 All right, it really is the top of the hour and we should begin. Let me welcome everybody Welcome to the future transform. I'm so glad to see so many of you here today to talk about a really amazing subject And we have a truly exceptional exceptional guest and I'm just delighted to connect you all with My name is Brian Alexander. I'm the forms creator I'm the host on the cat herder and I'll be your guide to the next hour of conversation about the future of education Now all of that Feeds into what we're doing for the next few months So we're gonna have sessions on academic women of color on work life balance on how to do webinars Well like today on high-flex We'll have the high-flex inventor with us to catch up on where we are with that on how to redesign liberal education And what accrediting agencies are doing to shape the future of education? So if you want to find out more about those sessions if you want to sign up for them Just go to tinywhirl.com slash forum fall 2020 Now all that is to say we want to welcome this week's guest I'm especially honored to welcome Nancy white because she's someone whose career I followed for years and years Whose work I've been inspired by Every time I connect with her I learned something more about how to facilitate how to guide how to host how to convene Truly she was a global expert in this with clients from all over the world multiple continents She is someone who is also just devilishly creative always energetic and just an absolute I find gift to how we think and understand how we work together in groups She is really really a guru on how to do this with video and live video events Which is why I'm inviting her to talk today now We have of course so many reasons for this so many of us spend a lot of time on Video conferencing tools like shindig or zoom or teams or others But I think we should really take a moment and dive into what makes them work well How can we have webinars that are awesome? How can we have video events that are truly memory? Are you back? Yeah, I think the internet universe had a little burp That's okay, that's okay. Welcome. I'm so glad you could come today Thank you for having me what what a fun thing I'm just sitting you like noticing people that I've known from other iterations over the years and it's just fabulous I keep on scrolling through But now I'm drinking decaf tea, so we're okay. Oh my gosh decaf. Oh, no, no, no It's horrifying Nancy I I've introduced you in the role that I perceive you in and in our emails to everybody in our social media Campaign I've mentioned that you were one of the founders and leading partners of full circle associates But to give people a better sense of who you are and what you do Can you tell us a bit about what you hope to be working on what you hope to be thinking about for the next Say six months or so that gives a sense of what you do. Well first a disclaimer I absolutely refuse the term guru and I absolutely prioritize the term learner and that stance a learner or practitioner and that Stance I think is essential to answer the question and to show up here today So the next six months boy, well, it's informed by what happened in the last four months when everything changed, right? I have a history of being a person who works online and offline and all my old online clients You know, I basically said goodbye to them ten years ago They all were fine doing everything and then all of a sudden I get these phone calls We have to move X offline into online and everything changed Yes, and that became a moment of opportunity because whereas only I think the most advanced people were willing to actually Create fully embodied fully human online experiences and everyone else was getting on their freaking airplanes and their privilege in flying places Which is ironic because a lot of my clients are working with climate change and they're like and you're getting on an airplane Why okay So there was this, you know rebirth of possibility so the next six months are about nurturing possibility About taking this moment when people who would otherwise say oh no you can't do that online It has to be face-to-face the only way we can have trust and relationship and do X Y Z as face-to-face And I'm going listen if we stopped everything today That is one option, but we all have to stop not just some of us Otherwise the disproportionality will just be even worse so either we're all in folks Or we say let's put a stop to the world Let's put everything on pause for the next 12 18 24 months, and then we'll take up later Okay, and education included and I think this is really for me a very Nerve-exposed topic because I have two small people who live with me my grandchildren and thinking about schooling and One of them who has an IEP and thinking about how this translates into the real lived experience is super Important so for me the next six months are how do we incrementally and every single time we gather together? Synchronously or asynchronously improve what we're doing and improve the outcomes, which means we're paying attention to outcomes Okay, it means we're not just doing this, but we're saying how we how are we measuring ourselves? How are we evaluating ourselves so that we improve that's the learner? Practitioner stance which has to be particularly heightened right now We can't say well that worked last week because the technology changed this week Or that worked last week because we have 20 times more people willing to experience with us than we had last week Okay, this is this this I don't know words. I need I need a good Italian arms And so it is practicing and then it is balancing Because I literally have more work than I can get done in a day And I have two small children who the school districts expecting to park in front of a Microsoft teams from 755 in the morning to 225 in the afternoon and like okay, none of this is realistic Okay, and I can sit and complain about it or I can say I will take your Offering as a very loose offering and I will riff and improvise upon it until we come up with something that a works for my family The works for my clients see works for their Constituents D begins to change the system. So literally I'm looking for a system change I'm looking for in the next six months to radically transform how we gather together And that it could affect any domain including education. How's that for minor? Well, you start off by saying you were a student a learner and now we want to transform how we gather together