 It's the top of the hour, so let's begin. Let me welcome everybody. Let me welcome you to the Future Trends Forum. My name is Brian Alexander. I'm the Forum's creator, host, and chief cat herder. And I'm really glad to see all of you here today to talk about an important subject with some great guests and with an awful lot of fantastic participants. We are in an extraordinary situation right now. For the past four and a half years or so, the Future Trends Forum has explored every major trend, every major force, every major story, reshaping higher education. And now we're living through the biggest, one of the biggest historical events of our time, the pandemic. Now, as you can see from this slide, which is a screen capture from the Johns Hopkins University dashboard, the pandemic continues to spread throughout the world. The number of infections approaches three million, the number of deaths approaching 200,000. How this impacts higher education is something that we've been studying very, very closely and discussing for the past month in the Future Trends Forum. We've approached it from different angles. We've hit at it from different points of view. We've really grown our reach and we've expanded what we cover because this is that powerful an emergency. It is that powerful a force hitting higher education. If you'd like to find some more resources, just go to tinyyearall.com.covidedu. And I have a few links there that you might be able to use. Today, we're gonna approach this from an unusual point of view. I think we're gonna approach it from a point of view that I haven't seen discussed nearly enough. What we're gonna do is we're gonna talk about what does it mean to think about higher education in terms of equity in this pandemic crisis? What does it mean to think about questions of fairness and balance, questions of social justice? As the COVID-19 virus sweeps across societies, it has uneven impact on different populations. That includes us in higher education. So to begin talking about this, I'd like to join, have joined us on stage, a wonderful reporter from inside higher education, Madeline St. Lamour. Madeline is a reporter who has been covering absolutely every aspect, I think, of higher education and COVID-19. If you haven't had a chance to read her work, it's just extraordinary. I mean, she's like a one-person Reuters or Google News. If you're not reading her, you're not keeping up. But in the meantime, let me ask you, Madeline, how are you keeping up? How are you doing? I'm doing pretty well, all things considered. Good. Pretty lucky compared to a lot of people. That's quite true. That's quite true. Now, where are you today? I'm in Washington, D.C. Excellent, not too far away, not too far away. So it just has an introductory question. I already told people that you're a reporter inside higher ed, or you told them that you're just reporting the heck out of COVID-19. How do you do it? How do you manage to cover such a vast and complicated story? What's your story? Well, I think what I've been doing mostly is I developed a new format called the Roundup that we've been doing every day, and that's been a good way to get people kind of every bite of news that they need to make it through their day without having to read, you know, the hundreds of stories that are coming out every hour, almost. So I've been doing a lot of reading, a lot of that, reaching out to people for stories that I think are important, or that inside higher ed thinks is important, like the story I did that's out today on how stimulus funding, how community colleges and regional publics kind of got the short end of the stick with some stimulus funding because of how the formulas organize, like what parts the formula uses. So yeah, just kind of trying to keep up and my beat is non-traditional students and community colleges. So it makes it very easy to cover issues of equity and things like that. So trying to focus on those pieces of the pie right now. Good, good. You must have a network of informers and informants all over the U.S. I mean, I have a lot of people emailing me, definitely, especially since all this happened. And I have kind of the usual suspects I reach out to when I used to live in Colorado and I used to live in Maine. So I have a lot of stuff on my news feed that's kind of varied from different parts of the country, so that helps too. I understand, I understand. Well, let me just, before we bring up our next guest to join you, if I could just ask from the very, very big picture point of view, how are American colleges and universities handling COVID-19 in terms of equity? I mean, you mentioned just now the stimulus funding. But in terms of our own administrations or on strategies, how are we addressing inequalities among students, faculty, and staff? I think it's varied from sector to sector, from private institutions to public, that sort of thing. And it's also varied in different parts of the country. And it kind of just shows you how equity is in a one size fits all problem. So some places are doing past fail grading. Some places are, you know, they have to focus on getting the laptops and the internet to students. It was very interesting. I did an interview that's gonna be included in the Q&A in our Monday's edition of the roundup with Carrie Billy from AIHEC, the American Indian Higher Education Commission, I think. And she was saying some of their schools because they, you know, a lot of native people don't have access to internet. They're just as in a tower. So a lot of schools are sending them home with packages, with packs that they have to fill out and then they bring them back to the library and drop them off. So it's, you know, very, very depending on what type of student you're trying to help, how much help they need, and, you know, what kind of institution you are. So by packs, when you said packs, I initially thought that you were referring to a backpack full of gear. Blackhawk, but you actually mean a course pack or a workbook. Yeah, because they, I mean, a lot of these institutions don't have enough laptops to give out to everyone, but also there's some places of the country that just don't have towers, so they can't even set up internet for them. So they're sending them home with, like, you