 Recording is on me. There we go. All right, we are recording. This is the April 2024 community chat. And our kind of subject or topic today is what I'm calling a workshop share-a-thon. Now we'll see how many people are able to share things and chat about it. I really just kind of wanted to have an informal talk about like running workshops and for, could be students, could be faculty or staff or really whatever context I suppose. And if folks have specific things they want to bring and say, hey, I ran this recently or a couple of years ago or whatever, that's really cool. Or maybe just general discussion around it. But yeah, I don't know. This is just kind of the thing I personally think about a lot and sort of what is the best way to demonstrate something in a workshop context, right? It's like a really common scenario of, hey, we've got a handful of people. I want to communicate something to them. What are the things that you like to do? What are the things you like to avoid in planning these things? Successes, stuff like that. I really like learning from other people, but usually in the context of workshops for me anyway, that's just attending them and seeing what other people do, which is great. I wanted to see if I could convince people to share their secrets, things like that. So yeah, that, Shannon just put it in the chat, avoid workshops entirely when it should be a one-on-one meeting. Yes, I feel like for me, that's my main thing is figuring out what is a workshop and what shouldn't be one. That's a big one. And I also, just to kick things off, my main, like I said, we can talk about this generally. If folks have something that they specifically said, I ran this recently and want to walk us through it, that's awesome. Love to see that. We have some examples too we can share. But one of my biggest things is figuring out what should be a workshop and what should be a set of documentation that I send to someone or a class. That was my biggest thing when I worked in higher ed, specifically with class settings is deciding when folks would say, I'd love if you could come in and do this and saying, I will get them the information that you need to do this and I will come in, but we are gonna do this and we're gonna not do this altogether because some activities altogether are not great to do, in my opinion. Some things are built to be done asynchronously. Yeah, personally I know lots of people do this and there are good and better ways to do it than what I've tried. Personally I don't like let's all do this technical set of steps together type workshops because I as a participant in them frequently find them frustrating because I'm either ahead or behind. Like I'm always in one of the two. I feel like maybe it's not inevitability but it seems like it to me. So I don't like that because it feels like, well, I'd rather have this person to talk to as a resource and ask questions of and talk strategy than let's all type these letters in together kind of stuff, you know. I'm gonna steal someone else's thunder. Just kind of do that a lot. So I'm not afraid to do that. I remember there was a workshop that Martha Bird is run as part of the DKC where essentially what we wanted to do is have students make gifts. And so she made almost one of these very interesting like spot like websites where the student was like pick an image that you wanna turn into a gift and then go through the process. I think it's called give it up for the gift or something like that. Okay, and the website's still live. So I might be able to give you a demonstration but like she talked about what gifts are and how if they can be used in different ways. So it was informative for like 10 minutes but the rest of the time, that's 20 to 30 minutes was go to this website in this lab and create a gift. And we have created the kind of structures by which you can do that. Yeah, give it up for the gift. There's a link to it in there. And it's a really, I thought it was a really great workshop because at the end of the workshop, everyone's gift came up on the screen. You've got to see what they made and they were usually funny and they told you something about the person and it connected everybody and she accomplished beautifully what she was setting out to do which was show people, A, what gifts are, why they might matter and take a shot at building them. I loved it. It was definitely an early spot, your point Tom. Definitely, it was super cool. Spots and workshops really would be a nice, nice combo. Well, and it's a nice combination of asynchronous and synchronous, right? Even if sometimes you have folks literally using the tool during the workshop but it's not, people can give them a window of time or something like that or it doesn't matter particularly when they did it is always a interesting way to kind of mix digital and well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say digital in person but it wouldn't have to be really synchronous and asynchronous. I mean, we're kind of hitting on like what's the real purpose behind the thing? In that case, it was like make the gifs or whatever and talk about them together. So if you can cut out a lot of the directions and get to that and have that be a workshop, bam, take advantage of in person, you know what I consider really expensive time which is anytime you're physically in a place together synchronously. Like I consider that like gold, high dollar, high dollar time whereas the asynchronous stuff or the stuff of this documentation is pretty cheap because you don't care, you do it once, it lives there for forever. So I kind of think about spending my time wisely. Another chunk that at least always comes up to me is like faculty inevitably say like we want more workshops and then they inevitably don't attend said workshops or register for said workshops and have a percentage rate that is very low. So really getting down to the guts of like what are we doing here? Cause it takes a fair amount of effort to create workshops or even to hold the time for them. So just being intentional about that stuff I'm trying to do a better job with and showing like our new registration system is I think easier for us to show like who registered versus who actually attended and making that like part of our process so that we can go back. And maybe one other thing we're doing better there is we have like our workshops that we've done that we think people might ask for again and a way to allow them to ask for those workshops. So not so much doing better workshops which I need always can improve on but like the mechanics of it at the institutional level is something that I rambled around with a fair amount. I always kind of think of like because the idea of faculty or whoever asking for more workshops or a specific workshop and then saying like well, will people actually show up? Like I always view that as a like it's more of a almost a problem of partially terminology but mostly time of just