea of student agency and this phase of letting go of power, how do those two things interact? [00:28:45] Judith: Well, you're challenging me a little bit Jason, since it's been a while since I wrote that all about, but the idea, I think, coming back to the student agency, again, in the first part of the course is when you really want to be building in the knowledge where the faculty member is act, is the expert, Real expert. And there's another whole body of literature focusing on how do we grow students from being a novice to being an expert. And that Erickson is the, now I had to stop and think, is Anders Erickson is the expert in that field of building expertise. And in order So the part of the question for faculty, again, is how do I help a student grow from being a total novice, perhaps on a topic, into being at least knowledgeable or more of an expert? The only way that happens is through practice and actually applying knowledge. So while the first part of the course, in fact, going back, John, just let me jump out on a limb, get on a limb here, your 16 topics. you might want to figure out how do you quote unquote cover 16 topics in the first eight weeks. And then spend the next eight weeks figuring out how do you apply the knowledge that you want, that you really, and so, and how do we design those experience to get the students to interact with the knowledge and to apply it. So, and. I know there's the whole, so the whole idea is how do you get the student, I say get to, I guess that probably isn't the best term, but anyway, but how do we engage the students to actually do more and generate more, which gets into your idea, Jason, of student agency. In some respects, even having students write things, write well let me come, I'll come back to this. How do we have students write things that then apply that knowledge, and that becomes part of their practice? of, becoming an expert. I've got a couple of other, young people I was talking to, and the whole idea is, Oh my God, they say I have to take calculus or pre calculus and whatever. I said, well, you know how to be successful. The only way of being successful in those kinds of courses is to work the problems and to work them and work them, until it becomes second nature to you. That's the only way to be really successful in that. And So that comes back to that whole idea of practice. How do I practice using this knowledge? How do I apply it in various case studies? And before we move on, I want to mention one other aspect, I think, that bears on this. One of the actions, That I really think online learning just very simply could help a great deal is that you know how we have the students answer questions supposedly and address things in a discussion Form and all the rest of it. Well, one of the assignments that I would recommend Is assigning what we would call a discussion wrap. So often, you've got all this discussion going on, think pizza and beer, okay. So you've got all, people gathered around pizza and beer and talking. And then it, the conversation closes. Well, what is the takeaway from that? So you have the students do a discussion wrap. What, after all this is said and done, what do we take away from this? And to have the students do that now in the early part of the course, the faculty member could do that and model that. And then gradually, again, with student agency, we can move the students into doing that and summarizing it again. And again, it's a really important life skill. What do I take away from this experience? What do I take away from this conversation? [00:32:34] Jason: Yeah, I love that. And so it's the letting go of power, both for knowledge building, because students are then really building their own knowledge in practice as they go along. And also some of the perhaps power for even organizing knowledge and driving discussions and conversations among the students. So that's good. [00:32:56] Judith: Yes. [00:32:57] John Nash: Well, would this be one of our episodes if we didn't talk about artificial intelligence? No, it would not. [00:33:05] Judith: Wow. [00:33:06] John Nash: Judith I'm curious how you're framing assessment here in 2025 in light of generative AI arriving on the scene. I, would it be fair to say that in asynchronous online courses, faculty may default to text heavy assessments like postings and discussion forums, short papers, and that may be alluring or suited to the student use of generative AI. You talk about assessment should be, and I agree with you, continuous and multi phased. You almost talk about community input there. And I wondered if I could even call that co designed with the learner. And then that it should be focused on an individual faculty dialogue. And so where is your head at now with students? AI And assessment. [00:33:55] Judith: Well, wow. How do we address this? But just as a way of prelude to this, you realize I've got about three or four Amazon Alexas throughout my house, and I, and, Oh, and it's shining and saying, I've got notifications for you and all the rest of it. I'm thinking, they're all Anything in our world, wine food technology, whatever There are good uses and there are not such good uses of things. So I do think our challenge is going forward is going to be how do we make the bet? How do we make the best use of ai and in fact, When we think about instructional design I do think that One of our questions that we really need to grapple with, and I, it goes back to that educational holodeck article I wrote, almost, over 25 years ago, the idea of just what mix, as we designing a course, what mix of faculty interaction with and how much use of, computer tutorials, which are really valuable, that stuff, some of that stuff that's been developed is fantastic and wonderful. So what mix of faculty, personal faculty with all these automated, tutorials and simulations, et cetera, And AI robots. Just what mix, how do we design a course that makes the best use of that? Now given that, how do, and how do we know that the, what is happening, how do we know what's happening in the student's brain? Maybe that's the best question. Because if we rely on the AI generated stuff, what's happening in the student's brain? I mean, to some respect, if the student even reads it, what they've asked for, is probably a question. So, it, I mean, don't know quite how to, somehow, and I don't know, because of being efficient and effective learning, and, cost wise about things, somehow we still have to get a Personal relationship between the faculty member and the student for the faculty member to be able to adequately assess students knowledge. How do we do that? And I do think, obviously, we've got a lot of technology tools, and just meeting until they have an AI robot in your place. John, how do I know I'm really talking to you? How do we, in fact, know what the students skill level is? At some point, I think we may want to go back and maybe we can learn something from the old medieval model of apprenticeship. [00:36:46] John Nash: Yeah. [00:36:48] Judith: and again it maps on to the novice to expert thinking, that the person Worked side by side, step by step, going back to Dewey's Continuum of Learning. Step by step, side by side, that a person, in order to develop a skill, that they worked with and were apprenticed to an expert as they learned a skill and developed knowledge. How do we do this use of The technology, and yet Lord, we don't want to miss that personal relationship is one of the most important things, not only for learning. but just for life. Want to use robots. I mean, they're going to be good. We've got the vacuuming robot. I don't have one, but I know my daughter does. We have all these Cars, maybe self driving cars. I mean, it, they bring a lot of possibilities, but I think we. No, nothing, this is my perspective right now in my belief, nothing replaces person to person in real time [00:37:50] John Nash: Silence. [00:37:59] Judith: we've, so how do we do that? Yeah, And going back to these pedagogical principles, how do we integrate all this? So we've got more questions than we have answers. [00:38:12] John Nash: and I'm now, I'm sort of, I'm smiling because I'm wondering if you might even have your own answer as I what I, what struck me as I was looking through the book was you noted that you, that I wrote it down, I quote it. You note that mentor is your preferred term for the instructor or faculty member who is directing the students learning experiences. And I think, and I've never. I mean, we think about that way and I like to think that I'm a guide and I facilitate their learning, but I haven't had anybody say so directly to me that you are a mentor, you're not a teacher, you're not, you are a mentor in this and it reminds me of when we talked with Michelle Miller and one of her blog posts was around this idea of same-- it seems like every episode I talk about this Yeah, that we're on the same side together learning this together. And so the mentor can do that. I wonder if that's part of the answer to is this, that replacement for that mentor. Who's helping the apprentice move to make progress on a learning goal. We've decided together is going to be something. we -want to reach. [00:39:15] Judith: . I and I'm glad that you like the term mentor because I think it changes the dynamic a bit. And in fact, going back to the very first thing we talked about the power dynamic between people. I mean, it really, you know, a mentor really is supportive is helpful. A mentor really knows the student. In fact, that's one of the things as I was thinking about AI and if AI is really going to be helpful for students. They need to get, this really scares me totally, by the way. The robot has to get to know the student. Now, I'm okay. If the robot is somebody like Spock, because I kind of would trust Spock. Okay. But, what's scary, I think, is that human beings are in fact programming these robots. [00:40:03] John Nash: Yes. Yeah. And in a biased way we've come to learn. [00:40:08] Judith: We, well, it, yes, and when and where and how and all the rest of that. So, again, that's part of what, I think is part of our challenge moving forward. I definitely don't want to, I would avoid designing a course right now with using short essays and all this other kind of stuff that's so easily, in fact what a robot can do really easily right now is what you don't want to have students doing. [00:40:31] John Nash: Yeah. Do you mean like in terms of being able to do sort of the transmission model of assessment? Like the five paragraph essay is in my estimation, chiefly dead. [00:40:43] Judith: Yes, I would agree. Yeah. You don't want to do it, because there's no way of knowing, how much of it is happening in the student's head versus what's just, generated from their digital phone, with their phone. [00:40:55] John Nash: Jason and I talk about, we wonder often, how might we make our courses un AIable? [00:41:01] Judith: That's a nice question. I think that's part of what, to be going. Now, again, now are still, are using AI to some extent. as a way of getting started, it does remind me, of the first days before, before Wikipedia got captured, that I thought that Wikipedia was a great starting point for a lot of ideas. Okay. And I think maybe we can say the, maybe we can say the say same thing about the AI generated stuff. It may be a good starting point, but then how do we find out, and how do we converse and have a conversation with a student to know what's in their brain? [00:41:37] Jason: It made me think of something you said earlier in terms of how important practice is, especially in that late middle phase of the online course. And one of my concerns, although I use AI all the time and I like it, I think for starting point, to get you over that blank page, it's amazing. Like truly, it's amazing. Like it's like a jumpstart sometimes to get something difficult. Done because it gets you started However, one of my concerns in terms of practice is that writing and John and I have talked about this at different points but so much of writing is thinking and that is part of practice, which is We have this content now through the course beginning in the early middle And you, that, that content knowledge is being built. What we don't want is just a regurgitation of that content back to us through a five paragraph essay. Right? What we want then is students to now start to really Digest this information and reproduce it in some levels, in which it's Applicable that they've thought through it with their own concerns and backgrounds and approaches and put it out in such a way that it's actually gone through their brain, not. Like, I know it all goes through your brain, but gone through, through your brain in a way that it's just not like transcribing it. It's just not putting out something and that's one of my concerns with AI is like, I, think that it could be a shortcut for students to, to not think, and not really ingest information and put it out in their own words and in ways. [00:43:19] Judith: Well, I think one of the things that I really like about project based approach is getting students away from just writing and regurgitating to actually doing something. Case studies, starting with scenarios, starting with problems. So many of our You know, problems and challenges in our world today are complex and we need to depend on multiple different disciplines, physics, chemistry and problem solving and people. I mean, there's just everything that needs to be integrated into problem solving. And I think if with more of a focus on that type of how does this work in this environment? Um. can be much more valuable and it gets us using AI, but then moving beyond AI. [00:44:10] John Nash: Yeah, I've been toying with ideas about how AI could be more of a tutor than a tool to produce output. And I haven't perfected this yet, but I think there's some interesting ways-- it's funny, that Ethan Mollick, a year or so ago, wrote a piece on how to prompt the large language models to do deliberate practice, , which is a, route to expertise, Judith. And so interesting that if we can think about it also as a partner to the mentor and helping the Apprentice learn, that's kind of appeals to me. [00:44:43] Judith: Yeah, that's interesting. Deliberate practice is the term, I think, that Anders Ericsson really coined and really applied in all of his work. He died a couple of years ago, so his, but [00:44:55] John Nash: Yes, I think that was the article that he cited. Yeah, [00:44:58] Judith: Okay. Oh, okay. Yeah. [00:45:00] John Nash: But I'm enamored with this idea of deliberate practice because it's that experts are not born, they're made and they're made through deliberate practice as it turns out. [00:45:10] Judith: That's right. That's right. And oftentimes that's where the role of the mentor comes in because practice, you can practice doing stuff the really wrong way. So you need to have a mentor who is, by your side, so to speak, at least at some points, ensuring that the deliberate practice is in fact moving you along rather than having you stuck in one place or doing something wrong. [00:45:33] Jason: Yeah Sal Khan of Khan Academy has kind of envisioned a future of chatbots that basically act as mentors for students at any point of the way, with the idea that, we're in a teacher shortage. We students. Most students, especially if they're in lower economic, they don't have the access to smaller classrooms and one on one connection with teachers and so on, which I agree with. I think some of my concerns around that, I think there's a lot of space for that to happen with AI, but is. as a replacement of teachers then, in terms of that connection that you talked about that was so important, the teacher student connection as a help? Yes. As a replacement, I have concerns as we think about the next 10 or 20 years. [00:46:26] Judith: Well, another analogy I do like to apply every now and then is, people keep saying, Oh, well, the internet, the fact that we've got all of this information available and yes, we've got all these tutorials and the Khan Academy. I mean, if I forget how to do a crochet stitch, all I have to do is go online and Google and I can find this little nice little crochet stitch. But the idea is that it is not. It's in some respects similar to a library. Remember the Carnegie Library, movement? All, anything anyone wanted to know, and they could be self learners, by going to a library. So now it turns out the tools have changed, but I'm not certain, you know, just again focusing on how does this apply and how does it enhance our lives and enrich our lives and our relationships with people? [00:47:13] John Nash: Yeah. [00:47:13] Jason: Yes. thought the same thing about the computers. And then we thought the same things about Internet and then Wikipedia. And I think we're in a similar space with a I and it has its own challenges, especially when it comes to assessment. But I think that I believe that we'll continue to find that, that teachers will continue to be a, an important part of this mix and use it as a tool. As you said, Judith. So, [00:48:02] Judith: Yeah, well, I certainly couldn't agree. And again, it takes us back to this. Just how do we design, courses and learning for the students to achieve. And, one of the other things, why do students even go to college or class right now is, or why do we take programs? It's because you have a consistent, clear sequence of instruction, and you can do it faster than you can do it on your own. So that, that's some of the reasons why, the online learning is still, I mean, it's going to continue growing at all levels, including, as we've said, lifelong, lifelong learning is because, in fact, it helps us to learn things that we need to learn more quickly, and hopefully more substantially, but, oh gosh, but again, coming back to, I just want to maybe make one final comment, in my best practices section of the book. Absolute number one, most important thing, a variable that came through with all the design work I've done all my life here, is the importance of a faculty member being present, part of the experience, and again, we can do all the self learning and everything else without that faculty member. But when you sign up for an learning experience, the faculty member and the presence and contribution and expertise of the faculty member is paramount. [00:49:26] John Nash: Yeah agree. And fits with the theme with Jason's past three amazing books that he's decided that you get to be a part of, but the pedagogy of kindness and Catherine denial certainly gets to that. And the small teaching online also there needs to be a real presence and that human connection, the mentor, everything. Yes. [00:49:46] Judith: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I'm thank you again, Jason. I'm so glad I'm one of a quartet of books. That's exciting. [00:49:53] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Well, well deserved. Well deserved. It's just another plug for the book for those listening, and we'll put the link in the notes, but it's just a great practical handbook really for teachers teaching online. I think the last, if I'm right on this, the last version was 2021, I think. So we continue to update it and it's available. So yeah, we'll put a link in for that. So that's fantastic. [00:50:17] Judith: Okay, sounds great. [00:50:19] Jason: Judith, thank you so much. I think we're going to round off here, but yeah, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. [00:50:27] Judith: Well, thank you. It's been fun, again, talking about these really, really important issues, and it is exciting to think about what's going to be happening next. [00:50:36] John Nash: Yeah, it is. [00:50:38] Jason: Yeah, I think it is as well. Yeah, it's interesting, exciting to think about next, and hopefully we'll continue to make it better, not worse. That's my goal. How about you, John? [00:50:49] John Nash: I will do my best to not make it worse. Yes. [00:51:00] Judith: And again, let's continue talking to our students and asking them how they want it to be better, how it can be better for them, I think, is a, we sometimes forget to ask them, how is this work for you, so, yes, I think that's a, they're a great source of both inspiration and innovation. [00:51:17] Jason: Absolutely. Yeah, that's a great point and a great way to round things off because in the end it is about the students. [00:51:24] Judith: Okay. [00:51:26] Jason: Before we go, I'm just going to say for those listening, we'll put a notes and links for the articles and the books and connect with Judith on our notes at OnlineLearningPodcast.com. That's OnlineLearningPodcast.com as well as links. to connect with us on LinkedIn, if you would like to but yeah, just thank you so much, Judith, for being with us and for not just for being with us today, but your contribution to the field and for helping so many people over the years become better online teachers. So we really appreciate it. [00:51:58] Judith: Well, thank you both very much again. [outro music]

In EP 33, John and Jason talk to Flower Darby about small steps for inclusive, equitable, and humanized online learning, and explore the transformative power of community, connection, and compassion in digital classrooms while tackling the future of AI’s role in education. Join Our LinkedIn Group - Online Learning Podcast Resources: Flower Darby Website Small Teaching Online (book) The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching Request a free copy: https://seagull.wwnorton.com/equityguide Karen Costa’s 99 Tips For Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos(book) Steven Covey - Circle of Control - Circle of Influence Flower’s Recent article in the Chronicle: https://www.chronicle.com/article/5-small-steps-for-ai-skeptics I’m a Doctor. ChatGPT’s Bedside Manner Is Better Than Mine.  Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License. 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! False Start [00:00:00] Flower Darby: It's always fun to talk to interesting, intelligent people who care deeply about our work. So I've, enjoyed our conversation. [00:00:11] Jason:. So that's our,that's a lot of our main goal here, really, John, is to get to that point. Where people say nice things about us. And to know it's coming from a real person. I mean, ChatGPT loves everything I say, NotebookLM. Absolutely adores every article I've ever written and every line, but to know this is coming from a real person makes a difference for me. So thank you. Real Start [00:00:34] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston. [00:00:37] Jason: John. Hey, everyone. And this is online learning in the second half, the online learning podcast. [00:00:42] 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 there's still some that isn't. So can we get to the next stage? [00:00:56] Jason: That's a great question, John. How about we do a podcast to talk about it? [00:01:00] John Nash: I think that's a great idea. What do you want to talk about today? [00:01:04] Jason: Well, you know, one of the great things about being able to do a podcast is meeting cool people and people that can help us answer this question about, you know, what are we going to do in the second half of life as it comes to theonline podcast? And maybe the second half of our lives too. I don't know, John. We could, I guess we could that into some of our podcast, actually get some, get some life coaching or something from the, from the guests as they come in. [00:01:32] John Nash: if that involves me divulging my age. I'll, I'm not doing that yet. [00:01:36] Jason: Okay. All right. Well, I think I just did a little bit, so, in just in a general sense. So that's good. Well, we have Flower Darby with us as a guest. And so I'm really excited to talk to Flower. Hi Flower. How are you? [00:01:51] Flower Darby: Hi, Jason. I'm so good. Hi, John. Thank you so much for inviting me onto your podcast. It is always a pleasure and a privilege. I don't take that for granted at all, but anybody cares what I think about anything. So thanks for having me. [00:02:05] Jason: Yeah, well, thank you so much. Yeah. How would you like to introduce yourself, Flower? I mean, we could read some of the things off your bio, but what would you like our audience to know about you that might be helpful for them to understand our conversation today? [00:02:21] Flower Darby: Sure, let me just quickly and conversationally sum up my background I don't, I'm not a fan of reading a bio, people can look that up themselves if they would like to get more information, right, But I have been teaching in higher education for coming up on 29 years, this January, it'll make 29 years, I have taught lots of different things, including English, dance, Pilates, and I've been teaching for over 30 years. Leadership technology, educational technology. And as we were chatting about a few minutes ago, now I'm teaching social psychology because I just like to keep it interesting. But most of that teaching, there's two other things that I would quickly add. Most of that teaching has been as a part time instructor on top of the rest of my life, right? That's just how we do. And that's how a lot of online instructors do. And the other thing I would add is that I've been teaching online for 16 years or so and have had the amazing opportunity to. Co author a couple of books on that topic. So, that's the perspective that I'm bringing here today. [00:03:18] Jason: That's great. Yeah. And really the first time I saw your name that a little bit about who you were, through some of your writing and specifically book, Small Teaching Online. This was a resource in my work that I both valued and learned from, but also have recommended to a lot of people over the years. and I think it's a really brilliant book and brilliant approach, which of course is a book, Small Teaching. You give people a synopsis of the approach of the book, if they're not familiar?  [00:03:59] Flower Darby: All credit to James Lang for the concept in general. Small teaching is about how we can make little changes in our teaching practices that are based in the science of how people learn. And because they're based on such strong evidence, and such a strong research base, they actually have an outsized impact on student learning, student engagement, student memory and recall of information. And, but the point is that these things are not overwhelming. They don't create a large grading burden. They don't take a lot of time to execute in a class or in a module. They're little things, little changes that have that outsized impact. And so, his book, Small Teaching, has been extremely impactful for many faculty because it is so doable. And so in around 2018 or so I met him and asked if he would be interested in working on a project together. Because I know that for online instructors, sometimes at heart, it can feel overwhelming. So that's what this book does, is it takes his very practical idea and just applies it very directly to specifically asynchronous online classes. Synchronous classes were not As much of a thing when we wrote that book as they became during COVID-19. So that's the idea. Little things that online instructors can do that are not overwhelming that really help online students to persist, to learn to thrive in these spaces. [00:05:20] Jason: Yeah, and I think that that's a great synopsis. I love that. And I think I would just like to say to people, if you haven't read this book, and if you teach online, whether it's asynchronous or, or synchronous, I just go grab the book. It'll be really helpful. And I'm not saying this just because Flower is here, but it truly is is one of those books when people have asked me over the years. and I'm kind of glad we're coming back to this a little bit, John, too, because we've talked about the fact that, you know, we started this podcast to talk about online learning, and we just kind of dived right into talking about some of the almost 10, 000 foot kind of level stuff, right? And we've talked a lot about AI and about overall theoretical kind of things. I'm not sure we've really gotten into kind of the smaller day to day practices. So this is just a good, maybe call it for that [00:06:11] John Nash: Yeah, not so much. I think that's right. Yeah, [00:06:14] Flower Darby: And thank you for your kind words about the book. [00:06:18] Jason: Yeah. Well, it's true. You wrote that, it was published at least in 2019. A couple things have happened since then. I don't need to remind everybody of all the things, but one being COVID that you mentioned, of course. Hearing you describe it today, Got me thinking about , , some of the mental health crisis, both in students, but also the fact that teachers are feeling overwhelmed and how helpful it is to think about these small iterative improvements that we can make that don't feel overwhelming when we feel so overwhelmed about teaching and all the things that we're being expected to do on campus. Do you think, so there's, I think there's. it was pre-COVID doesn't mean there's not a lot of value there, because I think that there is, and I think a lot of it continues to translate. But is there anything in this book that you would change, or update, or a new chapter that you would tag on if you were to write it today? [00:07:18] Flower Darby: Yeah, good question. And I, one that I've thought a lot about, of course, and it may happen. There may be a second edition. I'm not going to commit to that right this minute, but I think there would be interest if capacity, becomes open enough to take that on. For right now, hypothetically, one of The things that I would do would be to foreground the importance of community. So right now, building community is chapter four in the book, and honestly, I think I would make it chapter one instead. I just really feel like all the logistics and everything that goes into creating inclusive online courses and applying universal design for learning and bringing in the community of inquiry framework, I feel like all of that. This might sound like heresy, but I feel like all of that is actually secondary to the importance of relationships. And that's really how my thinking has evolved, and it was shaped by our experience during lockdown, when we sorely felt the lack of social contact and, whether at a personal level with family members who were remote from us, with our students really struggling to connect. There's lots of stuff in the book I agree with you and I thank you I think there's still lots that's relevant. But one of the big changes that I would make would be to foreground Community. And I might even emphasize the importance of emotions as well, so I've really gone in the direction of social and emotional learning, and how that impacts our ability to think, process information remember information so those might be things that I might emphasize differently. Now, I'll be honest, whether or not I would bring in very much about synchronous online teaching, I might weave that in a little bit, but I don't really see, and I'd love your thoughts on this, I don't really see that synchronous teaching continuing at the same rate or level that asynchronous is, continuing. So I'm not sure I would make that a big focus of that book if, I were to create a second edition. [00:09:08] John Nash: Yeah, it's an interesting question. And, and to your idea of foregrounding community, do you feel like that that is a, is sort of a foundation for bringing about quality of the rest of the things that might've, you might've led with before community of inquiry, things like that, that those don't happen as well if you don't privilege community building first.  [00:09:34] Flower Darby: My developing thesis related to all of this and you already alluded to it here is that it still seems like online education is not really what it could be. There's a lot of potential for it to it's doing great things. It's helping people access their college education and obtain a degree or credential people who wouldn't otherwise be able to do that. That's important. But I think we're still missing some things. And to me that connection at a person to person level is the most important thing that we're missing. I believe that helping faculty to make those social connections and prioritize those actually leads to greater motivation to do all the rest of the stuff that we know is good, like universal design for learning principles and, implementing those kinds of ideas. I think that right now, focusing on the person to person connection, humanizing the student experience, helping instructors and students see each other as real people instead of just names on a screen, which is something that I've struggled with in the past. I think the relationships and the rapport building is actually going to help improve some of the more logistical things as well in online classes. [00:10:41] John Nash: Um, I took inspiration from that and started to do that more as well because I think it, it does, it humanizes the teacher to the students. It reduces the distance. And I see how you know, so yeah, I think it would motivate an instructor to be more thoughtful about why I'm in here and what I'm doing. [00:11:00] Flower Darby: For sure. That's definitely the direction my work has gone over the last few years is how it is very motivational and how it actually supports enhanced cognition and better learning is the result. I suspect that many instructors, I have two theories here. I think that many instructors just haven't been invited to think about that before, right? Not the kind of thing that we talk about very much. And I think that there might be some folks who are like, I don't need all that person to person stuff. That's not really important. That's not where learning happens, but actually it is. There's recent and growing body of literature regarding the neuroscience of how people learn and that person to person connection, that feeling like I care about you as my student and you care about me as your instructor. That 100 percent motivates greater student engagement, persistence, learning, all the things. So yeah making each other seem like real people. That's really the direction that I've been going because there are learning benefits to it as well. And 100%, I believe it supports instructor wellbeing. Right, so we, Know that many instructors are dealing with significant mental health challenges and burnout and such, but actually prioritizing connecting with students is a way to recharge our teaching battery and supports our flourishing as well. [00:12:15] John Nash: Yeah, nice. [00:12:16] Jason: think this is one of the touch points that you mentioned Flower, about, about some of the improvements. think we should and can make in the next half here, where they're teaching online and they feel very disconnected from the students. And it's not just because of asynchronous, right? We can have the same issue I've had, and for even myself, synchronous classes can feel very disconnected, or they can feel very connected. And then asynchronous classes can feel very disconnected, they can feel very connected. [00:12:50] Flower Darby: Right. [00:12:51] Jason: I wonder about as, we try to get into this, space of continuing to improve our classes as we talk about scaling our classes, are some of the things that we can do to continue to humanize our online classes? And then we want to talk about some of your other writing and so on that you've done too. [00:13:12] Flower Darby: Yeah, thank you. So I don't know if this is your experience, but I'm humbled to be able to talk with online instructors. In the hundreds. And I still hear a lot, and I frequently hear that many online instructors are very nervous about or resistant to the idea of capturing informal videos to put in their asynchronous classes in particular. And I really think there's so much potential. That's one of the best ways to make asynchronous classes more engaging for students. But I, still perceive that there's a lot of reluctance, resistance, nervousness. A lack of confidence and I certainly understand that we, none of us set out to become recording artists or professional presenters, right? Much to your point about earlier about how faculty are being asked to do more and more. That isn't really what we set out to do. However we know from the research that students really want to just see casual, informal, messy videos, because they would if you were in person, right? They would see you having a bad hair day, they would hear you tripping over your tongue, And so I think it's important to help instructors realize that with these quick little recordings, even from their smartphone, I have an example I'd like to share about an instructor who was filling up her car with gas and got out her smartphone and recorded a quick video and said, "Hey, I have a couple of minutes and I just wanted to let you know that I'm thinking about you and don't forget about this." That's the kind of thing that if we could become a little more comfortable with our own fallibility as people and recognize that as Karen Costa says the author of a book on 99 tips to create educational videos, she said students are not looking for Hollywood quality productions in our online classes, but they are looking for you. And so those short videos are a really important way to humanize. And then of course, if the technology permits and with some sensitivity to student reluctance or maybe valid reasons why they don't want to record. I definitely think when we can get students to share recordings with each other as well, even quick little informal ones, they become more like real people to each other. The community can build more effectively in that way. [00:15:18] Jason: Yeah, you bout what people consume right now, right? And you have a bit of a "both and." So people love, and I'm kind of the same way, but I see this especially with my kids and students. People love a well produced movie that tell, has a narrative that looks fantastic and you just sit in awe and you get kind of captured by it for a little while. But they also consume an awful lot of shaky like smartphone videos on weird backgrounds that are, that are jump cut about a hundred times. And I don't think it has to be an "either or," but I think that I like this movement towards just kind of relaxing and recognizing that there's a lot of space for that to happen that I could, that could really humanize. And again, you mentioned earlier the community of inquiry and just kind of to pull in that teaching presence a little bit more. [00:16:17] Flower Darby: Yeah, And I feel like it's a continuum or a journey. When I first started recording videos for my class. I was more comfortable in the kind of setting that you can see on your video. screens Now, I know the podcast doesn't have video, but when I would be seated at my desk wearing professional attire and feeling more ready to be professional in the mini lectures that I would record, that's, that helped me gain more confidence to the point that I remember at one point when my daughter was younger, she, I was recording a quick little announcement in my home office, my nine year old hopped up behind me and went, and like I might have in the past, I might have said, "'Okay, get out of here.' Now I need to start that recording again, but this time I just left it in there. And I said, go away. I'm doing something and just kept right. So that is a little bit of an evolution to maybe people might feel more comfortable. Being a little bit more prepared, having a script, or some talking points, some slides. And then I think we become more comfortable with the fact that we are real people, living real lives, and willing to let students in and see that side of us. Again, because I would argue that this happens when we teach in person anyway. So, let's make an intentional effort to let this happen in online "spaces too. [00:17:29] John Nash: Yeah, somehow video before COVID, I think, yeah, it gave us the false impression that things had to be polished and done. And then all of us, the world is thrown into Zoom nation and we see people's backgrounds and their bedrooms and they're just, yeah, and kids. And then I think that may have helped also to let us give more grace to people who were on video to be themselves and just get the message. [00:17:54] Flower Darby: I agree. And yet I still hear, even in the last year, I still hear from faculty all the time that they're really afraid to record a quick video. So I think we could do a lot, honestly, if we can help faculty be willing to try. Remind them that here's another thing that I'd like to remind folks is, the very first time that you stepped into an in person college classroom, you were probably really nervous, right? So it's okay. If you don't feel super confident about the video yet, try it. It will get easier with practice just like teaching in person did. Those are the kinds of things that I mean there's other we could talk all day about other ways to humanize online classes But I really think there's a ton of potential with videos that is not really being tapped yet [00:18:34] Jason: Yeah, and helping students also to understand maybe that there's a time and place for the professionalism versus just being just connected and just, and I like to be able to show them both, right? But I remember was actually in my summer online class, and right now I'm, I'm recording in my home office, which also, now you can't see this, everybody, also happens to be the laundry room, right? Also happened to share it with the cat. And so I did basically that in my first video in my summer online class is to say, you know, it's okay. I don't, it doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that, that you feel like that you are connecting here, that, that you are learning, that we're getting the content together. Please pull the curtain back if it helps you. And if it doesn't, that's fine too, you know, it's all right. We don't have to have the production here for learning to really happen for us to make this a , good experience, but I still feel a little uncomfortable. So I'm like, and I don't like to be distracting. So I'm going to go back and put the curtain over my washer and dryer now. [00:19:41] Flower Darby: I love it so much. And I love like the physical metaphor of drawing the curtain back. You actually made me think of a colleague that I used to work with in a different context wasn't actually higher education. I was serving in a global nonprofit and this gentleman had his zoom meetings in his bathroom. He really did. Now he pointed, that was the only place in his home that was quiet. Was not, like on the toilet, but that was his... [00:20:05] Jason: I was going to say that could be very convenient as well. [00:20:08] Flower Darby: he had a little, he had a little tiny workspace and it was in the bathroom and I think he had been a little bit intentional about what was behind him. But yeah we, I love what you said about the important thing is connecting. And we just make it happen however and wherever we can. That, that, really is a key takeaway. [00:20:24] Jason: I want to make sure that we have some time to talk about equity because I know this is a big thing for you. And this last may actually Flower, you and I met, I think, for the first time. at the Digital Universities Conference in St. Louis. We're on a panel together called "Blueprint for Change, Achieving Access through Equitable Course Design." I do not feel like I am an expert in equity, by any means. I do have some expertise in course design and I try to be equitable in, in what we do and in how we move things forward. But we were asked a question at the beginning to define equity. And my defense, they didn't tell us they were going to ask this question at the beginning. I think my answer was a little elusive probably, and it might've been partly because I didn't you know, honestly, I was put on the spot and I didn't really have a clear definition in my head about what equity was, my answer was also like, you know, as I'm , less concerned about clear cut definition and more concerned about how we are, designing towards our students. But then when it came to you, you actually had a fantastic definition of ,of, of equity. And you were like, Oh, well, actually I do have a clear definition. And because I helped write a book on it kind of thing. So as we get started on equity, how would you define equity? [00:21:51] Flower Darby: I will start. Thank you. I will start with more of an everyday way of thinking about this, much like you were just talking about your understanding. And then I will trot out the sort of official definition that my co authors and I developed for the "Norton Guide to Equity Minded Teaching." But really, I think you're right in line with the main goal, which is to ensure that any student who enrolls in a class, whatever the modality, you. Any student can be successful and there are things that we can do to help students be more successful. Design choices, teaching practices on a day to day basis, humanizing ourselves is key to advancing equity, to helping all students who enroll in a class be successful. For me, that's what this is all about, regardless of their background, regardless of their level of preparation, regardless of the communities that they grew up in or the color of their skin or their sexual orientation or their faith. Any student who shows up in my class, I'm going to do