know, paper assignments to fill out and bring back, kind of like you would get over spring break when you were in high school. Or it was an elementary school, if I wanna just add something to this. So that is one way, that is one response. And, you know, friends, I was about to recommend and say to everybody that this is all about questions. I will have tons of questions for our guests, but this is really about you. We'd love to hear your questions and thoughts. And before I could even say that, Rosemary Ren went off and just put this on a question or observation online. I wanna flash that on screen so you can all can see it. And this is Rosemary's at CSU Fresno and Cuesta College. And she says that she has, whoops, excuse me, sorry about that, pressed the wrong button, I got too excited. This is an excellent webinar resources on this topic from QUSCEU events and corallearning.org slash webinars. Rosemary, that's terrific. Thank you very much. We'll have to make a point of sharing that out via Twitter as well as by email. Good for you for doing that. Now, while we're thinking about this a little further, and I'm so glad that you mentioned the Native American populations, I want to as well bring up our other guest for today. This is the absolutely wonderful Michelle Bukansky-Brock who is one of the most interesting, effective and important people working in issues of community colleges and equity. She is someone who has, as far as I can tell, wears about, I think, 12 different hats, Michelle. Is that right? And today, I'm going to be a robot. Oh. Because my video is messed up. It's okay. I mean, robots can wear more hats. Your voice is fine and we can see you smiling and it's great. Michelle, if I could, what are you going to be working on for the next two months? I'm asking, this is how one of the ways I like to get people to introduce themselves. What are the main things you're going to be spending the most amount of time on over the next two months? That is such a great question, Brian, because my role and everyone's roles who are kind of, I support faculty at the state level with professional development and not just all faculty, but specifically faculty who teach online. And my role has been changing day by day. And so it's very hard to project what I'll be doing next week. There's so much shifting happening in our, I work for the California Community College System and we're such an immense system that funds are being shifted around. There's just, there's so much evolving. But what I have my eye on through the lens that I look at this system as AR students, and I was really happy to see Rosemary share that webinar because I attended that webinar by doctors Luke Wood and Frank Harris. It's absolutely phenomenal and thinking about how we are approaching teaching at a distance in a way that really supports the stress and trauma that a lot of our students are going through. So I think that's definitely gonna be a focus. But the second thing is in community colleges and I'll generalize outside of California making the assumption that it's across the board. There's such a funding gap. And if you look at the way that online education, online teaching and learning has been supported in community colleges, it's been incredibly inadequate, the amount of support. So you can pick a large community college that serves 30,000 students and you'll be lucky to see if that community college has a single instructional designer or a single person dedicated to supporting the creation of accessible content for our students. And so that's a real problem right now. And while I'm hopeful that there'll be investments into changing that, what we're looking at are messages about hiring freezes. And if there's gonna be a hiring freeze then you can't hire more people. And so then you've got this infrastructure that was inadequate to start and now we're having to prepare even more faculty than ever to teach online. So those are some of the big problems. Those are huge problems. And I have questions based on this but I'd like to give our participants a chance to ask more. I say participants, people like to use the word audience but I think in many ways what we've got is the population formerly known as the audience. And so I'd like to bring Tom Hames up to the stage. He's in the Houston area. Hi, Tom. Hello everyone. Hi, Tom. Hi. Good to see you again. Good to see you. So my question was this. One of the things that I have been working on even before our current crisis is that it's pretty clear to me or it's pretty clear to a lot of studies that there's a greater differentiation between good learners and people who have less developed learning skills when it comes to outcomes in distance ed than in in-person classes. That divide, I don't wanna say digital divide but I wanna say that divide between those who are self-directed, effective self-starters versus those who are struggling with what does it mean to be a college student, which I deal with a lot again, like you, I teach at a community college. So we're now engaging in a massive experiment of throwing all of these less developed learners online. One of the things I was working on is making a heavier use of hybrid. In other words, figuring out exactly where those targeted interventions happen in a hybrid kind of situation where you need that face-to-face contact. Obviously that's not necessarily an option although I think going forward some ideas about small things like that. But I'm curious to hear what you guys think in terms of whether this reality is going to increase that equity divide regardless of how good the teachers are. And that's a separate issue. So that's my question. It's a great question, Tom. Can I take that one? Absolutely. So the first thing, this is kind of right in my wheelhouse. So it's important to, first of all, start with these equity gaps that you're referring to and race and ethnicity are the big drivers here. So let's put that out there and be sure that we understand that these differences, these gaps exist face-to-face and you're right, they are exacerbated when students learn online. And I would really push back on taking teaching out of the equation because if we're truly... No, no, no, I'm not saying you should do that. If we're focused on equity, what