 Well I have the top of the hour so let's begin. Let me welcome everyone. Welcome to the Future Trends Forum. I'm delighted to see you all here today. We have a terrific group of guests on a great topic and a lot to talk about. Let me take a step back. Ever since our beginning in 2016, the Future Trends Forum has examined how to improve teaching and learning and we've hit that from any number of angles and you can go back into our archive and see a whole bunch of sessions about that. But since 2020, for the past really two and a half years, two things have happened to change that conversation. First, there's been the COVID-19 pandemic and this has forced among other things higher education massively online for a time, but also brought instructional design and instructional designers to the forefront for the first time. And we have a lot of questions about how best to teach not just digitally but also in general. And the second thing, we've had a kind of recommitment to social justice and this has occurred on numerous axes including gender, including race, including disability, and that's what making educators rethink everything from tenure, permission, hiring and review the names of buildings and especially teaching and learning. So those two combined social justice and the pandemic have made us rethink and reimagine what does it mean to teach and learn in the 21st century. Now, this week's guests have worked on, written and edited two great new books. If you haven't seen them, just click on the bottom left of your screen. You'll see a button, the cleverly labeled the two books and this will bring you up to them. And to their credit, you can download those books in three different ways. You can actually have a print one sent to your home. You can download a Kindle version or you can click right on the web and read the entire thing for free, which is wonderful. Now, I have a whole bunch of questions, I have a whole bunch to say, but what I'd rather do instead of doing that is to bring these folks up on stage so that you can talk to them. And I'd like to start off by bringing the person I think is a lead cat herder for this whole event, a wonderful, wonderful thinker, instructional designer, and a terrific person, Martha Burtis. So let me hit a button and bring her up on stage. Hello, Martha. Hi, Brian. It's so good to see you. It's great to be here. Where are you today? I am in my office at the open learning and teaching collaborative at Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Fantastic. And is fall just starting to be felt there? It is. We actually are getting down into the 40s, I think, tonight or tomorrow night and I'm so excited. Well, the leaves must be turning already. That's starting. Oh, good time living in New Hampshire. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, wonderful. Enjoy. But listen, Martha, we have a tradition on the forum when we ask people to introduce themselves. We don't ask them to look at the past. We ask them to think about the future. So let me ask, what are you going to be working on for the next year or so? What are the big projects or tasks and what are the big ideas that are top of your mind? Great question. So here in the CoLab, as we call it, at PSU, I work with my colleagues, Robin DeRosa, Matthew Cheney, and Hannah Hounsell. And we've got a big new faculty development program that we launched this past spring that is in many ways premised on the idea of critical instructional design called Design Forward. We spent about a year sort of designing it, working with small groups here at PSU to really hone in on what we wanted it to be. Working on these volumes has been hugely beneficial to me as we've been putting together that program. So we're doing different modules, essentially every semester. We're going to start an intro to pedagogy one in about a week. And then we've got one in October, November on teaching online called Formats and Modalities. And here I'm going to show and one of my favorite pieces of it is this, which is backwards on your screen. It's kind of a workbook that we've put together of exercises and activities that go along with the critical instructional design approach that we're trying to really infuse into Design Forward. And I'm hoping this year to really get that workbook digitized and available for other people to use. Oh, excellent. Excellent. Well, I envy your faculty for this opportunity, and envy the students for the results. That's terrific. Well, welcome. Welcome. Let me bring on stage your colleagues and let's just go after these folks one by one and bring them all up. So let me bring up Andrew David King. Let's see where he is. All right. Good afternoon, sir. Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for having me. Or I should say good morning if you're on the West Coast. I am on the West Coast. Yeah. Good morning. Thank you for joining us. And are you on Berkeley's campus right now? I'm not. I am a little ways away where I live in the suburbs. Yes. Well, I would ask you weather questions, but there's a limit to my masochism. But I'm delighted that you can join us. Tell us, as you heard me just tell Martha, we would like to introduce in a forward-facing way. What are you going to be working on for the next year? What are the big topics and the big projects? Yeah. So I'm I'm in a moment of major life transition. I just began a doctoral program at Berkeley in English. My primary research interests are American poetry, the long 20th century studies. I have a background in philosophy to just completed a master's at Central European University working on an issue with the intersection of aesthetics and the philosophy of disability, which Jared has heard some things about because it was a reason why I was sort of waylaid. But anyway, so that's all that's all in the bag. So I'm trying to to reorient myself to think about my academic future. And at the same time, I've become involved in disability advocacy at UC Berkeley, which is something that I did at a couple of prior institutions, CEU, and then also UC Davis, where I was very briefly. So I'm currently the project director for some of the disabled students at UC Project, led by the Graduate Assembly at Berkeley. And I work with graduate students across departments to liaise and try to form partnerships and allyships to advocate for the needs of disabled