That's fantastic. That's fantastic. That's just the kind of thing that I wanted to hear and if you're new again Those of you who don't know Nancy. This is this is how she rolls I'm so glad to see To hear you and Lauren. I'm glad that your audio was fine. Lauren. Just refresh the screen if If you want to try that again, we'll still be here If you're new to the forum, we don't have an agenda. We don't have a prescribed set of questions We proceed organically usually I kick things off with a couple of questions Our guest goes wild with answers and then all of you have questions and comments. So again, please the Raised hand button is there if you'd like to join us on stage And the question box is there and in fact before I can even say this before I can finish saying it We have a question already. So let me just flash this on the screen right now And this is from Eric Green. This is Nancy. What is your experience right now? Well, almost all the hundred and twenty participants of the shending do not have cameras on how does our choice change your interpersonal experience engaging with us. Oh Yeah, this is a great question and I think right now I'm experiencing this not necessarily as a state but as a fishbowl So, you know, which can accommodate X or Y number of people in the middle and everyone else is in listen mode Okay So the camera at this moment if I if I imagine this if I construct this as a fishbowl It's less important because I'm my intention when I'm in a fishbowl is paying attention to the few individuals I'm having a conversation with which this is Brian. I don't know which direction he is on your screen, but Pretend so I'm looking at Brian's face. I'm looking at his nods or nods if Brian were to turn his camera off I would be very angry. I would feel lost I would feel that I'm losing the cues that I need That is a very different situation than if I'm sitting with a group of 20 students And we are saying we are in a learning community or a classroom together. They're not the same thing but You know, then With students with cameras off we have a problem or we potentially have a problem The first thing is to understand what is the purpose of having the camera on and what are the reasons for the camera being off? I Can't make assumptions about good or bad or useful or not unless those two questions are answered and I think that goes to the heart of What the practice needs to be about is being clear on purpose and then getting the information or enough information Not all the information We don't we really don't have the capacity to deal with all of the information to make adjustments So if I think that the purpose of our first engagement with my students online is to create relationships I need to understand why they don't turn the camera on. Is it a technical issue? Is it a bandwidth issue? Is it a learning or cognitive? I'm you know, this makes me very anxious when I turn my camera on issue There's can be a million reasons and in you know The idea of I want to engage them so that they feel Invited in not forced in so maybe it cameras off for the first week for some people And I might reach out to them individually and say is there reason your cameras off This goes back to the old school online stuff is never assume you understand the problem in a virtual world You need to ask you need to go back and find out so some of that is preparing ahead of time Do all our students have functioning cameras? That's one question you can ask in advance Do any of our students have cognitive issues where they Need an on-ramp to getting comfortable with video Are they in a situation where it's not safe to turn a video on because there's things happening behind them that are inappropriate These are things we would never have probably been thought about, you know, seven months ago, right? Why can't you turn your camera on because I have a chaotic world on behind me right now? I don't but normally actually I do with a seven and a ten year old in my life. So You know, there's a lot of reasons so I think the question is Super relevant and it asks us to go to why you need to do this And then what do you need to know to change the dynamic the follow-up? Then is how do we get people into video comfort and the simplest for me is starting in breakouts versus all You know start with one-on-one put people in paired breakouts Ask them to discuss how it felt to have a video conversation use a question that may Reflect different kinds of listening. So we have this Set of things in Liberty structure called helping heuristics what and one is just attentive listening So if Brian we're talking and Brian's doing it. He's not saying anything. He's nodding With the strange kind of way the windows are with Shindig our eye-to-eye contact is a little off So we're both looking up to cameras and you know kind of trying to triangulate that but And then the second type of listening is to ask tell me more So Brian might start doing prompts. So what we do is we have people practice these five different kinds of listening Right, which all will go all the way to Havoc did, you know, well, I'm gonna play the devil's advocate with you and Help them understand that we're using visual cues as part of that communication structure Therefore, I'm giving a rationale of why I want cameras on not just because I want to see your face. Come on I want to see your face is not A sufficient reason. Okay, I'm going to stop there Yeah, the green screen is a good solution for privacy And and I think we're getting better. I think, you know The playful use of zoom backgrounds can create a moment of connection I mean, I can't show you my zoom backgrounds now, but I have some weird ones that are used provocatively I agree. I agree. Um, that's a that's a fantastic answer. That's a mini seminar by itself right there first, Eric Thank you. Thank you for the great meta question. And of course, this is a meta session in many ways friends We've done meta sessions before in the forum, but for talking about webinars and video conferencing while we're doing it That's perfect, Eric um All kinds of responses have come back. Um, my uh, my colleague john stites, uh at georgetown Chimes in my 25 years supporting higher ed tech. Give me a license to preach on this when doing web video plug in Allows you to wire network has more consistent bandwidth than the best required this Uh, quite true. Quite true. And people don't even know what that means. So this is we've been more interesting. It's like, uh, What