equity is to me is it's being sure that students have what they need to succeed. And we know that emotion is part of learning. There's an effective component of learning and there's a cognitive component. And we're talking about a human being coming into a learning environment with the mindset that I can't do this, I'm not good enough, I don't belong here. Then what that means is that we need to create a different environment to ensure that more of those students succeed. So culturally responsive teaching and learning has a concept called dependent learners and more community college students do enter as dependent learners. They honestly, they haven't had the opportunities to develop cognitively in their educational experience for that point. And that's why the student-to-instructor relationship is so important. And it's not about bringing down rigor, it's not about changing outcomes, it's about creating that relationship and ensuring that students know someone is there who's gonna support them and who believes in them and who's gonna push them to do what they think they can't do. So yeah, for me, I look at the environment instead of thinking that I think our environment has to change and shift. And I'm a big believer that if we make a commitment to supporting that type of online teaching that we will see those gaps improve. Yeah, I agree 100%. My question is more, we had the alternative to meet with people in person, to give that, there's something about an emotional connection you have with somebody sitting in a room versus no offense what we're doing right now. Since Michelle and I, we've had conversations and so our connection is a little different than somebody who I've never actually sat in a room with before, for instance, because I already know you a little bit, right? So, how do you maintain that level of emotional connection to the students who need it the most? Do we, I wonder if we get to Madeleine, if you've seen any cases of this, if you've seen any programs or any pedagogies implemented by any college universities that are really trying to do that kind of connection. I know that one big thing, a lot of community colleges and colleges that serve populations that are more likely to not do as well online are doing, like the tribal colleges, for instance, a lot of faculty are just calling each of their students one by one to make sure that they have everything to check and say, you know, you aren't showing up to webinars or whatever, how are you, do you need a laptop? Do you have good internet? Like what are the issues? And a lot of other institutions, professors are doing that too and kind of realizing like, oh, my students have a lot to deal with. And I think also maybe part of that creating an emotional connection also comes from professors being honest about what they're going through. I talked with a professor recently who gets migraines a lot and gets incapacitated by them sometimes and they've been bad because of the stress. And she was saying, you know, she just told her students that and they weren't mad that she couldn't hold office hours that day. They were understanding and I think it kind of makes them realize we're all in this together to some extent at least and that, you know, they'll be flexible with you and you have to be flexible with them and it'll all work out if you work together. I've individually met with about 90% of my students over the last couple of weeks as a result of this. And some ways I'm being able to make more of a connection with them than I would if they were just sort of wandering in and out of my classroom and then disappearing. So I mean, there are ways around it. I'm just, yeah. Well, that's a lot of work. It's a lot of hand-holding. It is a lot of work, Tom. And I think that meeting face to face is wonderful. I think it's wonderful. I also don't think it's, it also puts up barriers, equity. It can put up barriers for some students. So if we have that expectation, there are students who particularly in this environment simply won't be able to get to a place at a certain time. So if we're truly talking about equity, equity is about removing barriers. So that can be part of our solution but this other piece about fostering relationships at a distance and how to do that is really, really important. And I put a link to an article in, I think I did it right, Brian. This is my first time in Shending participating, but I put a link to an article, it's a preprint article that I wrote with a couple of colleagues and it digs into this notion of humanized instruction. We're also working on a grant for humanizing online STEM courses and looking at how these practices improve equity gaps. We're afraid of humanizing. That's so powerful to think about. And thank you for sharing the preprint, by the way. That's a really good way to make the preprint system work. Tom, thank you so much. Again, I really respect your commitment both to your students that you're teaching as well as to the overall ecosystem of higher education. Thank you. We have more questions coming up and including Rosemary Wren, who gave us some links before. She wants to join us on stage. So let's welcome Rosemary. Hello. Good morning, Rosemary Wren. Good to see you all. And I'm really excited to be able to be part of this. And learn from you all because this is literally the focus of my work. I'm a doctoral student through CSU Fresno's EDD program and it's a fully online program. So I've been learning online for the last few years and I have to say when it's designed well, it's a really, you can build relationships with folks online. And I really like what both of you are having to say about how to really draw our students and looking for student-centered pedagogy, but through the internet is a little trickier than when you're in person. And so my question's directed really for Michelle because I work at Cuesta College down here in San Luis Obispo. And I have been, I'm concerned about the courses that I've converted online for this spring are certainly not the ultimate in online, good online pedagogy. And so specifically in California, and I imagine it might be similar in other states, what support will there be for people like me who are motivated to get good curriculum online, but still we have one