students and sort of broadly construed. And it's a group of which I remember. So I'm trying to think about ways to to be effective in that role and then also to how to have that practical pursuit sort of live beside my academic aspirations. So a nice bit of practice there, very good. Well, that's terrific work, Andrew. And good luck and congratulations on this new graduate program for you. As an English PhD myself, I can only commiserate. But now, Andrew, let me put let me welcome you to the stage, but also we have two more folks. So let me bring up on the stage, Jess O'Reilly. And let's see if we've got Jess here drum roll please. Hello, Jess. Hello. So good to see you. So good to see you. Where are you today? I'm in Swakamok. So that is Anishinaabe Mohan Ojibwe for where the three roads meet. Also known as Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. So about four hours north of Toronto. Excellent. Excellent. So if I were to ask you about the weather, you probably say the leaves are turning and you're starting to look to the long winter ahead. Well, I was in the lake yesterday and it was almost freezing overnight. So yeah, it's happening. That's it. Well, you and Martha, you are in the North Country. You know about how this works. Jess, what are you working on for the next year? What are you looking forward to? So I'm looking forward to finally finishing my doctorate. I'm your sixth of a five year doctorate in distance education program through Athabasca University, which is an online university in Canada. So I've been working on my dissertation project for some time now and I'm working toward the final stages. I'm not quite in the final stage. That takes a bit of time and committee liaison, but I'm through data collection. I'm into the analysis and the write up piece. So I'm confident and hopeful that I'll be finishing that project up this. Let's call it this academic year. Very good. Keep going. Keep going. We're behind you and we want to see the result. Dissertation on educational technology is upper alley, so we'd love to see that. Good luck, Jess. Good luck and welcome. Welcome to the forum. Well, three is not enough. We have to have even more and so let me bring up the fourth member or esteemed crew and let me see if I can find him here. And here is the man with the best background item on the panel today. Hello, Rock and Roll Jared. Good to see you. I labored over which guitar to hang because you can't have one guitar. That's not nearly enough, so you have to have like eight. And so I spread them out today and was like, who gets to make that wall? Which one is this? And what is it? This is the Epiphone 399. If you've seen the big hollow bodies like the Gibson 335, this is the version for short people like me, so you don't feel like you're playing dad's guitar. Well, I'm glad to see you playing your guitar metaphorically and literally. Well, what are you going to be working on, Jared, for the next year? What's ahead for you? Yeah, I've got two big projects. The one most interesting to this audience is probably that I will be building my second acoustic guitar out of Osage Orange and Red Spruce. So I finished my first one this past January and I'm moving on to number two because, again, one's never enough. And the other one is in the Tour de Critical Instructional Design book. I've got a chapter on quality course rubrics and reviews and it is not flattering to those rubrics. So my next year I'm going to put my money where my mouth is and I'm designing and testing and piloting what I would consider a better way, a more effective way to do online course quality that focuses on faculty student connections, inclusion, and a little bit of course structure and really emphasizes the autonomy and the experience of the instructors. Well, I'm glad to see you building. Your chapter is ferocious and very thoughtful takedown. But then to show what we can do instead is terrific. Good luck and welcome, Jared. Welcome to all four of you. Here on the Featured Transform, this is a venue for group conversation. I want to kick things off by asking you a couple of just basic questions. And again for everybody, especially if you're just joining us, look in the bottom left of the screen for the button that says the two bucks and that'll take you to the two bucks directly. Which ever format you like. Let me ask just if each of you could reply to this question. What does humanitarian design for education look like now after two and a half years of COVID and social justice mobilization? What is some of the key themes that you want us to bear in mind is we all work in higher education. Now there's four of you so you're going to have to I'm fine. I'm happy to get us kicked off. I would, I like this question because it kind of helps me think a little bit about how I ended up where I am working on these volumes and in this conversation today because in January of I guess 2021 after you know we had all survived, well I should say, not everybody did. But as we had gotten through the first full semester of living with COVID among us, I kind of looked around and thought wow in my entire career working in you know educational technology, digital pedagogy, faculty development, instructional design, I've never witnessed so much activity and conversation and innovation around pedagogy, right? And it happened out of necessity but it still happened and it was exhausting and awful at times. But it was also sort of revelatory at times and I thought I wonder where this is going to go from here because there are a lot of different places it could go. And I was worried about A, the thread getting lost but I was also maybe even more worried about some of the trends that I was witnessing that I felt like were working against what I thought was most important in this moment which was focusing on people. So I really started talking at that point with friends and colleagues. It's why we kicked off the Design Forward program here at Plymouth State. It's why when Sean Michael Morris originally reached out to me and asked if I wanted to be a co-editor of this volume, I happily agreed and it also led to a couple of other pieces that Jesse Stomm on I wrote that spring and summer and now it's been hard to believe another year and a half later we're still in the midst of all of this and I would say it's even more terrifying in