am I what am I plugging into? So thinking about how we prepare our scaffold technology stuff and working with a lot of I'm working with a bunch of flood plain engineers right now And like, you know online technology is not their domain. They are really smart people because it's like, huh? And some of them are iPads and they're pushing buttons and some are on their phone and some are on the desktop And that all compiles to make them feel very inadequate So, uh, you know, how we how we scaffold the tech matters and like for me, it's like If you're going to use a new tool Have some sort of play with it before you use it for the didactic or group process stuff So like we have people when I'm using the annotation tool in zoom I I put up a coloring sheet before the session starts. So as people come on board, I tell them, okay, turn on the annotate I screen share turn on the annotate and they start coloring And believe me that really throws them off and I'm like, why the heck is she having this color? But then when we go to use that as a stamping tool to understand whether there's convergence or divergence or thoughts or whatever They immediately know how to use the tool. So we're in it So there's you know, little scaffolding tricks and I think our toolbox for scaffolding tricks has to expand Well, it's a fantastic scaffolding tool a playfulness counts for an awful Friends, I have a question I want to ask Nancy, but then I would love to hear from you So again, um, just on the bottom bar of the page. Just press the raised hand button if you want to join us in the video Um, Samantha and Barry, I'm going to bring you up in a minute. If if you still want to be up I'll beam you up otherwise just type in the question box and We'll be glad to display these questions and comments. Uh, so thank you for all of these um, my question to ask, um, is you're thinking about this past It's hard to tell how many months, right? I mean plague time pandemic time is kind of fluid Um, what have you noticed about how people have changed in their behavior in online meetings? You know, are we more used to this? Are we more formal? Are you noticing any any patterns of change in this past this year? Oh, oh god every week every week the patterns have changed. I think um, One that showed up early was I was asked to come in and do a quick 90 minutes with a bunch of community of practice people at the world bank And I have done work for the world bank in the past and dear world bank people if you're listening, please forgive me But it's a pretty formal Environment where proving how smart you are is really important. You may notice this in higher education as well, right? I have to show you how smart I am And this was in the early days when everybody's kids We're running in around and people were in their sweatshirts. I mean like I put on lipstick for you today guys. This is really This is high high art today. I my pretty shirt and my lipstick instead of my sweatshirt and and not but This created a leveling moment And a more willingness to Engage in uncertainty and being able to work in areas that I don't have to prove myself as perfect And that's a tremendous opportunity and I'm afraid that is dissolving Over time I think the second trend is there's a sort of bifurcation Which is those who had bad offline meeting practices and they put their bad meetings online had horrible practices and so the zoom fatigue and the zoom b all this stuff was exacerbated by just replicating bad practices Um as I looked at my two granddaughters and how their teachers did things I could see where you know There was some early on mistakes and when they learned from them and approved quickly They kept the goodwill of the students, but where there's some practices that weren't really that generative The turnoff rate was so fast So fast and very worrisome because then you build the assumption that a really engaging Learning experience is not possible. So for me the first the first experience is so important um And even if you try something a little more daring with less certainty, I think your chances are greater than if you rely on Well, I think this traditional way is a better way to do it because I'm more certain of it going back to online I would be more certain. It's not gonna work So so the disruption here is the pattern and creative destruction is like my byword of the last four months We have to creatively destruct what was To create something new because we're not going back to the old times the old times weren't that great folks Okay There was great parts of it. But if we think of the practice as a whole there was certainly more we can do So I'm definitely one of the revolutionists sort of you Um iteratively revolutionized towards something new and don't Um try and replicate The comfort zone. So this asks a lot of people. So I think where the exhaustion comes in is Constantly trying things constantly experimenting constantly putting yourself on the line that takes a certain kind of energy And when you succeed you get more energy, but it still takes a lot of energy So I I think people are beginning to realize that we need to think about time differently So as we go forward time is a different element than it was before I'll leave that one as a Clip hanger for you Well, that's a great answer and of course I want to pursue it but but but we have um one question from Rachel Pearson and I'll bring this up on stage so people can see Uh, Rachel Pearson asks what will be one way to continue a culture of learning in large groups Additional detail I admin a group on facebook that's approaching 90 000 members Well, first of all if you are admitting a group of nine 90 000 members I want you up here on the stage and telling us what you're doing because Facebook is such a difficult environment um Because it it really Is a creative space create a great space for toxicity it um So in in the the nature of how conversations flow it is really a challenging environment I I think the second question is I need to understand what the purpose of learning is because I can't answer that in the generic except with generic answers with maybe totally Ridiculous, so maybe you can tell us a little bit more about the context We'd love to hear more And uh, Rachel if you can if you're if your camera is on we can beam you up on stage Otherwise just type in more in a follow-up question and and and we'd love to hear that While uh, she is doing that, um, we have a question from uh, I'm gonna try and pronounce this