instructional designer at Cuesta College with a population of 13,000 students. So needless to say, she's been kind of busy, but is the system looking at ways to support us as faculty so that we can get up to par? Because I know my work is not up to par yet and I want it to be the best it can be for my students in the fall. And actually I have a summer course I have to build too. So glad you're here. I'm so glad you asked that question. And your instructional designer is Cynthia Wills who's in range. She's the same. Yeah. So ask Cynthia about at the state level, I'm not sure if you're familiar with CVC, OEI, and that one, those acronyms. I'm partway to my DE certification, so I'm learning about that. So there are decisions being made now that I don't know what those decisions are going to be, but there's a day of advocacy yesterday in our system that was really trying to promote the need to support the unique needs of our colleges in this environment and coming out of this environment. So there should be shifts in budget changes coming out soon and I'm hopeful. I mean, I'm not the one who can answer that question, but I'm hopeful that we're gonna see an increased allotment to support faculty through online professional development through the programs that we have established at the state level with the initiative that's known as CVC, OEI, and that one, which I know sounds like a mouthful to people outside of our system, but it's a long acronym, so yeah. Michelle, when you say your budget, do you mean California state allocations or do you mean the CSU systems or given CSU? So I'm actually referring to the California Community College system, the CCC system, yeah. In California, we've got three systems of public higher education, the CCC or California Community Colleges, the CSUs or Cal State Universities and the UCs or University of California. So our California Community College system, that's the budget that I'm referring to and that's up at the chancellor's office is where all of those conversations are being held right now, so. Well, thank you for that answer. And Rosemary, thank you both for that great question as well as for your vitally important work. Good luck with this. Can I give one more suggestion? Rosemary, it looks like you're on Twitter because I think that was a tweet that you shared before, but I learned so much on Twitter and I stand in awe at the amazing people that have been sharing ideas and resources and strategies. So Rosemary, everybody, maybe in the chat you can share a favorite hashtag that you found through this process. Keep teaching as it has been a hashtag that I've been following and so many great resources and teaching strategies have been shared. We're seeing colleges just openly sharing their resources to support faculty, so there's so much out there. Yeah, it's tricky because actually I'm not much on Twitter. I'm still behind the times there, but Dr. Jayle Wood and Frank Harris, their seminars and webinars are phenomenal and then there's the one that starts today through USC. So yeah, thank you so much for the work you're all doing in this area because our students desperately need it. Thank you. Michelle, thank you again. Michelle, if you could either DM me or email me that link. The way the Shindig chat environment works is that often segments people into chat rooms of about 20 or so people at a time. So not everyone will get a chance to see the link. I see, thanks for explaining that. Oh, it's okay. If you can send it to me, then I can tweet it out and then I can also send this, I can attach it to the YouTube recording of this one, which I should be doing tonight. As you can see friends, it's really easy to join us on stage. There's tons of people who would like to ask questions. Please feel free to. Even as I say that, we have another person who wants to join us, Tiffany from OSS. Hello, Tiffany. We need your mic and camera on, and you might be having a technical issue on that. Tiffany, if you can't get on, just type in a question and I'll read out loud. While Tiffany's working on that, let me flash up some of the questions that have come up. And actually here's a comment from Gerald Petruzzella at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. I'd offer that one of the many ways instructional designers can support faculty, it's by helping them use the affordances of online presence to communicate that human connection. Thank you, Gerald. That's a supporting some of the comments we've had so far. And now we have another one from Robert McGuire. And Robert asks, speaking of support, I'm interested in how student affairs participates in the lives of online students. Normally, quote unquote, and going forward. Good question, Robert. So in the California Community College system, we do have a series of student support services that are offered online to, right now they're offered online to all of our colleges paid for at the state level. And that includes an online tutoring platform and it also includes an online counseling platform. So there's a lot of opportunity or there's a lot of effort in that space. And that's something that the California Community College system has been working on for many years through CVC-OEI to really be sure that we're not just focused on things like course design and teaching, but we're also very focused on supporting students who learn online. So that support as well as the instruction, making sure that students have access to all of that from an online environment is really important. Just very quickly before I wanna ask Madeline to join in on this, Tiffany's question was, is this recorded? Yes, every one of our sessions is recorded and goes up on YouTube. And we have a whole archive of this. So going back five years now. So if you'd like to consult the archive please feel free to, it's on our web page, link from our web page, link from my own YouTube channel. And that's also in every email that goes out and we'll have to link to it in the final slide of the program. So thank you, Tiffany for raising that. Madeline, did you want to add some more to this? I mean, again, giving your perspective and checking so much of higher education, where's this president's life playing out in the online world? Yeah, I think we're seeing a lot of