some ways because I feel like we are losing the thread in a lot of places. At my institution we definitely have this sort of and I should say that I'm very incredibly grateful to what my institution did to support me and my colleagues during the last I mean truly truly they went above and beyond over the last two years. But I think we are we're hearing the same thing lots of people are hearing which is oh things are getting back to normal and it's better to be face to face that's what we need that's what our students need we need to go back to the way things were and A I don't think that's possible I don't think we can erase the last two and a half years of experience and how it's imprinted on all of us as educators and teachers and learners but B I think we're losing an opportunity to take those lessons that we learned out of necessity and figure out how to take them forward with us and to use them to to create a more just university and it so I think this is a really really important conversation for us to be having right now. Well thank you more just universities are very very great phrase for this. Thank you Martha. Jess, Jared, Andrew what would you add to this? I would I would see I've seen the same thing at my own university I'm Wake Forest University is where I work where there was this this explosion this of oh man we have to change and we did things differently and we and we did things differently yes and and now there's the what do you call it the I'm in the Midwest so forgive me if I'm using this expression on a bit of a riptide to pull back sure I don't know what oceans are sorry pull back to the way things were and we can't go back I mean for Pete's sake I'm sitting on my desk at my home still within reach of a COVID-19 at home test sure we're not going back but I also see not just the universities and folks people saying no no see exactly but we see professional organizations and our conference is saying oh man we we went online for the last couple of years out of necessity and learned that there's many of our our members in our population who because they're taking care of their parents because they've got kids because of all kinds of reasons can't up and leave for a week and fly across the country to go for professional development and so again having to do something different our professional organizations are also in a space would say oh why don't we do both why don't we do both and why does why does it have to be either or and so it's still just like in in the university it's still attention between wanting to wanting to do both and wanting to just pretend things are I'm sorry that's rude I don't care just to pretend things are over and but I see it spreading well we definitely see that attitude in in the US inside high red Josh Kim had a good piece about the the desire for a snapback to try and return to fall 2019 and I think that would lose a lot of the lessons that you just too described thank you Jared just Andrew would you like to add any more go ahead Andrew you need to unmute yourself yeah thanks Brian that's one lesson you know despite three years of same teaching it still gets me everyone what I was saying was I don't have too much new I don't have too much new content to add to what Martha and Jared have already said besides echoing and affirming it I'm I in particular took myself to be saying one part of the my chapter in designing for care something very like very much a like to like what Martha just said about in meeting need to think about the the possibilities for these new technologies the ways they can be liberatory can make the university more just and we're a sort of at a risk of a feeling to really fully learn and take these lessons and bring them into the future I mean I think there was a point at which this conversation was about what are we going to do post pandemic now that the pandemic seems to be endemic conversations what do we do just period right yeah the threat of losing yeah the losing of these things of these lessons seems to be something that's happening very very quickly and in ways that are disappointing and surprising and I've seen this at all the institutions that I've had the opportunity to to be involved with disability related advocacy to some extent right now to speak about the current situation in UC Berkeley there is really no institutional academic cultural conversation going on about a potential switch back to hybrid hybrid teaching might be useful for it's all been an ad-hoc basis and the rhetoric is again reverted back to we want and you know virtual instruction is not ideal virtual instructions you know it's effectively denigrated and I'm not I'd be a first to register a number of complaints with or or possible drawback to for you to act like this isn't a huge well first of all a huge potential to be able to know students or people who are at high risk from covid and then the act is if it's being asked to do it as being asked to move heaven and earth seem to me I haven't you know after have had several years of in fact doing it and gaining institutional and professional fluency with it seems to me ludicrous so that's one of the things I'm currently trying to work on is to build coalitions of graduate students and faculty who want to develop some even if it's not enshrined in policy something some kind of consensus around what we think is the equitable equitable approach that just you know to teaching where students might not be able to come into the classroom because of their particular needs or you know just because they're sick and don't want to spread their fellow students and don't and shouldn't be punished for that and that was actually a conversation I shouldn't share too much here but that had to happen recently in a clinic which I was a member it's like it was sort of remarkable to me how quickly that that that that sense of courtesy to others is lost and so my my take I should just say you know as as a disabled person as someone who works with folks you know in all the sort of other issues where they face institutional ableism my take may be a little bit more cynical but I think I'm not less hopeful for that I mean I'm cynical about the attitude to the institutions maybe Andrew I found your chapter not cynical but very thoughtful very critical and very moving so thank you thanks Brian and thank you for these comments we