 All right, it's the top of the hour. Let's begin and let me welcome everybody Welcome to the Future Trends Forum. My name is Brian Alexander. I'm the forums creator host and cat herder And I'll be your guide to the next hour of conversation. I'm very glad to see you all here But before we begin, let me introduce the program Let me explain a bit about where it comes from how it works what we hope to do and what our plan is for today So to begin with you should know the forum is in its fifth year. We've been running since 2016 Which is very very exciting if you're new to the forum. Let me explain. This is a conversation-oriented space This is a venue for discussing the future of higher education. We don't have presentations We don't run as a standard webinar. Our whole idea is to focus on face-to-face audio and textual conversation Now every session we tend to have one guest and one theme and today you'll see is a little bit different Because today we're going to continue our exploration of the COVID-19 pandemic and what it means for higher education It's present and future. We are living in a truly extraordinary situation right now This screenshot from the Johns Hopkins University press. I'm sorry the Johns Hopkins University Dashboard is already a bit out of date. We unfortunately crested more than a half a million people and affected with COVID-19 And already the impact on higher education is enormous now I Have been putting together some resources to help with that including this forum But let me just give you this URL if you'd like these are links to a few different projects including resources for tracking COVID-19 Our spreadsheet of campus closures and moving online and more Now a bit more background about the future transform how it works So to begin with we can only do this work with the help of some very generous and kind sponsors I want to thank them before we proceed from New York State. We think nicer than that That's a non-for-profit that helps that state's colleges and universities do great things with each other and broadband internet They also do good things for a professional development and we're very pleased that they can help us We're also grateful to Shendig because as you can see they make this technology available that we're using So if you're new to it, if you haven't been here for a while, let me explain how it works Where I am right now and where this slide is just for a moment It's called the stage and we call the stage because everybody can see and hear everything that goes on the stage Think of it as the stage or the podium of a big lecture hall or a giant classroom All right below us you can see around you a bunch of different icons each Represents one or more people signing in from somewhere in the world. Some of them are video So you can see a person's picture and their movement. Some of them are static photos But they represent people signing in from somewhere now If you'd like to talk to one of them privately in a one-to-one basis kind of like leaning over and whispering to them Just double click on their icon if they want to talk to you your two icons will click together like Legos And you can have your own private audio visual bubble But I mentioned this is all about conversation. So let me show you how you can participate in that conversation There are two major ways the bottom of the screen. You'll see a few different buttons One of them is a raised hand icon. The other one is a question mark now Click the raised hand if you want to join us here pair on stage That is if your microphone is working and your camera is working your broadband is good enough Click that button when time is right. I'll beam you up on stage and you can join this for a conversation It's really easy and fast to do Now if you can't do that if your microphone doesn't work for example or you're in a crowded environment and can't talk out loud That's okay Click the question mark and that gives you a little box into which you can type a comment or a question When time is right a flash there on the screen forever willing to see and I'll read out loud for everyone to hear Now if that's not enough if you're on Twitter, just use the hashtag FTTE and I'll be tracking that during the course of our conversation And I'll look to see what kind of comments or questions people have there But really click that raised hand so you can join us on stage So you can take advantage of the full affordance of the technology and click the question mark If you really want to ask a question, but your machine won't let you do that We're really grateful to Shindig for making this technology available Now we're also grateful to our supporters on patreon if you're new to patreon That's a crowdfunding site like Kickstarter or go fund me It lets you collaboratively fund some ongoing project in this case It's our project of looking at the future of education So if you just go to patreon.com slash Brian Alexander You can see people contributing as little as a buck a month just to keep all the lights on the machines humming happily And I just want to make sure I can thank some of the really great people who've been very generous here This is you know people like Tom Hames, Melissa Wu, Kristen Eshelman, Seth Goodman, Corey, Michael Hagens Great folks and you can join them and we're really grateful to them for their support Now we're also grateful to some other people for their help because today is a really really nice venture and new venture for us We are partnering with campus technology magazine in order to share this session today Campus technology is a magazine. I've been reading for years. I've written for and I've Contributed to in different ways and we're really really grateful to join with them today Their editor Rae Kelly is here and she's going to join me as a cost in fact