like what people are asking for is I wanna learn something new or something specific I have something in mind and I don't have a lot of time. I don't have 40 hours to commit to it. I would love if I could show up and in 30 minutes to an hour or whatever come out of that with something, right? And that's, I mean, I think that's a very understandable one. Like I think almost anyone was like, yeah, like I also would like that. And so to me it's always kind of trying to figure out like well, what can I, what makes sense to deliver? Like you said, given the expensive time that we're now we've dedicated we're here we can do this, what is the best use of that time? And I like to, I don't know if this is necessarily successful but I always like to plant seeds using that time and say, you know, we're talking about this this is some background information you need let's do this thing together in this workshop. And I really hope that what I'm showing you here sparks an interest in that you will decide to spend more time because it's important to you and here's where you go. That's kind of always my format for these things. I mean, even with the stuff we do at Reclaim the Flex Courses we do it similarly where it's like we're trying to communicate like why this matters and why you may want to care early on and then give you some, you know, specific information and insight when we can. But to me the hook is important, I think. Taylor, I think to follow up on that point to me the most successful parts of workshops are if I can connect a second time like because if I ask them at the end of the workshop to tell me something you learned tell me something you think you might want to try at some point and then a couple of weeks, a month go by and I just pick it up and say, how's it going with that? Do you want to do more with it? Do you need some help? Like it usually doesn't happen in that first month or even the first second month but around month four or five like sometimes they'll come back around and if they're not back around by then I figured they're not coming back. So, but again it has to do with, you know, to Tom's point like do you have the time to do that? Do you have the, you know like what is the motivation to do that? And for me it's really just getting building more of a coalition of the willing, right? Like if I can work with somebody one on one and then I can get them to talk to somebody in their department and then the department starts to hear more about it. And again, it's a long game but it sometimes will work but not, I guess I would say reliably enough to say like, wow, that's a real hit all the time but a few times and the other piece I think is whatever structures I can use that are within the university system already I just try to use those things that put more of the work on other people and I just have to deliver a little something. You know, so like we have our center for excellence in teaching and learning and every year they do a symposium so they have a guest speaker and then they ask for like short workshops or quick tech tips or whatever and I always volunteer for something in that just again to get like people to know who I am and it's not a huge investment in my time to prepare it but it's enough to get it to be like, you know to get my face out there and even better if I can bring a panel of people like someone who I picked up last year and helped with the project and like build it around their project so that it's less about me and what I do and more about what they did and their goals and you know, and I think that that, you know it's a slow, slow process at least for me it has been but it does lead to some success. Yeah, I couldn't agree more in terms of like how like it sounds to me like you're saying like fundamentally part of the what you're hoping to get is to sort of recruit people to the cause a little bit, right? And that could be whatever, you know related to your workshop, right? But I love the idea of, yeah coalition of the willing there like because I mean, I fundamentally agree even in schools of different sizes and like the best way to communicate an idea is that one-on-one stuff and that comes from showing up, you know doing a workshop, having one person afterwards be like, that was really cool we should talk more about that and maybe that person follows. Yeah, I didn't agree more with that sentiment. I have a funny story about something related to this like, so I was in Puerto Rico and it was 2009 and I had done a presentation terribly received and basically the guy who had me there was like I really want you to do a workshop on Twitter. I'm like, Twitter? Like they just give you everything I said it's like, no, no, no, no, they've been asking. So I have like a stadium full like 200 people like to talk about Twitter with and people who had just been in a previous thing I did, who hated it? And so I get on and I'm like Twitter is kind of known for being a very like uninteresting technology in some ways like what did you have for lunch, right? And what did you have for this? And so I showed them how to log in we had networking problems, of course it was one of those things. And then they got in and many of them I'm like, you should like one of those early times where I got all my followers was like, okay, you don't know who's on Twitter. I'm on Twitter, I'm Jim Groom, follow me. So 200 people follow me, good for the stats. But then I'm having this kind of like, that's it. Like that's Twitter hashtags at sign but to your point, Jen, why I even say this is some of those people who again it wasn't an inspired presentation wasn't an inspired thing. I have followed for years and have kind of been in contact with for years around that presentation. I would say of the many people who signed up maybe 10 or 11 were constantly in a route of kind of communication and seeing what they were doing and even if it was one-on-one, but it's interesting, but like what would be a way now to build in a form of tracking in not a creepy way but tracking in a way of understanding and seeing, oh, the work we did, how did it follow through and did it make a point and can we reconnect around it because Twitter was the perfect tool for that. It was just a chance of history that I was asked to do that in a kind of impromptu way but I realized once I'd done it and few years later that like doing Twitter workshops was probably one of the coolest ways to actually test how people got it and where they went with it kind of like blogging although that was a little harder because less people, it was a lot more work but interesting in that regard. Yeah, I think really that follow-up is what a lot of people need and it doesn't have to be a huge follow-up it just has to be the like put it back on your radar follow-up because at least to me when I go to conferences and stuff I might see a lot of cool things or learn a few things but if I'm not immediately putting them into what I'm doing on