just had a couple of one comment in the chat I just wanted to hoist up there from Sarah Thompson who says focus within higher education must include the well-being of faculty and staff in addition to students when thinking about the pandemic so thank you Sarah Jess what would you like to add what is this I think Sarah's comment kind of echoes the thoughts that have been bouncing around my brain as my panelists have shared we were thrown in there at my context we had a weekend to figure it out remember that fun word pivot and there there wasn't really a whole lot of care or attention given to the fact that we were all in a state of crisis and and for me I think it just underscores how our systems generally are structured such that we have maybe one very clearly defined on ramp tends to happen during the admission cycle and then so many off ramps and students can take those off ramps at any time really commodifies their experience down to a dollars and cents bottom line and for me as a student as well as a faculty member I felt back directly last year my father passed from cancer and on the day that he died I got an email from my institution asking me to pay my program fees and give them an update about my progress on my dissertation and it's moments like that that really underscore how broken and flawed and lacking humanity so much of higher ed is kind of mired in but I do believe there can be a different way and I think that focusing on the people that we're in relationship with can for me at least help sustain me as I'm implicit in this colonial system for which I work and also learn I think it's I'm trying to be optimistic that change can come with from within and through the people who are involved for example something that didn't come up yet was the uncritical adoption of these very deeply problematic education technologies they've been around but I think their usage massively increased during the pandemic take for example those you know exam proctoring software tools that for so many reasons are unethical and we've seen the fights that have had to happen subsequently to ask institutions to adopt a level of criticality and care before the ubiquitous usage of such problematic ed tech so there's one example I think of I believe there is an evolution of thought and rather than the trite solutionism that we've seen in instructional design context in the past we might be moving to a place that is a little bit more nuanced and critical and person-centered or at least I hope so I do battle cynicism on a daily basis I am a unionist I represent my faculty union and I definitely see a problem with work-life balance when we're asked to do all the things all the time so you're face to face you're online you're asynchronous there's all these words that are being invented to basically call a thing which used to be teaching a new name which is teach three different ways all at the same time and and that for me is something that I think we need to keep a close close eye on because that will lead to huge consequences for faculty well-being and student well-being as well when you're sick you should be able to be sick and stay home and rest and this understanding that well you can learn anywhere anytime can become problematic if we don't set limits and those limits are our own bodies and cognition and needs to have holistic wellness and balance in our lives well that's really really well said thank you Jess and I commend everyone to Jess's wonderful chapter very personal very thoughtful and again very very engaging and moving in the in the second book click click connect friends I want to step out of the way and stop asking questions I would love to hear from you all everyone all nearly 100 of you I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions and I actually don't have to ask you that because they're already coming in so let me just begin by grabbing a question from who is this this is Alex and Carly a man with a fantastic beard by the way and Alex asks how might we involve as broad a diversity of people in our work as possible instead of limiting ourselves to like-minded people very question and who wants to try that well you know as as a classroom I'll pull on you if you don't I know right I think we're all just trying to be polite um I'll take that one I think it's a great question a very um tricky one I think at all of our institutions um we probably and within higher ed just more generally we have all kinds of sort of hidden codes I would say that we use to signal sort of who we are and and to connect with other people who maybe share those same that same language those same codes the same background and sometimes we don't acknowledge what those are we don't really ask ourselves we don't really unpack that I guess is the way I would say and so I think the way we start this work is by spending some time trying to identify what it is in our practices that may be um maybe not creating space for people who are coming at this from different perspectives with different contexts different experiences and different backgrounds I mean a really gross and obvious example of this that you hear is um you know on search committees when when you'll come down to a couple of candidates and and somebody will be rejected because it's not a good fit right and like if you unpack that word there's a lot going on there and almost always it's something that we should be examining and asking ourselves what we mean by it um so I think really the you know it's it's it's easy to say oh well you know I tried to reach out to people and they they weren't interested or I couldn't you know when I put out a call for interests I didn't get a diverse group of people asking to be engaged or asking to be a part of something that I'm working on or something I want to collaborate on and I think always maybe what we need to start with is looking at ourselves and saying is there something about the way that I am presenting this work or the way or the the communities I'm reaching out to the people who I'm asking for input what can I be doing to kind of break down some of those barriers that maybe I haven't acknowledged um about how I work and how I present my work to bring more people into the fold um those are my first thoughts about that I would love to hear what my collaborators think as well great thoughts great thoughts chair