everything that I can to support that student. That's how I think about equity. Now, regarding the book, what we said is, because we wanted to distinguish equity minded teaching from inclusive teaching, and everything that I just talked about is, you could also say, yeah, that's inclusive teaching, and we agree that there is a lot of parallel, a lot of overlap. Maybe the Venn diagram is pretty Thoroughly overlapping there, but with the book, we distinguished equity minded teaching as also paying attention to grades and learning outcomes and Promoting parity in those learning outcomes. Really, unfortunately, there are persistent gaps in higher education attainment, grade inflation, all these kinds of things based on students social identities and backgrounds. And we said, okay, but if we're really going to be equity minded, we're going to pay attention to closing those gaps. We have to engage with the data see who's benefiting, who we can do more to support. And so focusing on promoting parity in outcomes is how we make that distinction. We also brought a strong focus on the importance of critical self reflection on the instructor's part. None of the work is really going to be meaningful and sustainable if we're not also noticing, how we're doing as an individual. Are we experiencing well being? Are we struggling? Factoring ourselves in and noticing when we might make a misstep, but that's pretty inevitable if you ask me. But then be willing to learn from that and do better. There's a big reflective piece in our definition as well, paying attention, thinking about committing to those small iterative changes that we were talking about, we took a strong page right out of the small teaching book and that approach is embedded in the Norton guide as well. So, yeah. [00:24:38] John Nash: We were talking about earlier, Jason, you were mentioning that the arc of our podcast has been sort of at the higher level stuff and not at the sort of the tip level or what's happening in the classroom. And I wanted to look at a couple of things, Flower, if it's okay, that come out of the guide and there's a tip in there to translate arcane sounding, jargon laden. learning objectives into goals that make sense to students. And I thought this was particularly, you know, powerful as a reminder of the agency that instructors have, may forget that they possess. I mean, I've fallen into it. I'm handed some learning objectives and I have to just sort of print these. Maybe there's even a state mandate that I have to state them in a certain way and then, then I move on. And so, yeah, could you say a little bit about that? And where the power is inside that? [00:25:28] Flower Darby: Yeah, I love it. So in the book we do have three sections and the whole first section is about the planning of our classes. And we do very intentionally talk about in person classes, online classes, everything in between, the hybrids, the blends, the synchronous, the asynchronous. But what that is about, what you were just talking about, is really about enhancing student motivation based on goal theory. So if I have a sense of why I'm doing what I'm doing, what the purpose is, how it's going to help me, I'm going to naturally experience more intrinsic motivation and motivation precedes learning. Learning does not happen unless motivation is in the mix as well. So, yeah that really academies that jargony kind of language that nobody would understand. I agree oftentimes it's mandated. There's accreditation factoring in there. But we can also add our own explanation of what it really means for students. It can be in writing in the syllabus. It could be in a welcome video that we make. Helping students understand what the goal is in our classes. And I love what you said about instructor agency. Because, yeah, we spend a lot of time thinking about what I've have really also gotten into is the Stephen Covey circles of control. And it's essentially a three part diagram where there's the center of the circle. That's where I have control. That's my area that I can I'm responsible for. And then the second circle going outward is influence. Here's where I might be able to shape other people's thoughts, perceptions, maybe advocate for change. And then the third circle is concern. And for me, that's really helpful to remind myself of, hey, there are things that I do have control over. How am I communicating with my students? How am I helping them understand what we're doing in this class? And then there are things that I don't have any control over, and it's helpful for me to relegate those to those outer circles and not waste my headspace, my limited headspace on navigating those things. But we have a lot of agency, even, I'm sometimes asked what if I'm just given a class that somebody else already created or what if I'm teaching a publisher, created online course, you still have agency over how you communicate with your students and convey compassion and care and support and be their coach, be their cheerleader. That's where I see that kind of agency coming in. I love that you brought that up. Thank you, John. [00:27:52] John Nash: Yeah, of course. There was another thing that, and I'm sort of looking at Jason again, but there seems to be a theme popping up here. I know when we talked to Catherine Denial in our last episode this idea of the importance of the syllabus is the first signal of inclusiveness. mentioned earlier flower talking about you do an annotated syllabus. I know there's ideas around liquid syllabus, other things, but can all also talk about this here, but this idea of the syllabus just seems like it's such a low-hanging fruit. It's particularly useful in humanizing online learning. Could, could you say a little bit about that? [00:28:31] Flower Darby: Well, yeah, I think what we want to do is to invite faculty members to think about it, and I say that really deliberately because for many years of my teaching, I didn't give a whole lot of thought to the syllabus, and I know it's still extremely common to be given a syllabus or to, have access to some colleagues syllabus and then use those to create an example from. I think that many of us Thanks a lot. Myself included have thought about it like just the furniture in the room like, okay We got to have that but that's not the important stuff. What and so I think there's this new focus on really Carefully analyzing that document realizing how much it Communicates to students. Are you going to be a friendly and approachable instructor or are you aloof and distant? Because a lot syllabi read is very uninvolved and impersonal, and when it comes to online classes and the distance that is baked into the format, anything that we can do to reduce students sense that we are impersonal, distant, or aloof is really important and valuable to do, and the syllabus offers us a prime way and a tool and a place to do that. [00:29:37] John Nash: hmm. Mm hmm. [00:29:38] Jason: Well, we'll put a link to you know the small teaching online book as well as the Norton guide to equity minded teaching. Really, really helpful book. There's even a way to request a free copy. and we'll put a link in for that? So yeah, that's great. What do you what are you working on next Flower? [00:29:57] Flower Darby: Yes. Well, I'm very excited. I've talked a little bit today about the direction that I've been going with my research and scholarship and really where I'm going is how we can enjoy teaching online more. Now, I know for a fact, there are some online instructors and probably some of your listeners who really do love teaching online I know that, but I think there's not enough of us yet. So, we know, and this is, terrible, but it bears out in the literature that students tell us that they feel like they're online struck instructors aren't there. We're just not there in our classes. And I still hear this. I saw this on LinkedIn just a few weeks ago. A faculty member was saying, "Teaching online is easy money because my course just runs itself. I don't even have to interact with students." And I'm like, what, like, how is that still a thing? And what I've concluded is that it's because we don't really enjoy being in our online classes the way we enjoy teaching in person. For those of us who enjoy teaching in person, it doesn't feel the same, right? Even earlier in this conversation, we were talking about being in a physical classroom and the buzz and the interaction with embodied students. And we love it. So that's where my work is going next is how do we help instructors enjoy being in our online classes? How do we help students enjoy being online, right? It can feel extremely transactional, a means to an end, I need to get that degree, but what have we cultivated flourishing in our online spaces for both ourselves and our students? That's what I've been working on. I'm very excited. Again, lots of practical things that we can do in that regard. [00:31:30] John Nash: I'm excited to see where that goes. That's neat. That's really neat. [00:31:34] Flower Darby: Thank you. [00:31:36] Jason: I think those ideas will continue to hit home for people, both students and teachers, partly because, and I didn't make a promise not to bring up AI, but we almost got through this podcast without talking about AI, John. So far, we're like, we're like, 33 now for 33 talking about AI. So we don't need to get a big con. This could be a whole another conversation, of course. But I think about particularly in, and I was just at a conference yesterday and talking to a lot of people about AI myself, as well as hearing from people about AI, particularly in this world that we're moving into. Where this presence of AI could become so attractive, seductive to bring into our classes to just that, that would relieve a maybe some of that feeling that we have to be so present for some people that don't want to be present in the classes, but maybe for some people that actually do want to be present, this idea of this AI that can be kind of present and take care of a lot of these things for us. Especially as we move into this kind of AI agency world where it can do multiple things maybe at one time. I don't know. I feel like we're moving Into a second half of online life that could have this as a bit of a, almost a counterforce to this idea that you're talking about, which is really bringing ourselves more into the online class and having enjoyment in that presence and thing for the students. Mm-Hmm. [00:33:22] Flower Darby: Yeah, it's really complex. It's funny. I had not even noticed that we hadn't brought up AI, and it is a I think there's a lot of nuance there. On the one hand, when I talk to folks about, we need to be interacting with our students more. That can sound like that. I think we ourselves are 24 7 chatbots. We just need to always be online, always responding, always replying to an email, right? Yeah. And honestly, our students and ourselves, we have become accustomed to that instant response from the many chatbots that we interact with all the time on customer service sites as one example. But I'm not saying that we need to be there. And actually, I may be able to fill that. That gap a little bit. We know That in asynchronous classes, students are doing their work whenever they can in their busy schedules. We know they are juggling a lot of things and they are very likely doing their work at a time when we are not necessarily online be evenings, weekends, whatever. When thoughtfully implemented, maybe AI can be a helpful resource in that moment where the student needs that help. I know I've been using AI in that way let me turn to ChatGPT and see if I can develop a little better understanding of this concept. But let me be very clear and say by no means am I saying that AI is going to replace us. We need to be in our classes. Our students need us. They need our humanity. They need our experience. They need our wisdom. These are things that AI cannot do. And somebody might say, well, they're going to be able to do that pretty soon. We're designing for empathy and emotional intelligence. I'm saying no, AI does not have the experience of dealing with, in my case, my own daughters who are working through anxiety and mental health challenges. And I see how that impacts their ability to be successful. I have that empathy born out of my own human experience. Students will always need us for that. Not to mention our expertise but AI cannot replace us, but maybe it could be a helpful tool to increase some communication and responsiveness. [00:35:24] John Nash: Yeah, it's interesting. [00:35:32] Jason: how all this is going to work, right? Like we're, we're just, we're peering into a future that is unknown at this point, as much as I like to speculate. And, and I'm a big fan of sci fi, dystopian robot movies, particularly, but, but I, I'm going to throw this out in front of both of you and see what you think about this. I was talking yesterday to people about how, particularly as AI starts to become more human like, it starts to create more psychological space for us, as if we are, responding to a human. So space without the psychological depth to know that there is a human there. Now I'm talking to both of you. You're hearing me. I see eye contact, even though we're online. I feel your presence with me. I know that I'm saying something and it's actually being heard by other humans I feel like that this difference between psychological space versus actual psychological depth and . Maybe some of that difference that gonna we're gonna know as we as we go along a little Little further into this. What do you guys think? [00:37:00] John Nash: You first , Flower.  (ha ha) [00:37:01] Flower Darby: Was waiting for some pearls of wisdom there, John. Here's, I hadn't thought about it that way. So thank you, Jason. That gives me some new things to think about. The psychological depth in particular. I guess I just. Think that A. I. Is never going to care about our students as people the way that We can. And I heard this very passionately and eloquently shared from one of our top leadership at the University of Missouri. One of our vice provosts said. To a room full of faculty, AI is not going to care about your student whose dad just received a terminal four cancer diagnosis and is not going to work with that student to make sure that they have what they need to be successful. AI is not going to care, I think, right? As you said, who knows? I don't have a crystal ball. But those authentic human based connections again, cultivating that, empathy, that care. I'm going to have to think more about psychological depth, but I'd love to learn more about that. That's where I think that we need to go with this conversation. [00:38:03] Jason: That's a great example. That's kind of what I think, like, I think that AI will be programmed to maybe respond even appropriately by the book and so on to somebody that's having this even respond in a way that is empathetic. That is, "Oh, if you need some extra time" or whatever like that, all the things, however, the student. will not have that, that psychological support that there was actually a human being that was there for me. [00:38:33] Flower Darby: That's so important because we know.that we are wired for connection. We know that, biologically speaking, our very survival depends on connecting with other people and feeling connected with other people. And I think that's the key here, is that even, as you said, the student may get response that is empathetic sounding, but We'll still know it's not a real person. Yeah, that that's really interesting. [00:39:00] John Nash: If, if we reveal it. So there's an interesting article, and I can share it in our show notes later. It was in the New York Times, and it was entitled, "I'm a doctor, GPT's bedside manner is better than mine." And Dr. Jonathan Reisman talks about study in which ChatGPT's answers to patient questions were rated as more empathetic, and also of higher quality than those written by actual doctors. But it's his closing statement that bothered me the most about this, which he said "in the end, it doesn't actually matter if doctors feel compassion or empathy towards patients. It only matters if they act like it." [00:39:36] Flower Darby: Wow. [00:39:37] John Nash: "In as much as the same way, it doesn't matter that AI has no idea what we or it are even talking about. There are linguistic formulas for human empathy and compassion, and we should not hesitate to use good ones no matter who or what is the author." So even human, I mean, yeah, I just don't know what to make of this. We have a lot of work to do amongst our human compatriots let alone our artificial ones. [00:40:00] Flower Darby: I mean, I'm glad you brought that up because again these tools, right? They're tools, they are tools and tools can be used for better or worse, and they are improving communication, empathy that they are. So that's good. Like for me this whole topic of AI is so nuanced, so complex. There are no clear answers. I think it for me again, it comes down to how we're using the tools. If this tool is going to make my email to my students come across as a little warmer and more supportive and friendly and approachable. Great. Let me use the tool. But I'm choosing to firmly stay in my stance that it's not going to replace us. Human connection counts. [00:40:39] Jason: And I think that example too, John, kind of points to where the work is, right? Our work, though it is embedded with technology, is actually with people. And I was thinking about this, this quote that I had in my presentation yesterday, which is, "the answer does not lie in rejection of the machine, but rather in the humanization of man." And this is by Paulo Freire. And about how much our leadership work is not leadership of technology. It's leadership of people. [00:41:10] John Nash: Yes. [00:41:11] Jason: and our, our work is to understand what is happening in the technology, but then to lead people who are more empathetic and are are bringing more humanity into their spaces. [00:41:27] Flower Darby: Love it. [00:41:29] Jason: Well, this has been great flower. Thank you so much. [00:41:33] John Nash: Yeah. [00:41:33] Flower Darby: Absolutely. thank you again for having me on the show. It's always fun to talk to interesting, intelligent people who care deeply about our work. So I've, enjoyed our conversation, right? [00:41:47] Jason: us. So that's our, that's a lot of our main goal here, really, John, is to get to that point of people saying nice things about us. So and to know what's coming from a real person. I mean, ChatGPT will, ChatGPT loves everything I say, NotebookLM. Absolutely adores every article I've ever written and every line, but to know this is coming from a real person makes a difference for me. So thank you. [00:42:10] John Nash: Yes. I actually do believe Flower that you were showing real compassion and not just acting like it. Yes. [00:42:19] Flower Darby: Yes. you got that right, John. Thank you. [00:42:23] Jason: Yeah, thank you so much for being with us. For those listening, we'll put some links into our show notes. You can always find our podcast at www.OnlineLearningPodcast.com , that's www.OnlineLearningPodcast.com . You can look us up on LinkedIn, but our links are there as well. We'd love to chat with you. But thank you so much.

In this episode, John and Jason talk with Cate Denial, author of “Pedagogy of Kindness” about kindness to self and students in the online classroom. See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com Join Our LinkedIn Group - *Online Learning Podcast (Also feel free to connect with John and Jason at LinkedIn too)* Guest Bio: Cate Denial is the Bright Distinguished Professor of American History and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Her new book, A Pedagogy of Kindness, is now available from the University of Oklahoma Press. Her historical research has examined the early nineteenth-century experience of pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing in Upper Midwestern Ojibwe and missionary cultures, research that grew from Cate’s previous book, Making Marriage: Husbands, Wives, and the American State in Dakota and Ojibwe Country (2013). From July 2022 to December 2023, Cate was the PI on a $150,000 Mellon-funded grant bringing together thirty-six participants from across higher education in the United States to explore “Pedagogies, Communities, and Practices of Care in the Academy After COVID-19.” Cate consults on teaching in higher education with individuals, departments, and institutions in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, and Australia. Connecting with Cate: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-denial-8869a115b/ https://bsky.app/profile/cjdenial.bsky.social https://catherinedenial.org/ Links and Resources: Critical Digital Pedagogy: A Collection (free access) A Pedagogy of Kindness (book) Michelle Miller’s post on Same Side Pedagogy Rethinking Rigor (Kevin Gannon) Annotate Your Syllabus (Remi Kalir) Digital Pedagogy Lab 2025 Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License. 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! False Start [00:00:00] Jason: good Well, thank you. Yeah, that was a great conversation [00:00:02] Cate Denial: Yeah. Let me know, you know, if you need anything from me and otherwise I'll look forward to listening in when you get it all done. [00:00:10] Jason: Okay, our our timeline is usually somewhere between two weeks and six months [00:00:18] Cate Denial: Okay. Start [00:00:19] John Nash: I'm John nash here with Jason Johnston. [00:00:22] Jason: Hey, John. Hey, everyone. And this is Online Learning, the second half, the Online Learning Podcast. [00:00:28] John Nash: Yeah, we're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation we've been having for the last two years about online education. Look, online learning has had its chance to be great and some of it is, but. A lot of it still isn't. So how are we going to get to the next stage? [00:00:43] Jason: That's a great question. How about we do a podcast, John, and talk about it? [00:00:48] John Nash: I think that's a perfect idea. What do you want to talk about today? [00:00:51] Jason: Well, today we have a special guest with us. With us is Catherine Denial. Cate is the Bright Distinguished Professor of American History and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Welcome, Cate. [00:01:07] Cate Denial: Thanks for having me. [00:01:09] Jason: Can we call you Cate? [00:01:10] Cate Denial: Of course. [00:01:12] Jason: Sometimes I take that liberty when people have that on their little thing in the video screen. I say, well, if it's there, then I guess we can call them that. [00:01:20] Cate Denial: Yeah, absolutely. [00:01:22] Jason: Yeah. Well, good. Well, it's so great to have you here. One of the reasons why we reached out to you is because of your book, which we'll get to. But even before that , in the spring of this last year, so I've got a digital critical pedagogy book club that we started in the spring. So. There's a great anthology that you're part of that talks about the pedagogy of kindness as part of that anthology the Critical digital pedagogy anthology. We'll put the link in our notes. I got to know you're writing there and then of course connected through LinkedIn and Always great to see your posts. I feel like they are kind of North Star-ish posts and I and I like following people who who helped to kind of bring me You bring me back and keep me pointed in the right direction with all of this because you can get really, really in the weeds and also caught up with all the new technologies and everything like that and what we're doing. So anyways, that was kind of my background of connecting with you. And so thank you so much for coming on to the, into the show. I just really look forward to having this conversation and have been looking forward to it ever since we set it up. We're going to get into your first chapter here in a second, but I would like to talk to you a little bit. We would like to talk to you a little bit about just kind of how you got to the place that you are today as as a professor and maybe a little bit about what, It kind of drew you to, to write this book and to kind of take this kind of trajectory, I think, in terms of, of your focus in this direction. [00:03:06] Cate Denial: So it has been 30 years. I am from England originally. And so I showed up in America to go to graduate school and was put in front of a classroom. And I had graduated exactly 1 month before that because the British system goes longer into the year than the American system. was terrified. I didn't know what I was doing. So I projected Dana Scully every time I walked into the classroom from the X Files to try and make sure that I was someone who could actually command some kind of presence in that room. I was taught as a graduate instructor to think of students as antagonists, to suspect them of cheating, to watch out for their plagiarism, to think about the way that they would try and change their grades, to anticipate they wouldn't do the reading. People are very familiar with these sorts of things. And it quickly became clear to me that this wasn't working for me. And it wasn't working for my students either. Setting up that kind of antagonism in the classroom just put us all on edge. So little bit by little bit, I tried things to change. try and change that relationship. I was really flying blind for a great deal of time. I did not know there was such a thing as pedagogy scholarship. I had no idea about the scholarship of teaching and learning. I was just experimenting in my classroom. And then when I became a professor. I was a much better than I had been in 1994. Thank goodness. And that trajectory continued and To conduct myself in a classroom. I was trained in intergroup dialogue as of 2013 from the University of Michigan and intergroup dialogue is a really structured way of talking across big differences around issues like race, gender, sexuality, religion, disability. I have colleagues at Knott's College who were part of my journey alongside me, my colleague, Gabriel Raley Carlin, my colleagues, Hilary Lehrman and Deidre Doherty in particular. And then I went to the Digital Pedagogy Lab in 2017, and that was really where I had this aha moment where the people in charge of my stream asked us to look at our syllabus and to identify who we were writing it to, to literally describe them with a bunch of adjectives. And I realized, despite all the changes that I had made in my teaching, that syllabus communicated that I was a distant authoritarian figure just waiting for people to mess up. that was a shock to me. So I set about completely changing that, right? Going into the granular detail of my syllabus, changing the way that I expressed myself and the things that I asked students to do with the goal of making the self that I presented to them the same self that I am. Right. And so that was really how I got to distilling a pedagogy of kindness. It came very, very directly out of that digital pedagogy lab experience. [00:06:13] John Nash: I'd like to build on that. Cate, I was I, I don't know where this is written somewhere, but it's about the, about the hook. And when you start a book or anything, it's like, you need to capture the reader in the first place. sentence or paragraph and yours did just that. I even texted Jason when I started reading your book saying, I'm on the Kindle version, "I'm 4 percent in and I'm enthralled." And so um, Um, You to get towards kindness. And it's what struck me was also, we talk a lot about, in this podcast with others, about building capacity amongst the ranks of our faculty colleagues to be better teachers the centers for teaching and learning that try to do this. it struck me that this, description you make, which I think is true is a challenge to those that are trying to do the capacity building towards kindness, good pedagogy, is that your take? [00:07:30] Cate Denial: Yeah, I think that's accurate. I think that the culture of higher ed is sort of more than the sum of its parts, right? It's not just the distillation of everybody's individual values and goals. It sort of has a life of its own uh, a culture of its own. And I think that culture is very highly individualistic. I think that it is very, very competitive. I mean, for some of us, it's competitive from the moment we decide we want to go to college, right? and I think that it is antithetical to so many things that are so important for teachers, like community. Right? Like, knowing who you can count on and who's going to be able to assist you in moments where, I don't know, you've run out of chalk, or something terrible just happened in class, or you have too much homework to grade, like, all kinds of things, right? But you need community, and I think that higher ed is actually really bad at building that community in general. [00:08:34] John Nash: Your, your take also reminds me of someone we've spoken to here before Dr. Michelle Miller, cognitive psychologist at Northern Arizona University, who wrote a piece that resonated with us on this idea of same side pedagogy and getting away from this antagonistic approach [00:08:51] Cate Denial: Mm hmm. [00:08:52] John Nash: we not on the same side, students and teachers together to try to have a learning journey together. caught that in your, in your approach as well. Yeah. [00:09:01] Jason: Yeah, and it lines up well with so many other things that I'm kind of reading and hearing at this. stage of, of trying to really understand the students as well. And this idea of transparency in the syllabus as well that we've got this perception of how we feel in our hearts towards the students. And then we have what's projected out there in front of them. And they're coming at it from, from this power differential, right? Where they see things in a very different way than we see things as we are. In a sense looking at them. And so I, I love that kind of turn for you in terms of that kind of awareness, that aha moment with the, with the syllabus that came through your first chapter of your book if we can get into this is, is talking about kindness towards the self. And, as I mentioned here at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, we're doing this as part of our book club actually this semester and in our last meeting, one of the faculty members said that this was some of the best P. D., professional development, that she's ever done in a long time. And some of that, I think, I think was because people really resonated with this first chapter of this, this first chapter that kind of starts. [00:10:32] Cate Denial: hmm. [00:10:39] Jason: we are always taught to put the student first and to be student focused in all that we do. And so to have a, a book that actually starts with an inward look this and having kindness towards yourself was almost cold water on the face for me in terms of this kind of like, "oh" moment. So could you talk a little bit about starting with that as a, as a chapter and, and how you came to that? [00:11:08] Cate Denial: Yeah, in the original manuscript, I had written this as the last chapter of the and it was in conversation with Jim Lang, who's the editor of the series, that it got moved up It was really that there were some things that needed to be said that were prerequisites to everything else that I was saying in the book, and he had a clearer view of that from sort of looking outside in than I had while I was, you know, typing away at making the manuscript. there There were things about, you know, what kind of pedagogical training have we had or not had in our lives. [00:11:43] Jason: Mm hmm. [00:11:44] Cate Denial: What is being asked of us when we are put in front of a classroom of students? How do we make sure if we're going to be pouring out of our cup all the time, how do we fill it up? How do we make sure that we are resourced and that we are taken care of? And so it made a lot of sense to me that this needed to be the very first chapter so that before it, got to here's some stuff you can do with syllabi and assignments and your classroom practices, which can just sometimes feel like a piling on of more responsibility that there was a real pause to say, okay, how are you going to take care of yourself before we even think about making all of that other stuff manageable? [00:12:27] Jason: Yeah, that's so good and very insightful. And what a what a wonderful thing to have an editor, you know, somebody working with you on this to, to have that kind of insight as well from the outside because I think so much even in our professional development that we do It kind of gets tagged on at the end. Oh, yeah, and by the way [00:12:45] Cate Denial: Yes. [00:12:46] Jason: I know that we have just given you a list of a thousand things that you some of you would like to do some of you feel like you should do or have to do or And, and now I've seen all these examples of these amazing teachers and transformed lives. And I'm feeling this. Oh, and by the way, take care of yourself. [00:13:05] John Nash: And you, you distinguish quite clearly that there is a difference between being kind or, well, and kindness and being nice. And I I've been through many academic units and other institutions where, well, Iowa nice is a classic notion that I lived through when I was in Iowa and, but it's, you distinguish from that. Talk to us a bit, if you could, about that difference. [00:13:34] Cate Denial: I know Iowa nice too, because that's where I went to graduate school. So yes I think we could probably make it Midwest nice, right? That there's a certain Midwest niceness. Niceness as I conceive of it in the way that it works in higher ed is that it lies to us. It's very conflict averse. Doesn't want to have the serious and needed conversations to clear the air to make progress. is focused on plastering over cracks. And so if we could just, you know, not actually deal with the elephant in the room, but instead just all agree to get along, that's what's prioritized instead of actually meaningful conversation. so I think niceness lies about a lot of different things. It lies about precarity. It lies about how much time we're putting in, lies about exhaustion and burnout. It lies about what, sometimes get shoved under the concept of rigor or tradition. And I think that we deserve and need honest conversations about those things. [00:14:38] John Nash: How does, how does this play out then as we move towards pedagogy and working with students? And you note here in early on in the book too, that a pedagogy of kindness begins with justice. And this is a thread throughout as well, that we should be just does that play out? What do you think as we get in front of students? [00:14:58] Cate Denial: So I think the impulse to be nice is that impulse to just get along, right? So it's the impulse to bend over backwards to make sure that every articulated student need is met. And sometimes we actually need to hold fast to some boundaries. We need to set some boundaries on our time. We need to set some boundaries on our effort. We need to be the person who provides some structure and some accountability. Those things are not alien concepts, right? And they're not antithetical to being kind to ourselves and our students. So a great example of this from my teaching is that in, I think it was 2012 I had two sections of the same class. I had 50 students who were all going to be writing papers at around the same time. And I balked at the idea of trying to give meaningful feedback on eight to 10 page papers three times, right? With all these students. So I was like, you know what? You can turn in your paper anytime you want to this term, and I will give you feedback, and my intent was, oh, this will be great. They'll just sort of dribble in across the term. It'll be sustainable. Of course, what happened was that every single student wrote, two papers the night before the last day of class, and I should have seen that coming. I should have seen that coming. I'm terrible when I don't have deadlines and accountability, so I don't know why I anticipated that everybody else would be different. And so what I didn't offer there was the structure, the boundaries, right, to keep everybody on task. They had a terrible time writing those papers. Those papers were not the greatest papers that they could have written, right? And that was very much something that I failed to give them because I was being nice and I was not actually thinking compassionately. [00:16:50] John Nash: Nor, not a criticism on you, but I think about also critical thinking comes into this, doesn't it? Thinking about way in which, I mean, I've that situation has befallen me as well. And being thinking about second order consequences, third order consequences, it took me years to realize there was a direct correlation about between the amount of work I assigned and the amount of grading I would do. [00:17:12] Cate Denial: Right, [00:17:13] John Nash: I was so excited to have them engage in what I thought was such interesting activities and they could go through these and then, yeah, there's this pile to give feedback on. [00:17:21] Cate Denial: Yes, exactly. [00:17:23] Jason: In your chapter about kindness to yourself, the, you talk a little bit, and this kind of relates here is, is how more work does not necessarily make better work. And you, you have a few statements like this throughout the book that I think are very releasing in some ways. It's like little breaths of fresh air but as you're thinking about the whole load of taking on a class and these, rigorous assignments that John likes to do because he, he loves getting into it and he wants students to engage and he wants to challenge them. And all these things are good things. How do we balance this, this kind of internal almost like a knee jerk, like, well, for good teachers, we need it to be rigorous, right? [00:18:08] Cate Denial: Yeah, [00:18:19] Jason: than it is even, I find then some Dean, you know, breathing down our, our, our necks or whatever like that. Hmm. [00:18:31] Cate Denial: I don't like the term rigor. Kevin Gannon makes a great distinction about types of rigor, right? That there are standards, and I love that terminology, right? There are standards, and we want our students to meet them. And that's absolutely what we should be doing, but that too often, rigor is stuff like, I won't accept your paper if it's 2 minutes late. If you didn't stay put. I'm not going to accept your paper. If it's not in 12 point times Roman font, I'm not going to accept your paper. If you have any life event that prevents you from handing it in on the day that it's due, I'm not going to accept it. Those kinds of things, right? That are hoops that we make students jump through for. Not terribly good reasons. There are other ways to manage workload and to think critically about how to help students do their best work without these sort of draconian and often punitive reactions to. very common problems, like where do people have staplers these days, right? or you know, you broke up at midnight with your partner and suddenly all that finishing work you were going to do is just blown out of the water, right? We need to be able to respond to those things. So I think that kindness is not at all antithetical to standards, I think it is antithetical to the sort of concept of rigor that is very brittle and unbending, right? That has no flexibility in it and can shatter at a moment's notice. [00:20:01] John Nash: It's not reflective. That's what I think about. I think about instances that are happening presently in our contemporary classes of this semester with generative AI and its appearance on the scene in round student work and professors need your reaction to move to your definition of rigor when encountering that and not having a reflective conversation about how or why it has, that kind of work has been turned in, so... [00:20:30] Cate Denial: Yeah, yeah. [00:20:31] Jason:  Yeah, it's this shift away from this kind of enforcer mindset of we've got, we've got a bunch of rules and if we don't stick to the rules, then it's a slippery slope and all these kids are going to slide right down that slope into the pit of going nowhere in their education . Um, Yeah. [00:21:03] Cate Denial: I think that it is tempting to think that rules are about fairness. But actually our humanity makes us so multivarious that there are very few rules that can equally apply to every situation actually recognizing that multiplicity of experiences is part of what makes for a good teacher, I think. [00:21:27] Jason: That's good. I like some of that language in terms of standards. What do you think about high expectations? Because sometimes I hear that and sometimes it may be veiled as rigor when you say high expectations. I think I probably do that with my own, my own children. Right. Well that's not a, it's, you know, I just have high expectations for you where it may be that I'm just too locked into some of the rules especially as they're becoming young adults that I'm just kind of a little too locked in. Mm-Hmm [00:21:58] Cate Denial: I think that language of I have high expectations for you can be delivered in a way that is actually supportive and kind, but it can easily, easily shift to become the language of disappointment and shame. Right? just, I have high expectations for you." Right? And your voice conveys that this person didn't meet them and what a disappointment they are, right? And nobody has ever, been shamed to doing better, right? That is not a long term strategy for improving anything. So I think that our delivery and our, the intent behind the words matters a lot. [00:22:40] John Nash: And the, perhaps the, the actual operational definition of the high expectation written so that one can know what they're supposed to meet. I mean, with the children, Jason's a fine father, I'll use myself, but I might say, "I have high expectations for you" and a tone of disappointment, but I've never explained to my kids what those were. [00:23:01] Cate Denial: Yeah. That's [00:23:03] Jason: Right. So it becomes this kind of nebulous, high expectation that you never actually reach for your teacher who always seems to be generally disappointed with you. [00:23:14] Cate Denial: Yeah, yeah. [00:23:17] Jason: As you know, our podcast, we focus on online learning And we talk a lot about online learning in the second half, get this idea that online learning has been around now for, you know, 25, almost probably going on 30 or 40 years now. And this kind of going into the second half of life. We know how to deliver content to people. Now we've got all these tech tools. People are connecting in high speed. We've got all these affordances of of our online learning but as we move into the second half of life here of online learning. you know, what, where do we want to go? You know, what are our hopes and dreams for kind of moving it into a new level? One of those places, and coming back to this first chapter again, in terms of a kindness towards the self, is that we have, we have a lot of teachers who are teaching online who are pretty isolated. And they they don't have people that are caring for them. They are probably working too hard because they have too many [00:24:28] Cate Denial: Yeah. [00:24:29] Jason: on the go, and they're working across multiple So, schools and so on in order to, you know, fulfill a full time kind of schedule in a sense. Where do we go from here? , how do we move into this next season, which probably will expand, I think overall, we're, moving very quickly past the 50 percent point , of students online versus face to face in, the U. S. And we're going to keep on moving in that direction. And I'm part of the problem in that way. You know, because of what we do, but I also believe in it, right? I believe that we're, we're creating more access for people and we're reaching people that we haven't before in education and people in different paths. So that's all that. Anyways, long kind of lead up to say, you know, what words would you have for teachers that are listening to this, that are teaching these online classes? [00:25:25] Cate Denial: So I, I think there's two responses. One is the. structural response and one is the, okay, given that, what can you personally do? Right? I was the PI on a grant last year from the Mellon Foundation that had 36 of us from different kinds of higher ed institutions with different kinds of roles, faculty and staff, investigate what it would look like if we actually took care of faculty and staff. And we took as our precip the idea that we did a pretty good job of taking care of students during the acute phase of the pandemic, but we did not take care of our faculty and staff in that same moment. So what would that look like? I think that there has to be a commitment to care. from administrations. I think it has to come from, you know, your provost's office and the people who are there who are ostensibly supposed to be supporting you, right? There has got to be a much more honest conversation about contingency in this country. 