 Hi, I'm Dan Garcia, teaching professor from UC Berkeley. I'm humbled to have been honored with an ACM Distinguished Speaker and an ACM Distinguished Educator Award. Today I have the great pleasure of interviewing my good friend Brett Becker from the University College Dublin in Ireland, who's doing a fellowship with the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. His fellowship is Teaching and Learning for the New Era of Digital Innovation. And this is really important because computing has affected our society in so many ways. It's affected how people spend their leisure time, passing time in Facebook or doom scrolling or watching videos or making videos or creating. It's affected how folks access their healthcare. It's affected how we produce and watch our movies, all the digital assets that are now being part of every single high-end summer blockbuster. It's affected our way our cars are driving on the roads and our safety. In just so many ways, computing has affected our lives. And in terms of thinking about education, computing really is just kind of cracking the nut to affect education in a positive way. And I think I'm excited to hear some of the things that you've been thinking about, Brett. So in a nutshell, what's your research about? That's a million Dan. It's really good to be here with you. This research is about teaching and learning for the next era of digital innovation. It explores the digital demands on and needs of a range of disciplines, including challenges and opportunities presented by digital innovation. Ultimately, the goal is to kickstart initiatives to help Ireland produce graduates in the coming decade who are best prepared for the digital worlds that they're going to enter regardless of their discipline. By definition, this is a continuous process, really driven by the constantly accelerating pace of innovation. And this research will culminate in a professional development course for educators from any discipline aimed at helping them be better positioned to foster the skills, knowledge and competencies to deal with realities such as cloud computing, big data, the Internet of Things, and of course, artificial intelligence. These innovations are going to continue to transform the teaching and learning of all disciplines. So that's really what this is about. It's an exciting time. I certainly agree that this is a new era in this and those particular subtopics of computer science are certainly going to impact education as well as our society in many ways. What prompted you to choose this topic for your fellowship research? Well, I'm a computer scientist and my research area is computing education. And I actively research the needs of computing students for my day job, so to speak. And often that does involve looking at non-computing students, but normally in computing courses. So I have been aware that there are digital technologies, of course, impacting many students in disciplines outside of computing. And I find these areas to be really context rich. And also, often that's where there's the most evidence for digital innovation truly shaping society. You said there that these technologies are transforming everything we do, but it's the what we do that's really interesting. The technology changes the way we watch films, but we still watch films. So I wanted to get to the heart of those doing things. And many disciplines, of course, have been completely revolutionized by these innovations. For instance, geology has been transformed by geographic information systems. Architecture has been similarly revolutionized by building information modeling. However, if you look a little closer, the drivers of and the realities of these changes in various disciplines are quite distinct. And I find this really exciting. I mean, it's just really exciting that there are so many disciplines out there that have been changed so much. But there's also disciplines that have yet to really experience that, you know, to be over the hump, so to speak, and to really experience that revolutionary change. And the interesting thing about, you know, why some disciplines haven't adopted or haven't embraced the digital transformation is it's a question of, A, there might be some pushback from folks who said, you know, this is the way we've done it for years and don't want to adopt a new way. And it also might just, it might not lend itself as easily, you know, as it is to can be teaching STEM courses with a little computing that might change something that may be changing teaching social science courses. But I think there's transformation possibilities all across the board. So why does this topic matter to those who learn, teach and lead across the higher education community? Well, it's, I mean, it's important. And it matters because it's hard to find disciplines where digital innovation hasn't had a significant impact on teaching and learning. However, these impacts vary greatly. And like I've kind of hinted at, I think in many cases we're really just at the cusp of an even greater change. I mean, the pace of innovation is compounding. It shows no sign of slowing. It's certainly accelerating. And this is going to impact the teaching and learning of all disciplines in both pretty obvious and straightforward ways, as well as some, some, you know, more specific ways. If you look for a specific example, digital innovation is creating new disciplines and new specialties. So that's maybe kind of obvious. For instance, bioinformatics is a relatively young discipline that has benefited greatly. I mean, arguably it's been made possible by digital innovation. If you look at law, software copyright law is a relatively new specialty within the discipline of law. But as well, I mean, it's not just about those obvious changes. I find it really exciting that if we stick with law as an example, you can't really argue with saying that all law graduates will be the most capable and the most competitive regardless of their specialty if they have a command of the digital technologies that are relevant to law. And I think additionally, digital innovation, it's going to also affect more general aspects of teaching and learning