just I'd I'd tack on that too um as far as approach for making space um I've I've been doing this work for 15 years I've been online for a long time I've been in higher ed since I was an undergrad a lifetime ago and one of the things I have to do intentionally myself is I got I got vision and ideas for days but that doesn't mean I have to drive every car you know where are my colleagues where are my co-workers have their ideas and how can I support them instead of trying to say oh let's do my thing again all the time I mean I got great things I'm not gonna lie but it's like instead of trying to ask why aren't people coming along with me why can't I bring a diverse population with me it's like oh maybe maybe I maybe I should go along with someone else and help bring what I my skills and my thoughts and my experience to support their vision I might be able to jump in with a story that kind of picks up on this thread if you haven't read my chapter I understand the world very much through story and um something that uh came up last spring so first time I was invited back on campus was to honor our students who were convocating last year in the year prior we invited those graduates back as well and so I was invited to participate in an indigenous drumming circle that was going to open and close the ceremonies through honor songs the nishinaabe megeze the eagle song and then the traveling song and so our purpose was to sing these songs in honor of our graduates and that drove all kinds of people together into a room and I remember taking a moment and stepping back and thinking wow look at this there's faculty students management graduates community members like if this was an official committee we would have hit all those like necessary markers that they look for in terms of representation but nobody made a thing out of it we sang our songs we told our jokes we we you know um ate together of course because that's like essential um and I thought maybe that's what it's about it's about shared purpose so if you're asking the right question or focusing on the proper goal maybe that brings um the people to the room who are meant to be there and I mean room metaphorically could have been zoom as well but to me it just underscored how sometimes these like more contrived um you know we need to get a certain type of representation happening and it's part of our um official operating procedures that's a very colonial way of doing what the first peoples have always been so good at which is bringing many to the fire all as equals all as welcome voices and I think that comes from a sense of humility big time but also a shared purpose and goal um so I think that picks up on what Jared is saying like maybe it's not just about pushing through my own agenda or an institutional agenda but rather um jumping into projects and ideas that are focused on these big problems that that people truly care about because if students care about it they'll show up if they're not showing up they're also speaking in that way too brilliant brilliant thank you thank you great question um Alex and uh in in the chat uh Karen Bellener gives us a terrific prompt she recommends us to invite our enemies early and with open arms extending a listening ear can work wonders sometimes um I love that that sense of gathering around the fire chest great great answers thank you and thank you for the question we have more questions coming in and I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to uh to run at them uh we have uh our our longtime friend uh Tom Hames who has a question uh how does humane education deal with the inhumane systems of industrial education that we've designed explicitly or implicitly over the last century plus Jared just looked like he was about to grab the microphone so I think you have something to say why don't you give it a run yeah um uh I know Jess mentioned cynicism early so apologies in advance if this comes through I think I think what we're seeing a lot in the last three years especially is people giving up I'm going corporate I've seen so many of my colleagues who have done really great work for the last 10 years or more just get worn to the bone and like I don't know if the grass is greener on the other side but it's time to try and so I see that that's one way so we're losing passionate knowledgeable spirited people because we're just beat down um so unfortunately that's one way I see um yeah as far as as far as systems you know I'm always thinking about like all right my department is all of four people for a whole university what can I actually do like for reals what what can I actually do and just trying to do our piece as a whole really really well because I can't I can't I've got a I forgot where I said it but I had a line where I can't instructional design somebody out of food insecurity what can I do um so I'm going to try to focus on what I can do really well to help students to help the faculty so they don't get burned out and go corporate um because we've got a lot of great faculty here doing the same thing nothing against going to work for another outside of higher ed but it's that's unfortunately that's what I've seen mostly in the last few years is we're just getting run out Melody Buckner in the chat says if you're gonna get burned out at least you can get paid for it yep man I've heard that so many times in the last three years well this is a darker answer to tom's question yeah but the rest of you think thoughts about how to humanize a system that was designed to be inhumane yeah I have so many thoughts and absolutely none of them are like absolutely none of them are like things anybody should write down and be like okay no I know how to do that um because there's just there obviously is no simple answer to this question but I will say a couple things that come to mind for me and one of which is and actually I was already thinking about this because you had mentioned somebody in the chat talking about inviting your enemy space and I was thinking about that and how how that makes a lot of sense but also how we aren't all positioned to be able to um deal with um um asking vulnerable people to invite their enemy into the space is not necessarily a great is not necessarily the best practice so but we do but in keeping with whoever made that comment we do want to we do want to find some sort of