 Hello, I'm Timothy Reid, Eden Vice President of Open Professional Collaboration. And in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Eden, we're interviewing some of the well-known experts in the field of online and distance education to talk to us and give us their opinions and feedback over what's been happening to us over the past year and what might happen to us in the future. And I'm very happy to be here today with Marcy Powell, who I mean, I can present her in a million different ways, but let's just say she's a keynote speaker, author and consultant, both in Eddish Cater and also an important figure in the corporate world, the United States Distance Learning Association, President, Chair, and most importantly, perhaps, Eden Fellow. So Marcy, let me start off by asking how you are and how has the pandemic affected you professionally? Thank you, Tim. It's so good to be with you. And I'm doing very well. It's funny because in the pandemic, everyone keeps asking how we're doing, working from home, et cetera, but I've been working from home for over 20 years, so it's no difference, right, for me. But it's been a blessing to get to help others know how to do it and how to stay engaged and not feel isolated and so forth. And it actually prompted, well, I was writing a book before the pandemic hit because I knew, we knew the projections were that by 2025, 80% of the workforce would work remotely or hybrid. And so I started writing this book on how to leverage the distance and achieve excellence when working remotely, and I started writing a book a year before the pandemic hit. So it was timely. Indeed it was. Indeed it was. Okay, I think for a lot of people, they've been pushed, screaming and kicking into online education. And I think over this year, year and a bit, we've learned quite a lot about our teaching and learning education in general from the pandemic. So I mean, do you think we're ready for online education at a larger scale? And in which case, how do you see Eden as an association being able to contribute to education and research? I love that question because here's what I saw with the pandemic. It thrust us forward, propelled us in exponential ways that we were not expecting where we knew what predictions were going to be. We didn't anticipate it to happen overnight. And it did. And it caught many universities and businesses off guard. And so what I think from your question, what I've seen is that sadly, adjusting to the pandemic that quickly was not the top quality online learning, even though many experienced it and sadly, they experienced poor quality. But at the same time, we have universities like many who are members of Eden who have been doing it for 30 years and know high quality. And we know how to deliver and teach in engaging and incredible ways, integrating many digital technologies and making it as good as in person, if not better. But if you look at the media and what was put out not only from across Europe, but globally from the US and on, many articles about how awful online learning is. So first, I think our challenge is to get people past that experience. And that's not easy, but I believe we can do it. I think the world knows we don't have a choice. This is, and I hate the phrase the new normal because everyone's using it, but it is the new normal hybrid environments, the hybrid workplace, the hybrid learning environment, all of this is changing. And so to answer your question, I believe that Eden is the place that Europe needs to go to see how to do it right. I think a lot of our experts in the field, a lot of Eden fellows and a lot of the member universities have a wealth of experience and knowledge to share. And I love that we have been in the open educational resource field for quite a while and produced some incredible letters, research documents and publications on that, blogs, et cetera, a myriad of delivery methods for people and videos. I love that we're doing this. So, Tim, I guess the question I'm saying is I think that Eden is poised to contribute greatly. And I think the world knows it needs to move forward now with digital learning in a large, much grander scale. Yeah, I think you're completely right. One of the, I mean as many things I like about Eden, but if I could only choose one, it would definitely be the members because there's a lot of expertise there and people are very generous with their time and their opinions and their comments and I think that helps a lot. That is so beyond true. It's been such a blessing for me personally to be part of the Eden family because I cannot tell you how many times I could just email or call upon anyone that I know in my sphere of influence and sphere of network that influence me to say, I see this place or this university or this system that needs help and you're the perfect person. And people like you said, just deliver it. And I think also that when you look at the vault, I call it the vault, you don't call it that. That's my word for it. There's a vault, a storehouse, a repository of a wealth of experience that even when we can't do it in person, there are many publications and resources to read. But I do love the willingness of the Eden family and that's what we are, we're a family. I don't think you could have said it any better. I think family is definitely in the word. I think that's absolutely a wonderful answer. Thank you, Marcy. Okay, you know, the European Commission have put out this digital education action plan because I think they recognize the importance of this transformation in a way to reset education for the digital age. And that is one big step forward. So I mean, you know, with your experience and the amount of time you spend thinking about these sorts of things, how do you see this process of digital transformation of universities? It's a very loaded question, but very much right in line what I think about quite a bit. And I love the European Union and across Europe and the work that's being done towards the digital transformation. Education system has to change. We've used all kinds of words like reimagined education, redefined, we use a lot of different words on knowing that to keep up with digital times, there has to be a digital transformation across the education ecosystem from early elementary or young four and five year olds all the way up to postgraduate level. And I also see that digital technologies are quickly transforming the workplace. Look at automation and artificial intelligence alone. And we've seen that while it will do away with I believe the last report I saw from Gartner was 75 million jobs will go away, but 133 million new jobs. Our business is educating the workforce, preparing students for their future workforce or current. And that includes reskilling and upskilling, adapting to the new place, the new workplace. So if you look at it this way, Tim, with digital transformation, we know that the workplace is changing. We know jobs are changing. We know work styles are changing. If you just look at the multi generations, we all have a different way we approach work. And our just the whole mentality, the mindset, let's say it's a different mindset by generation. That's a good term for it. And we have to adapt in education. We have to adapt so that we are fulfilling our mission. And so I see that we need to embrace digital technologies, especially in the virtual and online world, we need to take technologies and embrace them and put them into this new world that we live in. Imagine the new merged campus, a virtual world where you can see hybrid students that it's really their holography. There's holography of one of the instructors is not really in that room physically. And so are some of the students. You can see them across the classroom. There are some physically sitting there, and they're separated if we need that. And these students are particularly wearing some of the latest goggles that are available for virtual reality. They can see real life what's projected on the screen. And so even though they're in a lecture hall, they're getting they're in an immersive environment. So that's a digital world where virtual reality, holography and other technologies are being merged into the classroom. I think I have another, you can kind of see here, I put this one in just to show you that we're seeing that already in virtual reality enabled cities around the world. And if that's what's happening across cities or across the United Nations and other places, this is the times we're living in, things are changing. And so we have to look at what does that look like in a classroom, where we can take things apart and put them back together with whatever we're trying to teach or reskill. So again, you can see what a classroom might look like in that new virtual online world that's infused with digital technologies. Does that make sense? It makes a lot of sense. And what does it look like? It looks like a lot of fun to me makes me want to go back and be a student. A lot of fun. And really the trick here, not the trick, I would say the biggest blessing here would be that we have so much power in our fingertips for the classroom for immersive learning experience that are beyond what you can do in a traditional classroom. And once we show that to people who have experienced it from the not so good side, I think we're going to go a lot farther in propelling it the right direction with high quality. I think that is a wonderful note to finish this conversation. Marcy Powell, thank you very much indeed. Thank you. You are so welcome. Thank you. Thank you.