correctly, Marcella Grassez Forgive me if I've mangled this I'm working too many languages Grassez What are some of the activities or strategies that work the best to engage with students online in synchronous web sessions? Okay, so Marcella, I'm curious about what age group you're talking about because I think there's some very different Responses and I can as I said to to brian before we started. I do not work in academia. Okay. I'm an outside um But I work in learning situations almost all the time learning and doing situations um For me Some there's some of the basic stuff that we learned about flip classrooms that we can rely upon So, you know really watching Putting too much content into the synchronous session and really having people work with content So if it is about divergent thinking, okay, so if the topic is x How do we think about other ways to think about that? So I tend not to do open brainstorming I tend to put people in small groups And create different ways of coming up with new ideas and one of my favorite ways is Let's say you're trying to figure out how to do this experiment. I start with what are all the ways you can cause this experiment to fail so It comes from a russian engineering A process called tris, which I can't remember the russian words, but I could get it for you if you want it And you have them list all the things to guarantee success and I tell them I really want you to fail And sometimes I'll put them in breakout rooms and then I'll bring One way is to have them record their list of failures in a google slide. So I get each group has a slide So there's a digital and a capture. There's a kinesthetic piece. It's building in here. It says, you know You're bringing in the whole self and then sometimes we'll come back in plenary and we'll read each other's list And then I'll say okay now beg borrow and steal from other people's list Finish your list then the next step is they go back into their breakout room And they have to mark every one of those things that are present in their current approach to doing that Experiment or a thing or whatever it is And that was like, oh, so how could you fail in in this test next week? How could you fail in this report that you need to write? How could you fail in this research approach you're taking? um And I have to mark everything that I'll be doing and typically, you know people come back between 30 and 90 or even 100 percent they're doing things that cause them to fail And this goes to we are so used to doing things in in a certain way and in a company in a custom way We're in our track that we fail to even see we're In a in a rut, right? So then the final question is what is one thing you're going to stop doing on that list? And what is your first step to stop doing that? So if you know, again, I'm making huge assumptions about age group and domain here But you know, maybe I am really crap at annotating my sources. Well, I'm going to go take this tutorial on How I annotate my sources better And so I'm creating that thing yet. Yes, Brian Marcella chimed in to say university age university age So trans works well across all those ages. Um, the other thing that I'm doing a lot And and we did this at the University of Guadalajara in a project. We did five years ago down there Is to use a process called what so what now what? And you know, I'm sure you've heard of this before a million times Again, I I'm looking at it from the perspective of liberating structures Which is the group process approach that I'm deeply embedded in and which by the way in again the last four months We've been able to move almost all those processes online in the last few gnarly ones are being worked on right now But I ask, you know, if there was some content that was delivered I say okay now in the chat what just happened in the last 10 minutes 15 minutes later it was And you talked about this You talked about that and then I'm going is that all you observed? What other data do you observe? You talked all the time good good What else did you do? Well, we didn't talk all the time and You're building their ability to pay attention Then the first time usually everyone's crap at it all ages by the way The second one is so what what do you make of that data? What is your interpretation of the data? What is the meaning? Why is it important? What conclusions do you draw? From that data and then they say well, you know, you're a boring lecturer Maybe you're a fantastic lecturer I really benefit from lectures. I don't benefit from lectures and again right now. I'm doing meta questions You yours would be in the domain you're working on and then so what so what should be our next step together on this And again, they can verbalize it if it's a small grip It's a large grip you can do it in chat and when we do it in chat by the way There's two ways to do it one is just to have people type as they go The other is to say take a minute to think about this Okay Type it in the chat, but don't hit enter till I give you a cue And this keeps people from being influenced by what other people are going to say So the idea that first we think alone Then we think together be it in small groups or large groups is a really important pattern That can get interrupted in digital spaces where the fast people will dominate over the people who need a little more time to think and process And when they hit enter then you say now go back and read what your colleagues said what your fellow students said And you can do another layer of meaning making But when I use what so what now at the first time I get pretty crappy results And I kind of call attention to like you missed like did you notice that there was a slide up? Did you notice this did you notice that I kind of call them out on their crappy data? And I said we're going to do this again when we do after tomorrow So before I start I say remember we're going to do what so what now after this So make sure you're paying attention and the quality of response goes through the roof attention has been focused because we're giving ourselves A reason to pay attention I'm going to go meta for you for a second group interaction exists on a continuum of over controlled and under controlled Over controlled means an example of over controlled is a lecture that takes into account nothing that's going on with everyone else So this goes to the question about cameras on cameras off if I were just sitting Or referring to my slides like you guys become invisible. I don't see you