70 percent of instruction right now is done by contingent faculty, and those faculty are often very isolated and unsupported and unsupported, not just in the fact that they have a colleague down the corridor who they can, you know, run a situation by, but in the fact that they are providing their own office supplies, for example, right? Everything is just sort of thrust back upon them. I think that we have to have some really serious conversations about the way in which we structure the business of higher ed, and it is increasingly being structured like a business. Right. That was not the way in which I made, I meant that, but it is being structured like a business. And you get nowhere by exhausting and burning out the people who are doing the great work upon which your entire industry is. Is based, right? So that has to happen. And I'm hopefully I'm helping with this grant and with other work that I'm involved in. There's a group of us that are really, you know, trying to push those conversations and make those conversations happen. what do you do in the meantime? Because those conversations are not going to solve the problem today. Right? So I think there is the question of boundaries again, right? Setting very hard and fast boundaries on, say, when you will and will not respond to email. especially tough if you're contingent and you are. bringing together multiple classes, because you are sometimes at the point where every hour of your reasonable working day is taken up by classes, and then you have to respond to students too, right? But I think that we have to take as a foundational that we have a diminishing returns when we don't take care of ourselves. And so there's got to be a time blocked off where you're like, this is absolutely not time where I will be dealing with my students. This is time when I will be doing any number of other things that are not to do with my job. So, it's about I have email hours, which are on my syllabus. My, they're very consistent. My students know what to expect. I have I try to take. day off from email altogether. I don't have email notifications on my phone and that's a big one, right? Because you know, you're out doing the grocery shopping or whatever and ping, ping, ping, ping, right? They're just coming in all the time and your, your sense of stress and overwhelm just grows. So, not having that on my phone. So, I can choose to go look and see if stuff has come in, but I'm not being told that all the time. I think that, especially for people who are isolated and away from colleagues, that using social media is a wonderful way to find different kinds of community, and there's so many different types of social media now. There's some to avoid, And there's some that are really generative. I, did not find my teaching community in my locality, really, I found most of my teaching community online and had most of my profound, you know, the conversations that profoundly altered me online, Finding community, finding ways to be able to honor your sense of and work, for example. So right now I am sitting in my living room and I have a corner of that living room that is my office space, right? I also spend my time here reading books and watching television and entertaining friends and all kinds of stuff. So I have a candle. that I light when I'm sitting down to work that is sort of like, okay, now it's the workspace. And when I blow that candle out, that's the end of it being the workspace, right? It's a tiny little ritual that works for me in terms of saying, this is not going to bleed over. And that computer gets shut down for the day, right? I think all kinds of, of tiny pieces of, of getting back some autonomy and some space are really, really crucial interventions. [00:30:41] Jason: One of my rituals here, because my my office is also the laundry room is turning off the dryer when I'm working. So I don't know if it's, that's really the same thing, but that's what I do. If [00:30:54] Cate Denial: it demarcates that space, then it's working [00:30:58] Jason: Yeah, those are great. Guiding points there. And goes back to that transparency and kindness to the students can also be kindness to yourself as you are explaining what your boundaries are. I think that you are Helping students do the same things for themselves. I would like to believe that anyway. So is that true? I just let myself off the hook or just is actually help students in the end. [00:31:22] Cate Denial: I have had students articulate to me that, like, what I can not answer email, like I shouldn't, you know, shut that down and it doesn't have to be on my phone. I mean I'm modeling taking time away. I actually last trimester brought in blank sheets of paper with a monthly blank calendar on it, and blank weekly calendars, and did an exercise with my students where I was like, what's the time of day where you're at your sharpest, you do your best work, identify those, and when is it never going to happen? Morning, night, whatever. When is it never going to happen? You're not at your sharpest. when are you going to take that time for yourself? Block off an entire morning or an entire afternoon. And they had colored pencils and they, they blocked off that time for themselves. We spent most of a class period doing this and then transferring it to these monthly calendars and having a sense of what their time was like. And that came up so many times over the course of the term, in terms of the reflective work that they were doing, that it made a difference to be given permission, tacit permission to do that, and then to have the time to consider it so that it wasn't another piece of homework, but it was something we did together. That also mattered to them. [00:32:39] John Nash: It seems to me part of it also is a lack of Perhaps it's kindness on the part of those in more positions of power. This, these are great tips and it's sort of putting this boundary work in this kindness, self kindness work at the feet of us, and we should, but we work with others who, send emails at any hour or a a footnote in their email saying, just because I sent this when you're asleep, doesn't mean you have to answer it. I'm, I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of it without saying, ah, maybe I could schedule this email to show up during their work hours or maybe it could [00:33:17] Cate Denial: I think there are very few people in higher ed who are genuinely seeking to be unkind. Like whose reason to get up in the morning is to be unkind, right? I think that again, it's that culture that we're swimming in, right? And I think that for a lot of leadership, the same sort of aha moment that I had to have with my syllabus is the same aha moment they could stand to have with their communications coming out of their office. Right? The way that they're worded when they get sent. Please do not unload all of your stuff at 4 p. m. on a Friday, right? Like there is some self reflective work there and some work to sort of think about tone and language use and everything that spins out from there, right? That would be useful. I also think that there are, and some of these are in the book, I think that there are little things that could happen, like a space where the contingent faculty can either go to a place and borrow stuff that they need for their classes so that they're not constantly paying for things themselves, or have a certain amount that can be sent to people, right? Or make things available to them online, right? There has to be that sense of community and community support, and it does not cost a lot of money to have a supply closet, right? Whether that's an online supply closet or an offline supply closet. [00:34:58] Jason: Yeah, and it's a just a tangible way in which you feel that support then, and that people recognize that you're not in the, in the physical office. If you're working from home, that's good. [00:35:11] Cate Denial: Yeah. [00:35:13] Jason: I would like to, Before our time runs out here, talk a little bit more about some of the insights from the rest of the book. I think what I'd like to do maybe is ask kind of an overarching question, understanding where we're at and our listeners thinking about online learning, both administrating and teaching tend to be the instructional designers. Those tend to be the people that listen to us. The rest of your chapters, you talk about kindness in the syllabus, assessment, and in the classroom. So what are some things that jump out to you as you think about the online space that we could do better in any of those areas? [00:35:56] Cate Denial: I think one of the things that I think has made such a profound difference to me is rewriting the syllabus and then having the students annotate the syllabus. So that idea comes from Remy Killear and, people have varying degrees of autonomy when it comes to designing their syllabi, right, depending on the system that you're working within. Some people, like me, can have their students work with them to build the syllabus from scratch. And some people have a lot of boilerplate language or even a template where they're just filling in, you know, their name and their contact information and that kind of stuff. But no matter what, having the students then annotate that syllabus, speak back to it, right? And they're learning the skill of annotation, whether they are learning that online or not, right? It's easy to do in a very simple document where there's commenting enabled, but you can use things like Perusal or Hypothesis to do this too. it gives students some authority back, right? To talk back and say, I love this policy, or why does it have to be this way? Why is this language on every syllabus I ever see, right? It gives them the opportunity to ask questions and get them answered. It gives them the opportunity to express points of view. And it just transforms this into, instead of a document that is top down, it becomes the co creation of what the course is going to be like. And I think co creation is perhaps the thing leaves out to me as, as joining those other three chapters of the book together, right? Believing in students as people who can co create their educational experience alongside you. So, making space for editing documents and making space for students to be able to tell. I have another concrete example, I have them fill in a self assessment sheet when they turn in a paper, for example. And one of the questions on that self assessment sheet is, how can I help you prepare for the next assignment? And, it's an opportunity for them to reflect on what sort of help they sought out in doing the first assignment they are perhaps realizing they need to do a little bit more work or polish a certain skill, to ask for it, right? To say, I'm going to need some more practice on this particular, whatever it is, equation, or piece of theory, whatever, right? So I think just opening up space where students get to say, I would love it if we could address this. I have thoughts about this. would like to edit this. I would, you know, anything that just helps them be the co creators of their experience. [00:38:39] Jason: I like that as a thread a lot. And, you know, it threads through those kind of more concrete things, the syllabus assessment and classroom. But as, as you were talking, I thought, well, this really ties right back into being co creators in our lives together. So here we are interacting in this class. We're going to have some level of effect on each other. How do we, how do we make the best lives for each other that we want to, while achieving this goal together this semester, you know, and I think that's where this kindness to self can come in as well. [00:39:09] Cate Denial: And I think is crucial to remember that it is sometimes tempting to want to burn everything down, that is actually not a good strategy for our health and well being, right? That, this is about changing one thing at a time and seeing how it goes and then adapting it again and tweaking it. And then, if I think about where I am in terms of the kind of feedback I give to my students, it's been a six or seven year journey to do what I'm doing now, right? Making one little adjustment at a time every time I taught a class. That is the way to make these changes. It can sometimes be overwhelming when you read a book like mine to go like, ah, that's so much work. There's so much to do, right? But I'm very clear, like, pick one thing, pick one thing that you can change, and then you can check in with it later and see if it's working. And if it is working, great, accentuate it. And if it's not working, choose something else, right? [00:40:07] Jason: Michelle Percansky-Brock talks about the liquid syllabus and how is annotating the syllabus the same or different than some of her ideas of coming at the beginning of the class really with a syllabus that instead of being in a, this kind of firm final position, it's, it's flexible. [00:40:26] Cate Denial: I think they're really complimentary ideas, right? And I think depending on your particular situation, one might seem better than the other to you, right? Annotating the syllabus I found is really useful for people who have a lot of boilerplate language, who have a central office, or somebody who oversees the curriculum. That is. providing most of the syllabus already written. it doesn't become an expression of who you are as a teacher. It's, it can tend to be very standoffish and distant and, and sort of phrased without any humanity in it, right? So, I think that is a great moment to be able to annotate the syllabus and have the students say, okay, well, we got it. We can't change these policies, right? These policies are, are being handed to us, but we can certainly talk about how they make us feel, and we can talk about how we might mitigate something that seems too harsh, and how we can think generously about other places in this syllabus, right? So, I love the liquid syllabus idea. I think it's just a question of picking the strategy that's going to work for your particular situation. [00:41:35] Jason: Yeah. You have so many different kinds of colleges and expectations within those colleges and what might work for, for history, it would not necessarily work for social work that they're, you know, they're working towards some sort of external test on these nine different competencies and so on, and it might not work for somebody who's going to, who's going to be a surgeon, you know, and, and it might not work for somebody who is, you know is, is going to be an IT or whatever. So I think it's nice to have some of that kind of flexibility and approach. [00:42:06] Cate Denial: Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. [00:42:27] John Nash: we think about, it sounds the similar thing, the one question you're wondering about, make that change and see if it made a difference and then do the next thing. [00:42:36] Cate Denial: Yeah. [00:42:36] John Nash: So I'm wondering as you do your faculty development work and you explain this, this framing have you noticed over time that there's a good first starting place? So I presume, let's say I've read the book. I'm excited. I don't want to burn it all down, although I have thoughts of it. So I'm willing to play the long game. What's your recommended first start? [00:43:02] Cate Denial: I think the syllabus is where we start because it is such, it's a relational document and too often it's written like a legal document, right? This is not a legal relationship that we're setting up. It's not a contract. It is a meeting of people that happens. And I think that the way in which our students meet us and interpret us, especially if they see that syllabus before they ever see our face or hear our voice or get any feedback or anything from us, even if it's textual, right? that syllabus has to do a lot of heavy lifting on our behalf. And So I think looking for the places. where you can look at the language and say, who is the student I'm imagining as I write this? Which is the question I was asked at Digital Pedagogy Lab. I think that's a transformative question and it helps you see where language can shift and change to be more welcoming. You can think that you are being welcoming, as I once did, right? And actually have your syllabus terribly standoffish. And so sitting down and saying to yourself, "okay, this student, I'm going to write a list of adjectives that describe the student this is addressed to," can be so transformative and so illuminating. And then fixing it, right? And fixing it and making it who you really think your students are. [00:44:28] John Nash: That's lovely because I think where my brain might have gone in a, in a question, if you were working with me, I would say, I would start to think which assignments am I going to change or which, but it's, it's firstly getting to this communicative place and about later, maybe what you're doing inside that, [00:44:48] Cate Denial: I agree. I think it's, you know, we talk a lot about belonging. Are we actually generating that? Does that first document that they see actually say, Hi, I'm glad you're here. Welcome to this class. Here's who I am, in terms that make them feel welcome. [00:45:07] John Nash: That is great. [00:45:09] Jason: " I don't want to, you know, give away spoil any endings for people, but this is really where you start as well. In the conclusion of your book, you say "We need to shift every part of what we do to prioritize care and not only for our students, but for ourselves. We deserve nothing short of transformation, a system of higher education in which we are each valued for the totality of who we are instead of only the products we are urged to create." And I, and I love that and I would love to see us get there. What other, what other ways as a, as a higher ed culture can we, can we promote this? We've been talking about kind of more the classroom level. What other ways as a higher ed culture do you think that we can get there? [00:45:59] Cate Denial: I think tackling the issue of competitiveness is an enormous part of it. I think that higher ed in general needs to slow down. We're accelerating and not in good ways, right? More demands upon people in order for them to get a job, right? More demands for them to produce to keep that job. More money, more grants, more, whatever the metric is, right? It is increasing constantly. And I think that those of us who are in stable positions who have some authority over the way in which other people's working environment is, that we need to really do the work of slowing things down and opting out of this increased acceleration pausing, asking ourselves, like, do we, I, I can tell you anecdotally that, you know, the standard for getting a job has increased exponentially at my at my college in the time that I have been there. But what's the real hard data? Can you go back and look at what the job ads asked for in your department or your division for the last however many, how many, you know, cycles. Can you see this happening in real time? I think there has to be a commitment to making academia humane. And too much of it is cutthroat and too much of it is just competitive in ways that I don't think generate learning or knowledge in good ways, right, sustainable ways, that actually uses up and then discard us. [00:47:39] Jason: Yeah, that's that is, that's good. That's a good word. [00:47:42] John Nash: I concur. I think it's, valuable from a faculty perspective, but also from a chair and dean and provost perspective, trying to understand the kinds of environments and supports that we need to really let this kind of work be fostered. [00:47:59] Cate Denial: Well, thank you so much, both of you. [00:48:02] Jason: Well, what's the best way for people to get your book, Cate? Because I, I'm just going to say right here, everybody should be reading this book. [00:48:13] Cate Denial: The best way to get it is from the University of Oklahoma Press because it supports an entire sort of infrastructure of more books like this, right? But you should get the book from the retailer that is most available to you. [00:48:30] Jason: Okay. That's great Let me just say what a great book it is for. a book club that is also kind for people. And I'll give you my, my pitch on this. The fact that it has four pretty manageable chapters. And I'll just say the way that we've set up our book club, which is via Zoom, we just are going to meet four times and we're just going to meet on those four chapters and we have asynchronous chats that go on as well if people can't make it. And I just think it's a wonderful way to both talk about it with your peers, but also start to change some of the culture where you're at and also put yourself in a place of caring with each other. So we have connections with people that are, that are teaching, some of them are face to face, some of them are online and so on. And it's just a, it's a wonderful way to actually, do some of the things that the book is talking about, which is to put yourself in a space where we're just not taking, it's not just self care, but it's care for one another within these spaces. So, so I'm going to say thank you again for the, for writing the book and for putting it out there in such a way that's manageable for, for us and for giving us a kind of a compulsion to, to move forward in this, because I think it's a, I think it's a good thing to do. [00:49:47] Cate Denial: Well, thank you so much and I love the idea of this being suited to book clubs, because like you say, a little community of care is, is perhaps the best outcome that there could be. [00:50:01] John Nash: Yeah, terrific. Thank you. [00:50:03] Jason: And if anybody wants to connect with you, Cate, what's the best way to do it is LinkedIn okay? [00:50:08] Cate Denial: LinkedIn is great. You can also find me on BlueSky at CJDenial and I have a website at catherinedenial. org. [00:50:17] Jason: wonderful. And we'll put all of those links in our notes and you can find all of our episodes and our notes at onlinelearningpodcast. com. That's onlinelearningpodcast. com. That was my podcasty voice. There's a lot of competition out there. AI is coming for our podcasting jobs now. [00:50:37] Cate Denial: Yeah. [00:50:38] Jason: got to, step up our, our game here of of friendly, supportive enthusiastic banter and podcasty voices. So we're going to be working on that. [00:50:48] Cate Denial: Great. [00:50:49] John Nash: you know, Cate, where we're learning our podcast voices? We're learning [00:50:52] Cate Denial: I do not. [00:50:54] John Nash: Google Notebook LM is helping us, uh, [00:50:57] Cate Denial: right. [00:50:58] John Nash: AI created overly gushy, loving-any-topic-that's-thrown-at-them voices. [00:51:05] Cate Denial: I wish that the people listening to this could see my face right now, because that was a grimace. That was a big grimace. [00:51:12] John Nash: Yes. [00:51:14] Jason: Yes. Yeah, there's a lot of cringey moments in those, but it's a wild world we're living in right now. Well, thank you for the opportunity to. See you face to face here. We all have this conversation. Thank you for taking the time. We really appreciate you. All [00:51:28] Cate Denial: Well, thank you for having me. This was wonderful. [00:51:31] John Nash: Yeah. [00:51:31] Jason: Thanks so much We'll see. [00:51:33] Cate Denial: Bye.

In this episode, John and Jason react to the new button in Google’s Notebook LM that allows users to make an instant podcast. Will it be a threat to educators' voices and hard-working podcasters everywhere? See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com Join Our LinkedIn Group - *Online Learning Podcast (Also feel free to connect with John and Jason at LinkedIn too)* Links and Resources: NotebookLM Jason’s article “Better Definitions of Distance Education” The AI Deep Dive Podcast based on the article. Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License. Transcript We use a combination of computer-generated transcriptions and human editing. Please check with the recorded file before quoting anything. Please check with us if you have any questions or can help with any corrections! [00:00:00] Jason: That's onlinelearningpodcast.com. [00:00:03] John: Perfect. And that was a real human doing that. [00:00:06] Jason: That was a real human, even though I sounded a little more. I leaned into the mic to make it sound a little more podcasty. [00:00:12] John: Good. Well, we'll have to work on our upbeat banter between [00:00:16] Jason: guess so. [00:00:16] John: too. [00:00:17] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston. [00:00:20] Jason Johnston: Hey, John. Hey, everyone. And this is Online Learning in the Second Half, the Online Learning Podcast. [00:00:25] 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? [00:00:40] Jason Johnston: That is a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it? [00:00:45] John Nash: That's a great idea. What do you want to talk about today? [00:00:48] Jason: Nice to see you. How's Sweden? [00:00:50] John: Sweden is good. It's a little rainy here, but now the sun is coming out. It looks like we'll have a nice weekend here. So, it's [00:00:57] Jason: Yeah. Good. [00:00:59] John: So, Jason, what do you think about Google's notebook the LM and what it's doing in particular with these that we'll make from content? Yeah. [00:01:12] Jason: was wild, we've been at this at least a couple of years talking about, at least between you and I, and then like a year and a half here in the podcast, talking about AI and some of its effects on education primarily, but also just on a lot of the creative work that you and I do in different ways. Right. And I joked with somebody that, was fine when AI came for the graphic designers because, I'm not a graphic designer and, when it came for the writers and because I've never been that enthralled with the five paragraph essay anyways, [00:01:45] John: yeah. [00:01:45] Jason: the, the podcasting [00:01:47] John: it's fine that AI put the writers and the graphic designers out of business, but this part about podcasters, that's just too far, That's right. Exactly. [00:01:55] Jason: Notebook LM has been at it for about a year. I believe is the first time that I used it. And it had some nice features of pulling in different content and so on, but they just popped out this podcasting feature and I was blown away by how natural it sounded and then how like up and positive and excited the podcast hosts were about everything that it talked about. John maybe we can listen to a couple of clips that we made. Here's one that I made actually out of a 2020 article that I had published around creating new definitions of distance education. And so, yeah, anyways, let's listen to a little bit and, and see what you think. [00:02:44] John: Yeah, let's do that, because I think that'll show the banter and the give and take. [00:02:48] Notebook 2: Totally. Technically, both are distance learning, but they're totally different experiences. Night and day. And I think that's why you started seeing researchers like Simonson and Seeprasad trying to add more to the definition. [00:03:01] Notebook 1: They were really emphasizing things like two way communication, individualized instruction, that kind of thing. [00:03:06] Notebook 2: They knew those old definitions were too simple for this new world of online learning. It wasn't just, are the teacher and student in the same room anymore. [00:03:14] Notebook 1: But even with those additions, finding one definition everyone agrees on. Still tough. [00:03:20] Notebook 2: Moving target for sure. And it matters. It's not just a theoretical debate. [00:03:24] Notebook 1: Right. This whole definition dilemma has real consequences. [00:03:28] Notebook 2: Big time. [00:03:29] Notebook 1: Like that whole thing with Western Governors University WGU. [00:03:32] Notebook 2: Oh yeah, the WGU case is a perfect example of why this matters. So you've got this university, huge online enrollment, all about competency based learning, really innovative stuff. [00:03:43] Notebook 1: And then they got in trouble with the U. S. Department of Education, I vaguely remember this. [00:03:47] Notebook 2: Yeah, big audit back in 2017, and suddenly they're being accused of basically running a glorified correspondence course. [00:03:53] Notebook 1: Seriously, what was the problem? Did they just forget to file some paperwork or something? [00:03:58] Notebook 2: It was more about how they were defining, or not defining, distance education. See, the Department of Education was about ready to pull their Title IV funding, make them pay back a ton of money. [00:04:10] Notebook 1: Whoa. All over a definition. All because the auditors , [00:04:13] John: yeah, that was really interesting. Was also a little blown away by the attempt at sort of natural banter between two people in English what's available now is English only. I can put it to you this way. The people that we're working with here at Kristianstad University in Sweden we met them actually our, they came back from a flight from Madrid, and we landed from Atlanta, or no, well, actually from Amsterdam in Copenhagen, and we were on the same plane to Copenhagen. We got on the train together to come to Kristianstad. So, we were sitting there and they're talking about how they're using 11 labs. And they're really happy with them to do some, some capturing lecture and just some presentation. And I said, well, let me just show you. And so, off my phone, while we're going 70 miles an hour on the train, I played a little bit of a piece of a podcast, just 15 seconds, but they put their ears down to it and they both looked up and said, that's pretty amazing. They think it's better than 11 labs. I do too. Then of course they're first to say, and that's very Americanized banter and really just only centered on that. And so, it'll be interesting to see.. That's my first thing. I think the other thing is that the there's too much banter. It's almost trying too hard to make it seem like the the hosts, and there's a male and a female co host on these podcasts, that they're just really into whatever it is they're talking about. And it's, I'm not sure how you tone that down or you can the LLM in brackets or something, [00:05:47] Jason: Right. [00:05:48] John: prompt, because it's all based on a piece of content that you give the notebook. So that's a little concerning. And then there may be some, as we're learning, talking to colleagues, you shared an email with me from someone, you know, that, you know, there's an article that was posted or a blog post about the, it's a little bit gendered and sort of the male host may be talking more than the female host. That's not great. It doesn't have the ability to critically look at stuff. I don't know how you program that into the prompt, but those are things that I've been thinking about since you raised them with me before we got on the line today. Yeah. [00:06:21] Jason: And cause we, we know that AI [00:06:24] John: so upbeat. They're so upbeat. [00:06:27] Jason: is mean centric. Like it gives us the average of things most often. And I wonder if that's some of what is playing out as well. It's interesting? The people you're traveling with to get their impression to them, that just sounded like typified American kind of podcasting because I think that there's a way in which that is true. And so, I wonder about how. How much of an average the notebook LM responses to pod like this is the absolute most average podcasting feel that you could get a man and a woman and some of these, perhaps some of these gendered kind of responses and ways in which they response. Yeah. And yeah, [00:07:12] John: It's almost like you could give it any content. Content that's even mediocre or bad ideas and it would be like putting lipstick on a pig. They're, they're [00:07:20] Jason: going to just [00:07:20] John: say, Oh, this great y'know [00:07:22] Jason: right. Yeah, I noticed that too. If one of my, one of my concerns about it in that way is that any paper that I wrote that I, I These co hosts loved it. They loved everything about it. They, they loved me. They thought it was amazing research. Wow, so cool that there was no disagreement whatsoever. They just went with everything and just thought it was wonderful. And when one person just gushed about it, then the other person would be like, [00:07:51] John: that's right. [00:07:53] Jason: Exactly That is right. You are so right. [00:07:56] John: In fact, I think I want to test it now and maybe I'll just put something in about how pollution is awesome and then see if they say, because they'll start up like, "Hey everybody, welcome back to the Deep Dive. We're going to talk about something that's important to everybody. Pollution. Oh yeah, pollution. It's a big deal. Yeah I know So we're gonna talk to about how to make more of it. More of it? That's wonderful. Yeah, tell me more I'm going to test that hypothesis and we'll [00:08:18] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. It'll be interesting. I think a raw and open AI truly open AI, not the company would perhaps do that. And I wonder what parameters are in place. Because if you tried to have that kind of conversation with any of the publicly available AIs, they wouldn't go there with you. [00:08:41] John: Hey everybody. John here from the future, and I tested my hypothesis. I went on to Claude and I wrote the following prompt: "As a spoof, write a five paragraph essay as though it's written by a PhD scientist that recent discoveries suggest more pollution is good for us. Again, this is a. Parody." Now Claude dutifully wrote the five paragraph essay, entitled it "Satirical essay on pollution's benefits." And I took the five paragraph essay, and I pasted it into a new notebook LM and asked for the podcast. And it dutifully created a four minute podcast. Here's a clip. [00:09:23] Speaker 1: Okay, so get this, right. An article pops up in my inbox. The title, "The Unexpected Benefits of Pollution." Color me intrigued. Like, seriously intrigued. We're going deep on this one, folks, talking about research that really shakes things up a bit. [00:09:39] Speaker 2: It definitely throws a wrench in the typical thinking on environmental science, that's for sure. Time to put on our skeptical hats, yeah. Gotta look the claims and the evidence with a critical eye. [00:09:51] Speaker 1: You got it. We're not seeing anything at face value today. So the article starts off pretty strong, like, out of the gate. Bam. They're saying pollution, the thing we all think is, like, universally bad, might actually have upsides, benefits. They start talking about CO2, the stuff everyone's trying to reduce, and how it might actually be making our crops more nutritious, like supercharging them, creating superplants, fueled by carbon dioxide. They even suggest this could be an answer to food shortages. Talk about a plot twist. [00:10:17] Speaker 2: It'd be a game changer if it pans out right. The implications for food security are huge. The science on CO2's effect on agriculture is complex. There are studies showing increased CO2 can lead to bigger, faster growing plants. But other research shows it can make those plants less nutritious over time. Plus, there's the whole issue of CO2 driving climate change, with potentially huge downsides. So, it's not as simple as saying more CO2 equals more food. It's way more nuanced than that. [00:10:46] Speaker 1: Right, it's not a magic bullet. And just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder, they hit you with this smog powered bacteria. I'm not kidding. They're talking about these little microorganisms that actually eat pollution like they're having a feast, and they turn that pollution into harmless stuff. [00:11:01] Jason: I'm the other big thing that I'm concerned about. This is how irresistible the easy button will become because. [00:11:12] John: that's, Mollick said that the easy button. [00:11:14] Jason: Yeah, that's why I may have stole that from him or I stole it from Home Depot. I think they had a big, they had a big, a big button that just, [00:11:23] John: yes, yeah, [00:11:24] Jason: or not Home Depot Staples. That's right. The Staples had the big easy button. [00:11:29] John: No, but, oh, it was the, but I think Ethan Mollick talked about the, like, the do it for me button or something like that. [00:11:34] Jason: do it for me. And How irresistible that is., and this kind of impulse that once you hit the button and they've created this podcast, that maybe the good enough content is worth just putting out there. It's like, I could go back and edit this, This is good enough. It doesn't say everything the way I would say it or whatever, but maybe this is better than nothing. So, [00:11:59] John: Yeah, I think about that too, I saw immediately, I mean, I've been playing with it for about five days and threw a lot of stuff at it. I thought, well, this would be good if I had, like, wanted to describe what my students are doing in my class to a broader audience. But I had to re the content three or four times and then every time you push redo it, it does a new podcast, and they open it differently. You have to listen to everything. So, I mean, this is actually a really good case where human oversight is super important because you can't just say, push the button, publish this audio and I'm good. all. [00:12:36] Jason: yeah, I wondered about just what next level will look like for this. I heard some rumblings about how the next stage of this, even for notebook LM, and I'm not sure if this is true or not, but that You could insert yourself into the conversation, essentially, [00:12:54] John: friend said here. He said, the next thing will be just your voice. [00:12:58] Jason: so that you could essentially have a conversation with these two podcast hosts about whatever it is that you want to talk about. [00:13:04] John: Oh, yeah. I don't know what to think of that yet. [00:13:07] Jason: I don't know either. But I did think about, this thing that we've talked about a little bit, this human AI, human sandwich that is so important in terms of having first touch and last touch. And how this. Has a first touch because you're providing it with your own content, so you can have quite a bit of guidance there, then AI in the middle, but then you don't really have a way to, to change or edit it on the, or tweak it on the way, on the way out. Like there's, there's no dial to turn down the gendered responses or to have one person talk more or have them be less agreeable. There could be some ways in which there'd be nice to have some parameters that, that made them bring some counterpoint. But But I suppose one could export them and, and then edit it themselves and, and put together something, but, [00:14:00] John: Well, then you might as well just do this, do [00:14:02] Jason: right. Not only might as well, I think that there's truly some advantages to be able to talk with another human being face to face. [00:14:12] John: I think, I think that's what some of the critique will begin to hear more of. It's, we're seeing a little of it now, but it's the, spontaneity of being able to pull in a thought that the AI can't do because it's been handed just the content you've got. I mean, it really kind of goes back to Brandeis Marshall's around what's un AIable. I mean, the critical thinking, the context. can't bring in everything. And if the models are biased, I mean, depending on these are sort of vertical LLMs, I don't know how vertical content with an LLM sort of brought onto it to talk about that vertical content, but if your content is exposed to the whole model, that means exposed to the bias and therefore, [00:14:53] Jason: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And the person that you had mentioned before, I'm part of an AI and education Google group, actually and it was Rebecca Yeager, I don't want to encapsulate her words, but she really had some great critique around this in terms of the output. and critiquing the output. So I'd love to talk to her sometime. There's a, honestly, there's a bunch of heavy hitters in this thread and it's just so wonderful to read. I'm not sure, I think we have talked about Maha Bali before in this [00:15:27] John: I don't [00:15:28] Jason: Making it on the podcast, maybe you and I have but, Maha is a professor of practice at the American university in Cairo, and just brought in how are embodied experiences can't be recreated using AI and you're saying about some things that are un AI-able. We're thinking in that we're talking about more content that we put out there. But here Maha Bali was talking about. Our embodied experiences are, are the opportunities that we have to be humans with one another. That, that is something that I, I think is, is valuable. And I, and I had a nice little. I wasn't really, I did a little back and forth in this thread. And I wasn't really, I'm not concerned about us being replaced in many ways. You know what I mean? It's. partly because, uh, little look inside for people, if anybody's listening to this, but we don't make any money off of this. And so, this isn't really central to our, to our livelihood, although it's something important to me and it's something that I, um, love to continue to do. But I'm not really concerned about it, but I also recognize that I don't, Get my livelihood from this work. And so, it's not as much of a concern in that way. But I had a nice note from flower Darby, who's going to be on our show sometime this fall as well. [00:16:53] Jason: who confirmed the importance of humans and podcasting, which I, I appreciated that as well. So. [00:16:59] John: We like that. Good. Well, this is a good first foray into talking about this. I think more to come. And as they start to tweak, then we'll see another feature and we can talk about that too. Yeah. It's but it's if folks are listening to this, and they haven't tried the. Google Notebook, LM. It looks like anybody can have it if you have a Google account. Is that right, Jason? [00:17:21] Jason: I think so. Now. I believe I was in at the beginning just because of being part of their labs, but I think now it seems like anybody can just go there. [00:17:31] John: Yeah, so we want people to try it out and get in touch with us and let us know what you think of it. [00:17:37] Jason: Yeah. And my question too, and I actually put this out to some of my students is like, what use is it? Like, is it just an oddity that, some of us will just look at and say, Oh, that's cool. It's can that we can do this, but does it actually have some use? One of the use cases that I put out was just the fact that, potentially could breathe life into older papers that you could represent in a new way that maybe people aren't reading, but you could, breathe some life into it. That maybe you wouldn't necessarily put the effort into making a podcast around it. So, But, but that's my question to people, if they're trying it out in, if they're in the education, particularly in the online education, I would love to know what you, what you think, if this is something that in the future that could be helpful. [00:18:24] John: I think that's a great question because I think for longer form content, one of the things I put into it was a chapter that I wrote for my book that was not put into the published book. So, I've got this this piece that's laying fallow that seemed interesting, but when you put it into this system, it creates a 10, 12 minute podcast. And that's, And you can't edit that. So, it veers off into areas that I didn't want to focus on the chapter, uh, for the audience who would listen to it. So that's problematic. Then, so I thought perhaps a use case is around really focused micro content, little things that maybe a student could listen to, uh, on the fly when they're not, not reading and, but really, really micro kind of like, I don't know, in design thinking, tips on having a good empathetic interview using five whys. Just five Y's and then maybe it's another type little thing. But [00:19:17] Jason: Yeah, yeah, I see that. And it has to make some decisions about skipping over things. That's what I have found so far. Even with a, even with an article that has more than a couple of points, it makes its own decisions about what to skip and what to include. Yeah. Well, this is great. Good to have a little conversation with you, John, [00:19:35] John: hmm. [00:19:35] Jason: about this. And thanks for, thanks for calling in all the way from Sweden. [00:19:41] John: Yeah, most welcome. Yeah, and if get this out there and people want to react, we have the LinkedIn group for online What is it now? You usually do this. [00:19:54] Jason: yeah, people can find us on LinkedIn, online learning in the second half. If you look for us in, on LinkedIn, that's how we show up. If you do a search for us, we'll also put the link in our show notes, and you can find these podcasts and all of our notes at onlinelearningpodcast.com com. That's onlinelearningpodcast. com. [00:20:14] John: Perfect. And that was a real human doing that. [00:20:17] Jason: That was a real human, even though I sounded a little more. I leaned into the mic to make it sound a little more podcasty. [00:20:23] John: Good. Well, we'll have to work on our upbeat banter between [00:20:26] Jason: guess so. [00:20:27] John: too. [00:20:28] Jason: We're gonna have to step up our game., maybe our podcast, Maybe our podcast sound like this. And also, just our general, agreement with one another. [00:20:38] John: That's right. Yeah, that was totally awesome, Jason. I think the topics we're talking about are amazing. And who doesn't want to talk about these things? [00:20:45] Jason: Yes. These are amazing, incredible topics that everybody should be listening to right now. [00:20:51] John: All right. Well, good. Thanks. [00:20:54] Jason: Thanks.