way forward right so how do we do that and this gets back to the question at hand I think so much of this has to do with coalition right so much of this has to do with us finding out how we work collectively um and not alone and and that means so in the question of inviting your enemies it means that you need to be part of a coalition where if if you're not capable if you're if you're in a vulnerable spot where you really can't engage with your enemy that way you've got somebody who can help with that you've got somebody you can turn to you've got somebody you can rely on um when it comes to humanizing education in the face of the increasing commercialization and corporatization and solutionism as just alluded to earlier talk about a word that like keeps me up at night that's plaguing higher education none of us as individuals can it's just you can you can make difference in your classroom right to a certain extent although as Jared has just said you can't instructional design away hunger right but in coalition we can do a lot we can do a lot more I'm not saying we can you know fix everything but we can always achieve more in collective than we can individually it's hard it's hard to do collective work um one of the things that's that I've been mulling over for the last year or so in part because of COVID is the concept of mutual aid in education and the the the meta mutual aid is a metaphor essentially within education and partly this is because when this may have happened in many of your communities but in my community when in march of 2020 when art 29 yeah 2020 when things got locked down a mutual several mutual aid um um movements popped up in my local community and it was really um it was it was amazing to watch it was hard to watch it was important to watch and see that unfold and as it was happening I was thinking there's something here about learning there's something here about teaching there's something here about how we work collectively towards something together that's bigger than any one of us and I and I keep coming back to that and thinking we need to figure out how to build mutual aid network into the work we do um in our institutions across our institutions across the faculty and student divide this is another thing I keep coming back to one of the things I love about Andy's piece in the book is that it's all about what it means to be a a body right like what it means to be embodied and and and trying to be part of this work and in when we're thinking about human infusing humanity into our work one of the things that happened during COVID is we all realized that like we all have bodies right like every one of us was vulnerable in all the same ways and so these weird power divides of administration and faculty and faculty and students and staff and faculty meant nothing because we all have bodies that are vulnerable and if there's one thing I want us to take forward out of this it's remembering what that was like to realize for a student to realize oh my professor is suffering right like something we would have hidden before something we wouldn't have shared but we couldn't not share it you know and and I want us to remember what it was like when we had first realized oh my students can't find food like they my students living in a tent because they can't go home to be with their parents because they're afraid of them getting sick one of the pieces from our colleagues at middlebury talked about a student going through that in the spring of 2020 that's what I think we need to be taking forward is that sense sense of collectivism and of coalition that's the only way that we fight against these systems thank you thank you martha we have we have more questions coming in and tom as always thank you for a very very deep question we have one from jessica who asks have you used universal design principles practices in your work I'd be happy to speak to that the answer is yes udl is something that I actually thought I would be writing my dissertation on so years ago my application into the program was about studying student perceptions of udl universal design for learning but over time I evolved in my uh my focus area now I'm more looking at open educational practices but udl is very much embedded in the way that I teach and I'm not here to suggest that I have all the answers like how to humanize education but I can tell you that certain um principles of universal design get some of my colleagues really riled up and they've sort of made it their mission to convince me how wrong I am to for example allow for flexible uh due dates so in my courses due dates are suggestions they are not fixed I do not penalize I don't want to see your positive COVID test or your doctor's note or any other personal information and to me that's that comes down to respect that is an act of respect for me um but it also is embedded in the udl principles another assessment strategy that I've been enacting for several years pre-pandemic would be multiple means of representation so in courses that are not English courses um where maybe it is embedded in the outcomes that students should produce a certain piece of writing for example I teach a course on truth and reconciliation students are grappling with colonial trauma and settler colonial harm and they communicate their understanding in myriad ways it's up to them to decide their best strategy so I've had students podcast their entire course experience powerpoints and video and writing if that's what they've choose to do and um for me it's led to such a refreshing perspective on assessment as conversation and community rather than a punitive working your way through a checklist that is arbitrary and often completely disconnected from the subject but my colleagues really really take issue with this some of them it challenges the status quo in a way that they feel I think cheapens the education experience it's like no to be a college graduate you must APA you must essay you must do things in this way and I'm thinking but it my experience has proven out that actually no that's not true and because I was adopting this pre-pandemic once COVID came around I found my course structure was quite well equipped to deal with all of this trauma that we were all going through but there are still these institutional limits right so for me why can't the deadline extend beyond