anymore, right? I have all the power I'm in the front of the room because I have control of the camera I may have control of the software which allows you to do things or not do things Um under controlled is what we finally call the goat rodeo You know imagine baby goats playing in the yard knocking things over jumping on things And so under control gives people No power actually or to get things done and over control gives them no power to be present to be there And what you're looking like is you want to find that space that's just controlled enough and not over control So that people have agency that you've given them structure for that agency and Even as we go forward people need some structure but sometimes they need less So usually you start like this and then you mirror it out. So that's kind of one heuristic You want to find the place between over controlled and under controlled the other heuristic? Plays into that which is you want to have enough predictability That people feel confident to engage But enough difference so that they don't go to sleep and just go on autopilot Okay, so when somebody turns on their slides, I open my email box Anybody else do that? Okay. All kinds of people. Yeah Um, so if I use slides differently like I say, okay, now I'm going to put up a slide and I want you to circle and mark up The things that are blah blah blah all of a sudden I realize I can't turn on my email I have to pay attention and this comes out of the world of uh improvisation Is that uh, we're mixing messages just enough To cause people not to fall into their habitual thinking Um, another way to do this is to use high status language like I can use big vocabulary words Do we can act a little bit goofy? Again, there's a cognitive dissonance going like she's using big words, but she's acting like a clown There's something going on here that causes me to pay attention So we're always looking for these things So these are kind of things that the pattern lever over controlled under control And the mixing of familiar and unfamiliar which give us a different way to interrupt that You know that happens because we're human beings Okay, I'm gonna stop for a moment. I can sip a tea Well, thank you. That's a fantastic answer. Um, and thank you for uh, for the question if if it's, uh, Marcella if I mispronounce your name, please forgive me. Um, that's a fantastic answer with so much playfulness And uh, so many ascents from the audience We have a video question coming in from uh, tom hams Who I'd like to bring on the stage Tom is a Dear friend Long time participant in the program And just an absolute Treasure and uh, I'm just really glad that he's okay right now because he lives in the houston area Tom welcome Now, um, I wanted to ask a question about a point you made earlier or or Get your thoughts on um, I have noticed that as time has gone on that uh institutions, uh have become more reactionary in their approaches to dealing with the crisis And I'm I'm I'm always a big I always like to think systemically about revolution versus evolution and those sorts of questions um, and um, you know in my own presentations and my own, uh working with faculty In limited capacity Uh, I have really emphasized taking things apart breaking them down breaking them like you say right Thinking about individual tasks that you're trying to do in your class and then building up from that as opposed to going Oh, well, I need to learn how to use the discussion tool I'm like, well, why do you need to use the discussion tool? First of all, right? So take three steps back and say hello. So but that's uh, On the local level I can work with faculty. It's not easy. They don't they're not used to Thinking about things that are not in the context of tools They you know, the tool's got to be the second or third step in this question On the systemic level though, I feel like I'm really swimming against the curve Because they've come up with a solution. They're trying to bang everybody into the same Shape hole no matter what Shape their teaching is right um, our our version of this is uh, I I think a localized version of high flex called learn flex um, and I was actually cornered by a vice chancellor a couple weeks ago And he was trying to get me to come up with a solution for teaching in that environment. I'm like That's not the first question. We need to ask here Do we you know, what do we need to teach and does that environment actually work for that? You know, I can't imagine teaching the way I teach As a simulcast I just can't and I'm not it's not because I'm not creative It's just because those aren't the kind of conversations I have in class It pretty much forces you into a a lecture modality and I'm seeing a lot of that though in terms of the technology being used to produce conformity to And to sort of bang everybody into because the institutions themselves are scared They're worried about the least common denominator, right? And and and how to shore up those things and those of us that do things a little bit outside the norm Are often caught up in that so I was wondering what your your institutional glasses in terms of Of what you're seeing in the world and what you might do to sort of counter that a little bit So so first I want to affirm what you said about That purpose before tools and purpose. So I kind of think about purpose What activities do we need to do to support that purpose? And then what tools and processes do we support to make those activities happen? And if you go I'm going to put the URL in here. This really is not new stuff This is old stuff, but there's a bunch of worksheets that are and the The digital Advocate book is free the book that Etienne Wenger trainer and John Smith, and I wrote like three billion internet years ago And there's worksheets and sometimes I find if you give someone a worksheet that says, okay What what is it you need to achieve by the time the student walks out of this course? What do they need to do by the time they walk out of this session what they need to do What activities support that and then how do we make that happen? So giving them a way to not be seduced by the technology Because it's often about how do we make the technology submit to our activity desires and purpose desires versus How does the technology drive? So I think there's a a practice piece here that's super important On the on the on the institutional one I I Oscillate wildly between massive despair anger and hope And I and and I speak from my