across the disciplines. For instance, mastery learning and personalized tutoring and mentoring. They're both known to have positive effects on all teaching and learning regardless of the discipline and the bottleneck there has historically been resources. Most often human and economic resources intertwined. But digital technologies are becoming available that will help us overcome these barriers, freeing up educators time to be dedicated to aspects of their profession that absolutely require that human input and that human touch. And particularly artificial intelligence applications are really well poised to help educators and students and provide for instance personalized programs of learning. And these are becoming more economical and effective, but in many cases they've yet to really take hold. You know it's really interesting. You're preaching to this man's choir because I'm trying to launch in the fall of 2022 a course at UC Berkeley that for the first time will give only A's. And the idea is we'll use mastery learning to say however long it takes for you to reach an A level if you're willing to work for it you can get the A. And it might take you two semesters but you'll just get an internal incomplete between the semesters and when you finally reach A level you'll get the A. So I'm hoping to get some press around this to see if we can actually finally take this idea of mastery learning and embody it in an actual course. That's great. But let's go back a little bit. What do we know about this topic from previous literature? Well if we look at digital technology in general there's a few main avenues in the literature that are really quite distinct. The first is for instance educational technology tools that we use in the classroom to help teaching and learning, right? So the pandemic really made this obvious with Zoom and different tools to kind of do the same things but differently. The second is more broad brush digital literacy that's generally beneficial for all students and graduates. That's been with us for some time, right? Digitally literate graduates that's a good thing. But both of these really they often lack disciplinary context and that's where I'm focused is where these innovations have discipline specific impact. So for instance, what digital knowledge skills competencies do earth science graduates need to be the best professionals that they can be? And there's not a large coherent body of work available on this front, at least not from a multidisciplinary point of view where lessons can be learned by educators in disparate disciplines. Much of the work is siloed within discipline specific venues and communities, but that's not to say that these disciplines don't have lessons that could be useful to those in other disciplines. There's a lot of really exciting work out there, but bringing it together and making it useful to others, making it useful to as many people as possible is a bit challenging because you have to cross those disciplinary lines. And we all know that that's a challenging thing to do in most cases. Sure. And it also it takes cross disciplinary teams as you're rethinking the course. If you're saying what do earth science graduates need? You can't just have CS people come in from the outside and say, here's what you need. You say, well, here's our tools we can provide and the earth science people can decide can also be, you know, learn what those tools are and say, oh, I could use that in this particular case. So it really does help to have a team approach in terms of redesign of education. How did you go about the research? One of the main avenues was conducting dozens of interviews with Irish third level educators, including disciplines from archaeology to zoology, as I like to say, but but also literally at as many institutions as possible. And these interviews covered various angles, including digital terminology, which I found to be really challenging disciplinary impacts, current practices, the different drivers behind the demands for technology and various disciplines. And it also looked at their current challenges and future prospects. It was it was interesting I had the opportunity to see a lot of innovations in action. For instance, I went to an equestrian center and saw kinematics software in in how equestrian studies people use those tools and I looked at how, for instance, ship bridge simulators were used in nautical science. So it's there's really, really interesting uses of technology out there in various disciplines. And like I said before, it's about, you know, what has someone done in discipline X that that people in discipline Y may be able to benefit from. So on that on that topic, a main output of this fellowship will be an open professional development course. And that's intended to provide a mechanism where groups of educators from any and all disciplines can learn about the the impact and practices and solutions provided by digital innovation in other disciplines and to allow for the cross pollination of ideas and and experiences. I love that idea it's almost like it's a play it's a sharing of best practices in some sense it's like a watering hole where you know earth science does something innovative and then chemistry says hey I want to do that that was really neat and it doesn't necessarily have to be limited to earth science let me borrow that tool and that idea that's great. Well this is so exciting what are some of the key initial findings from your research. I think an important initial finding and this is still ongoing but definitely an initial finding of this research has been just how differently various disciplines have experienced digital innovation so far. The demand for digital skills comes from different angles from different stakeholders in just different disciplines for some industry really has been providing that drive and demand for others. Regulatory demands so in architecture for instance they're really driven by regulation and they have to be compliant so you know that drives that demand. For others it can be student led particularly in any arts a lot of times students want to do cool creative stuff with technology. And the way