I'm gonna bring her up on stage right now Rae hello Hi, so thanks so much for having me For anyone who's not familiar with us Campus technology is a digital magazine. We're focused on all things technology in higher education and Particularly the intersection of technology and learning So we have been closely following the impact of coronavirus on colleges and universities I think one of the biggest issues that that we're seeing is this tremendous effort going on to move courses online So we're doing our best to cover all of that news and and the best practices that we can share in that area I Also wanted to say I'm Experiencing the move to remote learning myself as the parent of an eight-year-old Our schools are closed. We're under shelter in place. We're social distancing and it has been to say it's rocky Um, so I definitely empathize with people who are on various sides and stages of this is not easy So I'm looking forward to hearing from all of you and exchanging ideas on how technology can help Well, thank you, Rae. I really appreciate having you here I'd love to see the questions you come up with and if you're eight-year-old charge it through those doors. That's okay Um, the the purpose of today's session is to continue our exploration of COVID-19 and the future of education And our focus today not exclusively but our main focus is going to be on the role of technology and what that does to help or hinder Or otherwise contribute to this enormous extraordinary event So what I'd like to do is I'd like to open with a couple of comments and a couple of questions But then we'd really love to hear from all of you We have some great folks in the audience I'd love to hear your stories if you have a family at home like Rae does and like I do If you've been teaching online Like I have been or if you have any other stories about shifting at campus in any other way So again, if you'd like to contribute again You can just click the raised hand button to join us on stage or you can click the question mark to type in a Before I even finished that sentence hands have been going up all over the place So let me bring a couple of them right now Let me welcome Baynard Bailey from Vassar Baynard Hello everybody, can you see me now? Oh, I can I can't read. I can still see my towel. So you I'm trying to Frame here. I've been doing a lot of cleaning I think you I think you hung up a bit there Baynard in some ways So at Vassar, we had spring break. We're the first week back from spring break There's been a big push from the administration to just oh, we'll just turn on zoom and now we'll have classes online job Complete and I think we're skipping a whole sort of instructional design and counseling and a human-centered approach We really need to be saying What's our best approach for everybody here considering everyone's circumstances and I took my master's degree online So I'm grateful that I had that experience because I know the standard is a lot of readings of a couple of video lectures Maybe once in a while maybe in a synchronous a synchronous component once a week if you're lucky, but most of it was done completely a synchronously so I feel like everyone's feeling pressure To have all your meetings online. I've already we're already starting to hear reports of zoom fatigue Talk to people and they're like, you know, I'm in the meetings I'm sitting in my club chair all day long and I'm you know, you're locked in on the camera you have no place to go and We're cheap to jowl in my house. We're Stacked on top of each other. I've got two kids and you know one is just engrossed in She's doing a what's the wind wind walker and she's deep in that and I had my first conversation with her in three days Yesterday because I took half of the off, you know, because she's just been gone and My older daughter's doing a little better because she's very active and we're exercising the walking So there's this analogue component, which is a really nice thing. I just wish um, I could just be focused on that but right now there's a lot of need and only so many people at our campus with the Everyone is really Doing a great job sort of helping in a hurry But I think the dust will settle in a week or two and we'll we'll think about some more Contemplative and humans human-centered practices that will help us all get through this but right now it's kind of like a lot of very quick implementations of things and Everyone's kind of freaking out That's my summary I'm glad you were able to spare some time for us the middle of all No, I was like I got it. I got to talk to those guys again. I got to see what's happening out there the connection I'm such a social person Brian and I just feel like I've Let half my body's been cut off because I don't talk to the guy at the Cirque desk on the way into my workshop I don't see I don't see so many people that I would just be talking to all the time as part of my job Being connected to a high-touch campus, and I'm going from being in a high-touch campus to an absolutely no-touch campus So for me personally It's very jarring and alienating and I'm starting to develop my strategies to cope I don't know if you noticed last week. I was here, but I had my camera off because this was a disaster So I'm trying to Maintain a good professional presence and be as helpful as supportive as possible But I'm also struggling to do those same things at home with my family and Sometimes the institution is understanding and sometimes not so it's it's a constant struggle to both support and counsel those that are engaged in this sort of rapid switch to online learning and also to support My own needs and the needs of my family in this situation Well, that's an awful lot of work a lot of work Did you do you want to ask better questions before he just disintegrates in front of our