the end of the semester why are we putting these arbitrary time stamps on education that's a banking model hangover that has to go and I'm not saying I know how to replace it in a way that won't completely sink me in in marking from years and years past but there's got to be a way to do it and I think that UDL is a wonderful place to start because it opens your eyes to different possibilities beyond what you've experienced in teaching and learning which tends to be that very rigid way so I'm so glad that came up I think for me it's led to wonderful changes to teaching and learning thank you Jess thank you any other UDL fans in the panel or should we move on with that moment of pause that moment of reflective silence thank you for the great question Jessica and thank you Jess for the for the wonderful answer we have more questions coming up and by the way if you want to join us on stage just please click the raised hand button we have a question coming in from someone with a fantastically perfectly spelled first name I've got to say I just really admire that Brian Maschio says when students have long and regularly encountered subpar metagogy no one concluded in person instruction doesn't work how do we counter the analogous response to poorly designed online courses good question well-named Brian good question well what do you think how do we respond do we do we say that online and face-to-face are both just you know domains within the overall realm of instruction so I will say I shot my mouth off in a big shot meeting once where that's what I said and said I'm sorry what's our four-year graduation rate so that's 60% that's working I don't work there anymore but depending on the crowd you can sometimes get away with saying well let's just stop for a second see was this really working I think that's a really important point what Jared is just saying there which is that we have to point that stuff out when it happens too often we just let it go by and we have to like tag these just these these um disconnects and and shine a light on them and get people to really ask themselves why am I thinking about this differently than the other what is different here I've always I've said for years that I feel like there's an otherness to online education there's like a same way we other people right and and people who are different than us because they don't share the same markers as us we it allows us to think of them differently I think we do that in a way with online education versus traditional education we other it and and it creates a distance and in that distance we think we have space then to evaluate it differently and assess it differently and design it differently I mentioned earlier in this program we're doing a design forward for a PSU we're doing a program this fall on formats and modalities that I have a lot of work to do to get it ready but what I'm what I really want to do what I really want to get out there is sort of blow apart a lot of our traditionary that understandings of formats and modalities which tends to be very binary or if not binary just very siloed right our understandings of what those those different modalities are and if there's one thing I think COVID has taught us it's that modality is really complicated it's really really complicated far more than I think we ever realized and so rather than shying away from that and going back to how we used to do it I think we need to continue to kind of dig it up and figure out why is it different and is it really different or is it really different in the ways we thought it was different I guess that's the question I want to ask that's a great great question and I love your point about othering um we are almost the end of our hour and we have we have some questions coming in and one of them actually Jared it's it's it's it's aimed at you but I think I think this can also go a bit more broadly and this is one from J.M. and J.M. says in your chapter quality theater you suggest an over-reliance and rubrics is going on how can we know how to meet minimum compliance well I think the first step is having um a really honest conversation about what is minimum compliance because if we're talking about federal regulations the bar is I'm going to say pathetically low the instructor has to show up once or twice that's the federal regulations now you could have um area or university things about compliance but so I think really nailing down exactly what we need and so when I think of compliance it's it's rarely in a positive light it's like okay let me step back well let's make sure everything we've got is compliant with again we want to keep accreditation we want to keep our students degrees having meaning to job prospects and we want all of that but what else we want our students to connect the faculty so when I maybe reframing that like so when I think about compliance what does it mean to know your instructor your online instructor how can that look and there's a million ways it can look um but I think the first step is really just no no what do we for real what do we actually need to you know keep keep the lights on keep the accreditation because I would I would push to say that bar is actually really low but there's a lot of urban myth about what we're supposed to be doing good question and Jared thank you for that answer thank you I'm conscious of how close we are and I'd kind of like to wrap things up a bit the problem is we've been covering a wide range of ground you know at the macro political to the micro political we've been talking about pedagogy about technology and economics and the chat box is just on fire people are just all over the map of that which is great a lot of really really good ideas including just now a big burst of the Yvonne Illich fandom I guess let me let me just ask the four of you as we all plunge ahead into the 2022 2023 academic year when a certain dissertation will no doubt be completed and a certain PhD program will be accelerated I'm wondering what what kind of advice would you leave for all of us as we look ahead to this really challenging year as we try to humanize try to make our education more caring more responsive to students as human beings and accounting for faculty and staff as human beings what are what are some of the final parting advice you'd like to give us as we go and I I do in the interest