that that those tools and innovations are used. It also varies really between the disciplines and the impacts of innovation on teaching and learning they're also just as diverse some disciplines have had their practices revolutionized by digital innovation. And so although this kind of diversity may seem obvious the implications are extremely important I think the present state of digital innovation and teaching and learning. I think consists of three observations for me. First, some disciplines have been impacted more by digital innovation than others, and that reveals a disciplinary digital innovation gap, if you will, and second the pace of digital innovation is accelerating. So, the disciplines that have embraced digital innovation are likely forging ahead faster than others and this is a third observation that looking to the future, this suggests that there exists a disciplinary digital innovation gap that will grow if those disciplines struggling with change. Don't overcome the challenges that they face. Right. We talked about not every not every discipline decides to embrace computing to transform its education and its practice. So what what actually if anything surprised you by this research. I was surprised again by that variety. It's really interesting how different disciplines have adapted and how some have been kind of thrown into change and others have been a little more. I don't want to say hesitant but you know just the drive hasn't been there or the demand hasn't been there or the resources to capitalize on digital innovation hasn't been there for whatever reason. So I mean I definitely learned if you look somewhere where you think that digital innovation should be really really prevalent it may not be and and vice versa. In fact, many of the most interesting disciplines that I've entered into from a digital innovation point of view were arguably quite far from stem often in the arts. For instance, one may not think that that theater music various performing arts haven't been impacted or that impacted by digital innovation, but many of these disciplines really have and in really fascinating ways. For instance, people in theater are questioning what does it mean to be live and and what is technologically mediated live performance mean for audiences and for performers so it's really interesting stuff. It's always fascinating to see some of the most creative people are on the cusp doing some just wonderful new media. The whole phrase of new media just says that their performance art takes on many different dimensions when you bring in computing. It can be as I walk through the space of my body, the sound is changing. There's just really wonderful interactive exhibitions that you can have in some of these museums that just let you explore the space where very creative people are bringing computing and the performance art and kind of interactive space. So things rather than being passive are now interactive in ways that they haven't been before. Kind of virtual reality is like that you're gonna be in a movie you'll actually be in you put a headset on you'll be in the movie you know a bowl comes at you and you'll feel you know you'll feel viscerally what it feels like to have a bowl charges you and then be stopped at the last second or something. What this is fascinating to me really interesting what what do your initial findings mean for higher education policy and practice. That's a great question. The rich and diverse digital landscapes that exist within all of these different disciplines really present challenges and opportunities at the disciplinary institutional and national levels so there is there are going to be a lot of different levels of policy and practice implications and I think that's kind of putting them at those different levels might help. Regardless these challenges will only be overcome and the opportunities are only going to be realized through some sort of an awareness of these interconnected landscapes and disciplines need to cope with their specific needs and capabilities. Certainly they of course need to maintain their core identities and missions. Institutions, most of which these days are inherently multidisciplinary need to to really understand the landscapes within their walls and how they combine to form an institutional landscape. We go up another level nationally various institutions need to effectively work, I think in unison to present a coherent national digital landscape and including future focused plans. I only then really I think can policy be crafted that that will truly enable barriers to be overcome and for opportunities to be realized. And a lot of this goes back to this diversity that I keep talking about in the teaching and learning practices of various disciplines. These two have to be managed funding is important, but getting funding where it needs to be is often difficult. And awareness and knowledge or paramount obviously without them, you don't, if even if you have funding you don't have anything to do. So it's, again, it's about having disciplinary experts being aware of the potentially transformative innovations that are just just a, you know, on the horizon. And making sure that they have the resources and abilities and agility to make the best use of those innovations. And I think that looking forward. There's one area that really needs to be watched by everyone and that one is artificial intelligence. Education is from many angles, notoriously slow to change I think we started off with a little note of that earlier. And the prolifer, the proliferation of AI technology in society has been so far presently pretty much dictated by the economics and potential for immediate impact. So this means that industry mass market consumer products that's where we're seeing the AI right now right Tesla. But as innovation drives on and costs come down. I think that areas such as education, where the returns are often measured over years and decades will sooner than later and possibly sooner than than most think right now start to feel the real impact of things like artificial intelligence. And that's really important because the implications that AI can bring