institutions if they didn't have some kind of student support services online already moving them to online, like with counseling and academic advising and things like that. I think there's some places that are trying to do like sort of community events online but there's also a lot being canceled, which is hard. One thing that has been an issue, some states, it's hard if there's students who go to school in one state and then go home to another state to get counseling in some cases because the counselors aren't, there's some states that don't let you get virtual counseling from someone who's licensed in another state and not their state. So it's been an issue that I know some colleges have been facing and something, you know, as people talk about getting doctors nationally certified because of all this and nurses nationally certified, they're also talking about getting, you know, finding a way for counselors to have that same flexibility too because this is not a time obviously for students to be losing their counselors that they've had. Wow, that'd be an interesting second order effect of the pandemic would be to shift, you know, certification systems and licensing for counselors to make that natural, that'd be a huge step. Yeah, it's been an area of discussion for several industries, I think because it's been so difficult as people need to cross state lines to help those who are most in need right now. So thank you, that's a really, really important feature of this. Thank you, Madeline. And thank you, Michelle. It's just so fascinating to see us take what we had in February, 2020, how much all of our practices about teaching online, then rapidly inflate them to cover all of higher ed. We have more questions that are coming in and let me bring up one from Vasudeva. Oh, sorry, Vasudeva, he asks, how does science and engineering educators manage to run their labs online and keep up their learning outcomes? Thank you. Do you wanna take that one, Madeline? I think they haven't found a perfect answer to this yet. I know I've dealt more with like technical colleges and how they're figuring out like boat building classes and stuff like that, for instance, and it's all kind of, you know, a video-based teaching theory for right now and trying to figure out what to do later. I know there's some institutions that are still doing some labs that are like small and just making sure that people are spread out enough. I don't know, I think that's kind of a thing we're moving forward. Each institution's gonna have to decide what it has to do or needs to do to be safe while also being effective still and, you know, it might delay some people's ability to get their degree, which sucks, but also it's a pandemic. So it's kind of like there's no perfect solution to that problem, I think. What about, please go ahead, sorry. Oh, sorry, I was just gonna say online labs are science labs are, yeah, they're a real challenge with through my system as well. And I think part of, you know, the problem is that we often wanna look to like a resource as the solution, like, oh, just use these simulations, but we all know that curriculum is more varied and we haven't found a solution that fits the needs of all courses. I'm a big believer in starting at the grassroots level. And I think we should be putting more focus into getting faculty together to talk about this and to share what they're doing to find the folks who have found solutions and foster some type of community of sharing around that. And that's what I'd like to see more of moving forward. And then the other issue in the context of equity is access to virtual simulation platforms because a lot of times they don't operate on phones. And we haven't talked about phones, but a lot of our students, that's their lifeline right now. That's their connection point. And so being sure that what we provide, the learning environments are mobile friendly is gonna be really important moving forward. And I'd love to hear any thoughts from anyone who has examples of programs on their college, on their campus or in their system that is really putting an emphasis on that right now and helping faculty to understand what that means. We teach with Canvas in our system and Canvas has a great mobile app, but it works differently than an online classroom on a computer. So when you're designing on a computer and you're giving instructions to your students and they're on a phone, they're gonna, the instructions sometimes don't work and there's some features that just don't work on mobile. So if anyone has any tips or resources they'd like to share around that, I personally would love to see them. Well, I do wanna chime in on that very, very important point. First one answer would be Abilene Christian University did a lot of groundbreaking work on having a mobile first college digital infrastructure. They did a lot of really, I mean, they did crazy stuff like they built a tower on campus for extra bandwidth and all kinds of stuff. And so I just recommend reaching out to them, but this is hugely important. Pew Internet and American Life Studies show that across the US for years and years, if you are poorer or if you are black or Latino, you are much more likely to spend more time on phones and to use them for more functions than if you're any other race or if you're any other economic stratum. I think this is so vital, a mobile, I would love to see a mobile first strategy come out of this pandemic. And if anyone, please, if anybody has any examples they'd like to share, please feel free to either click the raised hand button or join us via testing through the question mark. While people are thinking about that or they're being very quiet because they're nowhere near where they should be on this, let me float another question that's coming from my dear friend, Mark Rush. He's a professor of politics and law at Washington Lee University, an expert in international education. And Mark asks, our discussion is focused on the negative impacts of equity of going online. Are there no reports of positive impacts? Are some nontraditional learners more comfortable online? I'm wondering, Madeline, do you wanna take a whack at that first? Well, I think, I don't know if it's necessarily the case right now given everything, but