eyes? Yeah, well you mentioned zoom fatigue and I just Wanted to see how you know, it's in the one hand It's kind of our lifeline to see people face-to-face, but then you know the there's the two sides of it Do you have any more feelings on that? So in my general sense of things, you know, if you have a seminar that's based on discussion That's okay and zoom and it's long as you're like a smaller number of people But if you're trying to do like a lecture or conversation with 30 40 50 60 people I think that the technology of it really starts to break down. I Also think like the zoom fatigue just becomes a factor, you know If I turn my camera off and just listen am I really there? I I think we're gonna see the zoom the zoom is really great It really does do a great job right because you can it works in everything and you can set up the meetings What's it's working? It's just pretty good And it's it's better than Skype. It's better than Google Hangouts. I love the shindig I wish we had that, you know for like a campus wide event or something like that and I think that's the next Thing to sort and solve because we're dealing with this community group and they're like we're making it One Google forum for everybody to talk to But I think we'll see less of oh We'll just swap out all our class time with zoom time I hope because that just seems exhausting because all the professors know they're I think everyone's working harder than ever now Not we're not dialing it back. We're ramping it up and we really need to just sort of like go Okay, we have five six weeks in the semester We the the administration's done a job a good job with the NRO option So I think students can say I'd like a beat if I don't get a beat Give me a pass and and that's a good way to sort of dial back the The pressure and expectations. I think we'll also do the same thing once we settle into this We're gonna go oh zoom is good at this I'm not gonna try to replace face-to-face all my face-to-face time with zoom time because it does a not a great job at that But it does a good job with small meetings Small groups one-on-ones Lecture-based sort of oh not lecture-based discussion-based classes and human exchanges. Yeah Well, we had a quick comment that came in from the discussions. I just want to put this up on the screen for everyone to see and this is from Teminik at the new school Zoom breakout rooms are really good for discussions or problem-solving with large groups Also using the whiteboard and share screen. Everyone can write and draw on the board Thank you. Thank you very much cutting on All right and draw at the same time is one of my questions. I've been experimenting with Multiple devices and drawing with a whiteboard. I was wondering if anyone had tried that What's a big question? But a unit you have a if you have a quick answer Her answer came in seconds. Yes. We just did today. Oh, that's awesome to know. I'll look for that feature I'll make up a little note for myself on my many scraps of paper here that I have on my desk So let's get to you in the new school Better than thank you so much for coming. We're gonna I'm gonna clear this Thank you for hosting this and can maintaining this routine despite all the chaos my pleasure and your room looks great Thank you. I put a nice little thing in there to brighten it up. It works well We've a few other folks who have their hands raised up and so I just want to bring them up in a hurry We have Dave wrong from a quite a Hoga College. I'm sorry from Coyahoga Community College Hello Dave We need a we need your camera on for that or He might be having a Bandwidth issue Dave, why don't you give this? Why don't you just reload your screen Dave and and see if that clears things up We also have a Thomas Hoover from Louisiana Tech University Tom you're you're muted Thank You Brian. Hi. How are you doing? We're great. Good to see you. Good to see you. Hey, Ray. Um, this has been really interesting We actually started the Wednesday when this basically came down here was the first day of our quarter so So we didn't have the luxury of having a spring break or having any kind of anything So I ironically had been meeting with the zoom on the Monday because we're doing some partnerships with K through 12 And I had a meeting set up for that Wednesday actually moved it to Tuesday so we signed a PO with was zoom on Wednesday and We that night got everything up and running and we trained 100 to 250 I'm sorry 150 to 200 faculty that Friday Saturday and Sunday and went live on Monday on all of our classes on zoom And I understand, you know, what y'all are talking about as far as it doesn't meet everyone's needs So I kind of look at is I've got a whole bunch of different. I just simply look at as another tool in the toolbox We have media sites So what we've trained our professors that if you would rather go ahead and record your lecture and Have it so students can watch it before class and then discussion in class then then do that if you would rather do the lecture and And so I'm actually we're actually using this as an opportunity to look at a hybrid approach and then at the same time also just if some professors just want to put their materials up there and How their professor how their students go ahead and read or or do dialogue or discussions in Moodle So, you know, we're kind of looking looking at different options and I also tell you that I've only been there for three months and We have a lot of things that that and the weird thing I mean, we've been able to kind of do things Over the past week that I thought would take me two years. So today we're moving forward with purchasing virtual desktop For a horizon view. We've got it respond. This was set up last week We had gotten teleboard will go would go actually went live on Wednesday And we're using poll