a daily basis I'm just gonna forget about them even if I do write some notes or write a blog or something like it just doesn't until I can find how it's gonna work immediately for me like 75% of it is just gone and I think that's like educationally what we know, right? Like when people don't immediately use the things that they're trying to learn then they don't practice them they stop to, you know they can't bring it back, right? So Tom, in answer to your question I don't do anything complicated I just ask them and oftentimes it's actually just on a piece of paper just to say like, hey, what's going on? Like what do you want me to do? Do you want any follow up? You're not wanting to follow up because that's the other piece it's like nobody wants to be spammed or feel like they want to avoid you around campus so like I always just say like do you want me to follow up with you? And most of the time people will say maybe later maybe like before next semester or something like that if they kind of don't want me to follow up but I still do it, right? Like and then if they come back to it then they come back to it and if not then again all I've really invested is a few minutes in the workshop in a few minutes and collecting those pieces of paper and throwing them into a spreadsheet, you know? Yeah, I really liked the idea of like something I might take away from this conversation is that yeah, pretty much every workshop I deliver or something that resembles the workshop should have some kind of, you know mechanism like you're describing and that maybe it's in some cases self driven where I can say like, you know hey, thank you all click this button and I'll email you later or I just do that, you know if I have everyone's email addresses or something like that and literally just at a bare minimum say like we will reach back out with the you know, and you could even hook it into like I'll share my resources back this way, right? But the mechanism of establishing at least chance for that communication again does sound like it's one of those ideas that sounds like completely obvious and I'm a little mad that I didn't think of but like yeah, like cause you're right if you don't revisit this I do this all the time too like I take notes when I attend workshops and then I literally never look at them again and even if I was just reminded three months later that I should revisit those notes I probably would in some cases and yeah, that would make a huge difference. I think it also depends on your purposes like, you know what people are looking for if you have a good enough understanding of why they're there then you can tailor it more to like getting them started on something immediately as opposed to having them try to walk away and figure out what are they gonna do with it, you know? So that's another piece that I try to do if I can find out who the participants are a little bit ahead of time even just a general sense then it can help make a difference in the way that, you know the things I might present and I do that with students too. So, you know, if I'm going into and my workshops for students are really more the technical stuff, you know like now click here, now do this this is what this means is what that means but I think that like if you follow up even with a handful of them, right? You know, then starting to do that relationship building especially for those students who I know I'm probably gonna work with for the next few years then I can, you know kind of start getting some, I don't know just like relationship building really is what it is but again, it depends too on like what's your purpose for the workshop? What are you hoping to get out of it? And the other thing I would just say is that like one thing I really always hate about a workshop is the survey that comes afterwards like I know it's important everybody needs to once that feedback but it always feels so generic like, you know, it's just sort of like did you like the workshop, blah, blah like it just feels like it's always the same stuff and it's never for me it's always for whoever's running the workshop, right? Like so that's another space where you could make it more about the participant like what resources can I send you? Let you know, and again small investment of your time but it feels more like it is about them rather than what you can get from it. Yeah, I, a couple of things I mean, this might just be an example of me being obnoxious not necessarily strategic but I always whenever the idea of a post workshop survey comes up, I'm like what are we doing with the information, right? Like that's the first thing we have to figure out if nothing then maybe we should not do at one but yeah, like how can we make a post workshop survey useful for them and also us is yeah couldn't agree more but because it's always like well we may want to, we may what do you mean we may? Like what does that mean? Like are we going to we should hopefully improve our practice and that is obvious a thing but we need to ask specific questions in order to do that not just what did you like even though it does sound like we could based on that improve things you probably do need to get more specific but I'm just kind of wondering like if you Jen or anybody else too has thoughts about like the getting to know your audience or whatever the participants or your workshop beforehand because obviously this is context-dependent I understand that like sometimes you can just you know because you know the audience you're talking to I'm curious if anyone's had particular strategies they like to do for when you actually don't have an opportunity to the obvious opportunities to find this information out so say you're going to do a workshop at a conference and so their participants maybe in a particular field or whatever but you don't really know a lot about them besides that has anyone done like just in time stuff in workshops to try and had any success with that or like pre-surveys or the things that strategies they like to try to get to know workshops participants ahead of time I mean the nice thing about if you're doing it via Zoom or you have some sort of like chat channel you can play that game particularly as people walk in you know in that like in between space I mean one of the hardest things is trying to say like introduce yourselves but limit it to 30 seconds and then you have a person who ignores it totally make it meaningful though limit it to 30 seconds but it needs to be meaningful and then you got the guy who does an hour and a half soliloquy about I don't know everything that they've ever done so I mean like cutting those people off is super hard especially digitally um we're here in the windows 98 I'm just dumb you know just seeing how you work under pressure just wrong variables at ya because that's a big thing about workshops too I find that I don't know about you all but like I find like I prepare workshop and I get to like one small piece