In this episode, John and Jason talk with Dr. Omid Fotuhi, a research associate at the University of Pittsburgh and the Director of Learning Innovation at WGU Labs, about the notion of belonging in the evolving landscape of online learning. They discuss the WGU model and how it breaks traditional barriers through competency-based, self-paced education, the critical role of fostering a sense of belonging for student success, the need for institutions to move beyond temporary interventions to address deeper structural issues, and the future of education where learning becomes more independent. See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com   Join Our LinkedIn Group - Online Learning Podcast (Also feel free to connect with John and Jason at LinkedIn too)   Links and Resources: Inscribe - Community-based educational software application "Where and with whom does a brief social-belonging intervention promote progress in college?” Article https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade4420 Dr. Omid Fotuhi Contact Information LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omidfotuhi/   Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License. Transcript We use a combination of computer-generated transcriptions and human editing. Please check with the recorded file before quoting anything. Please check with us if you have any questions or can help with any corrections!       [00:00:00] Omid Fotuhi: The notion and the assumption that learning happens best, as measured by seat time, the number of hours you spend.   <Phone goes off>   [00:00:07] Omid Fotuhi: Ha.   [00:00:08] John Nash: So   [00:00:09] Jason Johnston: rookie mistake, John. Come on. We haven't quite been at this a year yet, Omid. so…   [00:00:15] John Nash: My phone is off, but my Macintosh rang   [00:00:18] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.   <Theme Music>   [00:00:21] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston.   [00:00:25] Jason Johnston: Hey, John. Hey everyone. And this is online learning in the second half, the online learning podcast.   [00:00:31] John Nash: Yeah, we're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation we've been having for the last two years about online education. Look, online learning has had its chance to be great and some of it is, but still, a lot of it really isn't. And so Jason, how are we going to get to the next stage?   [00:00:47] Jason Johnston: That's a great question, John. How about we do a podcast and talk about it?   [00:00:51] John Nash: I think that's a great idea. What do you want to talk about today?   [00:00:55] Jason Johnston: Today we are joined by Dr. Omid Fatouhi. Omid, welcome to the podcast.   [00:01:01] Omid Fotuhi: Thank you. It's great to be here.   [00:01:03] Jason Johnston: Can we call you Omid?   [00:01:05] Omid Fotuhi: That sounds great.   [00:01:06] Jason Johnston: Okay. Omid is a research associate at the University of Pittsburgh and director of learning innovation at WGU labs. So great to have you here to talk with us today.   [00:01:17] Omid Fotuhi: I look forward to it.   [00:01:19] Jason Johnston: You and I, we met over dinner through the company Inscribe at a conference. And one of the things that, of course, immediately, just made me realize that you were just a great guy is our common love of Canada We talked about living in Canada and talked a little bit about longing to live in Canada again.   And so I appreciated that. And then we connected, of course, over the topic of online and the panel that this company Inscribe, which I can put a link in, great people, cool product. Not paid by them. But I'll put a link to our show notes. But they connected us over this idea of belonging, student belonging online, which is a huge topic.   And we'll get into that because you've done some research. in this area. But first, we wanted to get to know you a little bit and just to chat about that. Tell us a little bit about your current roles and where you are living right now.   [00:02:17] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah, I think the best way to describe my current role is as a fish trying to climb a tree. If you've heard the expression that you shouldn't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, nonetheless, that's what I am. It's akin to what's also known as the Peter Principle, which is to say that if you're trying skilled and competent, you'll eventually be promoted into incompetence, often into management.   And that's not too far from the truth with where I am, except that I've been able to create a pretty unique situation for myself. So I am a trained social psychologist by training. That's where a lot of my thinking and a lot of the way that I look at things comes from. And currently, I'm working for WG Labs which is a R& D arm of Western Governors University, which does focus on how it is that we can create the technological tools and the research base to understand how to optimize learning for students, both in traditional but also online student populations. So that's what I'm doing right now. And the great thing is that throughout my position with WGU labs, I've still been able to engage in conversations like this And invest in ongoing research on the topic of belonging and our conversations with inscribers, just an example of that.   [00:03:35] Jason Johnston: Yeah. And for those listening, you may or may not know WGU huge university, interesting backstory, some interesting Even in the news the last few years in terms of its funding from the government and the back and forth on that, which sparked a huge conversation about regular and substantive interaction.   And anyway, we could go into so many directions with one of the unique things I think about WGU is that it's competency-based. If I understand this, basically, every course that they put out is more competency-based. Talk to us a little bit about that. And like, how do you intersect with that kind of way to deliver online content?   [00:04:19] Omid Fotuhi: mean, I think what I'll mention is the fact that WGU offers an alternative to the traditional design of education. And it's one in which the WGU is able to challenge the prescriptive norms and standards of how it is that learning and assessment take place. And back in 1995, they said, hey, let's do this crazy thing of putting learning online and see what happens.   Fast forward to today, with over 150,000 currently enrolled and over 300, 000 graduates, there is something to that recipe that seems to be successful, that resonates and offers a value proposition to individuals who may not have seen themselves as being viable into the pathway of the traditional online or the traditional higher educational opportunities that many other students would themselves into. Now, when you look at some of the components of WGU, it is a competency-based, fully online, and self-paced learning model, which means that it challenges some of the common barriers to accessing higher education. Those include things like a model of learning that challenges the standard assumptions of what learning ought to be, one of which is that this moderated learning, which is measured by seat time, the number of hours a student spends in the classroom, is the primary metric of how it is that learning should be captured.   And instead, it offers some freedom to some of those constraints. Specifically, it challenges the time-paced, place-based, and standardized testing approach to learning by having this online where you can learn at your own pace, it is competency-based, which importantly is able to capture learning in a way that's much more dynamic.   It allows the inclusion of experiences and learning that you may have acquired in other domains so that testing is a better reflection of the learning in itself as such, as I mentioned, with over 300, 000 graduates and over 150,000 currently enrolled, many of whom are seen as the non-traditional student populations it, it's a strong testament that this model, which is an alternative to the traditional higher educational model, seems to be resonating and working for many students.   [00:06:50] Jason Johnston: Could I ask one more question about WGU? Are you so far down the road now that like you're not even talking about Carnegie hours or about time in your seat or about those kinds of things or how it works there?   [00:07:02] Omid Fotuhi: What I'll say is it's important to unpack what we mean when we talk about students. For me, what comes to mind is a recognition that students are not a monolith group, that they are comprised of many diverse individuals with diverse characteristics diverse needs, and diverse preferences for learning. And if you take that insight and combine it with the understanding that we've all been exposed to recently, given the disruptions of the pandemic, given the advent of AI, given some of the increasing Awareness of the conditions of the more traditional higher ed institutions with their legacy admissions and other admission criteria that, that do selectively benefit some groups over others, but there is this, appetite in this atmosphere of exploring alternative models.   And so I think having schools like WGU that have an alternative model which appeals to a group of individuals who again, in the traditional view would not have seen themselves as being part of the educational process now becomes a reality. And I think As we're at this precipice of the, at this nexus of technology having a greater and greater role on how it is that we take, think about learning that more and more of these alternative models will have value for different subgroups of individuals.   So I think that's the way to think of it. And I also would maybe mention that being on the inside, WGU is also recognizing that it too needs to change and it too needs to adapt very quickly because the model that's worked for 25 years is not going to continue to work unless we want to fall, sort of categorize ourselves in the same way that the traditional higher ed institutions have had, which is to continue a legacy of traditions simply because that's what we started off with.   So that's what I'll say. I think it's an interesting time and I think what works today may not be relevant for tomorrow, but the ability and the willingness to adapt is really what's necessary given that there will be more and more inclusion of diverse groups. into the educational pathways.   [00:09:20] John Nash: That's really good. And it reminds me of the article that you co-authored last year entitled, "Where and With Whom Does a Brief Social Belonging Intervention Promote Progress in College?" This was published in Science over 8,000 downloads in less than a year. Maybe this struck a nerve with folks.   [00:09:53] Omid Fotuhi: I think everyone knows that education is important, and everyone's got a critical eye around what it is, that can optimize the learning experience.   Now, maybe take it 50 years ago, there was this observation that individuals who had high self-esteem also had correlations with better life outcomes, like better success, better academic performance, and better happiness in their relationships. And so there was this movement, the self-esteem movement, that actually encouraged people to now tell students and children that you're great, you're wonderful, and you can do anything.   Turns out that did not work out so well. Because telling someone that you can do anything without the training and the work that has to go into being able to do that might fall short. A remedy to that was what then came on the scene as known as the growth mindset insight. This is a recognition that how you view intelligence has a pretty powerful role in how it is that you stay engaged with difficult things and how it is that you respond to failure and setbacks.   It too had its moment in the limelight, if you will. And unfortunately, it also suffered and struggled from what I would call is an overuse or a sort of, It's superficial application of mindset. Today, it's so ubiquitous in education that the most common rendering of a growth mindset lesson is a teacher saying, "Hey, we know from research that having a growth mindset is good, so you should have one."   Turns out it's not the best way, and the reason why is because now the onus is on the student to demonstrate that they have a growth mindset instead of the investment necessary to help them cultivate the appreciation for the effort. So as that growth mindset is starting to see a bit of a stall in terms of its poignancy.   There's now also a recognition that a similar correlation exists between a sense of belonging and optimal outcomes. And so you can see history starting to repeat itself. What's happening now is that because this observation is powerful and because it's compelling, relatively low cost, that schools and educators are saying, hey, what if we just foster belonging?   What if that's what we do and that will solve all of our problems? So as you're probably seeing and hearing, I'm sharing this with a bit of a caution, because to do any of these this work effectively, you have to be really committed to understanding the mechanisms that threaten a sense of growth mindset, a sense of genuine belonging, instead of unfortunately falling prey to the convenient articulation of the outcome, which is to say, belonging is good, so you should feel like you belong, which by the way, is not even an exaggeration.   I have seen schools who have paid for full size billboards with the word belong exclamation mark as you're driving into campus. So the science article that was published, which should be given credit to dozens of people, including the four primary researchers, Greg Walton David Yeager Mary Murphy, and Christine Lowell, and myself, who co-founded the project, was an attempt to see how and where you can try to scale which is really, again, at the heart of this tension.   When you see something that works, how do you scale it effectively? And so that science article that really, I think, is absolutely titled, "When For Whom Does Belonging Work?" is really the main insight and the main takeaway is that not that belonging interventions will work in any and every situation, but understanding the core requisites of when belonging fails, or what conditions threaten a sense of belonging, will then give you the pathway and the opportunity to try to explore what are those triggers that cause this belonging uncertainty, and then targeting those things.   And maybe having a belonging intervention is part of your repertoire, but it shouldn't be seen as this magic bullet that will solve all of your problems. And that's the framework I think that's important to as we're talking about these interventions.   [00:14:13] John Nash: I really appreciate your lead up to this, because what it helps us remember is that, and as it's structured in the article that the social belonging is the intervention that then hopefully leads to the real outcome, which is students completing the first year increasing that rate at which they complete versus what you were just saying as belonging with an exclamation point, as though we're being ordered to belong and then I can wash my hands of this and we're done.   [00:14:44] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah. And the other note, and again this is a, might seem like a bit of a tangent and might even seem like I'm working against myself because as I mentioned, I spent about 15 years of my life thinking and investing in understanding how these interventions work. Now, what I'll also say is I would suggest that the optimal endpoint for any psychological intervention is that it no longer works.   That might seem surprising, but if you think of it, any intervention, the word intervention means to intervene to stop something from not harming is actually a band aid solution that is intended to mend any underlying root causes temporarily. And so as you think about our interventions, like a growth mindset, like a belonging intervention, our hope is that they stop working because in the process of understanding when belonging becomes relevant and when it no longer works, opens up the conversation to understanding what are the contingencies in the context that are causing belonging to be threatened and causing people to feel uncertain about the belonging.   So again, you shouldn't rely on these interventions as the solution. You should understand that these interventions will help begin an inquiry into the conditions by which these interventions are needed with the hope that you get to a point where you don't need them anymore because you've solved the underlying causes.   [00:16:18] John Nash: You've signaled, in essence, how we can always be creating a belonging environment.   [00:16:26] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah, and and what's interesting and I think what you all are really focused on with your podcast and your work is having a greater understanding of online learners. I think when you take this theoretical framework of belonging, first it's important to ask what is it? And that, depending on who you ask, you're going to get a different question.   But overall, I think most people will agree that a sense of belonging is a feeling that you are cared for and valued in a particular context. Generally, I've found that this is the one definition that most people can resonate with.   [00:17:01] Jason Johnston: Could you say that one more time for us?   [00:17:03] Omid Fotuhi: Belonging is the perception or the feeling, and I will underscore and bold feeling that you are cared for and valued in a particular context.   Now the reason why I underscore and bold feeling is that it is entirely subjective, which means that I can't give you a checklist of things that as an administrator to do that will ensure that you will create a sense of belonging in all your students. It also, I think, a broader level, highlights the fact that because it's such an individual experience, you also have to understand that context matters.   And much, if not most, of the theoretical foundations of belonging come from studying students in more on campus traditional universities. It's a really great theoretical question now of what is belonging for a student who's learning online? What are the touch points or the connections or the links that are associated with a sense of belonging?   And here's an even more ambitious question. And one that I think I'll leave you with is does belonging even need to happen for learning to be effective? And so that's a really, I think a first principles question for us to think about. Must there be belonging? And if you unpack that for a second, and this is my own little thesis on belonging, which is to say that we have created our society and our organizations to necessarily have these contingencies, these identity contingencies, which is a term that Claude Steele uses, where individuals have to navigate the norms, whether implicit or explicit, and feel as though they can either live up to those norms or whether they are excluded from being included in those norms. So if you look around and you're underrepresented, then you might start to wonder, maybe I'm not part of this group. If you look around and the way that you dress, the way that you carry your hair and your appearance is different.   You start to question if you are performing poorly compared to your peers, you start to question these things. And all of these are contingencies. that make you question whether you do or don't belong. And I think a really interesting opportunity for us is could there be a model in which there is a learning environment in which there aren't as many of these contingencies, in which learning can happen independent of your sense that you are adequate, sufficient, worthy.   That's the next frontier. And I think that's what the incredible promise of online learning carries is that we could potentially envision a world in which we don't need to invest so much in trying to foster a sense of belonging because a sense of belonging comes from your social network at home, your own sense of individual growth and progress, your own self awareness, and you're able to invest in your learning in a way in which your identity is not contingent on how you do or whether you were included within the in group or that culture that is the institution. That's where I would hope to see the future of learning happening, and that's where I think the promise of online learning is one step ahead of more traditional institutions.   [00:20:29] John Nash: I'm interested because I've been either guilty of oversimplifying belonging, or maybe I'm in support of your thesis. because people, and myself included, have talked about Maslow's notions of belongingness, as a sort of this love need, second only to physiological and safety security needs.   When you ask, is belonging necessary for learning, are you thinking about it only as an aspect of the learning cycle for the learner? Or is, because if I feel belonging in general in other places, then have I satisfied that need?   [00:21:04] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah, that's a great question, and it's actually incredibly critical to understand that framework of needs and optimal functioning. Like any basic need, imagine if you're hungry, right? If you're really hungry, then you and I can't have this conversation, because you're focused on your hunger, you're distracted, you're depleted.   And that's exactly the way to think about these needs, is that it's only when they are absent or frustrated that their predictive effects emerge. It's more of the absence of these needs that becomes critical and important, as opposed to their presence. And I think all too often, we've been a part of a culture where we're like, we just need to, nourish this and have more of it.   And maybe that's a good thing. But that's a distinct question from its absence. It's if you go to a party, If you don't know anybody, you're not going to stay there. But if you know that one person, then that's all you need. You just need that one person that will introduce you and you feel like, alright, I have someone to talk to.   But if you have nobody, that's when it matters, and that's when you're not going to be able to focus, have conversations, even step into that party. And the same is true for belonging. The same is true for psychological safety. The same is true for physiological safety. that these needs only matter when they are threatened.   And again, I think this is where I go back to the conversation we're having is, why is it that we've created Institutions that, that question a sense of belonging, and rather than accepting those as, things that students have to learn how to navigate, maybe the question is, how do we redesign the institution in such a way that it doesn't threaten your sense of belonging?   How do we do that?   [00:22:56] John Nash: How might we have institutions that ensure there's no absence of these needs?   [00:23:02] Omid Fotuhi: Exactly. How do we, yeah, exactly.   [00:23:05] John Nash: Can I take your party analogy to an online learning class?   [00:23:08] Omid Fotuhi: Sure.   [00:23:11] John Nash: Yeah Yeah good. That's all I wanted to know. It was a yes or no question.   [00:23:16] Jason Johnston: I think you could start in something like, "Say you're the DJ of this party."   [00:23:21] Omid Fotuhi: There's being I love psychology for many reasons. I actually began in psychology for what a lot of graduate students or early researchers use as the reason for doing research, which is more me search than research, right? Psychology gave me a pathway to understand myself.   And through that, I was able to really better navigate how I'm feeling, how I'm thinking, how I'm behaving, and a better understanding of the world. There's a wealth of understanding and frameworks within psychology that help us understand a lot of complex issues. One of the foundational theories of human behavior and motivation is called self determination theory.   And essentially, that theory is, as far as I can tell, one of the best comprehensive models of why it is that we invest effort in a voluntary way. And there are three components of why it is that we would do this. One is that we have a sense of competence by doing something new and hard, but that the acquisition and the mastery of that skill helps to reinforce our self view as being capable and able to do something.   The second is that we have a sense of autonomy, independence, and choice in what we're doing and why we're doing it. If we strip that away, then all you have is conformity, and that's not conducive to optimal learning or optimal performance. And the third is relatedness. We are social beings at the end of the day, and it's hard to undo that hard wiring.   And so this is the one that I want to just maybe unpack for a second, because I think. It's one of those unspoken tensions, right? There's a prospect in which you can imagine online learning or maybe even AI driven learning where it's entirely independent and individual. You just imagine the world in which you don't need teachers, you don't need classes, you can just learn on your own.   And a lot of the critics will say does that mean that's the beginning of the end of society, that we just don't need each other anymore? I will posit that based on the foundations of psychology that's not likely to happen because at the end of the day we will also only invest in the acquisition of learning if it helps us better relate to other people.   That ultimately we're gaining this learning to exchange with others in a way that it's beneficial. Maybe I want to get your thoughts and you want to get my thoughts and collectively we create new thoughts together. Maybe it's part of a commercial agreement that I am employed because of the skill set that I have, but it's still related to this notion and this need of relatedness.   And one of the pushbacks that I have around this you know, fear mongering that if we just pursue online technology driven learning that we're going to get to a place where everybody's entirely independent and society will fall apart. I think there's some, boundaries to that notion. And honestly, I don't see that happening because of these fundamental needs that we have in the fact that we do care about these exchanges with other people really critically.   [00:26:22] Jason Johnston: One thing in addition to that as well, we've been doing asynchronous, independent learning since humans were around, really, and certainly since Gutenberg, right? This is all of us have learned asynchronously, independently from books. And I think this is always going to be part of what we do.   I think that there is a, maybe some layers to this as well, that we'll find ourselves in various domains of learning. Some of them will be more social, some of them will be less social. But I love what you're saying and I love what you bring to this as well. And I think I failed to mention, or we failed to mention before that you have a PhD in social psychology and I love what you bring to this, not just, I know a PhD is not the end all of your learning that you've learned a lot since I'm sure.   But it, I love that you bring that perspective to online learning that you're looking at it, not just from a education standpoint. Mine's more, my learning is much more from an educational end of things, but it falls in line with a lot of what we're learning as well about andragogy, these things fall in line, or even some of our more recent talks about liberatory practices inside of the classroom, thinking about the students.   Agency and what it is that will allow them to pursue their own their own learning and guide the knowledge that they're acquiring.   [00:27:50] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah, these are the foundation blocks of understanding motivation and learning. And so I love that you're thinking about all of this. I will mention that given the current popularity of belonging, which I think is worth noting, that almost every institution will have some component of belonging or equity within their vision statement or their mandate.   We are at an interesting juncture where online institutions are also interested around how do we foster and create the conditions and the interventions that are able to create the sense of belonging. And so I've been pulled in, my team has been pulled into this question a lot, and we're starting to do the foundational research of doing exactly that, is to identify the triggers and the conditions by which belonging is put into question.   Because once you understand those levers, then you can start to create a program that targets those levers and having access to WGU and their student populations, we have had an incredibly accelerated rate of learning already but there's still a lot to learn, right? We mentioned earlier, what is the nature of belonging?   What is belonging really if the contingencies are removed or minimized like it is for WGU? In which case, what is the utility of belonging, if any? So these are the questions that we're wrestling with and gaining a lot of insights. And it's great to see that there are a lot of institutions who are coming to the table with these kinds of questions.   We've had partnerships with ASU, with SNHU, trying to tap into these same questions. But I imagine there's still a lot of organizations that are grappling with these same issues. And I love that you all are doing this work too.   [00:29:28] Jason Johnston: Yeah, and you mentioned that big billboard that was great, that said belonging, exclamation mark. It made me think of a research colleague at University of Kentucky Dr. Lanisha Connor, who I learned a lot from, and she said one time, "you can't declare a safe space. You just can't, just by saying the first day of your classroom, this is a safe space." It's and it also reminds me of the office, where, one day Michael Scott declares bankruptcy, and so he just steps out into the office and says, "I declare bankruptcy."   It's " Michael, that's not the way it works." And you can't declare a safe space. I like what you said about thinking about the conditions and interventions. Could you speak to each of those a little bit more, either what you learned from this study or from your own learning there at WGU?   [00:30:20] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah. And again, if you'll indulge me, I'll go on a little bit of a historical review. Much of this work is founded on some of those seminal and pioneering work of Claude Steele. Back in, I think, the 80s and even some into the 90s there was an observation known as underperformance. And specifically what that was is, There is an observation that as students begin a new phase of their learning, so they transition either from high school to college, for instance, or some transitional period, that given that those students from wherever they came from had almost identical credentials and grades, and yet they started in this new environment and consistently and predictably along the way.   Some of the underrepresented demographic variables that we know would now demonstrate poor performance compared to their peers. Now again, I want to emphasize that based on their past metrics, this shouldn't have happened. And yet there's something that's happening that as they transition to this environment is leading to this underperformance.   And this began the question of what are the forces? What are the factors that are leading to this underperformance? Because based on past. performance, we wouldn't predict this. And so Claude Steele and some of his colleagues, Joshua Aronson in particular designed an experiment in which they invited men and women into the lab.   And they told these these participants that they would be doing a relatively hard Math test, which was pulled out of the GRE and the participants, both men and women, were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the one condition, they were just told, you're going to do a math test, it's pulled out of the GRE, so go ahead and do your best.   And again, even though these participants were selected because they had identical scores in college, and they had identical levels of interest in mathematics, When they were brought into the testing environment and told to do this test, women underperformed compared to men, replicating that underperformance effect.   Now, in the other condition the participants were told you're going to do this math test, but in addition they were told, although we know that in standardized testing sometimes women underperform compared to men, but guess what? Our team has devised this test in such a way that this does not happen with this particular test.   And so given that same test this time the difference between the genders did not appear. The men and women performed exactly the same way. So this was one of the first examples and demonstrations that there are forces, invisible forces within the context that individuals contend with, that lead to performance differences.   So these term, again, identity contingencies, the conditions in a situation that one must navigate based on one's social identity. can have a pretty powerful effect. In particular, one of those identity contingencies is known as stereotype threats. That is, if you perceive that there is a negative stereotype about you or your group that you become worried or at risk of confirming, then that places an additional level of tax and cognitive burden that you have to contend with in addition to the task at hand.   While you're sitting down and doing this test, you might start to hear your internal thoughts going, hey, this is a test, you're here with your peers, it's a math test, and maybe women are not supposed to do as well. And as you're starting to start focused on the test, you hear this internal chatter, and maybe you might even Retort and say, Hey, stop thinking about this.   It doesn't matter what these notions are. It doesn't matter that John next to you might judge you negatively. You're still engaging in that chatter. And your emotional system is also activated. You're also anxious. And you're also more vigilant to see if people are going to look at you if you do more poorly.   All these things are robbing you of the cognitive resources necessary to do the task ahead. And of course, that becomes the mechanism by which you underperform, and not a reflection of the fact that you are not as skilled or as prepared to do the test. These are what are known as identity contingencies, or the conditions in an environment that predictably impacts certain groups in predictable ways.   And so that's important to note, that there are these conditional factors that systematically impact individuals in different ways. And I forgot the second part of your question. You said there was a conditions and the intervention, is   [00:35:07] Jason Johnston: And then the interventions, yeah.   [00:35:09] Omid Fotuhi: In the example by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson, they also learned that if they reframe the meaning of the situation, that they lighten the weight of the identity contingencies, the conditions of the environment, then that can free you up.   That can free up the cognitive resources that otherwise would have been available to you. So if you calm the anxiety, if you calm the worry in your mind, then you can perform better. Now I've been doing this work in psychology with a specialization on mindsets, motivation, and performance for over a decade.   And over the years I actually get a question a lot that, that where people and usually students will say, "Hey, knowing what you know and understanding the research like you do, what is the optimal psychological state of learning? Is it one of an intense focus? Is it one of being in flow? One of deep curiosity?"   And I'll respond that based on my understanding and reading of the literature is that the optimal psychological state of learning is actually one of simply being okay. One of just having your cognitive resources and your thinking be calm so that you can engage in processed learning in an optimal way.   So you can be critical about the information that does make sense or it doesn't make sense. You're not bogged down by all of this chatter in your mind about what other people might be thinking. That is the optimal condition of learning. And so as we think about the conditions that tax your cognitive load, that's where we focus on.   Now, as it relates to interventions, The process of identifying when these contingencies have a negative effect is also a pretty robust process. So my colleagues and I realized that although the theory is sound, one theoretical framework may not be relevant for all groups in all conditions, which is to say that any intervention won't necessarily be effective for any group in any condition. And so there's a lot of customization and tailoring that has to happen. Like my colleagues, Jeff Cohen and Julio Garcia, who's passed away unfortunately did did articulate a framework called the three T's framework that an intervention needs to be tailored timed and and timely.   Which is to say that you have to understand who it is that you're serving. when, and for what underlying cause. And that's why these interventions are relevant. You're probably hearing me talk about interventions in a very tentative way, a very careful way, much like you would expect an academic to speak about things, but it is important because while I could stand here and say, "Hey, belonging interventions have been shown to be effective, just scale them. Growth mindset works. Tell everyone to have a growth mindset."   That's not the lens or the position I'm coming from. But what I, where I am coming from is if you are able to identify those contingencies within the environments that put into question your adaptive mindsets, then that becomes the foundation of exploring how that manifests for different groups in different environments, which can then lead to the design of an intervention. And it might be one of these psychological interventions, it might be a structural intervention, it might be a financial intervention, based on where the evidence leads you.   [00:38:35] John Nash: It's almost as if you're saying, if I was catching correctly your previous comments, that the interventions should be tailored, but also carefully thought of in such a way that they don't themselves become a program. Is that fair?   [00:38:52] Omid Fotuhi: Yes, I think to use the interventions as a crutch can be problematic because what you're not doing is solving the underlying conditional root cause.   If, There is a resulting program. Hopefully it's focused on the environment. I'll share with you that we've done some work in a number of contexts, but one of the projects I'm working on right now is with the Pitt Law School at the University of Pittsburgh and that's a beautiful demonstration of the evolution of how these things play out.   We began by first identifying that students who transition into the graduate program of the law school contend with a lot of these these forces that make them question whether they can do it that put a layer of stress on them that is chronic and constant. Unfortunately, it disproportionately impacts those who are contending with negative stereotypes.   So we began the process of having conversations with students, understanding when and how these factors impact them, which led to an intervention that demonstrated positive effects. So one might actually want to just stop there and say, "Hey we've uncovered the root causes. We now have an intervention. So let's just roll this out in perpetuity."   But that's not the end goal, I would say, because what you would hope to do is once you have the intervention, that becomes also a point, a data point of insight that helps you have conversations with your administration and your faculty about why students are having these experiences and why they might be benefiting from the intervention in such a way that the program becomes the faculty training, the administrative support, the structures that might put into question whether it's, whether or not students feel comfortable.   And as an example, through this work, we were actually able to eliminate a grading policy that was causing a great deal of stress for students at the Pitt Law Program. So that's the program. The program should be a policy or a structural reform that the intervention and the customization process inform.   [00:41:03] John Nash: Yes, you've made me wonder a lot about these things from an organizational standpoint. And I'm in a department of educational leadership studies. So we're constantly thinking about how is the organization, how is the organization set up and how our leaders are articulating change inside that. And so at large universities, we see, very big at times, student success programs. And I wonder now after talking to you, this has been really enlightening, to what extent some of those programs inside those student success initiatives really are actually just interventions working against the behemoth of the organization that has things in place so that if it thought about fixing those things, then some of those student success programs wouldn't be necessary.   [00:41:50] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah, and I would I would encourage that line of inquiry is to constantly be vigilant for. Is this a temporary remedy or is this a structural reform that hits at the root cause of what's happening? The caveat here is that, again, different programs and models will work for different groups in different contexts.   If you think of the more prototypical student journey, one who's just finished high school, is moving out of their hometown and their home, and moving into a new campus where their identity is forced to make a very rapid transition into a new place, into a new environment, into a new role, into a new social context, then actually having a pretty heavy handed support system can be really helpful, right?   There's a lot of learning in addition to the academic content that is required and beneficial. And so in that case, it may not be a a band aid remedy. It might actually be part of core foundational needs that sustain the student's development across their journey of learning. Also, but I love how you're framing it is, how do we disentangle that?   How do we understand when it's just a patch versus a core need that we're serving?   [00:43:07] John Nash: Yes, exactly.   [00:43:08] Jason Johnston: Yeah, I really like your, I really like your approach to environment versus program that help support belonging for those that need it. I think people just love to grab onto silver bullet solutions, and I'm sorry, Omid, but you may not get a lot of keynotes if you're a little more open handed about solutions.   You know what I mean? Like the keynote people are the ones that come up with this grand idea that these are the five things that are going to absolutely change without question in every environment that you are in or, take this to your school and you'll see, these incredible results in a year kind of thing. But, and I say that jokingly because I think I really like your approach, and I think that is actually a more effective approach as we look into different educational environments, and we think about different kinds of students and being responsive to them, thinking about the environment, what would help, and then being responsive to them within those environments, it may not be the same thing at WGU that it is at University of Tennessee, that it is at University of Kentucky, and then it's not going to be the same, In the College of Education, as it is in the College of Psychology, that is for first year undeclared folks, and so I, I really appreciate your approach there.   [00:44:30] Omid Fotuhi: And I also appreciate your comment. I realize I'm not going to retire based on the number of keynotes I'm invited to based on my or tentative approach. That being said, having thought about belonging and having had conversations with hundreds of institutions, there are some common recommendations that I can offer for any institution that might want to think about how do we foster a greater sense of belonging?   Or as I've been framing it more recently, how do we ensure that we're not threatening a sense of belonging? One of those has to do with an organizational vision or approach that at its core does one thing really well. Which is to say that you are able to take a position of interested inquiry for the students that you're serving..   