everywhere in addition. So, you know, I've made my little I've made my little sheet last night Just because I'm a nerd but just to kind of show Where we're going and it's been I just looked online and there's Currently there is a hundred and I'm sorry. There's 50 meetings going on currently Um, so I'm giving dashboard reports for our president. So He can't walk around our executives can't walk around but at least I can show them that people are engaging and teleboard Is going to be used so that we can show that not only Our students are engaging but also our faculty are engaging So, you know, we're I'm just really trying to I love baseball So it's my field of dreams analogy that I always use that I'm here to Put that field in the middle of Iowa and let the faculty come and play So my job is to get as many tools there for our faculty to go ahead and use Um, and it's been I think very very successful. We haven't skipped a beat And especially we had our ninth day of class, which in the quarter system is you all know, that's the big day Uh, when you're funding model what you're fun. How many students you're gonna have for funding? So we pass that we're also in the middle of moving to work day not kidding We have an old mainframe that we have to have people there operators that are there To run operations. Oh, tell me about it. So they come in we have our campuses, you know, essential except Essential people only and we have people in there going in there making sure that we can run payroll Making sure that we can get checks out Um, so You know, I mean, it's it's been I think a great experience. It's also been You know, like I said, it's been a dream to see all these tools These are all things that I've always wanted to put together But I haven't been had necessarily this is gonna sound really horrible, but I I haven't had to go through a governance at all I've basically just had to work very closely with my president very closely with my provost Right and I'm in the meetings with all the deans And advocate and go We had media site. We had echo 360. We had a campus wide for echo for media site So what I did we went at media site campus wide There was no kind of discussion because we didn't have that kind of time Now we're now I'm starting to develop surveys to go back and look best practices. How do we improve? Um, I'm we did all we taped a bunch of these trainings that I talked about over the weekend Next week we're going to go and offer these trainings via zoom Live Because we didn't have all the connections. We didn't have all the lti's built together So now we're trying to basically go back and improve our processes It's been from a from a cio perspective. It's been amazing to see The creativity in my staff It's also been amazing to see Who rises to the occasion being a new cio there? And who kind of just hangs around but it's that's been truly Remarkable and this is an experience that I would never have gotten I mean, I'm this is horrible to say I would never have gotten us experience But through this opportunity and I think it's going to forever change our campus And I think it's going to we wanted to move online All the tools are there because everything automatically goes into uh into zoom now So we have that tool set so for me The dashboards and the reports and being able to work closely with the deans and I mean that's been Amazing to develop those relationships And also through a shared experience of us we all know when you go through crisis You come together you get to know people differently and better So I think it's going to forever change our campus And it's going to think forever change the way it is viewed because honestly If these classes hadn't happened And this is actually what I'm working my dissertation on so I'll be reaching out to you a lot more on this Brian, but If this hadn't happened And we hadn't been able to go online We potentially would have if we would have had to take a time off or break or a new spring break students would have dropped Students dropping means less money were a public institution and it cascades So, you know, I'm not going to talk about Superman But I'm going to talk about that we hadn't done this the potential would have been cast catastrophic for the university Hang on a second. Let me pause you just for a second. I would love to talk about Louisiana politics. Let me hold that for a second Ray, you know What do you want to ask uh tom? I mean he's gone through this work three months of just absolute madness What what do you want to ask him? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that you have like a triage situation with your technology I'm just wondering how you're prioritizing You know at zoom, I guess is the first first thing and then How you decide what to do next The big focus was really focusing on keeping us being able to deliver our classes And being able to honestly have it so it's a good presentation for our students So they stay enrolled That was that was the big the big focus for me was how do we get the tools in our faculty members' hands? So that we can continue teaching And then adding these other things like response. I don't remember I said response We're bringing us respondents online and that's for the test taking. So it's kind of a evolution of we're just simply adding all academic tools um, and those tools also happen to be you know tools that help with with um With administrative, I mean we're using we're doing teletherapy with zoom now. We're doing our counseling with zoom We're doing tutoring with zoom. We're doing exercise programs with zoom So that the focus though was on the academic because at the end of the day I'm really like that phrase but at the end of the day You know, we are an educational facility and that's what the focus has to be Um, but that was the real the real