of it like I always have this big vision for it and if I get one small thing that's it and I think I always the more I go into workshops the more I have pared out it's just one idea takeaway one thing and I have tend to frankly to your point Shannon I try to do more one-on-one or very targeted like group work where I know a class is going to be using it and this is talking for a person who's not been in that context for a long time so forgive me but that's what I used to do at UMW is class of captivated 30 students get a blog sign up here's how you post out and then I'll revisit with with stuff over the course of the semester but it was really like very like hit and run hit and run we captured you and most of their eyes would glaze but there are a few of them like oh I might need to know how to do this to post my history portfolio but that was a very kind of focus thing I wasn't trying to get at any great concepts you know and I found that was a very successful way for me to do do it just very simple very fast and then out I do like the idea of have of trying to distill a workshop down to a single idea you want to communicate and kind of working backwards from there because I agree I often also have this like grand vision that I can only describe in like three paragraphs and it's like no that that's not a workshop that's a class maybe if you're lucky like you know and then I end up throughout the process of making the workshop like doing things that say like literally I'll say the words like well if you're gonna take away one thing and it's like nope if you're gonna take away one thing that's the whole workshop probably like and go backwards from there and it's funny because I taught a lot of classes that were literature based right and like you ask people to read these 300 page books and then ultimately you talk about like five paragraphs right the whole of the whole book and it's like so those five paragraphs have to you know somehow bring everything together and make sense but be very consolidated and have a point and not that I ever did anything like that with my workshops my workshops were a mess Tom can attest to that but I do think that idea of trying to just simplify a one or two very simple points you're trying to make about a bigger kind of way to use technology etc but a lot of times our ed tech tech workshops I wonder how people are running the AI ones now I'd be interested right because a lot of times blogging it wasn't this big philosophical question was like yeah you should write you should get your stuff online it's good to be online it's good to be open like AI it's like there will be blood you will all die the machine will suck your soul like it's a very different conversation I imagine when you walk into that room and super polarized anyone speak that may be the other thing that's hard about AI at least when you're trying to do introductory stuff is like distilling it down to like one aspect of it it's really difficult difficult because it's like talk about the internet well which part you know so you're trying to cover a lot of different things and a lot of different concerns while functionally trying to at least what I try to do is talk through like how you build better prompts while also discussing philosophical technological and the differences between various providers you know so when you say you over build the last I did this workshop not too long ago I definitely like I had 7 000 examples you want to drop into hugging face and you know see a LLM that's been trained on 16th and 17th century manuscripts talk to it about cows being cursed by witches like that was an example I did well you have to have a relatable example you know that's right I was like what will people want to do with AI talk about cows and witchcraft I work with a unique group I work for a small graduate institute in Berkeley California and they're all older and over educated and so they just don't care about learning anything and I thought that we just got accredited for distance education so it went from an alternative personalize you just talk to the teacher and write a paper kind of graduate institute to now they have to use technology to talk to people and this is you know it's been four years now since they were forced to do that and they just refuse to learn so I'm down to now going to the faculty meetings and presenting five minutes on one Google Workspace app and then getting them to like here's where your account is because they refuse to use their academic email I mean it's just but so then when I tried to tell them about AI talk about not interested so I over prepare my workshops are too long and yeah and all they care about is you know are the students cheating and is it going to kill me and because you know they listen to the news try to disabuse them of that but that that doesn't work either so I what I so my question everywhere in these informal things is what is it with academics say I I'm a retired craftsman so I was forced to learn you learn or you get fired I mean it's pretty simple and you learn the latest thing I worked in Santa Clara California for 20 years don't call it so come back and so you know you keep up where you're out and then you go into academia and it's like no I didn't I've been in denial for 20 years and I don't intend to change that I don't get I don't think I have an answer for you mark but I have also observed that that's one of the biggest like one of the hardest things to get through to academics is and I sort of feel like it has to do with the insecurity that's behind that like what's the what's the thing that's holding you back from learning something new is that you might fail at it right like and you're supposed to always be the smartest person in the room because you're the person with the big degree right like at least that has been my experience where it's like you know you're but you know when people say like oh no I just prefer it this way it's better this way it's like well is it better for your students that way like you know like and that's another place where sometimes you can get a little bit of movement you know it's like what about the children and that doesn't work either I think you just have to deal with this you know like just keep trying it like whatever comes into your head like you know like just keep pushing into some it or ultimately understanding like what are like what can how can it help them like if you can make that argument is like it's almost like a sales pitch like how can it help you like free up some time how can it help you like not have to answer you know this many emails or whatever it is I will apparently I don't know these apparently not using their email but I don't know I think maybe like maybe even one-on-one conversations might be another possibility I've gone to that you know and so I've for years I've accepted that you know they need to be the smartest person and you know I've accepted that actually but