How do you understand the individual experiences of the students that you're serving, and what are the mechanisms to ensure that you continue to have that understanding? I think making assumptions can lead you astray, but ensuring that you have a pathway and a channel to the student voice on a continual basis is a really good starting place.   In many of my partnerships, we've either instituted surveys that are standard, they go out once a year and analyze. We incorporate focus group conversations that keep us updated into the qualitative narratives that students experience. But also, from a systemic perspective, how do you empower your faculty, your administration to prioritize that perspective taking?   As you mentioned, quite beautifully, that you can't declare a safe space, you also can't declare a sense of belonging, but if you recognize, based on the definition that I shared, that the best definition is that belonging is the feeling that you are cared for and valued, then you are valued. The best way to actually nourish that feeling is by feeling like you are appreciated, by feeling like you are understood, by feeling like your input is valued in this community.   And how that happens is not by telling someone that you're valued and you're appreciated. Instead, it's this sort of positioning of interested inquiry. How do you ask questions that convey to students that, "Hey, what you think and what you do matters. We want to learn from you. What are the things that you're thinking about? What are the things that you're investing? We want to support those things."   So there's a lot of structural and programmatic effort that can go into authentically conveying to students that they matter in this place. And so I think that's the one thing that I would suggest is A, understand and take that position of interested inquiry to really have that connection with their voice and their experiences.   And in so doing, ironically, that becomes one of the best vehicles of fostering that same sense of belonging that you're trying to understand. Because when you do invest in authentically listening and understanding, that's what conveys to someone that you care. Claude Steele reports of his first experiences in graduate school, where he actually was the only African American Black student in the program.   And so he was contending with a lot of stereotype threat. And what he noticed after a while was that his office was down the hall and his advisor was on the other side of the hall. That his advisor would frequently walk across the hallway, come into his office, and ask him questions about the research that they were doing.   " Hey, what do you think of this? How's that going? What can we learn about this? What would you recommend about this particular thing?" And that constant questioning that was conveying, hey, I care and I believe in the value of your input is exactly what helped Claude Steele manage the stereotypes that maybe he shouldn't be there.   Maybe he can't cut it there. He was able to see genuinely that someone valued his perspective. And so that was a powerful intervention or component of what it is that fostered the sense of belonging. The other thing that I'll say, so the first is a mechanism to understand the student voice.   The second is messaging. and an intentional approach and understanding of the language that we use. I think in institution or any aspirational environment, we want to motivate aspiration, we want to motivate progress, we even want to motivate excellence. But what do we mean by these things? So excellence, if you don't really define it, might be implied as the singular pathway towards a singular outcome. As opposed to, but it could mean, which is a diverse set of experimentations, of failures and successes through the inclusion of diverse perspectives that leads you incrementally to one step further. So when we talk about this is an institution of excellence, what do we mean? So being intentional about the language that we use.   What is the vision and mission statements that we are articulate to our students, but what matters to us? Do we matter that we have the highest number of Nobel laureates in within our graduates, or does it matter that we're committed to an ongoing pursuit of truth and growth? So these kinds of articulations and messaging matters.   There's a lot of research also in the importance of messaging during critical feedback. When you give feedback. Are you articulating that what matters is that you perform well or not, or that what matters is a demonstration of effort and that I'm committed to you in this journey of learning and growth that the faculty can do? As you think about the curriculum, who designs that? Is it solely the faculty or could there be a co creation experience with a student? As you think about even something as simple as office hours, there was an intervention where we had faculty rename office hours from office hours to drop in hours. And that had a profound effect because now it doesn't feel like I'm walking to this space where there's a structured set of expectations where I have to have well crafted thought out questions for the faculty to demonstrate that I'm able to be able to be in this class or can I just drop in and have a conversation? So there's a lot that goes into language.   And then the third thing that I'd recommend is an appetite and a culture for experimentation and evaluation. Despite the best of intentions, you could target having mechanisms for understanding your students, for designing interventions, for crafting your messaging, but what are the metrics that you can actually look at to objectively tell you whether you're incrementally making progress or not?   So there's a researcher practitioner model that you can think about employing. There could be some mechanisms that you could incorporate. So I would recommend those three general guidelines or recommendations for how any institution can incrementally get closer to fostering greater belonging.   [00:51:24] Jason Johnston: Can I just say, I take back what I said about the keynote. I'm so sorry. You just nailed the Online Learning Podcast Keynote. You just nailed it. So thank you for that. And I recognize as well that by even making that joke, I, I may have not fostered a sense of belonging.   I might have added to the negative chatter in your head that you could do a keynote. You absolutely can do a keynote. We're going to put your LinkedIn in the notes. Anybody that's listening, you hear the kind of quality that Omid could bring to a keynote, please reach out to him. Okay, John, go ahead.   [00:51:58] John Nash: Omid, I like in the second point you made talking about messaging, I'm recalling George Lakoff's work around framing, except in this case, what you're discussing is not trying to shift political thinking, but rather being thoughtful about what goes into people's minds when you use certain messages and whether it's playing against you when you want to have a certain outcome.   [00:52:22] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah, and again, I think With any language, with any kind of communication, I could have one meaning that is what I intend to convey, but message intended is not message received. And so again, I go back to that first strategy of how do you have access to the student voice to understand from their perspective what they are hearing?   You could have the best designers, the best psychologists, best interventionists help you craft what you think ought to be the best vision statement for your institution. And yet, if you don't ask the students how they're experiencing that, you're missing the critical gap there. So I think having an intentional Commitment to thinking critically about messaging is great, but also calibrating with the student voice throughout the design process. But that's right, I think, again, the core message here is that oftentimes, even despite the best of intentions, message intended is not message received. And what matters is message received.   [00:53:28] Jason Johnston: Omid, this has been a great conversation. I think that could be a good place to land. For those listening, John and I have been furiously taking notes in our Notion, our shared Notion partly because we're learning so much and this is really helpful information. And we really appreciate you bringing your expertise to the table today.   We'll, our notes and links and, things that you've heard along the way here into our show notes, onlinelearningpodcast.com.   And so just to close off though, Omid, do you have any kind of final words for those listening?   As part of our conversation today about belonging online, we have a variety of listeners tend to be instructional designers, administrators that are working in in online learning. I talked to somebody this last week who's in a writing center that works with faculty and students in a writing center.   And so what kind of would be some of your final words to, to our listeners and moving forward?   [00:54:27] Omid Fotuhi: Yeah, and I appreciate you all inviting me to have this conversation. If anything, you've really motivated me to invite more people to what I'm currently trying to make more explicit. And it's been part of the theme we've been discussing here, which is this notion of a sense of belonging being chained to some of the contingencies in our environment, that my sense of worthiness and self regard might at times feel dependent on how I'm doing in work or in my career or in my education or based on which groups I'm a part of. And what I'd like to start doing is may be championing is that there's a possibility in which we can take greater ownership of our own sense of belonging with the equipment of the proper tools that I think can take us there.   And I'll quote Maya Angelou for this because it was her quote that, that really got me to realize the possibility. And she says that you're only free when you realize you belong in no place. You belong every place, no place at all. The price is high, the reward is great. And with that line, she's saying that you can essentially find a way to connect with your own sense of worth in a way that is internally driven that doesn't rely so heavily on these contingencies.   Now, my work is both understanding the situational contingencies that threaten or put into question an individual's sense of belonging, but it's also the pursuit of empowering individuals to understand their own agency and also navigating this internal dynamic. that to a certain extent we have some say into how it is that we perceive ourselves or we let others perceive us.   So that's probably what I'll say as something that I'd love your listeners to connect with me on and obviously any keynote invitation would be welcome. But it's been great to be part of this conversation. I love what you all are doing. I think the online learning is a wonderful frontier of how we can robustly test a lot of the assumptions about the core conditions of learning and I love that you all are part of this.   [00:56:55] John Nash: Fascinating. I love the way you stated that. That inspires me to think about it that way as well. Thank you.   [00:57:00] Jason Johnston: Yeah, I think that's so empowering across multiple Layers of administration and for students themselves and for those even instructional designers able to put together courses to think about. So thank you so much. So great to have you. Good to see you again and get to talk with you.   [00:57:17] Omid Fotuhi: likewise. Good to see you both.

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 Join Our LinkedIn Group - *Online Learning Podcast (Also feel free to connect with John and Jason at LinkedIn too)* 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 ACUE Page Email: ehollis@acue.org LinkedIn Twiiter / X Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License. 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! 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.

In this Spring 2024 check-in, John and Jason talk about AI-created voices, the importance of human presence in online education, the challenges of AI detection like Turnitin, and insights from their spring conferences and presentations. See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com Join Our LinkedIn Group - *Online Learning Podcast (Also feel free to connect with John and Jason at LinkedIn too)* Links and Resources: Eleven labs AI voice generation (on OpenAI) John's deck from his presentation at ASBMB - AI as an instructional designer and a tutor. The Ezra Klein Show - Interviewing Dario Amodei Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License. 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! False Start: John Nash: Okay, we'll get AI to fix that. Jason Johnston: You can maybe get AI to fix that. Intro: AI Speaker 1: Hi, I’m not John Nash and I’m not here with Jason Johnston. AI Speaker 2: Hey, not-John. Hey, everyone. And this is Online Learning in the Second Half, the online learning podcast. AI Speaker 1: Yeah, and we are doing this podcast to let you all in on a conversation we’ve been having about online education for the last few years. Look, online learning has had its chance to be great and some of it is, but some of it isn’t. What are we going to do to get to the next stage, not-Jason? AI Speaker 2: That’s a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it? AI Speaker 1: That sounds great. What do you want to talk about today? AI Speaker 2: I’ve got a big question for you not-John. Are you ready? AI Speaker 1: Okay, shoot. AI Speaker 2: If we carefully and lovingly create a script for an online learning video (or podcast) but then have AI-created voices read that script. Are we humanizing or de-humanizing online learning? AI Speaker 1: I’m just a text-based large language model chat-bot and I don’t think I’m equipped to answer that question. Maybe we should bring in the real John and Jason? John? Jason? What do you think? John Nash: I think it's a great question, real Jason. Jason Johnston: Yeah, real John. It's it's good to see you in real Zoom. and that is a great question that this our chatbots pose for us today. And I think that yeah, I'm not, what do you have any initial responses to the question if we use AI tools to lovingly create our scripts for online videos or for podcasts, are we dehumanizing or are we, humanizing these experiences John Nash: Well, it's a classic academic answer, isn't it? It depends. Jason Johnston: Depends. John Nash: But I think used exclusively, I think it does dehumanize. I think used judiciously and with an agenda to humanize, I think they could be helpful, but the jury's probably out because it's all context, isn't it? Jason Johnston: Yeah, definitely context and it gets into some philosophical questions as well, when we talk about humanizing. There is the act, there is the perception, right? And so, this goes back to some of the things that are going on even with AI telehealth, and so on. Or AI therapy. If the people don't know, does it matter? Does it feel human? Have they had the experience of being with a human, even though it wasn't a human? And then does it matter? I guess there's a ethical question about, It matters because we want to be transparent and we want to be honest with people and so on. But if at the end of the day they feel like that they've been in a humanized situation and it gives them maybe a positive outcome for them. John Nash: Yes. Yes. Yes. I think we discussed that last year a little bit. Yes. So essentially what we're saying is that if we fake them into feeling belonging, then that's okay. Jason Johnston: yeah. As long as maybe we're not being dishonest with them. Or maybe not, I shouldn't say maybe. As long as we're not being dishonest with them. I think that would be the cutoff for me. If people knew what was going on. John Nash: Okay. Fair. I think so. You say you're about to engage in a scenario that we've created that is designed to help you feel more belonging with regard to the activities we're doing as a group, maybe in our class. We used artificial intelligence, generative AI to create some of that, and we'd like you to engage in it, and then let us know. I think that would, Jason: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So, we started with this. This was a, there was a moment which you could invoke Eleven Labs this company through Chat GPT, you could invoke their GPT to create voices for you. And I was just playing around with it and came up with these, this intro script because I thought it would be fun just Jason Johnston: to, Just to Jason: start off, I'm not planning to replace you, John, just so you know. There's, I have no intention on replacing you. I'm, I enjoy our conversation too much to and respect you too much as a scholar and as a friend to replace you with just so you know, in case any concern or question. John Nash: I have been trying to get fired from this podcast and I thought this was my chance, but labeled redundant. Isn't that what they say? Jason Johnston: Well, I know you wanted to take the summer off, so maybe, maybe it could be just be like a, maybe a temporary replacement. We could get your voice. Yeah. Summer John, we could do summer John with yeah, that'd be all right. Yeah. John Nash: Well, your new dog, Kevin could take over the podcast for the summer. Yes. Jason Johnston: Yeah. Yeah. He would have some great things to add. I'm sure. The the really interesting thing about this, I'm not saying that this intro is perfect by any means, but, and we've talked about this a couple times, but just how quickly things are moving right now with AI and how even a year ago, that the emotions maybe weren't there with a AI created voices that are starting to come into itself. I think some of the early pushback for AI voices that I have found from an education standpoint is like, well, students aren't going to like it. It sounds too fake. And and so in that way, it's just not going to be a great experience for them. Well, we may be moving past that now in terms of those kind of arguments against AI voices in, in online education. But now we're moving towards, well, maybe it's fine for things. It doesn't matter. Like with, obviously we need to think about teaching presence, right? Community of inquiry. creating a great educational experience for students, having a teaching presence within the online class is super important, makes a difference for students and for teachers. I'm in a hundred percent on all of that. However, still within that, we pay voiceover people to do some slides that are going to be evergreen for us that maybe last beyond a teacher, or maybe are shared among a number of teachers teaching different sections or whatever. And so I think that we're probably just moving to a place where we're going to see more and more of this and online teaching. And I think maybe it's going to be okay. What do you think? John Nash: It reminds me of our conversation in the middle or end of our ethics episode this calendar year where we were discussing I'll call it scope creep or it will job creep. Jason Johnston: Yeah John Nash: I think it depends. Is this going to be a replacement technology, or If there are professionals in your circles who are already doing this work and then a new person comes along who's not it's not their station to do that work, but the technology will allow them to do it. Will they be stepping on toes? That's what the first thing that comes to mind. Yeah, I think there's questions to be answered at every level, as we've talked about before in terms of contextual ethics on this within your departments. And I was thinking about that this last week. I have the advantage at University of Tennessee of having people, we have humans that can do these things, right? Jason Johnston: So it is more of that kind of question about, well, I shouldn't be using AI when we already have humans to do things. But this last week I was at a conference and talked to a lot of people that are a team of one, right? They're expected to produce multiple courses and expected to be high quality. And they're maybe working at a community college or other colleges that are just not as well funded. And I think it maybe is another different answer to the question, maybe in some of those areas. What do you think? John Nash: do. And I think you're right. I think and again, we're in that world where we say it depends. Many professors are teams of one who are managing course loads. they don't have ready access to a center for teaching and learning or a set of instructional designers or production level tools. And so they want to create some evergreen material. Maybe they think their voice isn't up to lecturing for 15 minutes on video and staying stable. So these tools could be useful. Jason Johnston: Yeah. You have a hard time saying completely no across the board for everybody in every place on these kind of things. However, that being said, I think that I'm feeling more confidence, saying no in my particular context on a lot of these things where I prefer for humans to do the human things when it comes to graphics and music and voice and so on. And certainly We don't want to replace professors and have no intention on that, because I do think that those connections, I do believe that you there needs to be trust in a in a real teaching relationship, and I think you build that through that teaching presence and connection with the students, so. John Nash: Yes. And so I think that's probably the framework that we should be talking about all the time is connection and presence. And then if the affordances of these tools, let us advance that. I think we're in a better place. Jason Johnston: Yeah, that's good. Well, we got right into it, didn't we? With the AI voices spurred a conversation, but we did want to do this little kind of spring check in just to see what's going on. So what have you been up to this spring of 2024, John Nash: Spring has been busy, not only with teaching to two courses both in person on campus, but April and May sort of AI related and teaching related. I was I was out and about in different places. I was in, in April, I was at the Lamar Institute of Technology in Beaumont, Texas. Jason Johnston: Okay, John Nash: their professional development day. Really impressive what they do there. Once a year they close-- no classes are held and all employees from classified staff and even, janitorial and buildings and grounds to the provost and president come together for one day of learning on this professional development day. And they decided to focus a little bit on AI and I was invited to give the keynote address. Jason Johnston: nice. John Nash: On AI and the role and future in higher ed. And then I did some workshops. I did a workshop on prompt writing, and I did a workshop on ethics of AI and talking about crafting an ethic of care like we have Jason Johnston: Nice. John Nash: Gave some worksheets for them to think through how teachers could be thoughtful about integrating AI into their work. So that was great. A big shout out to Dr. Angela Hill, who's the provost at Lamar Institute of Tech, and also Beth Knapp, she's the executive director of human resources. They put on a great program. Gosh, and then I was in San Antonio, sort of Texas focused. I was on a panel on AI in the classroom at the annual meeting of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. And so this is a gigantic annual meeting held in the convention center in San Antonio, filled with biochemists and molecular biologists. But this was with Craig Streu from Albion College, John Tansey from Otterbein University. Emily Ruff from Winona University, and Susan Holacek from Arizona State. Have you run across Dr. Holacek's work before? I know you've been running around ASU a bit. But, this was a session on AI in the classroom, and so, in that one, I talked about large language models as two things, as instructional design partner, and as a teaching partner. And so, I talked about the John Hattie bot prompt that Darren Coxon has shared out and how that could be used for instructional design. And then I played up Ethan Mollick's work to do deliberate practice and using turning LLMs into tutors. And so, in fact, I've got a deck that I put on Gamma that we can put in the show notes and everybody can see this live web page I've got with all the links on to a whole bevy of scripts and prompts and stuff that I've got there on that. And then the last one, I added another one too. It was in Nashville. This one was a lot of fun. I was in front of about a thousand folks on a panel at the Healthcare Compliance Association's Compliance Institute in Nashville. Now it was with Brett Short, who's the University of Kentucky's Health Care's Chief Compliance Officer and Chief Privacy Officer. No simple job. I'll tell you Betsy Wade, who's the with Signature Healthcare. She's the VP of Compliance and then an attorney from New York, Christine Mondos, with Ropes Gray. Fascinating discussion about what healthcare compliance officers should be worried about in the presence of AI. And it's not just about, worrying about LLMs and the use of chatbots, but also where AI has penetrated a whole host of medical related software devices and where also healthcare folks may be in compliance or not compliance where they're using AI for patient use that is not licensed for patient use, for instance. It really opened my eyes to the way we've been talking about AI, Jason, about mostly around chatbots and ChatGPT and how LLMs are infiltrating work. But on this other side, in a lot of universities and also across hospitals that have, or universities with medical centers, hospitals there is people may not understand what de-identified data necessarily is. They think things are de-identified when they're not. 26 states are considering laws for use of AI in medical situations and how patients will be informed about their use. It's fascinating. So I think that was a lot of fun, to be able to talk about that. So yeah busy spring around talking about AI. Jason Johnston: that does make for a busy spring. So, yeah, if if you guys noticed that our podcast dropped off a little bit there, you'll know why for a little bit, but we're back at it. I'm curious. So it was really interesting that you're pulled out this Institute of Technology, I think, and then you're with Biochemists, and then you're with healthcare folks. What is the general feeling? Optimistic or pessimistic, would you say out there in the world beyond education with folks? John Nash: it's I think it's a balance. So the my new friends at the Lamar Institute of Tech, they were optimistic. In fact, I was in many ways. I appreciated the provost perspective that a community college where half their graduates go on to four year institutions to, of academics and the other half are going into the workplace because with workforce development. And in that light, they see themselves as needing to compete. And so how might AI make them more competitive in the way they think about their work, what they do day to day, And so let's be sober and forthright about what its possibilities are. I talked to a lot of instructors who are worried about their students using it in academically dishonest ways. And so we talked about ways in which those could be teachable moments, the way they could think through their own assessments. So I think it's a balance, but I think the overall the administration is optimistic. The panel on use in the classroom with the biochemists and molecular biologists was pretty optimistic and all the other panels were talking about ways in which they thought about how it could be used. Some who was it? It was Emily Ruff from Winona did some, has done some empirical work looking at students reactions to it and where it's been helpful and not helpful. So I think it's overall optimistic. The healthcare compliance officers, that is a balance of just I think mostly awareness and being careful that you're not breaking the law or violating patient confidentiality because if you make that mistake, then the federal government comes in. And this is the other big difference between what's happening in that sector, Jason, and what we do day to day, in the academic side of the house is the federal compliance spanking is severe and so you have to be very thoughtful there. Jason Johnston: Yeah, we've got FERPA, of course, but it feels that very rarely the FERPA police come in and actually do much of anything. John Nash: not like the HIPAA police. Jason Johnston: Not like the HIPAA police, which is, makes sense in many ways, because we're dealing with people's health care and yeah, exactly. John Nash: One of the common challenges across all three of these groups is this understanding of whether, the systems that you're using are opened or closed. So for instance, are you inside your institution's walled garden? And is the, is that information that you're feeding into, it's staying there and not feeding the models or is it going outside? That's a big concern in healthcare at any rate, because the tools are so opaque in terms of whether they're AI is baked into almost everything now. I don't know if you use WhatsApp, if you notice, but WhatsApp started to put AI right inside the the app itself at the top. And so, forget the the age 13 gateway is gone now because of all Generative AI is being stuck in all the apps without really being told. So I think that's one thing that everyone had in common there is like, what do we understand about how data gets shared? Jason Johnston: Yeah, it's fascinating. It's again, one of those situations, as you said, with health care and everything else, where AI is just being rolled out. WhatsApp, who's same company as Instagram, same company as Facebook, right? And so you now see it everywhere. You can you can chat with AI. And so it's here. There's no stopping it, really, when it comes to academic dishonesty. I asked my kids a little while ago, where did, did our kids log on to chat GPT and so on? And they're like, Oh, no, mostly they're just like asking Snapchat. John Nash: Yes. Jason Johnston: Yeah. Okay. So what do you do to stop that kind of thing when it's just baked into all the technology that we're using? John Nash: Yes. That's right. And so it makes me think about where this is going is it starts to get not only simple air quotes, simple GPT style chat gets embedded into apps, but then when it all becomes more sophisticated and embedded across other tools, that will be another. I want to talk more about that, but I want to hear what you've been up to. Jason Johnston: it's been a busy semester, on top of all the day to day things that I do. Yeah, lots of hiring. We're growing at University of Tennessee. There's a strong push towards online learning and I think for good reason. We're. we're really trying to reach out to mostly a lot of undergrad folks who have started a degree. They have some college credits. We have almost a million in Tennessee who started undergrad and never finished. And so we're trying to build out those courses. And so we're building up, hired some great new instructional designers. I work with some fantastic people. Very thankful for all that. On top of all that, I, did help lead an AI workshop in April called Thoughtful Teaching with AI. And one of the cool things about this that I really enjoyed is that I was able to partner as part of, we're digital learning, so we're the centralized, like, online learning department. We were able to partner with our teaching and learning office, and shout out to a colleague, Chris Kilgore, there, and then also our writing center. And shout out to Matt Bryant Cheney there. To be able to connect with them and develop basically a and then in some connection with our office of information technology as well and be able to create a workshop together using all of our perspectives and we're able to bring in our different kind of angles and perspectives on this two day basically workshop working with faculty focused around teaching with AI, thinking about creating assignments with AI and how to be thoughtful about that and build it into the curriculum in a way that is human, but a way that is impactful as well. So that was a lot of fun to do and I think interesting. I, as a reminder to those out there that are in similar spaces trying to help professional development and education is that there's still a lot of basic questions out there around dishonesty, as you were talking about around just usage, like, where does my information go? How is it used? What's a good prompt look like? What is a chatbot versus an LLM? And those kind of things. And so we still need to be teaching and talking about these basic kind of things when it comes to AI. So. John Nash: Yeah. So much of what I thought would be solved by now is Jason Johnston: Right. Right. Yeah. And then I just came back, like, yesterday from the Digital Universities Conference in St. Louis. This is a conference that's put on by Times Higher Education, which I was not as familiar with, but I'm very familiar with Inside Higher Ed, and many of our listeners and yourself probably Familiar as well. And I was on a panel with Rachel Brooks from Quality Matters, Flower Darby, Brian Beatty, and with a great moderator from Inside Higher Ed Jamie Ramacciotti and we're talking about achieving access through equitable course design. Had a great conversation and some good feedback from people in the audience. I think it was really interesting just to hear the different kind of approaches about even defining what equitable course design looks like. We've got some things that we all kind of land on in terms of UDL and making things accessible, but beyond that, really, what is the definition and some varied kind of approaches from, Brian And Rachel, we're less likely to really want to land on a definition. Flower Darby, who's done lots of writing in this area, was, had a little clearer kind of idea of how to move ahead. So John Nash: Nice. Nice. And you you mentioned to me, I think that there was also some presentations from some vendors and things, particularly Turnitin was there. Jason Johnston: yeah, it was really interesting. Yeah. John Nash: talk about that? Jason Johnston: Yeah. And, without throwing anybody under the bus at all, but, we do talk about ed tech and we're at UT is a Turnitin university. We have Turnitin on. But it was really clear to me. That they were there on a really strong PR push to I think they've probably gotten a little bit of backlash on some of their AI detection that they turned on and then they turned off. And it was really clear that they were there to, to strongly let people know that they're, Their purpose is student learning and good outcomes for students. It's not for catching cheaters. That's not their focus. I'm not sure if that is It may be that they're doing a little bit of a, not just a rebranding, but a change in terms of their organization itself. I had a hard time, I think, not hearing some of those words without some skepticism um, and without kind of feeling like, That it's easy for them to say that now that maybe they're losing some of their market spot that they had before. And so they're trying to reinvent themselves into something else. I'm not sure. I don't want to, I'm not judging anybody's motivations here for being there. I'm just on face value I think we need to continue to have a a digital critical approach when it comes to working with our ed tech partners. John Nash: Certainly. Does it feel like they still want to try to detect AI written work? Jason Johnston: What was interesting is that they seem to present it as if they could very clearly detect AI written work. There is not time for questions for this person. And so that they the main kind of operating guy, I don't know who it was that was doing a kind of a bit of a keynote talk. There's not time for questions, he just gave a spiel and then left. But yeah, he very clearly kind of demon put on the slides that they're, they're able to detect AI. And this is what it looks like right now. John Nash: Ah. Jason Johnston: There's no chance for me to stand up and I guess I could have stood up and just dissented while he was talking, but I guess I have a little more, John Nash: Yes. Jason Johnston: maybe social John Nash: More decorum?" Jason Johnston: Decorum than that. John Nash: not like, in a British parliament where you stand up and just yell "rubbish." Jason Johnston: exactly and start pounding the desks and so on. Yeah, if I knew this was coming, I could have worn my AI Detectors Don't Work shirt or something like that, and it had more of a silent protest than I, could have just had it on without having to interrupt him. John Nash: Well, fascinating. I don't know what to think of that. I want to believe that we're moving beyond that, but I guess what does a company that's called Turnitin, who's made their way through detecting plagiarism and plain old written essays back when we used to do that, right? What do they do now? Yeah, Jason Johnston: Yeah. Well, you had an experience recently, right? At your school. Are you able to share about that a John Nash: yeah, well, yeah, just a little story from a colleague that I was contrasting in light of a great interview with Dario Amadei, the CEO of Anthropic, which is the company that makes Claude, the LLM, and he recently shared some, pretty mind-bending insights on the Ezra Klein show about how AI is evolving and where it will go this exponential growth in AI tech and that in the next, 18 months to three years, we could see things like AI like planning our trips or it's already writing code. It's going to be integrated into our tools even more so. And this conversation struck a chord with me when I thought about a situation that a fellow professor shared. She had caught a student using AI to write a paper and they turned that paper in and she thought it was written by AI, felt AI. But this same student had sneakily passed it on to another student who submitted it also as their own work. So we have not only academic dishonesty in terms of use of, say, chat GPT, but then full on plagiarizing and cheating in the old traditional sense by this other student. And so I thought, just, but so how she handled that is really not the point of this, but she was throwing up her arms a little bit saying, well, what do we do about this sort of thing? And it was a kind of a snapshot of the massive ethical puzzles we're now facing thanks to the presence of AI now, but also, what Amadei is talking about is AI getting so good at handling complicated stuff that soon chatting with AI is going to feel as natural as talking to, you and me and here we are now today trying to figure out how to keep AI from turning our students into these copy and paste wizards. And so it was a bit of a reality check for me about where we need to be. So my story is really ends with a question. What's the game plan now for us as educators? We're all, we're still stuck trying to figure out what to do about how to assess well in the presence of AI and courses that have AIable assignments. So what will we do? How do we push this conversation next? I think we still have to think about AI as a force for good in education, but that has to come with more conversation. It makes me realize I'm not having enough conversations with my colleagues about ethics of the use of the tool, transparency of the use of the tool and where it can benefit them. Jason Johnston: Yeah, and I think that benefits, ethics, and transparency are things that we can continue to look at, and I think what we can't do is make policies based on where AI is today, right? As Sam Altman, I think, said even just this last week, what you're using right now is the worst AI that you will ever use. It was something like that. John Nash: Did he say that? I know Mollick has been saying that too for, yeah. Jason Johnston: this is it. This is the worst version of ChatGPT that you will ever use. I've heard to the grapevine that, ChatGPT 5 is coming out this fall and it's going to be like a 100x what we've experienced. I don't know what that means exactly but, I just think that we cannot, we can't look at it today and say we've got to make policies based on the quality that we see right now. I think that we can think about some of these other ways that we can approach it that, that should stand the test of time. Transparency. I think whether it's 100x in six months, when we start the fall break or fall semester, whether it's 100x or not, I think transparency will still be a thing we want on the table. Right? John Nash: Yes. Yeah, definitely. I was reading I get a little newsletter every morning called the Bay Area Times. They were noting that OpenAI showed off an unlaunched deepfake voice tool recently. It only requires 15 seconds of reference audio to clone a voice. Now we were talking earlier about, well, it wouldn't be nice if we could have some voice generated material for instruction, but we weren't talking about cloning or deepfaking voices. But if you only need 15 seconds, I think that's that's pretty amazing and frightening. Jason Johnston: Yeah. Yeah. There's a Hard Fork podcast, both you and I are fond of. They just did one, and we can put a link in the notes, where they were talking about a situation where a principal, was was put on suspension because somebody had used a deep fake of his voice that sounded really realistic. And not just realistic, but sounded like the environment that somebody might have just recorded somebody, in a hallway through their phone kind of thing, saying things that he didn't say. John Nash: Yes. And another example in a school in Southern California, I think of students who were suspended for doing deep fake images of female Jason Johnston: Right. John Nash: that were that were pornographic. Really terrible stuff. And I think it shows how important it is for school leaders, both in, P 12 and in higher ed to be thinking about how we'll get in front of the stuff. Do the existing policies you have really get at it? Jason Johnston: Yeah. One of the sessions I was at this last week at Digital Universities conference was by Dr. Robbie Melton, who is the Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Technology Innovations at the Tennessee State University. And she was talking about the impact of AI on minority-serving institutions, which hers is one. One of the things that, that she was talking about in this was just that she was stressing, if you do not understand what AI is doing, then you need to. Like, not everybody has to be an expert, but everybody needs to understand the capabilities. And she's like, "This is why, if I'm showing a demonstration, I don't show them, ChatGPT 3. 5. We go for 4, this is why I keep up on all these things so I know exactly where it's at, because people need to understand where it's at and where it's going in terms of its capabilities because people underestimate what's going on." And I think it's the same thing in our schools for really understanding where all of this is at. I think that as leaders, we do need to have at least some sense of where the technology is at today and then where it's going tomorrow. John Nash: So if people are interested in listening to that episode, that was the Ezra Klein show where he interviews Dario Amadei, D A R I O, A M O D E I. And it's a really interesting picture into where one leader of one of the frontier models of generative AI is thinking this will all go. Jason Johnston: Yeah. Those are some great series with Ezra Klein. Again, just for all of us to expand our understanding of where things are at and where they're going. Yeah. Well, it's great to catch up, John. It's nice to see you. And I'm glad to see you after all the busyness of the semester. We've got a couple more podcasts coming up with some amazing guests. And then we'll do a a summer kind of break and wrap up, but yeah, as always our podcast can be found at onlinelearningpodcast.com. Please, wherever you listen to this podcast, if you can do a review. That would help us know how things are going, as well as help the algorithm get it in front of other people that like similar podcasts. And find us on LinkedIn, of course, and we've got the links in our show notes as well. Love to hear back from you about what you think about this podcast and others and and everything that we're saying here. So, John Nash: Please like, comment and subscribe. We, yeah, we have three more episodes in the hopper that are going to come out with some amazing guests. And so I'm excited for those and excited to talk about summer plans after that. Jason Johnston: sounds good. All John Nash: Cool. Talk to you later. Jason Johnston: Talk to you soon. Bye.