advocacy role as a Guardian of two small children in a public school system that I believe has good intentions and can't seem to get anything right I have three high schoolers and so I'm fighting on that on that front too in addition to my college students Yeah, and so my to my my answer today because I was in like deep grief about this two days ago And then yesterday I have a neighbor who says I'm going to focus on the positive I'm going to focus on the possibilities and it was a good reminder that as a survival strategy. I have to do that So I am now taking the guidance of my school district, which is still unresolved They're going to vote around the 12th. They haven't talked to the union yet My god school starts in three weeks and they haven't talked to the union yet Um Is I I'm going to say okay, I am going to take your suggestions as the loosest possible guidelines And begin to discover what will work for my family Then begin to discover what works for other families who are interested in something different And I'm not using the po d word because I'm actually not going that way But I'm looking for models where kids and families have more agency in their learning that the social connected tissue can rise above the You must have 180 thousand days hours of learning to check the out that you know the superintendent of public instruction box um, and I'm going to do that through a series of iterative experiments and my Optimistic self is if I start showing evidence of usefulness Other people will want to begin to play a part in that And then I may be able to influence so for example one school board member is a parent in one of my grandchild's school So I think If I can demonstrate something to her not ask permission Not ask for support, but to demonstrate results I might be able to begin to influence change because I certainly can't at the top level It is too dysfunctional. It is too reactionary as you've said It is too political and now to add to it and I think for very important reasons the anti-racism agenda is coming to the forefront and Equity is coming to the forefront and that's a really difficult problem to solve. But right now it's a long jam for doing anything So I think these side experiments are the ways that we can begin to imagine different possibilities So one is we're piloting the summer what we call kids rule the school So we have between three and five kids to get together on monday the kids pick the topic The kids put out how they want to do this topic We we put it on a google doc or a mural I've given Brian a pdf of one of the murals for the week. We did the hope diamond and they posed their questions on monday and then we get together and look at the answers on thursday So this afternoon we have this part two on clea patra and You know, it's not that well, but we will talk about that too. Um, it's another one I sent you and and and what we're doing is then we'd say, okay, what engages the kids talking to each other Yeah, uh, they can play with yeah The ability to set the agenda. Yeah, even within some constraints that we're talking about history mysteries, right? the advice of a skill teacher who's who volunteered to be with us who is just like mana from heaven And we're going to debrief this what worked what didn't work And then we're going to present it as a model or an option or something not to try it could be a failure um, so I am really starting at the grassroots and that's not necessarily Effective or useful strategy, but it's what I can do, right? The other is to reimagine The the learning in a different way. So the slide that brian put up this is uh, a redesigning of what used to be a six day face-to-face Introduction to a Fellowship program force for women agricultural research scientists in africa And it was you know, it kind of looked like your typical business school leadership mentorship sort of entry point We took all their learning objectives And we put them on a mural board like if we were face-to-face it would have been post-its on the wall, right? And we What here requires sense-making? Which is will we prioritize? synchronous time what is content? understanding or grounding or follow-up that becomes asynchronous Either self-paced or in small groups What requires the relational piece that moves our learning forward because some of us are very much social learners not all of us And and those became a coaching thread and then we used um, we used the mit theory you model because Well, there's lots of reasons it was chosen, which you know starts with kind of downloading observing Then retreating and silence and reflecting and then acting into the future And we reparsed out their content and it no longer was in the same sequence it was before so one of the really interesting things is to To question sequence when we move online because sometimes I mentioned time is tricky So sequence becomes a little more malleable and sequence is about how much it is an intellectual load How much is it a sense-making load? How much is it a relational load? And so we start mixing those things up to have that difference we talked about a little bit earlier You know, you're going to get a rhythm that has The different pieces alternate and then there's something that pulls it through that which is typically reflective Or peer interaction, you know that kind of sense-making with a peer And then we introduced a whole set of partly orange circles, which of course you can't read this as client stuff, right? Is processes and this again comes out of that liberating structures repertoire And by the way, there are a group of educators who are doing some really cool things with liberating structures in the classroom Arvin Singh at UT Austin would be one in your in your neighborhood Tom right Tom I have I have my hero name and face. Yeah. No, that's cool. UT is about 150 miles away, but Well, you know, it's like It's it's irrelevant anyway But so that was that was kind of a long-winded answer at the at the institutional level I think the only way is to rise up. I mean go back to Alexander Hamilton rise up And then I think its students their families are paying their tuitions its teachers um Lovingly rise up because I I think administrators are in a terrible position, but I think we cannot accept the status quo We can't let panic drive bad decisions and frankly a lot of them look really bad from where I sit Yeah, that's and and it's frustrating because you can see the good the good path and it's just not it's It's