now I'm down to they're just lazy I don't know maybe that's it I'm not sure but yeah I've I've reached out personally and it's a very small you know I don't 10 faculty members or something and I've gone to that and the current theme that I'm pounding on is learning how to use the tools aligns with the mission that seems to work with a couple of them so because it's a social justice kind of like of course Berkeley kind of social justice sure and it plays yeah but what about the children didn't work they're not children obviously but you know yeah it's it's fun I have to say I feel like I feel I do feel like that strategy though of just of like when you find something that is connecting even if it's only connecting with one to two people or a few like you got to do that because the minute you have some folks who are then also working on this stuff like like you know using the tools or whatever that does snowball well snowball is not the right word it's much slower than that but you know it does it does compound eventually very slow landslide yeah and because ultimately like you know like any other group of people academics are a bunch of individual people who all have individual perspectives on something I do think Jen what you said about like the perspective of like I studied this thing and I'm good at this one very specific thing is a does influence a lot because especially compared to to like me where I like can't on a given day decide what my favorite that I have too many little things that I'm only kind of good at right that's my whole thing but that's not most academics you know most academics know what it means to really understand a niche that I've not even aware of right now right so that's very different but yeah I do think I do think you know having that perspective of mine is important but yeah you ultimately got to give you have to spend the time on the people who are interested and at some points you're gonna have to be like all right well I've tried this this and this with this person and they're not responding so like okay you know I have to I guess I have to continue on doing something else with someone else I mean sort of the existential crisis approach hasn't worked either it's like look we're credited now and you have to use these tools and if you don't we'll lose our accreditation that doesn't work either I mean I don't know it's interesting and they are older you know it's kind of a volunteer it's a very small graduate institute so they're way underpaid it's they're really volunteers with the stipend or whatever so they're not really going to change so well I think that's a really important piece of information though right like if they're not there's no incentive for them to change because you know what are what's to be lost right you know and I think that that's that's the part that's really hard to like where I am you know so I'm based in a New England institution and we can't keep hearing enough about how we have a shrinking pool of students and you know like it's just higher ed is really hard now and it's like okay yeah it is but part of that is like if you're not keeping up then it's only going to get harder you know like so I think that's a piece that I tried to you know I guess get across as best I can is like if if we're like we keep falling behind in like the technological elements and people just keep relying back on the you know I like to collect papers on actual paper like you know kind of ideas it's like so how is that going to make our job any easier to recruit students here when you literally won't even share a syllabus electronically like I mean it's just but I think it is part of that feeling of attack right like is that there's people are questioning is is college worth it is that you know like in it in it's like you're kind of getting it from all sides and so when somebody asks you to do one more thing learn one other thing it's like not you know a lot of times I feel like there's a lot of people who are really burned out on the whole thing especially after COVID especially if you are afraid of technology before COVID and then you got forced into it and now you're just like nope I just want to go back to my happy world before COVID it sounds like it's you know part of it is establishing trust too that you're doing this for the same reasons that they do anything related to their job you know like and that should be easy right in the sense that it's like we all work here we want this to be successful that's what I assumed right it's like we're all in this and the thing is is the you know we don't make money okay but we're volunteers we're doing this voluntarily and you have to use the tools I so I just assumed I've been at this seven years now with this group and I just assumed they'd be like great somebody can show me how to do this stuff but no that didn't work out and also I have a class analysis you know it's like IT is like the pool boy or the trash man you know it's like IT they come in at night right and they fix they come in at night fix things I don't really have to see them so but you can't raise that that you know well and that's kind of what I mean with trust or to a certain extent in that like I would always try and be really transparent about like when working with with faculty when I was at my previous job that I was doing this because I genuinely believe what I'm telling you today or whatever is going to be better for students or better for you in these ways and then I wanted to try and demonstrate why right not beyond beyond the me just saying oh we should do this because it's better and saying like no no this is actually better for learning outcomes in these ways but that's so hard to do for a lot of reasons A because you know some some of it like you can say we should be you know accepting papers via a system instead of via pen and paper and and I would say and not because I hate pen and paper pen and paper is a fantastic reliable technology one of the best of real banger in terms of of technology you know is really great but here is the other reasons not to do this or or or that could be a benefit and it's so hard to frame that in a way that is helpful and doesn't feel like you're talking down to people so it really really really difficult and so I'd spend a lot of time trying to think about how I could do that and not yeah I don't know just be simultaneously helpful but also convey that I know what I'm talking about in this particular thing like I did think this through I'm not selling you on whatever tool literally you know like I'm I'm doing this because I think it's better yeah for instance currently I'm so we finally formed a subcommittee or a committee to you know move this along after seven years with the chief academic officer to get the faculty more involved somehow maybe and so currently I'm explaining to everybody now more one-on-one that currently the faculty fill out a word doc and email it to the chief academic