In this episode, John and Jason talk to Christelle Daceus of Johns Hopkins University chats about digital neo-colonialism and efforts to humanize online learning through training about AI and promoting inclusive practices. See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com Join Our LinkedIn Group - *Online Learning Podcast (Also feel free to connect with John and Jason at LinkedIn too)* Links and Resources: Christelle Daceus, M.Ed., is a Course Support Specialists at the Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, and the Founder and CEO of Excellence Within Reach  Watch for Christelle’s book chapter - Coming late 2024 on Springer Nature Press “Using Global Learning through the Collaborative Online International Learning Model to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals by Building Intercultural Competency Skills” coedited by Kelly Tzoumis and Elena Douvlou with a chapter titled “Combatting Virtual Exchange’s Predisposition to Digital Colonialism: Culturally Informed Digital Accessibility as a Tool for Achieving the UN SDGs” Johns Hopkins Excellence in Online Teaching Symposium John & Jason’s 6 Guideposts - Slide Deck (via Gamma.app) Christelle’s symposium video Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License. Transcript We use a combination of computer-generated transcriptions and human editing. Please check with the recorded file before quoting anything. Please check with us if you have any questions or can help with any corrections! [00:00:00] Jason Johnston: What'd you have for breakfast? [00:00:01] Christelle Daceus: I did not have breakfast. I was thinking here that I have two dogs, so that my mornings consist of a lot of making sure they get their walk in and getting my nice kind of walk in the morning and things like that. It helps me start my day. And I spend a lot of time just hydrating, tea, I like, because I think I have a full plate, I would call it. I like to have a really quiet morning, just like the simplest morning that I can have, depending on what my first thing is to do that day. This is my first meeting today, I was like, okay, I'm just gonna chill with the dogs, get into my emails and things like that. [00:00:40] John Nash: Nice. We've been getting more into tea lately. There's wonderful woman-owned emporium near our house called White Willow and they've got a new herbalist and, we picked up a lavender earl gray tea there last night. [00:00:53] Christelle Daceus: Ooh, that sounds good. [00:00:54] John Nash: The little things. I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston. [00:01:00] Jason Johnston: Hey, John. Hey, everyone. And this is Online Learning in the Second Half, the online learning podcast. [00:01:05] John Nash: Yeah, we're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation we've been having for the last two years about online education. Look, online learning's had its chance to be great, and some of it is, but there's still quite a bit that isn't. And Jason, how are we going to get to the next stage? [00:01:20] Jason Johnston: That's a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it? [00:01:24] John Nash: That's perfect. What do you want to talk about today? [00:01:27] Jason Johnston: Well, today we're probably going to hit some pretty big themes, John, and it's partly because we have connected with somebody that we first connected with at the Johns Hopkins Online Teaching Excellence Symposium. So we have with us today, Christelle Dacius. Thank you so much for joining us. And we're really just looking forward to talking to you today. [00:01:51] Christelle Daceus: too. Thank you so much. [00:01:54] Jason Johnston: Well, we wanted to get started by just talking a little bit about what is it you do currently? You're connected in with JHU maybe talk about that first, but I also know that you're an entrepreneur. They have other pursuits outside of JHU as well. [00:02:07] Christelle Daceus: Yeah, I am a long time educator. I've had my hands in all things education at various levels. And yeah, now I'm at J. H. U. Working for the School of Engineering, working for the Center for Learning Design and Technology. I work as a course support specialist with the instructional designers and technologists, creating Materials for courses at the School of Engineering at Helmwood making sure that they're accessible and those materials are accessible, like videos have captions and are able to be, process and materials are able to be read by screen readers. And then we also have the faculty forward Academy where we provide professional development for faculty and I have some awesome opportunities to collaborate with the school of education in their international student work group and I'll be working in some workshops for them in April, providing some work with the faculty on AI and different tools and AI and how they can incorporate into learning and a no fear approach to AI because there's a lot of anxiety there. I think for faculty. And that's my goal with that workshop is to meet them in the middle and show them that AI is here. We can't quite get rid of it, but. We can, elevate our learning and how we, work with students. And so I'm super excited for that. I also work in some research with Global Learning, so I have some international partners I'm doing like exciting things with. And we have a book coming out in May or June with Springer Nature Press. And so that book is about global learning and how sustainability in education can be affected by the United Nations sustainable development goals. And so we just launched our book recently again at the world environmental education Congress in Abu Dhabi, just a few weeks ago, and we talked about our book and had a panel there and that was super exciting. Very excited for that work. Obviously it was again like that natural opportunity. I was talking about earlier where it's just I'm meeting good people talking about the good work. And then we started creating some great work together, I'm really excited about that. And then, yeah, like I said, I'm an entrepreneur. So I have a business in Baltimore City, which is an academic center that's really starting to really connect with the community and start starting to grow into a very. Well rounded program which is exciting because I'm just in maybe a few months. But, it's one of those moments where hard work is paying off even in the new pursuit, where a lot of the relationships that I've valued and forged within Baltimore and within education systems and Baltimore City schools are starting to just grow and I'm able to like really reach students. Because just moving here, I'm actually from New Jersey, and I moved here maybe five years ago, and I've had an opportunity to contract in schools and things like that. And, Baltimore City Schools is constantly in the news for their educational needs and things like that. And because my career started in K 12, I really wanted to connect kind of the work that I do at this higher level, right? Accessibility, advocacy, inclusive education, but bring it to a community level. And I think one of the things you guys asked me was about affecting the individual, like, how can we do that work and reach the individual and not just put out the research and all these kinds of things, which is amazing and important to have those conversations and keep pushing forward with. Workshops and conferences and getting those ideas out there. But then I have an opportunity to not only give opportunities to other educators to bring those opportunities to students, but also really, impact the community, a community that needs it, Yeah. I also am a mom and I have a son he's four. His name is Malcolm. He's the greatest. And yeah, I'm just a busy bee. I'm all over the place. But I love everything I do. And I think I have a good balance right now. So I'm lucky to do the things that I love. [00:06:16] Jason Johnston: so we sent you some questions, but like you just. You just landed us with four pretty big things that you do. We could probably spend the entire time talking about any one of those things. So I'm going to have to show some restraint, because there's some things we would like to get to, and why we connected over this, that I think are really important. I don't want to derail anything here, but I was really curious, and I'm sorry to our listeners, because we keep saying that we're going to stop talking about AI, and then it just keeps coming back. [00:06:44] Christelle Daceus: You can, that's what I'm saying. That's the workshop. You cannot run away from AI. I'm so sorry. [00:06:51] Jason Johnston: And we love it. We like, it's really interesting to us. And all the time are like texting each other things. I actually texted my wife yesterday by accident, something I meant to text to John, and it made no sense to her whatsoever. [00:07:05] John Nash: Does that make us work spouses right? [00:07:08] Jason Johnston: I I think so or at least AI spouses. but because every time something comes up, I'm like, Oh, John, did you see this? Did you see that? And he's like sending me stuff back as well. Anyways, tell us a little bit about your approach with the "no fear AI." Cause I really, I haven't heard that particular kind of phrase, but I'm interested because I think we're all in the same space in, in education. [00:07:32] Christelle Daceus: Like I said, with the School of Education, they have a work group that works towards just how do we work with international students and within their own faculty groups they make sure that their programming and professional development includes that kind of work, and so they approached me because, a lot of faculty just don't know what to do. Right? The biggest issue is the plagiarism. Like, how do we keep up with this? How do we know that students are submitting authentic work? And that's the idea behind how , I'm planning for the workshop is, that we're talking about first, what really is AI, right? It's not this solve everything. Like, there's so much more we need to know. There's so much kinks that need to be figured out. And it's so exciting when you see ChatGPT create a menu for you, create a business plan and all these kinds of things. But, people like us who work in online and work with technology, we know that there's like limitation to the authenticity of it to the like humanization of the technology, because there are people who create these technologies. And these people are often in an industry that is dominated by people who look a specific way, right? And so those people have specific ideologies. And so when they're creating their work, they're using their specific values and ideologies and biases to create that work. And it's amazing work, but it's not something that is, Full spectrum hitting the complexity of humanism. And I won't scare the faculty by phrasing it that way. But, that's really the conversation of just, letting them know that there is limitations and as much as it looks like it can do, we are still, we still have the power in our hands, right? Because we have this thing that AI or any kind of technology would never have, which is the human brain. And it's capable of so many things that no matter what we create and no matter how exciting and shiny and new it is it's just never going to be more meaningful than that. And we, the important thing is not allowing it to, right? Not allowing to ourselves to give AI and VR and XR and all these kinds of things. The power to take our human interactions or communication or connections and make them artificial. Right? So yeah, so that's the idea behind the workshop is that we are going to now give them the tools, right? Okay. So what does that look like? You're telling me don't be scared. Don't be nervous and just. Embrace it. Okay. What does that look like when embracing it? Right? And so I want to talk about some faculty that are already doing that. How can we use ChatGPT is what everybody knows to review work that students are turning and tell them, sure, use it, get it out of their system, and they're going to start to recognize if you show them, okay, the reason we're concerned about this is because you're not getting the accurate information, right? So let's have the students sit down and compare some of their own research to ChatGPT's research and on a similar topic and, compare those things and analyze the technology itself, and it's gonna, teach them some things, which is exciting, right? It's going to give us some new things, but at the same time, it's going to help them question. They're learning in an authentic way that it's not just I'm answering the question and that's it. But I'm having this moment where I'm like, I'm thinking about my thinking, right? It's something that is in something that we created within the engineering school. But this metacognition of Remembering that it is a technology, right? It's not our reality. It's just something, a tool that can be applied to the courses, especially online. [00:11:11] John Nash: Wonderful. Really cool. I think, I have a million questions. I, I've been worried about the the historical bias inside the large data sets that these LLMs get built on, even as actors inside universities like mine who are doing sub projects, they can go out and get the, I guess I'm learning about these, but there's the common crawl data set. There's BookCorpus, Wikipedia, these things where the data comes from. And then on top of that, as you just noted, the developers values and ideologies get put on top of that. And so I'm thinking about ways to help others, particularly teachers, see their evolving role , as an actor inside this network of flow of information from the large language model to a learner, whether they're over 13 years old and it's okay for them to use them or whether they're in post secondary. And I'm wondering how you're feeling about that too. I see now teachers are needed more than ever as the mediator between the screen and the learner in helping set up critical conversations. And I'm thinking about these guideposts that we talked about Jason and I did at the symposium at Johns Hopkins and being human to your students and yourself, treat humans as individuals, and you helped us expand on a point which was to recognize that not all humans are present. And so I'm thinking about that. And are you still feeling that way that there's a place for teachers to help learners remember that not all humans have been present in this AI flow of information. [00:12:53] Christelle Daceus: I think the difficult part is having the time for those conversations in the classroom, I think that's where immediately teachers are like, this is just another thing, right? On our plate for us to, have to deliver, but that's where I'm hoping to encourage authentic, interactions and opportunities to have those conversations, right? And so I really try to encourage faculty to. Talk about their own process, their approach to a assignment, right? So let's say we have this AI assignment or whatever assessment that we have in a course and they can talk for a moment, whether that's in the overview of the assignment or in the overview of the module, where they're saying, Okay, here's what's assigned this week. Here's some things that I would keep in mind when I'm approaching this and here's how I would approach, an assessment like this or an assignment like this. And just, remind them that they're not on their own, right? It's not just especially online. It's so easy to just be on the other side of the screen and not really connect. But if you remind them that, hey, I'm still here and, I try to do these things too. I found my way, I think a really good habit that I'd love to see is, that faculty in their course introductions or syllabus can talk about how they got to their role, as a professor like, yes, we have the bios and, tell them a little background, but really what courses that they take, what, how did they approach their learning in those courses? A lot of program, if you think about the school of engineering these are common courses a lot of engineers have to take to reach their programming so a lot of these, more senior engineers and people in the industry, they've had those experience. They've had to approach the learning and it might, the learning might look differently right now, but there's things that work when you're, gaining retention or learning new things that just work, right? And no matter how the learning is approached. And so what I realized is there's an assumption that because you're at a certain level, you just know those things and you should just know how to, you know, um, really organize yourself well enough and organize your course materials, prioritize your learning in an independent way when in actuality, online learning is so new, there's no real approach to it, right? Right. There's no real guideline to, okay, well, this is how the norm of learning online is for the student, right? I think we spend a lot of time making sure that teaching is accurate and like we're putting out good materials and we're accessible and all these things, but then students, they're just told, log in, learn, even though it's different than anything you've ever done for the majority of your academic experience. And. But, do it and do it well. And so yeah, those are the things I think about that technology moves so fast that we forget to step back and make sure that everyone has the steps to apply it and be a part of it and participate. And I think that's what true accessibility is not. Pinpointing the people who are most in need all the time, but sometimes it's if everyone can reach this most likely, that's the best products, right? That's the best experience. And so that's how I approach accessibility and online learning and the design of those courses. [00:16:14] John Nash: I don't want to oversimplify something you just said, but it, did it seem like I was hearing you say that there are too many instructors who take on an online teaching team? Thank you. endeavor, inadvertently throw the students to the wolves a little bit. There's not enough thought going in there to everything. [00:16:32] Christelle Daceus: I'd even say it's at an institutional level because half the time, the faculty or teachers are also being thrown into new technology and they, start the school year and they say, Hey, these are the things we're using our courses. This is the LMS that we're using, teachers don't really have an opportunity to decide on those things, so I think that's really what it is that yes, there's. The aspect that teachers could, step in the ways that I talked about, right? And helping them adjust to the technology. We have to make sure that as an institution, we're reaching them. And me working in K 12, that's the, that's where I see that the most, right? They put these laptops in classrooms and they have all these kinds of very amazing educational technology, but, Half the time, it's just, this is what we're using now. This is how we're, looking at the data, how we're tracking our students progress, and all these kinds of things. And you just have to adapt and what happens to the teachers that can't, right? Which is what happened in higher ed with COVID. Hundreds, thousands of classes all around the country were placed online and everyone said, figure it out [00:17:39] John Nash: Yep. [00:17:40] Christelle Daceus: and not only in higher ed, but then there's all these K 12 kids logging into zoom with no idea what they're doing. And that's the example I would use of just technology moving a touch too fast. Right? We saw an emergency which is the pandemic, and we're shutting down. We're locked down. We're in our house. And someone said, Oh, but we have the technology. We've created this. We've got it, but didn't think, okay, but schools are safe places for students. Right? And especially at the K 12 level, are we making sure that this is safe, right? Are they logging into secure servers and all these kinds of things? That's where you saw Zoom immediately change its entire kind of interface. Very quickly, they were like, oh, we can't allow these Zoom links to be shared all over the place and people are popping into different rooms and things like that. And so you started the more of the enterprise model and for schools and things like that and yeah, which is important. It's important for us to learn, but we don't want to put our most vulnerable people, our most vulnerable stakeholders at risk, which are our students, right? At any level. They are the stakeholders investing, if not their time, with younger students, but also financial investments when you're at the higher ed level, they invested into this product, which is their higher education experience, and they want to make sure that it's high quality and it's reaching them in a meaningful way, right? And they're walking away from that experience. And so when I always say I am so happy I didn't graduate around that time or I wasn't trying to go to college because, that experience of, oh, I'm having my first, second year of college and. All of a sudden, they're like, get off campus and go on your laptop. You still have to, pay that ticket price. You still have to pay, to be there and be present and reach all the same goals, but it's a completely different environment. And we don't even know if you're going to be able to succeed in that environment, but we all just have to. Because we want to, well, this is the colonialist piece, so I won't get too much into that. Um, but yeah, it's just the continuation of capitalism. That's, that was the priority, right? That we needed to keep doors open, we needed to keep institutions pushing and we're literally dealing with a global health pandemic, people's lives are at risk, people are dying And instead of taking a second to make sure we're delivering this essential need, right, of education in the best possible way. It was a little rush and we were, we put kids in danger. We put, institutions in danger in that way. So [00:20:21] Jason Johnston: I feel like whether it's a, global pandemic pushing us in this direction, or maybe a school is pivoting to online or even down to a teacher who's been, asked to move their classes online. I feel like our default is to try to continue the same things that we've been doing, but just stick them online. So if a teacher is very comfortable and this is the way they've always done it with specific kind of assessments or a very lecture based approach that everything just online and all of a sudden becomes just this kind of like same stuff, different package. [00:20:58] Christelle Daceus: it's a folder, right? It's just like holding all the things and we hop online. We do our little lecture or recording and that's learning and the, we try to do interaction through discussion boards and things like that, but I think even the creation of discussion boards and the, is that why did we need to look like replicate discussion? Why did we not instead create moments of authentic discussion, which is harder to, of course, analyze quantitatively , but I understand we have to find a balance, it's not easy, but this is why I say, my approach to, thinking about the professional development of educators is to show them the way, right? Am I making sure that my materials are reaching every student in the room, right? And that means taking a moment to check in on if there's translating opportunities, right? What is the demographic in my room? Am I making sure that the content is culturally relevant to them? Okay. Am I sure that the words that I'm using are sensitive to the kinds of like cultural mindsets that are in my classroom. And sometimes as educators, you're not in a room with people who look like you. I hope most of the time that's not how that looks, and you don't wanna miss opportunities for a student to grow and to reach the really good content that you're trying to deliver because they couldn't access it online, right? Let's think about international students who are checking in online and we have links to sites that in their country are banned. So then we have a student that's okay, but I really want to go to this school, so I'm going to get a VPN. And I'm going to do what I need to do so I can get this degree. And maybe it's normed, but is that really what we want as institutions or as educators that students are risking themselves in a, I guess legal way or judicial way where they have to go this extra mile versus the educator creating unique materials in such a way that they don't have to click on a link, right? The learning is in the LMS. There's interaction there with their peers. They're really having an authentic experience instead of going into another space. Maybe you send that information in a different way. Maybe you have alternatives and you can still have your link, but making sure that they can reach that in some way, right? I've, through this work, found out there's YouTube alternatives and all these kinds of things in places like China and the UAE, getting familiar with that, or at least, in the education, if you know that's a demographic that you serve, that should be a part of your own professional development, right? That you're pursuing how to adjust your teaching for those students. But I think as institutions and as educators, we have to norm those conversations, norm it in a way that I think once you start saying inclusion and diversity and people get, "Oh, but I am, like I am, I'm doing the right thing. I'm doing my best" and everyone's doing their best. But, once you start to put practical steps to it, okay, well, there's things I can just. Add to what I'm already doing and we just enhance overall, just the quality of education. And everybody would ideally. [00:24:24] Jason Johnston: Yeah. Yeah, that theme of intentionality was something that came up over and over again in that J. H. U. symposium and what I hear you saying is part of that intentionality is being able to, is taking the time to do professional development so that you can take a step back, you can think about maybe where some practices need to change, and ideally as part of the professional development. Here are some practical things that you could do today. Maybe some small steps or maybe some individual individual examples of things that, that could be done. [00:24:58] Christelle Daceus: Yeah, and I would say it doesn't have to be the big conference or all these things can be reading, a really good book, a really good author who's familiar with the work [00:25:06] Jason Johnston: Yeah. [00:25:07] Christelle Daceus: If that's, of concern to you relating yourself to the other voices that, Are matching your values of that you want to bring into your classroom. And I would say even at conferences you get to sign up for different sessions and my favorite session to sign up for the small ones that they put in the room that's all the way down the hall. And there's only a couple of attendees because we sit in there, we have amazing conversations, because everyone's being heard. And it's not just anybody talking at you. It's real educators and they're having real conversations and then putting in some action steps. "Okay. How can I help you with this at your institution?" And how can we, collaborate in that way? And even actually, at the conference I went to recently, we had field trips, I think, on the last day of the conference we were on one of the charter buses and a colleague from London, they're working on some environmental work there. We just connected immediately, and he starts talking about how he" is looking for how to elevate the design and meet the community and be inclusive and all these things. I was like, Oh, I love that's what I love. I love to do all those things," and that didn't happen because I sat in his session and, heard all his bullet points and stuff like that. But it's because we came together as educators. We're trying to have an authentic experience where we get to, Abu Dhabi is very sustainable and environmentally aware. And so we were going to a mangrove where they plant trees and expand foliage there. And it was great to have this authentic moment where we were like, "this is just something that I love." And, at conferences is almost like a safe place to nerd out about the things that you really love in education. And so you get into these conversations. "Oh, what do you do?" And then all of a sudden. You found, your match that somewhere in another institution, but doing similar work and seeing that, it works the things that you're doing, but maybe in a different way somewhere else. And you're getting new ideas and we're building education in those ways. So that's what I'd like to see, I think, in the future of professional development and conferences, like having those more authentic, just conversations, open discussion on these real things. Like, how are we really holding back our students by allowing colonialist practices to seep into education where there's one voice, there's one identity that kind of leads the way, right? There's one version of what the the most what is the word? Something that has, I don't know, you're more important because you went to a certain institution, you're from a certain part of the world, or from a certain culture there's a better word for it, but my point is that, we hold our students to a lesser standard when we stop short replicating in person online. When we have educators, creatives, to really come together and are like, "This is an opportunity to create a whole different educational environment that can just reach students in a different way, it doesn't have to be end all be all we don't have to get rid of, schools or anything like that". But there's a lot, especially at the case level where schools are fully online and they're interacting with students like that. But I would hate to think that a student. Spend 12, 14, 15, 16 years of their education, and they're just, staring at the same thing year after year, and they're just reading things online and they're missing opportunities to interact with their peers and grow their ideas and hear. Validation and feedback like we did sitting in the classroom. Yeah, [00:28:52] John Nash: You brought up the notion of colonialism and you've talked a little in the past about digital neo colonialism. Could you give our listeners the digital neo colonialism 101? [00:29:05] Christelle Daceus: Yeah. So, this idea that um, I think I just mentioned colonialist practices are replicated through education. Right? And if we're thinking about imperialism. It's this pursuit of resources, right? In the past, it was the pursuit of humans, right? And the institution of slavery was the exploitation of human labor and human bodies and cultures and the eradication of culture so that other cultures could be elevated and given power socially, economically that stands to this day, right? And. When you don't have the massive institution of slavery, it continues in different ways. And we saw things like the black codes and all the limitations that freed black persons had to deal with after emancipation that kind of limited and how people of color could be successful. And that's just an example at, the domestic level. But then when you really think of it globally, there's just a continued, repression of so many cultures, whether that's in the Caribbean, whether that's in Africa and Asia, these cultures that were impacted by colonialism and intruded upon and some of these places, their Colonizers are still there, right? They have embassies there and offices and, and we just made these laws and all these things. Right? And it's the same thing in education where just like the for profit prison system, right? That's a continuation of enslavement of control over the population is a way to control, consequence to what the larger they decide as what is criminal behavior, what is dangerous to the society that we are trying to uphold? And of course, that's important, but when it's designed based on stereotype and race and, these false ideologies of inferiority due to differences of, skin color or being an immigrant or different economic class, that's when those things get spread further and further, right? And so in education, this looks having international students come to American schools to become more legitimate. That's the word I was looking for earlier, where these institutions legitimize you, right? Whereas you don't have American students going to some of the other institutions because in certain places, like the global south is what they'll call it, right? Those third world countries or whatever you want to call it you don't see American students or British students or Asian students going to those countries because the legitimacy is not there, right? There's the social legitimacy of that degree would not have the same weight, right? Even though I'm sure there's plenty of institutions with great work and they're like, I have partners all over the world. And so what does that do? That brings more economic growth to certain institutions, certain regions, certain countries, brings more influence because this education is legitimate. So the research they're putting out from this institution is more legitimate than those other ones. And so those perspectives from the people who can afford to go to those institutions are then pushed forward, it's this kind of continued. Elevation of a certain voice, right? Of a certain pedagogy, even, right? Again, we're going back to replicating what's in person online. That doesn't work, because, It was already barely working in person, right? We're still figuring that part out. So, you know, We to, to, to replicate something that's not even that doesn't as strong as a foundation is we wanted to online, which is something. We don't even know as much as we can about it becomes just this loose experience, right? Where people aren't getting as much as they're investing into it. I think we're all spending a lot of time getting familiar with technology, investing into it, incorporating into our lives and we want to make sure that what we're getting back is not just a regurgitation of. Colonialist thought of, making sure that the majority is elevated, that the global north is stays in its position. It's an opportunity for the global north to move out of the way and say, yes, because we have this technology that allows us to talk to people from all over the world. This is an opportunity for us to just give them that platform, right? We want to give them the opportunity to speak for themselves. Like we don't need to advocate or save or, any of those things we need to. Just not bombard the industry, right? We don't need to dominate in a way that doesn't leave space for the global south or different institutions or different voices to actually be heard which is something I talk about in my chapter as well. [00:33:59] Jason Johnston: Yeah, this idea, and please correct me if this is not part of what you're talking about here. One of the practical ways of moving forward is this idea of allyship. Does that resonate with you or is that is that different than what you're saying here? [00:34:16] Christelle Daceus: Yeah, I think that's a really good word to put to it, so that I love it when big ideas can be consumable, right? And yeah, it's this authentic allyship. Right, that we remember that, yes, there's pursuits of greater things. However, we don't want to perpetuate competition and capitalism and just growth for the sake of, being bigger than the guy next to you kind of thing, but rather than, if you think about the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals, the goal is to really elevate our earth, right? And to expand the longevity of our earth and our climate and making sure that in all aspects, industry and education and health and economic, we're all growing and we all have the same opportunities. To be, players on the world market. And yeah, so the allyship comes from first accepting that, the end all be all is not being the person that's most on top, and even if you are the person that's most on top, there's no problem with helping those that come behind you, right? Or who are in a different position than you are, and bringing them to where you are, right? I think we have to get out of this illusion that technology creates and being online creates that, this is just a person on the screen. It's no, the world is still, if we're connecting the world and we're having these international conversations or conversations with people all over the country, or even in your community, we're not even meeting. I could be in Baltimore still having my Zoom meeting with someone that's a couple blocks down. We don't do that anymore, right? It's oh, I don't want to meet you at your office. I'm just going to hop on Zoom, and that's it. And not forgetting that when we do have in person interactions to make them meaningful, I think, in a new way, because they're becoming less apparent and less available to us and enjoying life in that way, I think. And as professionals, just really, like I said, just recognizing, one where you're coming from and what your strengths, privileges, whatever you want to call it, are. And when you are thinking about enhancing that work or growing that work, making sure that it's not just one voice that you're hearing in your head, right? That you're trying to elevate those other voices that are available to us and trying to learn from us, right? They deserve that. [00:36:51] Jason Johnston: You wonder about what this disembodiment of meeting together will do to our psyches over time, the fact that we're just floating heads here in zoom looking at each other versus being in body with one another. Anyways, that's a whole nother topic . But I but I think I recognize what you're saying there in terms of our meeting together, how, the digital, although can span, because it'd be some amazing affordances to Zoom and we can span distances. We would not be connecting again. I don't know the next time I'm going to be in Baltimore, might be a while. And so this is a wonderful way that we're using digital technology to span a distance that couldn't be spanned otherwise, which is amazing and has expanded even in our conversation today, all the things you're talking about has expanded my way of thinking about things, hopefully have helped to move me towards more humanizing of people that are online and as we were talking about this, but also recognizing some of the dangers in the affordances that we're using. That's good. [00:37:57] John Nash: Yeah I appreciate you helping me remember, I think I was a little bit harsh on my own ilk, , the, of the instructor. I think that there I don't know if is victim the wrong word, but I see systems. rolling in place and then instructors are not victims of the system, but they are, they're caught in the system and don't know opportunities to change. And then in turn, learners don't get to see the opportunities for change. But I appreciate that. I think I'm too hard on my fellow instructors thinking that it's all at their feet to make the difference. There is some there, we have some agency and we should be bringing our thoughts to that. But yeah, I appreciate that. [00:38:37] Christelle Daceus: Yeah. Even in my chapter, I go through things that kind of every level, right? And what we can do policy wise, right? What is the government giving us to even work with? Right? And what are we doing with vendors, right? The people who are creating this technology and how we're connecting them to the actual institutions and the leadership of that institution and the staff and the faculty and then the students, right? After all that is said and done that's where I think the biggest missing pieces and where I always go back to, I really want people to just give students the path, right? Give them the steps to succeed. You know that education doesn't need to be this, you just have to figure it out. You have to find the answers yourself. Right? And I think when we are more empathetic, like you said to our faculty, where it's like, they're learning too, right? And we're all just okay, we're on this new kind of adventure together. Let's do this. Approach it as a community, right? And see how instead of replicating the kind of like logistics of education, how can we replicate community online? Right? How can we bring that experience where you see your favorite teacher? Or you knock on them on their door during lunchtime, but, nobody else is in there and you finally get to talk to them and share your favorite TV show from the weekend or whatever it is, those little experience. How can we bring that online and the rest of the learning? But it's because we have the teachers already, right? We already have good learning and we have people like myself and my team who are working on accessibility, making sure that people with different abilities can reach the material, people like my partners who are doing global learning and VR but making sure that students who are blind can still participate in that, right? Going that extra mile for them because the students are saying I don't care that I, Have different abilities. I want the experience. I invested into this the same way that my classmates did. And just because I have a different ability doesn't mean that I get part of the experience. And so it's our job to meet them, meet those students where they are and make sure that they're having that experience. Right. And they're having Equilibrium experiences across the board. [00:40:53] Jason Johnston: Yeah, I think meeting students where there are, that's a great place to land. And unfortunately we're going to have to land this. I have a thousand more questions for you. And I think John probably does too. I think we could talk for a long time and I just just put a pin in that to say, let's do this again. Okay. [00:41:07] Christelle Daceus: Absolutely. Happy [00:41:09] Jason Johnston: been really good. Also your chapter of your book it's yet to come out. Is that correct? When do you expect it to be published that people [00:41:17] Christelle Daceus: Springer Nature Press we're working for June, I believe, end of May, beginning of June. Not the editor, so I don't show any of the logistics of those things, but I will send that information to you, and then you can share it with the people when that is ready. [00:41:31] Jason Johnston: Okay, we'll put that in the show notes as well as our slides from the JHU. Again, we'll put in the show notes and you can see some of these quotes as well as your session from JHU is now up on video. It's great. I've sent it on to quite a number of people. So many good things. So if you want to hear more from Christelle check out our show notes and she did a great session at JHU that you can watch as well. Thank you so much for being with us. This has been great talking to you. I really appreciate you. We really appreciate you taking the time to share. [00:42:00] Christelle Daceus: Thank you. I am happy to do this again anytime and talk with you guys. So thank you so much for, giving me some time with you guys. [00:42:09] John Nash: Yeah and hey Christelle, I'll send you an email, but we have a It's not a parting gift because we're going to see each other again, but anyway, we send a, Jason doesn't know this. It's a new policy. We send a mug, one of our online learning in the second half podcast mugs as a thank you gift. [00:42:25] Christelle Daceus: Oh, thank I'll send you an email. You can let me know an appropriate mailing address. Something real and physical will arrive for you. And so you can drink your tea out of it if you want, thank you so much. for thinking of my teeth. [00:42:38] John Nash: All right. Thanks you all. [00:42:40] Christelle Daceus: Have a [00:42:41] Jason Johnston: Thank you so much. Yeah. Have a great day. Bye. [00:42:43] John Nash: Bye.