I know in general, we talk about equity not being great with online learning versus face to face, but nontraditional learners, typically online learning is just easier for them if it's a secretness, because especially because it cuts out community time, it means that they can do it on their own time. So if they have a few jobs, if they have childcare, that sort of thing, it helps with that. So I think there are some upsides to using online learning, especially asynchronous online learning, but it's just kind of trying to figure out the special formula to make sure that those students stick with it and don't stop out for whatever reason. It's so trying to figure out how to get the face to face effects, but in online, I think would be a really great thing to come out of this because it's definitely, it's one of those things that's needed if we're gonna educate all those people who have some credit, but no degree or adults who need to be re-skilled, that sort of thing. Yeah, you said that, I think you said that really great, Madeline. Yeah, I mean, thank you. OLC, which came out of Sloan Sea, their early beginnings evolved out of a grant to increase access to higher education for underserved students. So online courses do increase access to higher education for underserved students, and that is why it's so important, and that is why this, it's even more important now, right? But like we've said, access doesn't equal success. It's the keeping all of our students, more of our students retained in understanding how to do that. One of the theories that we've been looking to that's part of humanizing is Laura Rendon's validation theory, which emerged first in the 1990s and talking about face-to-face practices, but that research, it was qualitative research based on interviews with low income students who had succeeded in college, and they interviewed these students and asked them, what was it? What was your turning point that helped you really believe you could do this? And the data strongly pointed back to interactions with faculty who, for example, something as simple as knowing someone's name, something as simple as, having, including them in it, like a learning plan, like giving them some kind of choice. So creating an environment that allowed them to see that they could be successful. And so, again, it's that rapport and that connection between the instructor and the student, and there's research that shows online community college students are more likely to feel like they have to teach themselves in a face-to-face course. So that strong connection, that relationship isn't there most of the time online. And so that really has to be stressed. When we look at what works face-to-face, a lot of the times we do have to cultivate that online. And I say that with like a voice in the back of my head, because I'm usually the one who says, let's not compare face-to-face online, because when we do that, we miss a lot of beauty and wonder and creativity that online courses offer that you can't do in a classroom. But when it comes to that relationship, I think that that's something we have to look at those best practices face-to-face and make them happen online. I really appreciate that. That's really well said, and I appreciate your humility in this. One thing to add, the Center for Inquiry at Wabash College has done several studies on student engagement, and they back you up, saying again and again, it's that relationship between the student and the instructor. We have another question. This time someone wants to join us on stage, Tiana Hong Shi from Oregon State. Instructional designer there. How are you doing? I'm doing good. Someone asked, I think it's Michelle mentioned about mobile design. We, too, a few years back, we hired a user experience designer to join our team and to help us design Kevin's course template that will just be responsive to whatever screen students are using. We do not just design a mobile version. We design the courses so that it will work on a normal computer screen, but if student login on a cell phone, then we use the code in Canvas to make the web page of the Canvas pages responsive. Your screen size will automatically adjust. And there's a few things. The Canvas app on the phone, it's kind of clunky. They don't link well when you go from module to module. So there's several things we did is at the course homepage, we created a button that can link to each module easily. So when the students land on the course homepage, they can click on one, two, three, four to go to the each weeks or each module's content directly instead of going back to the phone and then try to find out which module they're going to. On the computer, it's so screened, so easy, but on the phone, it's really not well designed that the Canvas app to help students move from one place to another. So we created several, just very easy picture icons that link to the modules that the student can just click and then link them, take them to the modules. That's one thing. And at the module level, at the end of the module, we add a page that says week one conclusion. And then we specifically added, this is the end of week one. If you finish everything, go to week two and then we link it. It seems redundant on Canvas if you use on computer, but for itself from users, that's super helpful. You're just helping students save a lot of time, time to move around and then they click on that, they can easily go to the next page or next module. And another thing is just to make sure your pages are not super long and we use the responsive coding design so that it automatically adjusts. I think that Canvas does that automatically with the code but just when we put content there, if it's too much, then try to break them into two or several pages instead of stacking everything into one page. So that's a few things we did in our course template when thinking about making the course content more mobile friendly while you don't have to have a specific mobile version. Wow, that is the voice of experience of someone who's just helped move entire universities, entire curriculum online. Thank you so much, Jung Hong. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. I wrote down your name, you might be hearing from me. Oh, I hope so. Michelle or Madeline, do you have anything to add to that or do you just want to, should we move on? Well, I actually do have a question that I'd love to ask. Do you find that, and I hope that this isn't too getting in the weeds, but I'm really curious to know, in the Canvas app, students don't go directly to the homepage, right? Because it opens in the modules, and so students have to actually click, there's like a button at the top to take them to the homepage. And so what I often wonder is, are they even going to the homepage? Because when you're confronted with modules, do they, like, how do we know that they're going there? That's like a question that I've wondered. I know Utah State University, their instructional technology or their faculty support center has done some wonderful things on Canvas data analytics. And last year or the previous years, they run in May or in the end of springtime. They run a data analytics camp, boot camp or conference type of thing. And they ask Canvas to provide them data. Canvas can actually, Canvas has this data, but it's just not automatically become available to institutions. You have to specifically request for this data, like where students first click when they log into Canvas. And I think from Utah State University's experience that data is available. But you need to request for that data and you need a data scientist to bring up the data. Yes, exactly. That's been our challenge. Yeah, thanks for sharing. That's fantastic. Thank you so much, Yungan. I really, that's, I just felt like we should have you on stage for a while. And thank you again for all of your work. This is an extraordinary month. And instructional designers have been heroic in what you've all done. Thank you. We have another question that has come in. Actually, we have another recommendation for a resource from the awesome Vanessa Vale. Vanessa says, for mobile learning, check out Inga Dovar, Moby Mook, sorry if I mispronounced the names, and ignore shit. And here's a link to Merging Mook. I'm gonna copy this and I'm gonna share this as well after a session. Vanessa, thank you very much for sharing that. Thank you. Again, mobile first. Well, we have it looking ahead. We have another question that's very forward-looking. And this is from Columbia University's Ophelia Mangan. And she asks, from your point of view, what is the general consensus in higher ed to put intellectual property aside and share resources freely within the university and among the ed tech community more broadly? I don't know if I know the general consensus, but I know a lot of people I've talked with have said they think this is a really great opportunity for universities and colleges to start working together and stop being so competitive. And I know a lot of people are sort of predicting, it's likely this recession is gonna result in mergers and things like that. And so it kind of, the first step will probably be places sharing resources, sharing services, that sort of thing. And I've seen a lot of people encouraging faculty at neighboring institutions to work with each other and talk with each other and figure out what they can share and who can help them with what. So I've seen a lot of encouragement toward that. I don't know how much it's been done so far, but I know a lot of people are thinking about that. Yeah, I agree with that. And I think that from my view in the community college system that I work in, we're not researchers. So when it comes to, there's a huge push for open educational resources, right? So doing away with textbooks and starting to teach with OER, which is great. It's a wonderful for students. I would really like to see more of a widespread shift to sharing teaching and learning resources. I think that would be phenomenal. There's a lot of people who are committed to that, but that's a bigger issue because I think a big part of that is even improving the understanding of what an open license, like a Creative Commons license is, because the faculty that I speak with, oftentimes they think that that means they're giving their copy right away. And so there's a lot of unpacking that has to happen there. And that all goes back to digital literacy, Brian, as you know. And so it's a complicated area. And I agree that I love that question because it's ridiculous to think about how much we are all recreating the wheel and recreating resources over and over again when we could tap someone else and just share them. So in our system, we do see a lot of sharing happening through the Canvas Commons, which has been fabulous. So we have seen colleges sharing whole Canvas courses designed to help support faculty learn to teach online through the Canvas Commons. The team that I'm a part of, we offer many of our online courses, professional development courses in the Canvas Commons. So yeah, hopefully we'll see more of that, but I don't think we do have a general consensus. I do agree with Madeline on that. It's a tough one. It's a tough one. And it's one, you know, here at the forum, we've been very pro-open for years and years and we would love to see more of this. We had a really wanted to follow up referencing an earlier point, I just want to share this. She advises us that Canvas data is available at the account level but not sorted to be able to push to the schools through sub-accounts until they're working on it. So Tian Hong, this may be of use to you as well. Well, on this note, you know, thinking about where higher education could go, what do you imagine colleges and universities could look like in terms of equity this time next year? So the year 2021, I mean, all kinds of things can happen. Absolutely, absolutely. But what are some of the ways this could fall out that you would really like to see? Yeah, those are two questions. What do we think's gonna happen and what would we like to see happen? I'm glad you called it up for that second one because I don't know what's gonna happen and I don't really feel good about making predictions but, you know, I really hope that this makes us recognize how important it is to be sure that we have faculty who are prepared to teach in not just the digital era but the internet era. I get concerns when there's such a lean on things like online proctoring when we move courses online