focus was first day of the quarter We got to go now and the staff is the I mean, yes Working late at night and the staffs really stepped them stepped up and done that we've been creative We have a one of the things we love. We've got slack So fire we have an online going going online group And we're any message basically I can ask anything anyone can ask anyone else within seconds We're also blessed to have some students that didn't go home Especially some of our international students that work on our help desk We're routing our help desk fault calls to their dorm room so they can answer the calls We're utilizing student workers that we're in an exercise facility That now don't have any place to go. They're coming work in our library We have we're a rural place here So we left part our main floor of our library open because some of our faculty members have to come to campus to teach Some of our students have to come to campus because they don't have a computer Or because they don't have connectivity at their house So for me, it was all about academics and giving those tools Because if we don't teach classes I'm not gonna I mean, that's that's that's what we have to do. Correct good question, um and Tom, thank you so much for for sharing your story Um, this is an extraordinary time and my best to your staff as I go through this process We have tons of questions and comments, uh, and I also wanted to bring up to the stage Um, a truly remarkable professor, uh, this is kevin gannon from grandview university Some of you might know him under the nom de plume the tattooed prof Kevin is a historian who's also the director of their center for teaching and learning Professor gannon Good to see you brian. Good to see you. How are you? All right. All right Um, I'm really glad you could make it and um, I thought about saying that we should continue this conversation in death metal voices, but then I I held back about rare might just Not believe she was hearing this um one quick question for you is um You know looking at the at the huge technological change that you're seeing happening both at your campus and and around What are the leading technologies that people are using just as a matter of choice? So at my institution at grandview here in Des Moines In the middle of iowa so we are building it to go back to the field of dreams illusion Most you know our campus is still open quote-unquote But classes have all moved to remote. Most of our staffing is remote, you know, it's kind of that essential personnel only thing We offer a few programs online But a majority of our instruction and mission is centered around traditional face-to-face pedagogy So for us The technology piece is basically for many of our faculty use what you know Start small, you know, the simplest tool is often the best So, you know, if I've got it, you know And in my teaching center my instructional technologist and I have been responsible for sort of coordinating this pivot Which has been fun But you know, we've been working with faculty with a wide range of experiences And so we have some faculty who have never even used our learning management system And rarely email, right? And then we have other faculty who are power users of pretty much any digital tool that we have out there that we support So the hardest part has been trying to meet people where they are One of the so, you know the the typical I think Solution package if you will for for folks who are you know, we're really anxious about this And we had our spring break to do this pivot Zoom is a big one We also use panopto And integrating through blackboard For us that's been huge Because that's allowing a lot of our faculty to you know, sort of put content up And then use other tools to engage with it and discuss with students Those are the two big and then just, you know lms one drive Google docs, you know simple Ways to collaborate and share and and what we're finding is that the simplest tools are often the best for folks who are making this transition under less than ideal circumstances Well, that's a great outline. That's a great outline. Um, rhea, would you like to, um, Press professor gannon a bit more on some of this or I wouldn't terrify you too much No, no, uh, so I've been thinking, you know, we've talked a lot about training faculty But what about students? Are they having any trouble transitioning to these are these tools new to them? Yeah, actually, and that's one of I think one of the underappreciated parts of this whole equation as we talk about And certainly, you know as a faculty developer a lot of my conversations have been about how do we get faculty ready for this? But we can't you know, and it's been said on nazi. I'm right But we can't assume that students are familiar with these types of digital tools Students are consumers of digital tools in a lot of ways, but not necessarily things like zoom, for example Uh, and so I think some of us kind of gotten a little bit of trouble when we assume that students would immediately figure out zoom Uh and be able to get into class. Um I think for my institution a lot who are like us, you know, we serve Uh populations that have long been underserved in higher education about 60 of our students are first generation Um, we serve a lot of students. Um, who are from the lowest quartile socioeconomic status So we have to think about things like the digital divide access to broadband Um, I've been emailing with one of my students who's stuck back home in the Dominican Republic Who can send email once in a while, but that's about it So zoom is kind of out of the question, right? And so What we've been trying to do is put together resources for students brief tutorial videos stuff that faculty can put right in front of them To help walk through we've been doing a lot of screen-shotted