of time I do want to pick on people and I'm going to pick on Andrew um but where would where would you start sir um this is a great question I think I would just my chapter is kind of about this a little bit I would remind folks as I'm constantly reminding myself that I do not know the first thing about what is really going on in my students lives right very easy for all of us to be preoccupied but their own concerns were often overburdened with doing the emotional labor of the university sort of too poor anyway right but you really do have the power to situate yourself as an empathic humane person in your classroom in relation to your students I don't want to pretend that that comes at no cost to you again I think it is involves again shoring up this this burden that the university in part or in whole more often than whole fails to do but but drawing that lesson I think from from pandemic teaching especially that people's lives are complicated they've been made more complicated by the massive micro and macro scale harms that we've all experienced socially at the level personally um sort of being conscious of um maybe the limitations of our knowing and how those might figure into our students presentations or or or absences in the classroom keeping that in mind as as as we move forward it's really really just a basic thing but um I find myself in the position again of having to remind myself of it a lot and seeing my colleagues forget it and my instructors forget it too so thank you thank you very much and if you if you haven't read that Andrew has a great chapter about among other things legibility and the problems inherent in seeing people and people disclosing things I don't want to I can't summarize it without enough justice thank you Andrew um just do you want to do you want to jump in where sure um there is something in in my mind right now so I can't remember if I included this in my vignettes or not but there's an elder on campus elder Nokomis Martina Oswalmyk she's a Kuemkong First Nation and she works at Cambrian and other institutions and she said to me one time um creator gave us three years so she was talking about these and then a third being in your heart she said there are three years and only one mouth for a reason you should do at least three times as much listening as you do talking and if you can adopt that way you're far more likely to to move in a good way and so that's a teaching that I felt compelled to share I think that that speaks to what Andrew was was talking about as well and um I don't always live up to it but I think it's a good one to remember and try to aspire toward it thank you thank you I won't say anything more um yeah maybe bad advice on a webinar Jared what would you where would you point us where where should we um um despite my slant toward cynicism I think what I would say is you know look around this space our space is my absolute 100 for favorite percent thing about these collections and working with them is I got to see what a lot of people are doing around the world really amazing work they're not doing everything but they're doing something and it's pretty spectacular and so I would just say keep that in mind you don't have to do everything you don't have to fix our higher education system but you can do something in your space with your co-workers with your learners with your administrators you can do something and there's like Martha was saying we're a coalition we can do something together too well thank you thank you and that's a fend that's a perfect bridge to Martha both because she for me is the editor here as well as a writer but also coalition she helped assemble a big coalition of all of you for these two great books Martha what would you tell us um well I was gonna say that's a perfect ending but I'll I'll have a go at it I um I guess the one thing that I would say because I agree with everything that my co-panelists have said is um just give yourself a break um I feel like that's something I say to people a lot these days when I'm talking to faculty and students is um cut yourself some slack um I know that's not always easy and I don't want to make it sound easy but um these are these are tough times for everybody and holding yourself to an unrealistic standard doesn't help you or anyone else so be extend grace to yourself first and then share it with others and then share it yeah Martha thank you Martha Andrew Jared Jess I can't believe an hour has come and gone you've been so generous and so thoughtful everybody grab these two books now there's a big button left to the screen so snag them whichever format you want um what's the uh um a three of you at least are on twitter I guess that's a good way to keep up with you um if if you want if you can throw in the chat any other ways of of keeping up with you as each of you progress and your important work let me just thank you all one more time this has been a terrific conversation I admire all of you um please keep up the great work and thank you again thank you so much Brian thank you thank you this is all my pleasure but friends don't go just yet um we need to point out where things are getting next and I do want to thank all of you for the great questions uh because that's what makes uh the forum work uh if you'd like to keep talking about these issues everything from pedagogy to technology to how to extend grace and build coalitions we can keep talking about this on twitter some of those have been already just use the hashtag ftte or tweet at me brian alexander at shindig events or take a look at my blog brian alexander.org where we talk about these issues uh if you'd like to look back into the past into our archive where we've hosted some of these topics many times before just go to tinyurl.com slash ftfr archive and you can find more uh if you'd like to look ahead to the next few weeks we're covering a wide range of topics as I mentioned before just go to forum.futureofeducation.us to learn more and if you want to share any of your work any that you are especially proud of just shoot me a note and I'd be glad to share with everybody here until then thank you all for a terrific hour thank you for the great thinking together and a great conversation I hope you're all well as the fall semester chugs long please take care of yourselves and be safe we'll see you next time online bye bye