officer and he reviews it then he emails it to the president which shouldn't even be involved in this process but it's such a small place and then he reviews it and then he emails it to the administrative officer and then they upload it to the google drive and I'm like you know if you just fill that out in the google drive you know so talk about efficiency you know but this is my current one I'm you know maybe I'll get some movement who knows anyway I don't want to have this whole thing be about my faculty you need to get rid of them mark I'm sorry there's doesn't sound like you have any other option and if you need help reclaim is have is a new service that we're coming out with actually I have friends in Oakland, California so it's right next to Berkeley I can I can get it taken here or as Kathy Davidson said at a digital pedagogy lab she was talking about that and somebody brought this issue up comes up all the time right and she said well you know it's just you know one casket at a time which I thought was kind of astounding for her to say in public and it's recorded somewhere reclaim the lame Shannon and Tom are talking about sort of office hours and various workshop like things and kind of what the core of a workshop is and yeah I also find that really interesting because I don't know if anyone can necessarily describe what a workshop is really because they can sorry in like a one sentence you know that really gets to the point of it that isn't sort of oh it's a meeting like this like well that's not why we have them you know that idea I think like a lot of people are workshops are more hands on than like a presentation so that's one expectation which isn't always met including what stuff I do sometimes right and then like what we always struggled with is like I get into proof a lot because I have a lot of frustration with like doing stuff and feeling like it doesn't matter and then also like paranoia about proving that stuff matters to other people because that often has been the case in places where I've been so you know I get into that too like I'm really I always hated that phrase like if I just reached one child today I'm like then you did a terrible job because you had 300 students a day you know let's let's get down to business that means we're not doing this right we have to do a lot better than that we need to be in the like let's say 50 range when we'd still be awful so I mean you know like I think about that a lot with workshops I can console myself and say it's on a super long pale and I think that's true it's good but it also frustrates me on the other end where I'm saying like why am I doing this if it's not an effective thing in general why don't I just have individual meetings with all these people it would probably like do better say like after five minutes this isn't for me and we cut out you know we save them a bunch of time I don't know like those are the things I really struggle with with workshops one of the reasons I like the drop-in hours they call them something fancy they call them the agora like the open marketplace of ideas there were some cool things that happened because different people would be talking about different things and they kind of over here and sometimes that would lead to stuff but again happenstance you know lots of things that go against kind of those open office hours or drop-ins and lots of days certainly towards the end where I sat there and did nothing while I did my regular work which I guess I'll put in the nothing bucket you know what I mean so I don't know like it's part of it and it's just so different like if you go in a classroom for students who have to use WordPress for this project the way you interact with them and what you do is very different than trying to convince faculty that WordPress might be a way to to create open publishing or do blah blah blah like the fundamentally different things yeah I mean and that's always a one-on-one conversation I think I think it's hard to be a workshop I genuinely agree that those are different things but I always tried to bring that in when I could like when when I because that was a very common yeah faculty would say hey we want to do something with Domain on one's own or we want to make a WordPress blog or whatever can you come in and show my students how to do it and I'd say sure and then I would try and get as much information about you know why like why are you doing this what's the role in the class and then I would spend and I would say typically and I felt good about this I don't know that every single faculty member and student who went to one of these maybe felt the same way I did but at least I got some good feedback which was like I'd say cool I am gonna go into that we will spend like about 15 minutes getting them started on that but I'm gonna spend the other 15 minutes explaining to them why this matters in from my point of view not from your I didn't obviously sell it this way but I spent much more time talking about like why are we creating in this case like a blog in this way and why does that matter or why do I think it matters essentially and I don't know that I was always 100 successful but I my goal was to try and at least get some people hooked because again it kind of comes back to my thing of you know tools can be hard to use but a lot of things aren't really that hard if you're invested in them or or don't feel that hard if they're if you're invested in them and if the resources are there to find out more so if I could basically say let's get started here you go you are started now and here's more information there's more information good luck you know it's WordPress there's actually a lot of information the the the challenges I've curated some of it for you so that you don't have the entire internet to look at but before we do any of that why are we doing it like this and yeah because I think that's hard I also felt like that was hard for faculty to argue to their own course I could come in as a technologist and say in my realm this is why this is important faculty member has already described to you why you're doing it from the course's perspective and I would try to link the two together don't know I was I was successful but that was my strategy I've also tried to use that strategy Taylor and I guess I would say with mixed results you know it's it's how you mix it in I think so what I tried to do is like have them do something and then talk about like a bigger idea right like you're setting your site visibility now the user choices what happens if I pick this one can I who can I share it with you know like but also hey that means that this is live to the whole world you know which is you know for a lot of students is very intimidating at least I you know I work with undergraduates mostly and they're like no thanks like but then you can ask you know you can say yeah we're just starting like but I think that another key piece for me is if I can work with