disconnected from the whole idea of teaching and learning the you know a lot of what people are doing and That conversation just isn't happening It's really patch. You know forcing the it's forcing the The adjustment down onto the students and then the teachers And and then making them adapt in a systemic way that Is very difficult, you know to achieve and especially without that larger support So I have a question back to you back to everybody is why aren't those discussions happening? And what is our role in convening or stimulating or rising up and occupying that conversation? I think yeah, I think part of it is that I mean first of all we had panic Then we had oh man. We have a plan And now we're in oh man We don't have a plan because it won't work back to panic and when that happens human beings don't necessarily react well Uh, and we're seeing this all over society. This is not confined to higher ed or even k-12 But um, I think that's what's going on. I don't think anybody's stopping long enough to have those conversations And anytime you try to slow down the mad train and say hey guys Why don't we think about this before we go rushing madly off a cliff? We don't have time for that. We got 500 million things that we have to get done We got to put a plexiglass shield. We got to put in video conferencing equipment. We got to wire this. We got to do that and I'm like I don't even know if we're going to use these rooms. What the heck, you know, so yeah, I don't know it's it's it's frustrating because uh, you know, I've I've developed a number of things from the ground up and nobody's listening to them so With the task before the technology we're building lots of technology Say that Well, we're we're listening to you tom, and I'm glad that you're here to to come in. Thank you so I'm gonna Yeah, I just want to I'm going to put a link in the chat. There's um One of the tools for diagnosing and then being able to talk about what's going on is come from the Complexity science and it's called the eco cycle and what it allows us is to see those certainties and uncertainties another one is called critical uncertainties and um I don't know why my links keep on coming up all funky. Sorry But I I I think What I've noticed is when we can parse out some of those issues visually Then people step back and they're more willing to have the conversation if we just do them verbally everybody's preparing their response So I think this also goes to a teaching and learning thing is When we mix our modalities a little bit We slow down that I've got to get ready to prepare for my smart response or the teacher's going to call on me and I And I'm no longer listening and I think we have a lot of no longer listening going on At all levels of this system So I keep on looking at what are things that can frame a shorter quicker conversation But that bring us a way to sense make it and a visual seems to be an important part of it It really can be um First tom, thank you for the um for the really brave big picture question Especially knowing your experience and that's a what a great answer hitting just so many different pieces of this at once um I'm we have a whole stack of questions I want to get a couple of them in before we completely run out of time And this is from someone else whose name I'm going to try desperately to pronounce correctly uh Liza Debevich who asks um, I'd like to know creative ways to make a meeting less wb like Including tips on how to politely digitally interrupt someone usually senior who is talking without end Are we talking world bank? It's a hypothetical it's a hypothetical The most effective strategy that I have is breaking people into small groups and this pattern works face to face It works online. So instead of starting a meeting with your student I'm going to tell you what we're going to do is like I'd like to turn to you Eternal partner and say if this meeting were to be an absolute failure, what would what would your role be in that failure? Or What do you want out of the next 45 minutes? What do you bring to make sure that happens now turn to the person on the other side? So we do this in breakout rooms and you can go first think it about it alone Then put them in pairs then you can put them in fours you can build without but you're interrupting immediately the individual Either tune out or dominate. I mean those are the two strong responses in a meeting tune out or dominate um This also starts changing the dynamic about who dominates the conversation whether it's a power structure gender structure racial structure When you put people in small groups and you don't have to give them a lot of time In fact sometimes the time constraints Annoyed people initially, but then it helps and think okay We're really focusing on answering a particular question and their idea though is that the most important part of this design is What is the question you're inviting them to consider? And if you spend time on designing the right invitation Your chances of success go way up if you just toss off some sort of like why did you ask me that question? You're going to go downhill really fast. So the skill of designing good invitations And I think it supplies to meetings that applies to classrooms If there's one skill that I know that I constantly have to improve that's the skill And and frankly the only way I improve it is to share my questions with someone else and say like Nancy that makes no sense Here's a better idea. I can't do it by myself So I design with other people I'm much better But many people I have colleagues who can design brilliant questions But this interrupts that power dynamic Interruption is another thing. That's a different thing and I do a lot of kind of I I just get goofy, but I'm often an external facilitator. So I have permission to act outside of the boundaries. Yes Okay, so when you're within the power structure, I think there's some prep to be done So when I'm coaching leaders who are dominating or interruptive or who talk too much I'll go into the meeting and say, okay Um What's your plan in terms of how much you're going to participate and how you're going to participate? Get them aware of their patterns and then I say me I have a code that I can share with you if you're not living up to what you just said So I'm going in as a coach. I can send them a private note In the tool if that's possible or if they're not doing it I'm going to call them on it because they've given me permission to call them on it So I think