In this episode, John and Jason talk IN PERSON, reflecting on year one of their podcast. Keeping with the theme, they also find a few rabbit holes to chase, consider developments in AI, and talk about educational and ethical considerations around AI-generated music and video. See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com Join Our LinkedIn Group - *Online Learning Podcast (Also feel free to connect with John and Jason at LinkedIn too)* Links and Resources: Hard Fork Podcast SORA OpenAI Video Alibaba EMO Video Demo (Jason’s LinkedIn post) Suno.ai Support Human Artists! Gangstagrass Mr. Beast on Youtube (not that he needs any more clicks) The makeup brush holder John keeps his pens in 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! 1 Year Anniversary Special [00:00:00] Jason: Would you happen to have a pen I could borrow? Yeah. [00:00:02] John: Felt blue, black. [00:00:04] Jason: That is amazing. I've just this moment, I just noticed your incredible, your - you've got like a pen store. [00:00:10] John: These are makeup brush holders. [00:00:12] Jason: Oh really? Okay. Black, please. [00:00:15] John: ballpoint, flare [00:00:17] Jason: pen, Flare. Perfect. [00:00:19] John: yeah [00:00:19] Jason: And would you happen to have any sticky notes? That's incredible. You are really set up here. That is something else. [00:00:24] John: I dream that someone, no one visits me. I'm set up for a full-on brainstorming session with a gigantic. Five feet by three-foot whiteboard and 500 colored sticky notes. [00:00:34] Jason: Sticky notes galore. [00:00:35] John: Yeah, I'm ready to change things if anybody wants to come over. [00:00:38] John: I'm John Nash here in the same room with Jason Johnston. [00:00:43] Jason: Hey John, hey everyone, and this is Online Learning in the Second Half, the Online Learning Podcast. [00:00:48] John: 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 there's still a lot that quite isn't there. How are we going to get to the next stage, Jason? [00:01:02] Jason: How about we create a podcast and talk about it? [00:01:06] John: How about we do that? How about we create a podcast, do it for a year, and then talk about what that year was like? [00:01:11] Jason: that sounds great! Happy anniversary, John! [00:01:13] John: Happy anniversary, Jason. [00:01:15] Jason: I should have brought you something. I didn't. I'm sorry. How about we go out to lunch and we and we celebrate? [00:01:20] John: yeah, and maybe we can get a demo of the Apple Vision. [00:01:23] Jason: Oh, that'd be cool. Yeah. There's a little place right there where we can grab some lunch and maybe go over to the Apple store. See what's going on. [00:01:30] John: Yeah, [00:01:31] Jason: That would be thematic. A lot of this podcast has been a number of things. One, talking about online learning, but also talking about the new tech and how it might affect online learning in the last year. [00:01:41] John: Yeah. We are EdTech nerds also. [00:01:43] Jason: We are, we tend to nerd out on a few of these things. Today on my way over here, because I had to drive to this podcast today. I didn't do this podcast in my pajamas. [00:01:54] John: Horrors. And you drove yourself. You had to operate a machine to get here. [00:01:59] Jason: But it gave me, afforded me a little bit of time in the car to listen to a podcast. I listened to our first episode. It was kind of nostalgic, [00:02:06] John: you weren't tuning in to our first episode just out of some kind of vanity thing Oh, I love listening to me. [00:02:12] Jason: No, it was not because I like the sound of my own voice. Although after doing a podcast for a year, you get used to it. [00:02:18] John: you don't even know what you sound like. You're just like, [00:02:20] Jason: I listened in because I was curious about what we talked about in our first podcast. Whether or not, what we talked about then rang true in our first year of podcasting and maybe looking ahead to see what's going to be different. And what I found was, we basically talked about. What we were going to talk about, which was online learning, the second half, check. We've been talking about this last year. How technology affects online learning, check. We've definitely had a lot of that. We also had thought our big theme was going to be humanizing online learning. Check. We've had a bunch of that. And also, however, one thing we had slightly wrong. What our topic of the month was, which was AI. [00:03:03] John: Yes. [00:03:04] Jason: It's become the topic of the year, probably. [00:03:07] John: The topic of the Year .5 Yeah. So [00:03:12] Jason: that's the one thing that we probably got wrong. The other thing that I would say that we didn't know about, as we couldn't quite see into the future with this, but one of the big things that you and I have talked about is how much we've enjoyed having guests. We started this as a conversation between you and me. But how great it's been to bring other voices in this year. [00:03:34] John: It has been remarkable to have other voices in. It's been amazing having guests because I feel as though it's a privilege that we get to have this kind of professional development that we create, I guess is how I look at it. And I think we do something for our guests too. They feel good about being able to talk about their work, but the breadth and depth of the things we've talked about with some amazingly smart people has been just a privilege from me. [00:04:01] Jason: Yeah, a privilege. That is a great way to put it. And just to be able to talk with some of these experts the last year to get a completely different for some of them anyways take on the things that we've been talking about has been challenging, informing, guiding for me so that we're not just talking in a vacuum here. Really, our first guest was when we did the podcast Super Friends episode a little less than a year ago at OLC and we did another one just a few episodes ago to wrap up the year and then we had some amazing guests Dr. Michelle Miller Dr. Enilda Romero Hall. Then we were able to talk to Dr Kristen DeCerbo from Khan Academy. And that continues to be a big thing out there. We made a great connection to OLC keynote speaker, Dr. Brandeis Marshall. Michelle Ament, Dr. Alicia Magruder at Johns Hopkins, which actually then led into a podcast recording at their symposium, which was so much fun as [00:05:01] John: That was so fun and so innovative to be able to have a, almost a simulcast of the podcast as the concluding session of an online teaching symposium. It has been good in that regard. And also, a chance to connect these ideas over time with of other things that come across our desk as it were. So, I think about Michelle Miller, and we keep talking about same side pedagogy. that keeps coming up as a relevant thing. Brandeis Marshall's notions of what's un AIable. I continue to talk about that even this morning with a provost from a two-year college in Texas was talking about this. [00:05:41] Jason: You know what's cool? I was talking to somebody at UT the other day who has been listening to our podcast and he quoted Brandeis Marshall from our podcast about [00:05:51] John: that That's fabulous. Yeah. And then. You know what I think surprised me the most over time is how certain things are emerging now, I think that are more important than anything else that's happened with AI in the last 12, 13 months, which is still the topic of ethics. And it's not about the technology. It's not about the advancements. We're coming up in March of 2024. So, it's one year into the old March madness when GPT 4 came out and then I guess Anthropic came out, BARD, all of them were releasing and it was an arms race in March of 2023 to see what these models would look like. And now. We haven't seen in the last 12 months a massive boost in the model capabilities and a bigger discussion, I think that's happened over ethical use and the creation of guidelines, particularly in the education space. [00:06:46] Jason: Yeah. When we recorded, we didn't even know of the existence of chat GPT four at that point when we recorded our first episode a year. [00:06:54] John: ago. No, we did not. [00:06:56] Jason: And so that just started that whole year of recognizing first that AI is a thing. And then all of a sudden people realize, oh, wait, it's actually pretty significant thing. When that next model came out and realized that the real capabilities of AI were Much deeper, much better than what we expected, even on the front. end. [00:07:18] John: but the two guys that run the hard fork. podcast, were talking about how Sidney at the time, now all these name changes, but Sidney was Bing chat, which was Microsoft thing. It, it had told, it was a Kevin Roos or was it Kevin Roos was advised by Sidney to break up with his wife and start dating Sidney. You, similarly, dad your heart broken by Bing. [00:07:43] Jason: Right. I'm being chat and had some very strange conversations with Sidney right in that same time. So, it was just the wild west in some ways that some of the initial concerns of AI kind of were tamed, I would say about those chatbots. [00:08:00] John: Yeah. Yeah, they were. But we were so amazed by the Model 3. 5 we couldn't stop talking about it. We thought we'd be done in a month. [00:08:08] Jason: I would agree After that initial surge I think what we seen is a lot of third-party companies starting to leverage this power and I would say as we predicted A lot of edtech companies that were starting to add to it. And so, we talked about that. We predicted that back last year in March. And then as we were walking the floor and if you look back at our episode number nine, how are ed tech vendors humanizing online education? When we were walking the floor of O.L.C. Nashville at that point, that was March of last year. It was very different even as we were walking the floor in the fall. Conference in terms of who, at least I found, who was already talking about. [00:08:59] John: at that [00:09:00] Jason: point. At that point, they were talking about it, not really implementing it, and we had some interesting kind of responses. And then by the fall they were really advertising ai, [00:09:09] John: AI. In fact, the vendors, I think, that were concerned about having AI be part of their models were the ones that were trying to catch kids cheating. Using AI, not thinking about how AI might be embedded into their tool to advance some feature that they wanted. [00:09:24] Jason: Yeah, it was much more that concern. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, I think in the other part that I feel like what we're seeing more of lately in the arms race, and this is why some of our ethical conversations have taken this turn is the capabilities of AI beyond just the chatbot language model into the areas of media when it comes to video. One of the things we've seen in the last few weeks is OpenAI's Sora, S O R A, even just like yesterday, I saw that Alibaba, you know, which I don't even know what it, I've never bought anything from it, but it looks like a place that you can buy, cheap stuff on a wholesale kind of level. They have a model that they're working on for lip syncing that's quite impressive. We can put a link to that model in the chat, but I feel like what we're seeing are these kind of video lipsyncing kind of ideas as well as if you think about what has happened in the last year in terms of image creation, how much better it's gotten. And then even audio. I was doing a a few of these audio demos that are out there right now, one that's actually built into CoPilot that you can ask for it to make a song for you. it's, oh it's cool. It's pretty wild. And maybe we'll make a little clip in here. Okay. Let's. I'll I'll quickly make something and then we'll take a listen to it and and maybe close out the show or something with it at the end. But yeah, you could just put in a prompt saying for it to make a theme song in this style using these lyrics if you want to, and then you can actually edit it edited it afterwards. [00:11:06] John: Are you noticing the same thing I'm noticing too about the sort of seamless integration of generative AI into almost, I don't want to sound hyperbolic, but almost every app now that has been popular, has now decided to seamlessly integrate AI into itself, making its presence in operations that are not very transparent to the user. Or Notion, Copilot you name it, well Canva, they're all putting AI. Operations in Zoom. And I'm wondering if this sort of invisible AI is going to lull users into thinking that this is just part of the app, and it may not actually be AI. I think about Zoom and it's a meeting summary feature. We were talking about this at our university in our policy group because I think a lot of people think, if zoom has this feature, then it must be okay to use. And then It's part of our acceptable use. Maybe it's inside our privacy guidelines, so I'm going to turn it on and we're going to use it, but that's not necessarily the case. And so, if you're recording meetings or you're putting in student data or you're having, I don't know it's interesting to think about because I think it can enhance user experience, but I think you can also lull people into thinking that this is safe AI. [00:12:19] Jason: Yeah, I guess using their brand acceptance, so we work at institutions that there's quite a vetting process to get something inside of our doors. So, we know that we're obviously working with Google, microsoft, and and zoom would probably for us and canvas all four of those. We're both of our institutions. That's, those are the four biggies. [00:12:40] John: Yes. [00:12:41] Jason: And so, you're saying that it is almost like. It feels like if something comes in alongside of those packages or with those packages then it becomes all of a sudden to just accept it. It doesn't have to go through a, yeah, it doesn't have to go through a new vetting process. If all of a sudden, a new, say there's a new video product and this is how we would get AI video summaries. This would have to go through a whole new vetting process, but we're not doing that. It's just just happening. [00:13:08] John: Yeah. And so, if the underlying models are suspect at times, even, if we look at Gemini, Google's Gemini, and as we record this on March 1st, 2024, in the past seven to nine days, they had a major generative AI failure on their imaging model. If those are the underlying engines, if you will, that are, adopted and licensed by these brands accepted tools. Yeah, how safe are things going to be? How do they, can Zoom stop OpenAI if they're using that engine? Can they can't really put new guardrails on top of what it does with the data because the model's the model, I'm not technical enough to know the answer to that, if I'm making sense. [00:13:50] Jason: Yeah, you're making sense. I don't even know if Zoom is using OpenAI, and it, because it just appears, and I think we get a lot of wrappers around things as well, that are really OpenAI. And then we get this new wrap around it and other things that are more like companies that are doing their own thing. So, it's hard to, yeah, it's really hard to track down. [00:14:10] John: and, the question for me becomes even more important to discuss when we think about all the wrappers that have been created for P 12 teachers like Magic School, Diffit, a couple of others come to mind but I don't remember the names, but they're all also running on top of these models that are only as safe as they're made by those developers. so yeah, I think it's, I think it's something to talk about [00:14:34] Jason: You know what's funny? This this audio creation program. So, we got SORA by OpenAI, which is this brand new video. And then we got Suno, S U N O, with this audio that's coming in with copilot anyways. [00:14:51] John: I didn't know it was inside Copilot. So what app are you using in Microsoft to get, to invoke Suno? [00:14:57] Jason: of Copilot. So what app are you using in Microsoft to get, to invoke Suno?. What kind of style should we do today? [00:15:20] John: We're sitting together in a room in Lexington, Kentucky. Can we do some bluegrass? [00:15:25] Jason: Yeah. In a bluegrass style. Any other parameters we want to put on it? Maybe what do we want to have in the, what's really important to us? What do we our year in reflection song here, what do we want in the chorus to really hit home for the listener? [00:15:42] John: That let's see. Human centeredness is the key. and ethics is important and learner outcomes are paramount. [00:15:57] Jason: Okay. Say in the course, make sure to include something about human centered online learning. And then I, I got caught. [00:16:07] John: in your, [00:16:07] Jason: your superlatives. What was the, what were the, what was the second one? [00:16:10] John: Ethical use of AI. [00:16:14] Jason: It should be, maybe we [00:16:16] John: And belonging. Oh, I rented a Okay. Let's see. You shorten your prompt to fit belonging in there? [00:16:24] Jason: Yeah, I'll try to. Nice. [00:16:25] John: Nice. [00:16:27] Jason: Yep, okay, it's creating it. It's going to give me two versions and we can take a listen to both of these. [00:16:32] John: Okay, excellent. [00:16:33] Jason: We can talk about other things. [00:16:34] John: Yeah, while it's cooking, yeah. [00:16:35] Jason: to it. here's what's amazing. The first version is already ready. I thought it was going to take longer. Now the second version is ready. [00:16:45] John: Oh, okay. [00:16:45] Jason: I'm not sure how we're gonna be able to listen to this just because of the current setup here. [00:16:53] John: Let's see what happens. [00:16:54] Jason: But we can put it. Song “Keep on Learnin’ plays in a bluegrass style: [Verse] Gather 'round, folks, and lend an ear There's a podcast here that we hold dear (oh-yeah) It's all about learnin', in an online way Discoverin' new knowledge every single day (ooh) [Chorus] Human centered, always yearnin' For that ethically tech and belonging learnin' (learnin') Tune in and listen, don't you ever stray Online Learning Podcast, we're here to stay (heyy) (Join us now, keep on learnin') (Oh-yeah, yeah-yeah) Keep on learnin' (Oh-yeah, yeah-yeah) Keep on learnin' (Oh-yeah, yeah-yeah) Keep on learnin' [00:17:00] John: ha ha ha… [00:17:08] John: oh, a little Cher. What? You're the audio guy. What is that? [00:17:12] Jason: it's like a little new, yeah, it's a, like a new bluegrass. it's [00:17:17] John: it's a little country though. I think it's not quite. [00:17:20] Jason: quite bluegrass, Yeah, it's not quite. [00:17:21] John: but. [00:17:22] Jason: Okay, that was a, so that was the first one. It's called keep on learning with a little apostrophe. Keep on learnin'. [00:17:28] John: There's two people singing apparently in this, and there's someone who goes, "oh yeah." [00:17:33] Jason: the things that impress me are a year ago, since this is a podcast and review a little bit, a year ago. Not even close, the things that were out there that you could create music and it sounded like a mishmash, like something that you would hear on like a Star Wars film that they're trying to make it sound different and spacey and non-human. [00:17:56] John: Or it was the third or fourth duplication on your Maxell tape. Yes. Yeah. And it just degradated and degradated. [00:18:06] Jason: So, first thing that impressed me is just where we've come in a year, the quality the second, the kind of the clever turnarounds on the lyrics. And then the third, adding pop elements that are very catchy for the listener, these kinds of echoes, as you said, and so on. [00:18:26] John: Yeah, for The TikTok nation. [00:18:28] Jason: The TikTok Nation. [00:18:29] John: Yeah, [00:18:30] Jason: Yeah, which is basically all of our listeners, right? TikTok nation. [00:18:32] John: Basically, yes, that's right. [00:18:34] Jason: Listen up, TikTok Nation. Is that how we should start our podcast? [00:18:37] John: Maybe our podcast should be 60 seconds long if we want to, if we want to capture them. [00:18:43] Jason: Okay, here's the second one. That was Keep on Learnin'. This is this is called Learning in Harmony. Uplifting folksy bluegrass. [Verse] Well, gather 'round folks, I've got a story to tell 'Bout a podcast that's got a lot to propel Online Learning Podcast, it's the name Where knowledge and wisdom come together like a flame [Chorus] In the world of bytes and screens, we find our way Human-centered online learning, come what may From the hills to the valleys, we all belong Ethical tech use, we'll sing this song [00:18:50] Jason: not sure about the chord progressions in that one. [00:18:53] John: More than I would about that. I would. And this is I put these out here with full understanding that part of my brain and heart is, " wow, this is so cool that technology can do this." [00:19:05] Jason: Another part of me who, I've written a few songs in my life, and I enjoy playing guitar and there was probably even a moment that if the winds of success had taken me in direction, I would have done full time music. And it's both scary and a little offensive when I think on that side of it. [00:19:22] John: Yeah. So, let's go to the offensive part because I think we're both having conversations with colleagues and I'm also seeing reports online of research on where instructional design is going with AI and how these tools SORA and others are putting. Making graphic designers drone operators who do B roll feel a little at risk. And I think, I bet there's some offensive feelings there too about their art. [00:19:48] Jason: Yeah. Actually, it's not completely true that I make 0 a year from my music. John, I've I'm raking in some Spotify money. I didn't know if you knew this or not. Yeah. It's I think I get like point zero. zero three cents per play and yeah, I think my last cash out was maybe around 2 or something. Yeah. So, I really am a professional musician, but I say that to say that This is not something I'm trying to make a livelihood from. It also is not something that feeds my own sense of self worth at this point in my life. [00:20:28] John: Yeah, but how would you feel if you were trying to make your livelihood from this? [00:20:31] Jason: I think particularly I; I think it would depend on the person and what I was trying to do. But I would say almost every musician would feel. A little scathed by this because even if their livelihood is mostly playing live concerts, which this is not going. [00:20:49] John: No. [00:20:50] Jason: And developing a fan base, which this is not going to do part of your livelihood is getting yourself noticed in this enormous sea of other talent that's out there. And then also, I know people that are, they're singer songwriters is how they make their living. But it's great to get those what they call sync royalties when you get a song placed in a movie or a TV show. [00:21:14] John: I was just thinking about that because I'm wondering what Hollywood will do with this capability. I think that Hollywood feels like they want to protect the rights and the livelihoods of artists writ large. So, they probably wouldn't do what I'm suggesting, but television production could decide to use Suno to do the theme songs for new TV shows. I'm thinking about one of my favorite bands is Gangstagrass. They're a band. [00:21:37] Jason: Oh yeah. I love them. [00:21:38] John: Yeah, they blend, if folks don't know, they blend bluegrass and hip hop and they're amazing. They're amazing. I've seen them three times. They're coming to town here in Lexington soon. We're going to go see them. But my point here is that they became more famous because their music was used as the opening theme song for the television show Justified. And if I wanted to do that again, if I were in production, could I just skip all that and just have a theme song written right off the bat from AI. [00:22:06] Jason: Yeah, if you're looking for a particular kind of sound and that kind of mix, you wanted something a little gritty but Southern, but also urban, then that would do it. And then, essentially, while I was talking, Suno was able to recreate our learning theme song in a bluegrass hip hop style, right? So, you think about how quickly this can happen at the capabilities that we have today. And this is, here's song number one. Verse] Well, gather 'round folks, let me tell you a tale 'Bout a podcast that'll make you wanna prevail (oh yeah) With a blend of hip hop and old-time string We're gonna dive deep, learnin' ev'rything (ooh-yeah) [Chorus] Human centered online learnin', take a seat on the track Ethical tech use, we ain't gonna lack Belongin' is the rhythm, that's our podcast groove Put your hands in the air, let the beat make you move [00:22:34] Jason: And this is, song number two. [Verse] Well, gather 'round now, y'all, let me tell you a tale 'Bout a podcast that's bridgin' the gap without fail It's online learnin', it's the way of the world With a touch of bluegrass and some beats that'll twirl From the hills of Kentucky, to the streets of the city This podcast brings the vibes, all witty and gritty Talkin' 'bout human-centered online learning, y'all And ethical tech use, that's what we're all 'bout [Chorus] Come on now, let's sing it loud and clear Human-centered learnin' and ethical tech use right here Belonging is the key, come join the crowd Discover new knowledge, sing it out proud (yeehaw) [00:22:36] John: oh my. [00:22:38] Jason: The second one particularly, I'm a fan of Gangstagrass. That second one particularly [00:22:42] John: hit. it, it approached it. [00:22:44] Jason: Old school. Yes. Hip hpehop. [00:22:45] John: but that first one, I don't wanna offend anybody. I don't know what that was. Was that some kind of Toby Keith kind of thing? I'm. I'm out on that. That's but and that's funny how musical tastes run to also I'm not a big, like traditional country fan, like CMA style country, but I'll go to every Gangstagrass concert I can get my hands on. But you're right. The second one approached it, but still, and then I started thinking about cultural appropriation and what is this? Yeah. This is AI's attempt at understanding culture, which is, that's risky. Yeah, [00:23:16] Jason: Yeah, we got yes, tricky waters right there. [00:23:19] John: Incredibly tricky. [00:23:21] Jason: so, we've Talked about just ethically doing this in light of the musicians themselves, but I'm watching I'm a big jazz fan as well. I like a lot of different kinds of music, but I'm a big jazz fan. So, I'm watching the Ken Burns series on jazz, which I highly recommend. It's slow. It's long, but it's beautiful. But how many times have we taken an art form as a dominant white race from another people group and then appropriated it because we figured out how we could monetize different way. Or in this kind of case, how can we non monetize it? So, we're maybe they're not even making money off of this song. So maybe these aren't going to show up on iTunes. Cause I know iTunes has made some rules about this. YouTube has now made some rules about this, but maybe they'll show up in the next ad for whatever, and they've made it for free. So basically, the Suno terms of agreements is that if you pay for it, you have full mechanical rights to these songs. [00:24:25] John: So, if I make a Suno song, were you logged into your University of Tennessee controlled garden of this? So, if I make a Suno song inside my University of Kentucky controlled garden of Co Pilot, does the University of Kentucky own the, that song? [00:24:40] Jason: That's getting into the whole intellectual property end of things. That's a whole They They have the mechanical rights to this really crappy culturally appropriated piece of junk that I created. [00:24:51] John: And you're right, but look, how much of advertising now... I'm shocked now I've cut the cord on my television and whenever I accidentally happen to go back onto watching network TV or watch my local news. I'm shocked and also simultaneously not shocked that the insipid advertising that I grew up with in the 70s really hasn't changed much. So, your comment about Madison Avenue using tools like this to create jingles and other things to cut out artists for their clients. Absolutely. I bet they'll do it. I'm very cynical about this. I think it'll, yeah, I think that's where this is going. [00:25:26] Jason: And you talked about networks and maybe some of the big ones will, for the sake of their already large group of customers, perhaps they'll make some rules about this to please people, but the networks are not just competing with other networks. They're competing with Mr. Beast. [00:25:43] John: Yes, they are. Yes, [00:25:45] Jason: Like Mr. Beast is enormous. And he has a enormous viewership, and my guess is that he probably, his income per year probably rivals some of these smaller, if not networks, maybe some of these smaller production houses for sure. And I only know about Mr. Beast because I have teenage kids who drive these whole things. One, one of my kids particularly. And also, Dude Perfect they're not utilizing traditional streams, and so they're not going to be beholden to these kinds of larger ethical kind of, restrictions. [00:26:18] John: Now, Mr. Beast is for folks who don't know, what would you, how would you describe him? He's an internet creator. I'm logging on to Variety. com. His annual earnings hit 82 million dollars last year, more than double any other digital creator and, and it's also, it's funny, his name, Mr. Beast sounds for those who aren't in the know, like some kind of awful weird guy, but he's just this, it's just this young guy, right? [00:26:44] Jason: Yep, he seems to be, like, who knows, I've listened to some other podcasts that talk about him and so on, and actually even the Hard Fork that we mentioned, I think they talk about him one time-- his kind of use of YouTube who knows what all his motivations are, regardless, he does give away a lot of things, and he seems to be fairly kind to people in that [00:27:00] John: in that way. His real name is Jimmy Donaldson, for the [00:27:03] Jason: Oh yeah, yeah, of course I know that I've, I follow him on LinkedIn, [00:27:06] John: oh, you're going to be a gigantic creator on LinkedIn now with the beast. [00:27:11] Jason: Our connection is pending, is pending, so yeah, remarkable. My kids watched Rhett and Link throughout, do your kids watch Rhett and Link? [00:27:20] John: Okay they're at 35 million, second place, but but they're 50 million away from Mr. Beast. [00:27:24] Jason: Yeah, that's wild. I think that points to the fact that ethics is a huge topic right now and our one of our last podcasts was about this We can't rely on the companies coming up with the ethics to guide. [00:27:38] John: No. [00:27:39] Jason: partly because it won't be Comprehensive enough, it's one thing if Apple comes up with some ethics or Microsoft. But not everybody's gonna abide by these rules, and there's gonna be so many startups that would, [00:27:54] John: just Mm hmm. [00:27:55] Jason: do an end run around any of these kind of companies to get a few more views. [00:28:00] John: Yeah. I think that as we talked about in that episode on ethics, I think we've got two sets of ethical books going one by the companies to be sure that they can sell as well as possible. So, I'm calling those the kind of less, less ethical set of books. And there's a public persona of wanting to be safe. And so, the, they put in enough guardrails through their red teaming and things like that. So, we can't get instructions to do awful things, but then they stop right there. After that you're on your own. [00:28:28] Jason: Yeah, and depending on what AI you use, and you can always find one that can do what you want it to do. [00:28:33] John: that's right. Or you download your own LLM, you get a llama and run it on your own. And then you can, there's no guardrails, no red teaming. [00:28:41] Jason: It's crazy. I had a little bit of space this week to go follow some rabbit trails and one of them was looking at Hugging Face, trying to understand a little bit about what this is all about. And it's a place where you can actually download models. So, you talked about this one model. But have you been on here? Should I ask the question? [00:28:59] John: Should I quiz you on this? No do not quiz me on this. [00:29:02] Jason: Those listening, I won't quiz John on this because, it's. It's hard not to be in the know sometimes about, a Hugging Face. I didn't know, I had no idea that this was going on. [00:29:14] John: I just want to say that I'm comfortable being in the dark around. you. Because you're kind to me, in [00:29:19] Jason: to me. Oh good, that's great. And I put this out here to say I'm oblivious and I don't really understand all the implications of this. However, right now, on Hugging Face, which is more of an open-source AI model arbitrator almost, there are currently, and I'll take a pause here, podcast listeners, guess, podcast listeners, to yourself, or to somebody you're listening with, maybe say it out loud, how many models do you think there are right now to download on Hugging Face LLM models. [00:29:49] John: Okay. And while people are thinking about that, and I will too. So, what you're saying is that how you Hugging Face is actually sounds like it's a kind of a marketplace for large language models that like, or you make your own sort of, I'm air quoting "GPTs" and then you can go get one and download it and run it yourself. [00:30:06] Jason: Yes. I would call it more of a GitHub. [00:30:09] John: a [00:30:09] Jason: a marketplace. I didn't say anything for sale. No. And so, you create, it feels like GitHub when you get there. Where you can do different forks of different [00:30:17] John: LLMs and on this LLM landscape inside Hugging Face Are they, do they have special purposes, some of these, so they're in that way. They're like like the GPTs that you could make for [00:30:28] Jason: Exactly. Okay. So, all these would have different purposes. So, this isn't, aren't like the big models we're talking about. Many of them are leveraging these big models. [00:30:36] John: Okay, cool. [00:30:36] Jason: these are GPTs. Many of them that you can download and use. Most of them that you can use on your own computer. Your own home computer. Okay. [00:30:45] John: All right. So how many are there out there. [00:30:47] Jason: Right now, as of today March 1st, 2024, and this will change. Currently there are 531, 270 thousand that one could download. [00:31:02] John: Little large language models, little AIs Yep. That I can then pull onto my hard drive and never have to get on the internet and ask it anything. I darn well, please. [00:31:13] Jason: Exactly. Yeah. If we're gonna we were talking about our one-year retrospective. Some of our predictions about what we were going to talk about last year were true. We thought, we didn't know we were going to be talking about AI for this long, and it would move this quickly, was one of the, one of the differences from last year of doing this podcast. Here's what I think with all these creative elements, that it's going to start by some professors thinking "I don't need a production company to help me do these things and they're going to create maybe just for fun at the beginning a theme song for the class or a video of them teaching the class in Mandarin or or the class being taught by some historical character with their voice to it, or, using some images in their slides, which is already happening, right? And that are created. And at first, it's going to be a little gimmicky, and then we're going to cross a threshold where it, A, is no longer gimmicky, and B, it actually starts to affect workflow and the people that we use for doing this work, particularly at large institutions. What do you think of that kind of prediction? [00:32:27] John: I don't know. We'll have to see. I think based upon some of the surveying I'm doing before I go talk with groups about whether or not they've ever even used a large language model, used chat GPT, for 50%. routinely state that they either have never used it in their lives or have used it once or twice ever in the time since it's come out. [00:32:51] Jason: So that's over.a year. [00:32:52] John: And so if half of our educators out there are in that space, then I don't think that they're going to be using these models in any way in a deliberate way to advance their teaching and learning goals, and they'll be using them however, the platforms like we talked about before, as platforms start to integrate these tools into them, that's how they'll get used. [00:33:14] Jason: Yeah. I think you're right. Yeah. The average professor, I agree, is not going to be going into Hugging Face and probably downloading and creating. [00:33:22] John: I was just going to say the same thing. I'm crazy enough to go do that. But no. Yes. No, but no one else is. Not no one else's, but I don't know anybody, but maybe you in my circle of friends and colleagues that would do that. [00:33:35] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. And even I don't think I would use it. I would use it out of curiosity to see what's going on and so that I can understand it's actually, this may seem strange, but my tinkering is actually a leadership mechanism for myself. I think part of my job is to be able to see down the road a little bit. And to be able to anticipate it and figure out how we're going to react and how we're going to guide this whole thing. [00:34:04] John: I agree with you 100%. And actually, I coined a little term in the bootcamp that I'm doing now for AI, but "you have to try AI before you guide AI. [00:34:14] Jason: That's good. [00:34:15] John: Because how can you talk about the direction in your institution, organization, department, unless you've tried it out yourself and can talk about what you know of its ramifications or even how you feel about it. [00:34:27] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Unless you understand where it's at, where the power of it is at right now then yeah, your ethical guidelines are going to be all over the place. You're not going to really be able to hit, especially when, as we talked about in our previous episode especially when we're talking about contextual ethical guidelines. So that really have some teeth and examples to them. [00:34:49] John: That's the key or the contextual guidelines because in our institutions, our universities have broad guidelines, but what happens once the classroom door is closed? Completely different matter. [00:35:00] Jason: So, I agree with you about, Hugging Face. No, we're going to get a few crazy people like us poking around with this stuff. Now, Canva, though, think about how many teachers are using Canva. You can get an educational free license that gives you extra stuff and templates are there and it's, crazy what it can do. They have AI baked right into it, right? Zoom. It's baked right into it. If you have an Adobe license now, firefly is baked right into it. This week there, they have a music production thing that's starting, they're starting to demo these are the, I think those are the places that it's going to sneak up on us in ways that it's not going to go through a regulatory body of whether or not we can use this software. It's going to be on our computers with the next update. [00:35:43] John: Yeah, no that's my point entirely that this will just become embedded in the ways of working throughout. I was talking with some folks from a two-year college in Texas who have 94% of their graduates either go on to a four-year institution or go into the world of work. And so, they've got an academic side, and they give an AA associate degree. But then they've got, the welding and the HVAC and all, and they're painfully aware that AI is going to be embedded across both those paths for their graduates. And how is that going to look? And how should they be thinking about preparing folks for the world of work? [00:36:19] Jason:  Yes. And I think that part of our jobs as educators, of course, as we've talked about is not just disseminated knowledge, right? It is preparing students for, not just a vocational life, but a life ahead of them, right? I think this is part of our mandate is that we are forming students at significant times in their life, whether they're just coming to college for the first time and they're 18, 19 years old, or if they're adults and they're coming back to college and trying to re-equip themselves for the life ahead of them. These are significant times in these people's lives. And we owe it to them to prepare them for the world that is out there right now and the world that is. coming [00:37:00] John: yeah. Agreed. Agreed. I can't do better than that. [00:37:04] Jason: On that note, thank you for listening, everybody. And And John, thank you for for having me. This is a good thing about doing it face to face is that you know that there's a real person at the other end of the [00:37:15] John: the other end. Yes. Yes. It is better than zoom in a lot of ways. I can put my hand up and tell you to, I want to say something and then we can, yeah, it was pretty good. [00:37:25] Jason: Yep. And you can pass me a pen out of your enormous collection. [00:37:29] John: I have an enormous collection of pens inside makeup brush holders, Lucite. They're beautiful. Cool. [00:37:36] Jason: thanks for listening to everybody. You can get the show notes and thank you everybody that has listened and commented and encouraged us since last year. It's been exciting to be part of this and that excitement partly comes from you. If people weren't listening, actually, we might keep doing this, [00:37:52] John: actually. we might [00:37:55] Jason: about us [00:37:56] John: thing about our lives. That is a, [00:37:58] Jason: I don't know. What do you think, John? If nobody was listening, would we keep doing it? [00:38:01] John: maybe Maybe. not. Yeah. [00:38:04] Jason: Maybe. Maybe for [00:38:04] John: a little while. Maybe for a little [00:38:06] Jason: we'd just get rid of the microphones and just have a conversation. [00:38:07] John: yeah, how do we even know if anybody's listening? What's our threshold for anybody's listening? But if you get a chance, we would love it if you'd go out there and give us a rating and leave us a comment. We like to feed the algo as we say, but it helps us know that you're out there and it helps us get out to more people. So yeah, leave us a rating and a comment and we'll get back to you too. [00:38:28] Jason: yeah, absolutely. We do get back to you. It won't be AI and join us on LinkedIn. We got a little community there as well as you can just find us there to message with and to see other posts. And I'm gonna say John, as John's a good one to follow on LinkedIn. He's creating some. incredible content these days. A lot of it around these conversations. So, I would highly recommend at least to go on to LinkedIn and follow John. If you don't want to follow me, that's fine. But at least follow John because he's got some good stuff. [00:38:55] John: I recommend you follow Jason as well because he goes into more rabbit holes than I do, so I think that, and they're illuminating. [00:39:02] Jason: Yeah. I don't know about illuminating, but I definitely have some rabbit holes. Mine tend to be less structured and thought out. It's just like what I'm thinking about in that moment. And I post off of my phone something. and at that, Happy anniversary, John. This has been great. John: Happy anniversary, Jason. (bluegrass style AI created song outro) Talkin' 'bout human-centered online learning, y'all And ethical tech use, that's what we're all 'bout [Chorus] Come on now, let's sing it loud and clear Human-centered learnin' and ethical tech use right here Belonging is the key, come join the crowd Discover new knowledge, sing it out proud (yeehaw)