to education. And specifically that the innovation in practice and policies of teaching and learning really have truly revolutionary potential for all disciplines but we need to be on our toes and be ready to make the most of that. At the first moment that we can. Brett, what a delightful way to close this because you know when I do a lot of advising and when when students come to me and say what courses should I take. I always say, Well, there's lots of fun courses but definitely take AI. The AI just feels like the course that every single subdiscipline fact even other computing disciplines are having AI plus that you know I got my PhD in graphics and now graphics really at Berkeley is graphics plus they I you know there's architecture but there's architecture plus they I that's really a you know let's build that's the exciting that that's the it's bringing new life it's breathing new life into many of these fields because now there's new hardware to build to do the AI and the neural nets faster. It's really interesting. I also I love your your your overall summary of how to transform higher education because certainly funding is important, but it has to also be grassroots I'm reading. I'm doing a reading group about the history of civil rights and you can't just from the national level make a rule and then have all these you know folks on the ground not believe in civil rights you have to kind of somehow make them believe in it so there's a lot of analogies I'm seeing here of how do you get people to buy into it. You know yes as money and grants and let's have a thousand points of light and opportunities to share best practices across the disciplines as you know earth science does something transformative let's make sure other disciplines know about that in maybe a yearly or you know monthly or something conference or calls. But it also has to be from bottom up it has to be the departments themselves the disciplines themselves have to say wow what an opportunity not only is there free money to grab on do but let's I have some vision let's get some visionary people forward to put those grants forward to see if that money available from the from the top. Can transform the discipline and then let's quickly share that with others and let's look around ourselves and see what you know chemistry is looking at whatever science is doing say let's borrow that tool and what's nice about computer science is abstraction. Maybe you can maybe you know folks can build tools that are generalizable and can be used across all disciplines rather than well I'm going to build a tool only for science know if I build a mastery learning tool it could be used by many disciplines so I think there's a lot of potential to take what we know with computer science but again the key is. You've got to have this be a partnership this has to be computer scientists on one side of the one side of the aisle. The discipline specific experts that the real visionary folks in the other side of the aisle coming together to make the best the best higher education experience in the best. Not not just actually the education of it but also transforming you know what architects do period you know transforming the discipline itself. And a lot of people don't realize that a lot of times it's the grunge work like computing can bring in and and lift you up rather than you know remove your jobs of where you know that no there's no manufacturing jobs because robots are doing them all but. Think about architecture think about architecture. I don't know a hundred years ago before computing. All of the calculations of whether the building can maintain the stresses and strains are done by hand. And now you put in a CAD model and you run software and it does it for you. It says oh you know what this cantilever won't be able to support if everybody decides to have a you know a party on the deck or something. So all a lot of times computing can now elevate what you do and allow you to be more creative because it does the grunge work for you. It's really fascinating. Ask the folks at Pixar if they could you know if someone trying to sketch think about snow white right trying to sketch how address actually moves when you're making snow white 70 years ago. Now you just put a dress you put some physics on it and then how it renders is automatically done. So all of that work of trying to figure out how to do that is now something that computer can do for you and can allow the animators and can allow the creative people to be much more creative at a higher level. So computing certainly a transformation of so many ways. Yeah and I think that's really important. You know it's not going to take jobs. I don't think it's it's not going to you know remove work from our plate and leave us with nothing to do. It's it lets us do more better. Right. Yeah you know. Yeah. At a higher level of abstraction you want to use that the phrase like you know you were doing this lower level thing and now the computer can do it for you. Now what would you do. You know what would you do. Even the folks at you know at Amazon this big this big company that's doing this the folks who used to do kind of a lot of men you know have you know strain injuries because now that's done by by computers that's done by robots. Well now what what should they do. Well they're doing a higher level work so it actually does help in most cases it does help folks to elevate what they're doing and elevate their their careers. It's wonderful. Brett I want to thank you for your time. What a fascinating conversation and I also want to thank you for doing this work. This is really important work in terms of it's really like looking at the global space of education and digital technologies and how can we improve it and how can how can Ireland make a difference. And actually there's almost like a level above it like how can once they make a difference how can other countries learn what Ireland is going to be doing so I think there's there's a lot of potential to share best practices with us but again thank you for the time and thank you for the work that you're doing. Thanks very much Dan it was a pleasure talking to you today.