students or if I can work with students at the beginning of their time at the university and then like offer hey you're gonna you can build on this right like this is how you might build on it that you might see it again here you might see it again there but that's the thing it's and it's a time investment and I think that's the other struggle with technology a lot of times Mark maybe to to your situation too is like people are told they have to learn new things and then like a year later not now you don't now that's out and this other thing is in and now the next thing and now the next thing and it just they if they don't have that interest they just don't want it you know like and it just feels like oh it's another like whatever shiny new thing the administration thinks we need and then in two years it's going to be gone and you know doesn't mean anything to me anyway you know so I think that that's the the part that with students it can be in some ways easier to make that connection because they're more comfortable usually with the idea of like what what could this tool do you know because they just have used different ones compared to the faculty a lot of the time well and you can use that strategy with students too right because they can build on it over time at least in some some examples right so because that was always my main argument is that this doesn't have to die when you give up your when you give up your student email address you can take it with you if you want to or you can specifically not take it with you when you want to when you don't if you don't want to so that I resonate with some not all of course right but yeah I'd hope since they most of them had been in larger institutions obviously and had been through that if I just wait this out it'll go away thing and that work but here again for seven years I've just been trying to get them to use the Google workspace that's it and you know I keep showing them all the resources directly tied to it from Google right so one place to go one thing to learn well one big thing to learn one place to go um but you know it's like you say it's a long process well the crazy thing to me I have sorry Jim no no please well you think about it like I guess we've been I don't know like I know some of the people here we've been doing this 25ish years maybe a little bit longer yeah exactly and I mean like if I and I'm throwing away a lot of stuff right now as I showed in the beginning when I threw away a time magazine from 1991 you know like I mean I'm still having the same conversations with people about when to use a spreadsheet whatever we're doing is failing utterly at massive degrees of scale over 25 to 30 years so you can take comfort and that anything you do will be just fine and probably feel much better thank you yeah probably like this isn't an isolated incident this isn't an individual thing this is massive catastrophic failure are they all the same people have you been having the same conversation about spreadsheets with one person for 25 years though Tom no but I can tell you that I have the spreadsheet conversations so often it breaks my heart you know like fundamental building block things like this is the place you put numbers that you want to add we don't have a conceptual grasp of that that's kind of broad spread and this is you know me bouncing around lots of different places large public now small private small private someplace else northeast south whatever and internationally you know like I've messed with all this stuff these are not isolated incidents yeah maybe restricted to my sphere of experience but it's fairly broad fairly long periods of time I just wonder what would work and what what is our pace of change you know like that's always my thing it's like what is a reasonable expectation so I don't feel like I'm wasting my time and then this is all stupid and I don't like it being anecdotal nice things with individual people who are just awesome because then I don't feel like my input or stuff that I did really was the change factor I just happened to coincide with an awesome person we were able to do some awesome stuff but like that's not change at an institutional level yeah it's tricky like I um I'm having a little bit of an existential crisis right now because I'm kind of like maybe I don't believe in change at an institutional level in the sense that of course I do but like in the sense that like I I kind of feel like any kind of change like that is made up of a bunch of individual people changing something right and I I don't think that that happens all at once or I don't know if it's maybe I'm just like naive but like I you know like I think I think that that that we are going to have that spreadsheet conversation and it is a bummer that we have to have it because side thing what if we educated people about this stuff but what is we even mean in that thing I just said right so it's complicated obviously but like yeah I don't know um I I think it's it's hard to stack up those individual changes to make an institutional change and I've not done it very often so I definitely agree in that sense that it's very very difficult to it can be make those large changes it can be depressing but at the same time I have found in my experience that a lot of times there'll be faculty for students come to you and like you know I have a vision for like how I want this thing to change and experiment with what could help it change you know and there's no I don't think my role as an tech did anything other than give them the possibilities think through some tools and some possibilities to make that maybe work or go into the laboratory and I always thought that's when the best work happened and if you had a bunch of people doing it your job was fun and people were like wow this worked out and someone like this sucked but I actually see where I went wrong and what could happen and then you kind of have a kind of virtuous cycle with a few people institutionally no I mean as as as far as the magnitude of some of the work amongst people in this call went institutionally it was still marginal and I think that's important to remember but I think there are people who were able to kind of you know understand that this tools at their best were about augment augmenting the relationship and ability to kind of do stuff synchronously and asynchronously and kind of share your thinking and develop a sense of person and place outside of class and build on that I mean I think all that stuff is still valuable I think I like to work with the faculty and students who saw that you know or who kind of graphed that always the idea of going in and I feel your pain mark to convince or let people see it's like like that was never I mean you know as good a salesman as one could or couldn't be it's a painful experience unless you're really one of those people who like to convert you know and then you really have that kind of you know religious kind of halo