You know kind of tip sheets and emails But then the other thing that we've been doing is trying to help faculty come up with ways to do quick surveys and check-ins with their students to see who's got access to what Are some students still on campus because that's going to make a difference in terms of broadband And if you're at home, what kind of connection do you have? What kind of device do you have? One of the things that we've really been struggling with is you know, we had a lot of faculty He just sort of assumed that yeah, we'll just hold classes online, right? You know Monday Wednesday Friday one to 150 here we are and that works when in a normal circumstance on my 85% residential campus But when people are home and different needs maybe different job needs caregiving needs We've come to discover that you know, some of our students really appreciate having a synchronous meeting option But a lot of them can't make it So figuring out how to strike that balance use recordings And certainly don't make it so that students who can't make it to a synchronous session are being penalized in any way So from the student perspective, you know, it's you know, there's almost as many questions as there are students, right? And so having our faculty Think about things from a more empathetic much more flexible perspective maybe than we're often used to That's been kind of our first rule of thumb Nice Thank you Kevin. Thank you. Yeah, and thank you for the great question Tell you what, let me keep both of you here as our expert panel And let me bring up some more questions that have popped up as we've been talking Just one quick question for me Kevin. What's the what's the ratio of your academic technology instructional technology instructional designers staff to the number of faculty at your campus So we have about 95 full-time faculty About 150 to 180 adjunct faculty We have one part-time instructional designer who works remotely We have an instructional technologist slash lms administrator who works out of my teaching center and we have me Okay So one to 25 or one to 50 or so depending on how you get it. We've been busy. Yeah Ray, is that what you've been seeing around the country as well that kind of ratio or Yeah, well, I mean, I guess it It varies. Um, but I think everyone's being hard hit by all the Questions of how to do this move online or or just any sort of continuity of of instruction I hear that I hear that Well, let's let's look ahead a little bit. We have a question from Yeah, awesome, uh professor mark rush and washington lee who asks What is a possibility of having to continue at least partially online in september? And also possible some international students won't be able to return due to travel restrictions So what do you two guys think about that? I think we need to prepare for that possibility. Um, we already are in my teaching center You know in iowa, we have not been issued a shelter in place order Even though the pressure is intensifying on our governor to do that But I think it's becoming more aware as we talk about what's necessary for public health that this is A fairly slow moving thing, right? Um, so we've already been kind of mad-dash planning for our summer sessions Which for us are really important for our revenue And our yearly operating budget and those are certainly going to have to be moved fully online Um, and we actually start our summer in the first week of may our spring our spring semester ends the last week of April So this is coming up quick for us International students we have a significant portion of international students at my institution and yeah, we've I mean A lot of them are stuck where they went for spring break You know, I mentioned my student in the Dominican Republic for example, we have students in europe We have students in asia and oceania And we have students in the caribbean Who haven't been able to get back now and so we've been you know We need to think about what that's going to look like for the fall because I think it's a pretty high probability Wow Mark thank you for that great question and um Kevin I mean really that's We're not just thinking about a one-week transition here and we're talking about the long haul Yeah, you know, I'm supposed to be the guy who talks about hope and things like that But I think you know, we are this is unprecedented and As comforting as it is to think of it as temporary and I think temporary it still is temporary just not maybe as Short-term temporaries we think But I think what we've already learned from this sort of crash course and moving online Is that the more we're able to play in for these things and You know game out scenarios the the better prepared We're going to be when the need arises and so for that reason alone I think we need to be thinking about the fall semester in these terms Now that brings up another question of admissions and you know, what happens with Incoming freshmen or even just trying to recruit students and give them tours of the campus and and things Yeah, we're doing virtual visits and virtual admissions tours um, it's And I'll tell you, you know for small institutions like mine the ones who are really dependent on enrollment intuition for our revenue This is going to be really difficult, you know, we're already looking at you know What's our recruiting targets? Where are we in the admissions funnel? What are our numbers look like in our past five-year cycle things like that? um Every school like mine is sweating over these Those numbers right now And that's one of the really scary parts is you know, this is for schools that are already You know Tightening their belts even under the best of circumstances. This this is a problem well Hang in there hang in there and and and don't go away for a second We had a couple of questions that came up