there is this behind the scenes work that has to be done particularly with leaders And people in power that doesn't apply to a one-time meeting But these these are ongoing meetings. It's worth the investment if it's a one-time meeting Um, say, oh, that's a great question. Let's take that to break out. And so you've interrupted with process Perfect. No, does it work? Yeah Well, if it works, it works. This is crucial Liza, thank you for that great question. And I'm sure everybody everybody around the This digital campfire not in the thought. Yes, we can think of people like that We get to give examples like that Small groups are just a fantastic fantastic tool We are Just a minute Three minutes before the end of the hour are nancy, which is crazy. How quickly this is rocketed through Let me ask you a question because I don't think this has come up yet This is a quick. This is a forum of the future of education I'm wondering If you could look forward a little bit What are some of the changes and we should anticipate in this whole webinar video conference world? Maybe not in terms of technology, but in terms of practice Well, this is a really hard question to answer because I I think again If we can't get clear on intentions of why we're doing this we can't imagine a better future So I think probably the most productive thing we can do is to spend more time about but with purpose and intention Rather than barreling along inventing Invention is important, but I think we have this fetish about innovation That blows past purpose. It blows past the intention of what outcome we want And if we blow past purpose, we don't know how to set up indicators to give us signals Whether we're getting the outcome we want or not and then we just blow on to the next thing So if we could get a little more reflective and a little more intentional, I actually think we could make progress much faster They know to go back to Tom's kind of that rocketing between action and panic A little slowdown in the middle may serve us enormously And if we can build that muscle and I think it is a muscle It's a muscle that is exhibited through practice We could get further The other thing is as I think we need to have more cost disciplinary Conversations about the purpose and the outcome so that we're designing with not designing for so this whole thing In my school district about the district hiring a consultant and not talking to the teachers and god knows I don't know What's true anymore What I read on facebook what I hear from a press release. I can't trust any of it and that's a problem But I think we have lots of insights That just don't get connected so Um, I don't know if you follow the work of Jerry mckalski, but he's trying to think about what's the open global mind Around any particular challenge that the world is facing and clearly education is one of those areas where that cross pollination Could be incredibly empowering Um, and that's a pretty meta answer. It's not an individual practice answer, but it does go back to like what am I going to do I'm going to keep experimenting um Trying to lovingly provoke and engage rather than complain um, which is challenging and uh I think other people want to do that but if they feel they're alone in that they won't take the steps So those of you who show up here today are people who take steps, right? So if you show up and publicly show your commitment towards experimentation We can change the future quicker than if we're all just sitting there complaining Or feeling isolated alone and unsupported, but when we're together we can do more and I know that sounds so so be preachy But I can't see any other way Brian And all of you have shown up here And so Nancy you've lovingly engaged. You've lovingly provoked You've lovingly reflected and invented. Thank you so much. Um, it's it's just been an absolute treat to host you You've been terrific. What um Even with cats loving the zoom cat shows up. I was waiting for the zoom cat I know I know he hasn't played a role for a bit. He's been sleeping What's the what's the best way for people to keep up with you? Is it on twitter? Or is it for a blog or where? Um, well on my website theoretically I'm blogging. I've got like 222 drafts I've been too busy to actually communicate outward beyond my community of practice But the the liberating structures of community of practice on back and I can share that information Is probably the most direct way right now because that's what I'm focusing my attention on is this, you know, kind of iterating process forward Um, I'm at Nancy white on twitter, but I I have really stopped doing a lot of tweeting particularly during the black lives matter Um reemergence because I felt like another white voice wasn't necessary. So I I've really pulled way back on that I owe my blog my reflective writings because that's where I I practice and learn out loud with my network but um, it just there's between kids and Way more work than I can do. I I've been a slacker. So I apologize for that Well, you've been doing tremendous amount of work. Thank you. Thank you again and Um, we're the end of the hour. So I have to show everybody what we're doing next But I did want to thank you again But don't go away friends. Don't go away because we have to talk about what's happening next Not only am I being sad upon by a big cat, um, but we have topics coming up. So, uh We at once a week the forum continues to explore where higher education is headed So we have in the weeks ahead Subjects including academic women of color how to implement a high flex teaching the work life balance Redesigning liberal education the dark matter of accrediting agencies and what they do If you'd like to sign up for these or just learn more about them go to tiny url.com slash forum fall 2020 If you'd like to keep talking about these issues like how to interrupt people will how to use small groups How to invent and how to reflect without going too crazy with innovation We have all these different places for you to do that including twitter use the hashtag fte If you'd like to go back into the past and look at some of our previous forum sessions We have a whole archive with almost 220 videos. Just go to tinyurl.com slash FTF archive This recording should be up within a day In the meantime, thank you all for your great questions your great thoughts through diligent work We can't do this without you. You're amazing Please stay safe everyone and we'll see you next time online. Take care Bye. Bye