and it's evidence that we haven't rethought how we're teaching yet. So it is my hope that this will be a wake-up call to really, really start preparing faculty to understand effective teaching and learning skills and making teaching a priority in higher education, which it just, it hasn't been. And so I guess that's what my hope is, is that we make that a priority and not just faculty but understanding that faculty need to be supported. They can't carry all of this on their own shoulders. Yeah, faculty being supported, that would be fantastic. Thank you, Michelle. Madeleine, what do, I mean, I know professionally, you can't necessarily tell us everything we'd like to see, bear out, but if you'd like to see, if you could tell us what you would like to see as far as you can, or what you think is likely is to happen, either way, we'd be glad to hear it. Well, I think I can talk about what I think there's an opportunity for right now. And I think it's a big, to phrase it that way, but I think there's a big, there's an opportunity to kind of change how everything's done. People are rethinking, do we need these admissions tests? Do we need to be requiring so much work of everyone? Can we be more, can we provide flexibility for grading and things like that? And these are the things that I've been talked about for a while, but I think it's kind of accelerating now and people are starting to realize like, oh, like these kids can't get to the admissions tests because if buses don't run, they can't get there and it's hard for them to get there, things like that. And I think it's also an opportunity to, it kind of will depend how the funding shakes out. If community colleges, tribal colleges, regional four years get what they need to support a possible enrollment uptick or just in general to try to help students get through the recession once the pandemic piece is over and help their students who are already in there stay in. They're gonna need a lot of support to help their faculty to provide emergency aid to their students. Like I said, there's some tribal nations where they don't even have a tower so they can't even put up, school can't even make a hotspot for them because there's no way to. So there's, it's a lot of inequities that are showing up in a lot of different spaces of American life. And I think this is a real opportunity to say, okay, here are ways that we could fix this or make things easier or actually start to make things equitable and help those who are most vulnerable get gains. On the flip side, we could go the totally opposite way and things could get worse than they are now. Which is not fun to talk about or think about, but if we don't provide enough laptops for students who don't have laptops, if we don't get them wifi hotspots, if we don't get them food or money or aren't flexible about how they have to do childcare now or help them when they lose their job and can't make rent, that sort of thing, then we'll just, I think probably just see a black slide. So it could sort of go either way at this point. I appreciate your candor and your willingness to look at difficult options. Just 30 seconds ago, we just got a question that actually touches directly on what you just said about it. From one particular point, this is from Dave Ron and Cleveland. So they've been providing some kind of laptop, a Chromebook to all students when they register through financial aid, but it hasn't got much traction. Perhaps that'll change now. We don't have time to dive further into that because it is the top of the hour. And somehow, my two splendid guests whose names begin with M, you have raced through an hour digging us on all kinds of topics, all kinds of pieces of this great puzzle. Thank you so much. It's just been really, really wonderful to hear from both of you. Before we leave, can I just quickly ask, what's the best way to keep up with you? First, Michelle? Oh, so my handle is Brokansky, B-R-O-C-A-N-S-K-Y and you'll find me at Brokansky on Twitter and brokansky.com on the web. Brokansky is a great portmanteau if you're under two last names, I love that. Thank you. And Madeline? I think there's a button for my Twitter. It's just at Madeline St. Amor without the period in my last name. And you can find my email address on insidehireheadmadeline.saintamor at insidehirehead.com and you can also go there and see what we're writing and check the roundup every day. Isn't the roundup like a little box on the main page now just today? There is a box for all our coronavirus-related news and it has the live update link at the top. It usually has a roundup in the mix of stories. It might get turned into a newsletter, I don't know, but right now it's still just an article on our site and you can find it in the little coronavirus box. Well, keep us posted. Thanks again to both of you. I look forward to hearing more from both of you, especially if you continue your important work. But don't go away, everybody. We've got to mention a couple of things about what's happening next week. So we have, first of all, not just next week, tomorrow, I'm going to be helping lead a session with a Chronicle of Higher Education on fixing high-res inequities in a time of crisis. This is gonna include focusing on contingent faculty, so non-tenured faculty, especially agents during the outbreak. That's tomorrow from two to 3 p.m. Next week here, next Thursday, we have some wonderful guests I'll tell you about by email. We're gonna continue looking at the impact of COVID-19 on higher education for a few different angles. Now, as a few of you have mentioned, these topics are vital importance, too. We'd like to keep discussing them. We have a lot of ways of doing it. It looks like Twitter is the most popular way, so just use the hashtag FTTE, but we also have groups on Slack, LinkedIn, Facebook. Now, if you wanna go back into the past, like Tiffany was asking, you wanna look at our previous sessions, including a recording of this one, just go to tinyworld.com slash FTF Archive. There's almost 200 videos there, plenty to look at. In the meantime, thank you all for your great questions and comments today. It's really been a privilege working with you all. Please be well, stay safe, and take care. We'll see you all online next time. Bye-bye.