that uh speak to some of the points that we've just touched on This is one from a katiyun Who just observes for time zones. We have students in china and the west coast So a 15 hour time difference. So totally a class at a common time. We could all agree to is is difficult uh, so that may be another reason to push for You know asynchronous or asynchronous teaching including recordings um, we have Dave ron wants to just switch machines. Let's see if we can bring him up on stage Let's see how this goes Let's see. Maybe a broadband issue there Dave. Can we see you? No, Dave, I think that's your connection. Um, uh, why don't you try again by just typing in the question or comment and then I'll read it to everybody else uh, we also have a question from A very detailed question from christopher dobson at harper college and bring this up. This is a complex one Um, he asks, how do we get more faculty to consider moving to more micro learning? or flipped resources with online q&a questions or online q&a sessions That's a great question. If anyone knows the answer, please email me You know, we've been doing I I think And again speaking just from the experience working with the the community of colleagues that I have You know, we talk a lot about resistance to change and things like that and I think that's part But I you know for faculty. I think what it is is it's not that people are inherently against these things It's this they're so abstract in some people's mind as to not know what those look like So when we say what you know, why don't we move to micro learning? Why don't we move to you know flipping parts of your course In principle sure, but what does that look like in psych 101? You know, what does that look like in biology 101? And so I think the way that we have these conversations constructively is to work with faculty members and say this is what it could look like You know, here's an example of of something that would that would likely work in your situation And so let's talk about is this a good thing for student learning? Is this a good thing for student engagement the more specific I am With faculty members and the more I'm able to actually demo things concretely The less barriers there are in the way to adopting what would be pretty significant changes to one's pedagogy It's great to have you here for the faculty perspective in particular Just to that's a really really good point. That's very very was if Christopher if we don't if we haven't given you a good enough handle on that Why don't you come back at us with another question or drill down into one of those and we'll see if we can flesh out a bit Rhea, did you want to try pouncing on that one? um, it just seems to me that you know Maybe most people are in sort of the stage one of just simply trying to Keep the classes going and then stage two is okay. How can we fine-tune this and you know actually do it better? Oh, that's a good way of putting it. That's a good way of putting it. Thank you and rhea your your use of the term stage actually brings up something I think is really important and It may be sort of cliche to say this because it's been all over social media But if you use the kubler ross model of stages of grief, oh no, right? I mean this I honest this is where we are at my institution We were in denial for a little bit like are we going to have to do this right and we lost some time right and then You know, we moved into anger. We moved into bargaining and but I think what's important is Think of our students who are supposed to graduate this year. Yeah, right? Think of our student athletes whose career just came to an end Think of faculty whose classes were going really well, you know, maybe that small seminar that upper level lab course And now there's this I mean, I do think that there are stages to this and right now we're in that stage of just you know, I think some of my colleagues just still mourning the loss of This thing that they shared with their students that we share with our students and And I think we have to make allowances for that In terms of what kind of bandwidth folks have for thinking about these larger issues I think that's right. I When I took my seminar online, my students were unusually quiet to begin with and I really I thought they were awkward With the technology they didn't make sense because they were very comfortable normally and then I realized that they were They were in mourning and and it was partly the the face-to-face environment that we'd enjoyed But I think also connected the broader morning of you know, not being able to go to the your favorite restaurant Not being able to just, you know, go for a hike and talk to people You know social distancing is Especially for we extroverts is a hard thing to do Absolutely We have a quick note. I just wanted to share from banard who apparently has more time than than any human should He just quickly made an hour ago Quick page on on how to do remote read remote recordings. So banard. Thank you very much I'll share that on on twitter too Much obliged to see those resources We have a quick question to turn to the international topic from Charles fendley at northeastern who wonders if international students will be allowed to return Or visas will not be granted Uh, ryan, have you have you been seeing any uh, any sign of this in your coverage so far? Hmm, um, honestly, I don't know. Um I imagine it's just kind of a big unknown for everyone Um, and as kevin, uh, you're I mean you mentioned some of your students are from the dr and the promotion Um, what are your thoughts on this? This worries me a lot. Um, because what i'm seeing You know, I should point out that that i'm a historian of race and racism in u.s history And so what i'm seeing here kind of evokes some of the Kind of xenophobic responses to external