around your work and I think a lot of times it was just being with people who are smart and know that these tools can provide different ways at it and then finding that relationship between those people and yourself to do it or a group to do it and I think that's enough I don't think it's institutional transformation I think it's usually you transform a faculty or two who transformed a learning experience for a group of people and you know that was cool right like I think you know and I saw some of the effects and you know they didn't change the world but they they helped us think through a moment in higher ed where this stuff was happening so yeah I think I know it didn't change the world right yeah we're in the world that we are ugly though you kind of lose you lose scope of what these things are good at you know and they're good at the kind of more focused specific so yeah I don't know it's interesting we're way off topic here we've gone into like and I got a run I really appreciate this chat and I I dropped in that my my made up title for my volunteer position is Technologian so maybe maybe I need to go to that I got a jump because I'm a facilitator at Story Center so I got a digital story mapping class that I'm supposed to be in right now so thanks for the chat I hope to see you next time now that I finally found the calendar and sometimes I get the notices see y'all thanks all right bye bye everybody Shannon I know you probably are a close sometime too but I would love to hear if you have any time about the student led stuff you're working sure yeah I'll give the quick plug in here I'll link to like so you can kind of see previous events but think we've discovered our way of not hating the idea of workshops for I guess just notoriously always is that we so ready most people here maybe familiar very watching we have digital knowledge center peers helping other peers with digital projects and so the main goal of actually our did our workshops are their student proposed sometimes our consultants but a lot of times they're just students who have like are interested in something say like the president of the photography club wants to run a workshop on something the fun part of that is for at least Cartlett and I is that they proposed they want to do something we meet with them to talk about okay how do you make an effective workshop let's let's work together to figure out what are the beats of this workshop that you know because everything you all been talking about like what it like how do you hone in on that like one idea because most students do not know what is useful workshop and then we have them we do a whole rehearsal so we do it we treat it live like we do a live run through so that they can kind of we can see it and get them to be back like on how that goes and then they do it and we found like this is rewarding for us and since like it kind of it maybe it's not like always quote-unquote useful things like you know we have one on rotoscoping like how many people actually need to know about that it's not a lot but for us student that student the presenter getting useful like experience in doing something like that is the main goal the attendees may get something out of it but for us like we're like by flipping the notion of like what the workshops are for we have found that to be a more meaningful experience and then we get like lots of interesting things and then it seemed we do a lot of I'll also say a lot of work to market those things you can kind of see the fun graphics we do like all that work so the students don't have to but students also seem to show for other students stuff more than like when I'd be like it's me doing it it's like okay whatever they seem to be able to recruit that kind of support too so it's like it's a it's a lot of fun and it's like right we're kind of get we can then kind of open it up to anything like we don't have to know about the thing the student just needs to know about it we just had to be the people that can help them think about how to distill what they're trying to do and then like you can see on the website they could link to that into the future has their name here I did this workshop you know and we hope to set them up for success so actually understand what makes a useful workshop um you know uh you know in that period of time so it's a lot of fun we yeah first I was hesitant and now it's like no this is it gets us out of doing it but in a more interesting position to kind of facilitate kind of cool work so well yeah that's amazing and like you obviously get to it serves so many like aligned purposes it seems like to me right like because you get to also say like this is the D.K.C. offering this and so that is a benefit because you get to showcase sort of the breadth of things that your the that your students know and and can help with which is obviously inherently valuable the students get this amazing experience they get to work with you and partland on building a good workshop which is something they'll use for the rest of their lives like it's it's a kind of a win win win win win as many as you want there it's really cool yeah but and also my favorite part of this so we do like when we figure out the presentation we we call it a jam and we do part of the jam is that we then figure out the title of the workshop which is often the most fun part if anybody came to the Cartman live presentation on the summer it's like we get in front of a whiteboard and then we just kind of like throw things at the wall like if you can kind of go through you know the previous events like that is like it's interesting because it's also an exercising distilling do we all agree what this workshop is about because if you can title it well like we all know what this this is gonna be about and it's just makes it I think fun too like trying to come up with something like ridiculous like my I think my my I kind of find that one but like one of my favorite ones was like oops I made the web accessible and it was like a one about like web accessibility it just like the public that you can sometimes surround something that sounds stupid and somebody's like actually I think that might work as a title and then just work as a marketing thing you know students will stop and like look at something that is interestingly titled rather than Domino one's own workshop it's like you know it's like it's something like you know you know you know you know smooth moves using like you know just one kind of things to get a student's look it's a little bit of like sometimes I feel like I'm making clickbait but it's at least kind of entertaining it worked for the internet clickbait I know right I mean yeah you're just using it for the power of good not for advertising revenue so it's fine this is awesome I think we're well over time but thanks Shannon also specifically I know now we're almost 10 minutes over but this is great and so I'm gonna hit the stop on the recording here