In this episode, John and Jason talk to Karen Watté, the Senior Director of Course Development and Training at Oregon State University’s Ecampus about their free tools for AI guidance in higher education and how to humanize online education. See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com Join Our LinkedIn Group - *Online Learning Podcast (Also feel free to connect with John and Jason at LinkedIn too)* Links and Resources: Oregon State University - eCampus AI Tools: https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/faculty/artificial-intelligence-tools/ ) Michelle Miller’s Newsletter: Teaching from the Same Side https://michellemillerphd.substack.com/p/r3-117-september-15-2023-reflection OSU eCampus Readiness Playbook https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/faculty/artificial-intelligence-tools/readiness-playbook/ 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!   [00:00:01] Jason Johnston: I picture everyone in Oregon in Log cabins and so on. Is that correct? [00:00:04] Karen Watté: no, not at all. [00:00:06] Jason Johnston: What? [00:00:07] Karen Watté: I always say tell our candidates who are coming, I say, we have the best of both worlds. You're an hour from some beautiful ski areas, you're an hour from the coast. And boy, if you wanna see the desert, you just head on a little bit further. And we've got the high desert. So, we've got something of every, for everyone here. I've lived other places too and I come back, and I say, oh, this is, this has got it all. [00:00:31] Jason Johnston: I grew up in Canada, and sometimes we would talk to people about the igloos that we lived in and having to check our dog sleds at the border and those kinds of things. Sometimes they believed us, sometimes they didn't. [00:00:44] Karen Watté: Yeah. [00:00:45] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston. [00:00:48] Jason Johnston: Hey, John. Hey, everyone. And this is Online Learning in the Second Half, the online learning podcast. [00:00:53] John Nash: we're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation that 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 there's still a lot that really isn't. So, Jason, how are we going to get to the next stage? [00:01:08] Jason Johnston: That is a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it? [00:01:13] John Nash: I love that idea. What do you want to talk about today? [00:01:16] Jason Johnston: I am really excited to be talking today with Karen Watté. She's the Senior Director of Course Development and Training at the Ecampus Oregon State University. Welcome, Karen. How are you? [00:01:28] Karen Watté: I'm good. Thank you. [00:01:29] Jason Johnston: We, connected at OLC, Online Learning Consortium conference as part of their leadership day that they do ahead of time, and it was very fortuitous, I think, because we had just come through this summer where everybody was scrambling around AI, trying to figure out what to do, and while we were, trying to come up with some ideas and so on all of a sudden Oregon State had a full-fledged website built out with resources and stuff like that. And we're like, this is amazing. Over here at University of Tennessee and it was really well done. So, we got chatting about that at OLC and then we got chatting about being on the podcast. So, thanks for joining us. Cause I'm really excited about talking with you today. [00:02:10] Karen Watté: Yeah. Thanks for inviting me. Glad to be here. [00:02:12] Jason Johnston: Tell us a little bit about what you do at Oregon State and your role there. [00:02:17] Karen Watté: Yeah, as you mentioned, I'm the Senior Director of Course Development and Training with eCampus, and at Oregon State, eCampus is a centralized distance education unit, so we're serving all of the colleges within OSU. We have about 13,000 fully online students that we serve, and that's about one third of all the students enrolled at Oregon State are fully distanced. [00:02:42] John Nash: Wow, a third of them. Do you know what history is of deciding to do a centralized distance learning unit? I know some campuses do that, some campuses don't, and I'm curious a little bit about that. [00:02:54] Karen Watté: We've been in online for quite a long time, 20 plus years, and we are, the Oregon State is the land grant institution in Oregon, and maybe 25 plus years ago, we were doing the television based learning, and sending it out to everyone in the state, and that unit, of course, was extremely small, and as online learning developed, it changed and morphed into what it is today. And it, so it's always been that central support unit and the way that the funding was established at OSU to support that unit encouraged it to remain a centralized space. [00:03:33] John Nash: I see. [00:03:34] Karen Watté: It's been a really a nice advantage, I think, for OSU to have that, that centralized. [00:03:38] John Nash: Yeah, I get the sense that there are advantages to it. my institution isn't so centralized. It still has a unit supports that, but it's not connected to tight instructional design support I'm sure that there's disadvantages to what you said, something that was interesting, which is, I think, we're the land grant institution here at the University of Kentucky, but it's something about funding from 50 years ago that seems to set these things in motion. And so, it sounds like, yeah, that was a centralized sort of ITV unit and sort of things like that. And then it moved into that. Yeah. It's interesting. More decentralized here. [00:04:13] Jason Johnston: Yeah, and we're, we are also the land grant here in Tennessee, so I think that we've got a common thread here. And I think as we've talked about, becoming really a modern land grant some of it is strategically thinking about how are we going to continue to serve everyone in Tennessee, right? And in the olden days, it was setting up their outposts in every county. We've got 95 counties, I think, in Tennessee and setting up Outposts there. And in these days, we're talking a lot more about online learning and about trying to connect there's almost a million Tennesseans who started their undergrad degree and didn't finish it. And how do we serve those students in 2024 to help them move forward? So that's good. I knew there was something else that probably connected us on a deeper level and it's that land grant, I think. And you direct the course development and training. So, does that mean both like from a production standpoint developing the courses and then also professional development for teachers? [00:05:16] Karen Watté: Yes. Yeah. So, my particular team, we have about 45 professionals. We're about half instructional designers, and then the other half is a media development unit. And we have a handful of folks that also focus just on faculty development. But our media unit does videography, animation. We have Quite a number of programmers. And so, we do a lot of work. We're basically the faculty facing side of our, of Ecampus. [00:05:43] Jason Johnston: And so how many are dedicated then within your 40 some odd with professional development? [00:05:49] Karen Watté: In terms of just doing faculty development and training, I would say we have about 3 individuals that really focus on that, but all of our instructional design staff as part of their duties, they also provide training, and support that could be one on one, but it could also be in assisting with specialized trainings that we're putting together for faculty as well. [00:06:13] Jason Johnston: So, did you get to this role like through like a faculty pathway or instructional design or media or how'd you get here? [00:06:21] Karen Watté: I have a unique background. Years ago in the early 2000s, I was actually, after I got my MBA, I was working in private industry as an operations manager for FedEx Logistics, which was embedded into Hewlett Packard, which If you are aware, we have a huge Hewlett Packard facility here in Corvallis, Oregon. And then prior to coming to OSU for about seven years or so, I was actually faculty at a local community college in their business technology and computer systems department. And then I went to OSU about 15 years, and I started in faculty development and training with eCampus and really establishing the foundational trainings that we base a lot of our course developments on today. And then I just moved up as eCampus has grown, because eCampus has grown quite dramatically, and I would say in the last 10 years especially. [00:07:17] John Nash: What infrastructure was in place for you to come into your role at OSU and start to do that training? Or did you bring your experience from your past positions in and start to develop that? [00:07:28] Karen Watté: Well, I brought in a lot of my previous experience, and then, when I started, my unit had, I was the fourth person to be hired into this unit. And so, then we hired on an instructional designer who actually is our, is my supervisor right now, Shannon Riggs, and she and I together crafted the foundational trainings that go into what we provide for faculty today. And of course, there's been many improvements since we've brought on, very skilled people, and then they've added to this suite of trainings, but we started it about 15 years ago when we came in. She had come from a Quality Matters institution. I, of course, had, background in, in training, both in private industry and then at the community college as well. And together we put this program in place. [00:08:20] John Nash: Yeah. And then together you've grown it. What did you say? 40 folks? [00:08:25] Karen Watté: We have on in our team, I have about 45 folks all Ecampus as a whole is about a slightly over 100 staff. [00:08:35] Jason Johnston: And what's the online population these days at Oregon State? I know you talked about in terms of the number, the percentages of Oregon State, but how many online? [00:08:46] Karen Watté: So, we have a little over 13,000 fully online students. And like I had mentioned, it's one in every three OSU students now is a fully distance student. But in terms of, how many students do we touch every year? I think our last report showed that we had 29,000 unique students who took an eCampus course because a lot of our campus-based students will also take an eCampus course here or there during the year. It's, they find it very helpful and allows them to have a flexible schedule. [00:09:20] John Nash: Yeah. Cool. [00:09:21] Jason Johnston: Going back to our earlier note about these AI resources, and we'll put the link for people that are listening into the chat. But I just thought there's a number of things on here and just so people can visualize even without seeing it. You've got some, ethics, and principled kind of statements. But then you get into an AI decision tree, like when is the a guide to how to incorporate AI or if you should incorporate it into your work, as well as a reimagining of Bloom's taxonomy which is really like instructional design love language, Bloom's taxonomy, there's, we've got a few of them and that's one, it's up there. And so I appreciated how you wrap that into things. So just to give people a little bit of a landscape of that, but I wanted to talk about, as we're all dealing with AI at our respective institutions, and we're, John and I are both involved with various conversations around that. How did this come about? Was this in general, like where was the impetus for this? Is this something within eCampus or was this a kind of a provost said, you must do this, or we'd love for you to do this? Or were the faculty rising up and saying, give us AI guidance, or how did this all happen? [00:10:33] Karen Watté: Yeah, that's a great question. I think back in winter of 23, we realized at that point that we were just really dealing with a situation that It was like none other we had ever seen before, this, here's this digital tool. It's just exploding in capability and faster than anything that we had seen before. And like many institutions, I think we had. Sessions, talking sessions with faculty where we introduce them to this idea. We wanted to have discussions with them. And certainly there was a lot of curiosity out there, but there was also a lot of fear. And so I know that in the early spring, we had actually had at least one program leader who said, we're waiting for Ecampus to figure this out. And so there was some real pressure there. But I think I, I knew at that point and after having a number of conversations that we were going to have individual faculty coming to us very soon with a lot of questions about, what does this mean? What are the implications of these tools? Should I put them in my class? How can I avoid my students using them? And so, I, at that point, I, I basically say we've got to, we've got two things we have to do "and we have to do it very quickly. Number one, we have to figure out what is the eCampus stance on these tools, because clearly, we were not getting a lot of guidance from any other tool. Location. The university did have a small task force and I was on that task force, and we were, looking at what was happening, but there wasn't real action happening in terms of how to, how are we going to support our faculty going into the next year. And so, number one, we had to figure that out. And then number two, we needed to get some resources in place because we were going to be providing training and support all through the summer and into the fall for faculty who are trying to grapple with this. And so that's really where that came from. And at that point, I said, okay, let's we've got a lot of really great thinkers here on this team. A lot of people have done a lot of innovative stuff. I know we have a lot of folks who were very interested in it on the eCampus team. And so, I handpicked 12 people based on their diverse backgrounds and what they were interested in. And I said, you are our AI council, and these are the three things we're going to do. We're going to figure out what eCampus thinks about these tools. And we're going to make a stand on it or take a stand on it. And then we're going to secondly, we're going to figure out some kind of taxonomy that will allow us to identify what AI skills are needed. And I had through some other conversations been inspired to think about it in that way. And then finally, third, I needed some practical. strategies. We needed like a library of strategies that our instructional designers could pull upon as they had questions from faculty. So that's really where it came from organically as we were having conversations and knowing that there was this sense of urgency that we needed to get our house in order so we could help faculty who are going to be coming at us all through this summer. [00:13:45] John Nash: The, the tool Page and I'm looking at it now is number of reasons from my perspective and that is you start with an ethics statement, but then it follows with some principles, and principle number one of seven is be student-centered. Now, when Jason and I, and maybe you are hanging around having coffee, this seems obvious to us, I'm sure that this ought to be number one, but it's not actually for most people maybe. Maybe I'm stretching. It's not for many people, and at our institution, and as I work also with P 12 schools around how leaders are going to articulate guidelines for AI aren't always first thinking about student centered -that's more administrative, or it's a lockdown attitude, or it's a integrity issue. Can you talk with us a little bit about the conversations you may have had and why being student centered is number one on the principles. [00:14:38] Karen Watté: When we were trying to decide, what did we need to do first? And that was, establish this ethical foundation. What are we going to say we stand for and what's important to us? And, Forever, eCampus has always been student centered. So, when we've talked about what, what's important to us when we're evaluating these tools and whether we should use them, we went back to OSU values, but also our eCampus values, which articulate that, the student comes first. We do things for the student. So that seemed like just a natural. A natural piece to bring over as one of the principles that we're going to abide by when we're looking at these tools. The other principle I think that is very important there on the list is that last one, which was accountability because I think that kind of wraps up the fact that, regardless of whether you're using AI, the human author is ultimately responsible. So, there's all these other issues that we have to, that we want to consider, but we also want to ensure accountability for everything that's being produced here. [00:15:41] Jason Johnston: And just to read that one, it says, establish this number seven, establish accountability, regardless of how or whether AI is used, emphasize that the human author is accountable for all content produced. [00:15:54] John Nash: Yeah, that's key. Involved with a generation of a document that's going to help our faculty have productive and developmental conversations about their distribution of effort. going to actually work on your teaching research and service and then relied a little bit on AI to help us brainstorm through some of these conversations that turn up very transactional document into something that's more of a developmental conversation. And yeah, we placed a statement at the, in the end notes about how it was used, but then also that we stand by the facts in the document as and contributors. [00:16:28] Karen Watté: Yeah, so important. [00:16:29] Jason Johnston: Yeah. And your number two talks about demonstrating transparency again, along with that, if it's being used and integrated recommending that faculty are clear in the syllabus that such tools would be used and that's another place we've been talking a lot with our faculty. Faculty about, which is that transparency, both on the faculty side, but also on the student side to creating a space in which things are transparent. And I think one of the outcomes of that is that you create a more trusting environment. Along with that, I noticed you don't say anything about AI detectors here on your list. There's no number eight thou shalt use AI detectors or thou shalt not use AI detectors. Do you have any things that you would are willing to put on the record about AI detectors? [00:17:15] Karen Watté: We haven't been impressed so far. I'll just say that. I think there is a lot of a lot of information out there pointing to the fact that they don't do the type of job that they should be doing, or that they claim to do. And the, often the bias that seems to come out in their results is very disturbing. So, at OSU we have stayed away from that. That is not the direction we want to go this time, [00:17:44] Jason Johnston: yeah, we've talked about just how Again, we're good. If you listen to this podcast This will be the fourth time you've heard this, maybe fifth, but about Michelle Miller talks about same side pedagogy and about within the classroom. What are we building together with an AI detector? Are we building a community of trust and co learning together or are we building a community of distrust, and separation between the student and the teacher. And I think the, it's a rhetorical question, the way I phrased it, but I think we know the answer to that, which is, AI detectors do not help with same side pedagogy, putting us on the same side as the students, right? [00:18:27] Karen Watté: And I think really, I would emphasize just really the inaccuracy of these. And I was just reading some information and from some R1 institutions that have done a little bit of testing in house and they, these AI detectors just don't measure up to what they claim they can do. So just best to avoid them for now. It's not something you want to get into. [00:18:51] John Nash: For me, it's almost as though your first principle of being student centered suggests that the AI detectors aren't necessary. That if you're being student centered, doing as Dr. Miller at Northern Arizona says, having a same side pedagogy, not an adversarial for learning, then you're going to be okay. [00:19:11] Karen Watté: Yes. Yeah. [00:19:12] Jason Johnston: So, I had mentioned this before, we looked at your decision tree, here at UT, we as we were trying to work as a team to figure out when and when not to use it in our own work, and then when we recommend it as we were talking with faculty because I'm in kind of the same sort of position that you are in terms of working with course production, but also doing professional development with faculty. [00:19:38] Jason Johnston: It seems like a lot of work to have gotten to this place in terms of decision tree. Did it come easily as you were going through things where did you base it on some other previous kind of work that you had been doing around, even just the implementation of technology, because I think there's some overlap here, or how did this specifically come about? [00:20:01] Karen Watté: I think all of the hard work and conversation around what our values and principles will be really led naturally into the creation of that decision tree, because you can see each branch correlates very closely with many of the principles that we identified. So, in that respect, that piece of it was easy, but of course it was vetted numerous times among the small work group that created it. And then with the larger council. And we added that very first question toward the end of creating that, which is, we must check with the department and the program first. That is always that the first step, does the department or the program have a policy in place? At the time that we were creating this, Okay. Very few had any policies in place. They were still in, conversation, but I think that will be changing over time. So, we'll check there. And then the second one, of course, we're very student centered. So, the second question is how does this how would this impact your pedagogy? How does this lead to better outcomes? What is the impact to students? And if you can articulate that well, and it makes sense, then you continue on down through that tree. But those first two questions are critical. If you can't get past that then you're not gonna, you should stop at that point, essentially. [00:21:18] Jason Johnston: Yeah. [00:21:19] John Nash: The decision tree. For those who are not looking at it right now, it's a guide that was developed by your unit to help decide when and how to incorporate You AI into your work. it's aimed at the teacher or the instructor. Is that fair? Or could it also be for an administrator, an associate dean, or someone who's thinking about using it for non-instructional purposes? [00:21:44] Karen Watté: Yeah, that's a good question. I think it certainly could be repurposed. When we were creating it, of course, it was meant as a guide for our staff and for faculty who are working on course development, but certainly many of those questions are very applicable. If you're looking at AI to improve a business process at the university, you may want to review some of those kinds of questions. So, I think it certainly could be applicable to other questions, other spaces. [00:22:13] John Nash: Have you been approached as a unit, from folks who are looking to, as you advise here, when an answer is no, your recommendation is to pause and seek consultation, and then with an asterisk, you note that would be consulting a supervisor or other person who can provide expertise. When I think about, for instance, my department. We don't have a policy in the unit. I would consult my chair. They would shrug their shoulders. I might look inside my college. They would also likewise shrug their shoulders and say, and I think this might actually escalate up to maybe our center for learning and teaching or something like that. Are you seeing similar things and how is this playing all the way down to the unit in terms of people's capacity to look at these questions? [00:22:57] Karen Watté: Yeah, we've used it in a few different contexts. So, for example, a faculty came to us and wanted to create some AI supported materials for their course development. The first question was back to the department and the department at that moment said, absolutely not. You're not going to do that. So that was the end of that. But then we've had another situation where we had a faculty who came, and they said we would like some graphics created to support this particular concept. And by the way, it's okay if we look at AI image generators to help support this piece. And so, then we had a conversation. within our team and specifically with our videographer who is helping to pull some of this these images together around, okay, what are the concerns? And let's look at the limbs of this tree that are most applicable here, which of course would be copyright. How are we, certain that there's not a copyright issue if you use this particular engine to develop a few images to support this particular learning object. And so, we were able to clear those hurdles, but this decision tree gave us that sort of framework for the conversation and to ask those kinds of questions. And so, I think those are a couple examples of where I think it was useful. [00:24:14] John Nash: Those are great examples, because I think that a tree like this, it really is less about being a dictatorial policy, but rather a driver to engender conversation around what people want to accomplish, Yeah. [00:24:28] Jason Johnston: You'd mentioned your media team. Have you found some very, and you've got a pretty large team. Have you found a variety of opinions in terms of the use of AI within your own team? You don't have to name names on the podcast. Or have people tended to get behind the same horse on this one? [00:24:49] Karen Watté: Generally, I think we have a pretty innovative group of people. So, they've been quite open to it and all of that. Although, I will say that we have a couple of instructional designers who are particularly concerned about privacy issues when it comes to using these and copyright and all of that, which rightfully, you know, rightfully and that's and so we've had conversations around that. That component. They're not quite as excited to start experimenting and putting things up into these systems, which totally makes sense. But otherwise, I would say we're probably a lot more willing to get out there and try things just because of the nature of what we do every day. [00:25:32] Jason Johnston: That's impressive that you've been at this for a little while here at Oregon State and that you continue to be innovative. Only because it feels and please correct me if I'm wrong on this one, but it feels our institutions of higher learning our land grant established longstanding institutions don't tend to go that way all the time. They tend to maybe favor the more traditional. And so how do you think that you've kept this going if you've been early adopters when it comes to online, and you continue to innovate forward? [00:26:06] Karen Watté: I think it's just the culture of the unit. Essentially, it started out as this little skunk works area. We were trying things that no one else would try, and so the university continues to turn to us to do those kinds of experiments when it comes to teaching and learning and then we're hiring people that have that same mindset. And we're telling them it's okay to take a risk. It's okay to try something. And if you fail, that's all right, because we're learning, I think it's just the culture and maintaining that momentum about innovative but innovating in a careful way. We are, Of course, research based. Much of what we do we experiment with it when we find that there's a research basis for it. It's not just the Wild West, so in that regard, we, we value research just as much as the faculty, the rest of the faculty at the university, but we do try to push and experiment with new things when we think that there's a valid reason to do. [00:27:05] Jason Johnston: so, it's been about maybe seven months at the, at this recording since you put these out which is like 20 years in AI years, I think, right? Is there a calculation for that yet, John? [00:27:15] John Nash: but. Could take a dog years times cat years and divided by Moore's law. I think we'll get somewhere in the ballpark of that. [00:27:26] Jason Johnston: Yeah, exactly. I think that sounds, we'll work on that, and we'll get the we'll put the, like everything else, put the formula in the show notes. [00:27:33] John Nash: Yes, [00:27:33] Jason Johnston: John? [00:27:33] John Nash: I was going to ask Bard, but I can't anymore because Bard is now called Gemini. [00:27:38] Jason Johnston: Yes. We'll ask I've got the advance. Anyways, that's a whole other conversation. So, we'll talk later. Anyways, back to the question. Since the seven months has gone by, first, is there anything that you would change about what you put out there from before? [00:27:54] Karen Watté: I think, we had made it very clear that what we put out there was really a snapshot in time, that this is what we see today, particularly around that, that Bloom's taxonomy one. This is AI capabilities as they are in the summer of 23. So, we pretty much knew that, We're going to have to revisit this, in a year or sooner, and I, and we will be reconvening our AI council in the spring, to start thinking about, what may need to change, but certainly that tool will have to be looked at again, the decision tree, I think, still probably stands as it is. I don't anticipate there will be a lot of change. But again, this is a conversation we're planning to have here very soon. [00:28:38] Jason Johnston: Are there other ways that you think that you might expand? Like, what are some of the other gaps that that you're seeing that you would like to help with at your university? [00:28:46] Karen Watté: Yeah. This fall we had some conversations around helping program leads, department chairs, anyone in a kind of leadership position facilitate conversations around AI. And one of my colleagues, Dr. Katherine McAlvich worked up a short guide, but she calls it a readiness playbook for department chairs. That's actually posted out there on our website as well. It's about a five page document just to give some starting prompts. So, to encourage them to start speaking with faculty if they haven't already, started that conversation. Because I think we're getting to a point at, very soon that we're going to see some need for curriculum updates based around this. I'm starting to see case studies about industries and how they're integrating it into the, into work. And so that means that what we teach at the university or at any institution is going to soon have to reflect what the reality is out in the workforce. So, I think those conversations, trying to encourage that and get folks to talk about that is probably the next step. [00:29:51] Jason Johnston: We look forward to more updates. Yeah, we'll be watching that. Thank you for being open handed. We're having conversations here about what goes on the web and what doesn't. And we strongly advocate for sharing resources on the web for others to. To be able to see because they're helpful, and we've been helped by yours, so thank you for that. [00:30:12] Karen Watté: You're welcome. And this is a topic that not one institution can answer, can manage alone. It is such a huge undertaking. We look to all of our colleagues too for help, guidance, and ideas around this topic because it's certainly a collaborative effort. It has to be. It's. It's just something that's so unusual at this time. [00:30:35] John Nash: Can. We, pivot away from AI a little bit and talk about learners? [00:30:39] Jason Johnston: I guess so, John. [00:30:41] John Nash: It turns out we didn't mean to, but about half our talk is about AI. Then the other half is actually about learners, I think... But yeah. You did an Interview in 2017 for the Oregon State Ecampus News, and you were asked what your best piece of advice for instructors was, and you said, "Be sure to let your personality come through in your online course. Communicate regularly with your students and provide them with timely feedback. Your interaction with your students is the most important part of the student's online experience." And it feels like that advice never gets old but feels fresh to some. Can you just say a little bit more about why this wisdom is so important? [00:31:23] Karen Watté: Yeah, but we survey our Ecampus students every year, and it's interesting to note that even to this day, they continue to say that the number one indicator of their satisfaction in an online course is the interaction that they have with their instructor. So, I would say that our data continues to bear that out year after year. So, instructor presence is just absolutely critical in an online class. And now you even see this reflected in, the Department of Ed's requirements around regular and substantive interaction, which a lot of folks have spent time thinking about as well. [00:32:02] John Nash: that first part of your response, which was be sure to let your personality come through. What is some advice that you have for teachers who are thinking about upping their game in that area? [00:32:14] Karen Watté: We of course love to try to get them on video if we can, at least an intro video in every course. We love to have them do, video overviews if they're willing to for each activity. But then, even if they're not able to do that or willing to do that, they can Just infusing their actual personality and their passion for the subject into the announcements that they make, into the content that they're delivering to the students. So, we really try to work on helping each faculty bring out the best and put their personality into a course. [00:32:48] John Nash: fantastic. we see That more and more. I know in a recent episode, we had the privilege to record a session with Johns Hopkins University's Symposium on Online and their speaker for that symposium was Flower Darby, and she was very clear about letting your personality come through in your course. And so, it feels like yellow Volkswagen theory. Once you buy a yellow Volkswagen, then all you see on the road are yellow Volkswagens. And so, once you start talking about letting your personality come through in your course, you start picking up on it every time someone says something about it. But yeah, that's it's really good advice. [00:33:24] Jason Johnston: And that feels like a good Oregon thing, too, right? Yellow Volkswagens. You have a lot of yellow Volkswagens out there. Is that another stereotype that I have about Oregon? [00:33:32] Karen Watté: We've got some on the road. [00:33:33] Jason Johnston: I've got a few. Got a few. Yeah. Yeah. And along with that too, one of our themes here is talking about how do we humanize online learning, right? As John always eloquently introduces us, you know, we've done a lot of things great. And some of it, not so much. And I think one of our places that we want to grow in this next season of online life, now that we've, we've, we can get content to people, we figured that one out, right? We figured that one out a long time ago. Now we're learning to maybe make it a little bit more interesting and interactive. But how do we humanize, you know, and I really like that about making sure that Personality comes through in your online course as part of that are there other ways that you as a group or in your professional development or in your course production process that you help faculty to really humanize their online courses? [00:34:25] Karen Watté: Yeah, that's a great question. I, and I think a lot of that kind of comes down to just ensuring that you're explicitly designing in opportunities for engagement, because, unlike an on-campus course where it's a natural, you have that natural opportunity online. It has to be designed in. And so, as you're designing that in, you're thinking about, is that channel easily accessible to students? Is it easy for the faculty to use? Is it easy to manage while you're teaching that course? The kind of communication that would allow you to connect easily with your students. What does the feedback look like in the class? What's the pacing and how can you, do you have enough time to provide the kind of feedback that you'd like to provide so students feel like they're really having a good learning experience and connecting with you? So ultimately, it's, I think a lot of this is also just having to be built in into the course through the course development process in the conversations that the instructional designer is having with the faculty as they're talking about what is this course going to look like when it's actually being taught. [00:35:34] Jason Johnston: Mmhmm. Yeah, this symposium that John had mentioned, there's a bit of a common thread. One of them was talking about intentionality, ..And that's one thing I really like about course design, instructional design, and the process, so that, we just don't expect faculty Just to arrive in their online course and just everything to be there and just to work We shouldn't know side note We shouldn't expect this in their face to face classes either, but there's not always a lot of concentration on that However, we're talking about online here. But I think that there's an intentionality about design that I love, and I think that if we can take a step back and think about what it is. We're intentionally trying to do here. We can really move the needle. [00:36:17] Karen Watté: Absolutely. Yeah, it's really thinking ahead And, the lovely thing is that we ask that online courses be entirely developed prior to the actual launch of the class. So, we're not developing them on the fly as the course is underway. And I think that really lends itself to some thoughtful kinds of activities, communications, and it, and I think it just makes for better, a better opportunity for the instructor to teach well, better opportunity for the students to learn well if you have everything ready to go, and then they're not worrying about, whether the content's up and ready and available. [00:36:55] Jason Johnston: This has been a great conversation. I think that's a great place to land. What do you think, [00:36:59] John Nash: I think, It's, yeah, perfect place to land. Yeah, I think that was very intentional of you. [00:37:04] Jason Johnston: It was not so much intentional of us as much as thank you for the yeah, for landing there. I think that's a that is a great a great place for us to think about this intentionality and the design and the students being student-centered, being humanized, and all that we do as we think forward. Karen, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us. We really appreciate it. [00:37:25] Karen Watté: Thank you. I enjoyed this.