threats that the u.s has had before and I fear that Given the drift of current, you know the the current administration Um, it's going to make it really difficult for our international students And so I think this is one of those for those of us who are involved in higher education Um, you know this upcoming election is going to matter a lot for obviously a variety of reasons But this is one that specifically impacts us. I you know, I think that We're our international students had already been struggling with visa issues this year at least at my institution Even if it was in terms of just you know, increased administrative burdens or delay in the process so I know one of the things that we need to be doing and that I would recommend everybody doing at their institution is You know making sure that your international studies coordinator or whatever office oversees that Is making plans for what to do in terms of you know, an increased burden in the fall Speaking speaking of which we had a question from mark rush before but let me just share His follow-up comment. He's the director of the center for international education at washington He says the visa issue is a real problem regular visa processing is suspended for a while So it looks like this is going to be a big big challenge. Yes Let's uh, let's let's come back to the uh technology issue. We have um, Dave ron From cleveland has been pushing really hard to get on it. He's very patient and I want to thank him for that So you share this question with text, which is our biggest challenge at the trices is our student body is significantly made up of low income folks that have neither internet access at home or the computer equipment to use Most of them expect to come to campus out closed to use school's devices And that's not a question so much as an observation about something. That's uh, that's quite dire and we've seen many many examples of that I'm just wondering raya. What have you seen of uh, how colleges and universities have responded to this? Are you seeing them loaning out more uh more laptops? Or tablets or are they loaning out hot spots or they're making some other arrangement? um Well, I can just share like a personal experience with this which is the main problem with our school district that you know, my daughter goes to um, but they have not been able to offer any online learning because um Of the you know because not every student would be able to access it And so it's been taking them extra time to figure out I think their plan is and it's crazy because I'm in silicon valley. You'd think we would be on this um But their plan is to send chromebooks out pre-loaded with all of the right apps and everything To students at home. So they don't even have to come you know, uh To a campus to pick it up because you know social distance But you know for the rest of us is kind of frustrating because we're left with nothing and nothing to occupy You know our kids in the meantime Challenging situation. Oh, that's a good point. Oh gosh, good luck And if I hear an eight-year-old shriek, I'll understand we'll always understand completely By the way, if any of my cats have hurtled past me, please that they're they're usually very show-offy So if one of them leaps over my shoulder onto my head, that'll that'll be why Um But uh, Kevin, have you have you seen any solutions to the problem that Dave raises? No, I haven't and it's a problem that we're experiencing too with a lot of our students You know some students their internet access is through a phone with maybe a limited data plan And that's it if they're not on campus, right? And so We've been trying to meet as best we can you know, loading out laptops that we do have Trying to find surplus machines that we can get in the hands of students But our efforts are incomplete at best And most schools like us who aren't that well resourced. I think that's the case too I think one of the things as we think about what comes out the other side of this is you know We do a lot of talking about the digital divide and I think intellectually we've always thought about what that means But I think this is a real visceral Sort of demonstration of what that does mean for our students when there is not a campus option for access I know one of the things we've been talking about at grand view because we've been making a big push to move to OERs Is you know, we can have all the great digital tools we want But if our students can't access them and they're not on campus then they're useless and so One of our conversations is why don't we just give everybody a chrome book when they show up, right? And then so I think we're gonna have to start looking even at schools like mine, you know, which is a 1600 Student private college, you know in the middle of Des Moines, Iowa You know, we're talking about things that normally you would associate with larger state university systems But I think that what what we're doing now has really demonstrated the need For closing that digital divide as much as we can Have you uh, I mean American historians are people I love to pick on for current events, which is almost never a good idea But let me just give this a try. Um, have you seen anything in the senate bill that? Passed today that indicates spending on digital infrastructure I have just glanced over the executive summary of the legislation. So I'm not sure my immediate thoughts on it are that it's not enough You know, we're talking, you know, this should be new deal on steroid stuff Especially given the unemployment numbers that came across the wires this morning There is higher ed funding in there. I haven't seen anything other than it's just there So how that's used and how that's distributed. I think is going to be really important Um, yeah, but yeah, I said, you know, and again, we're in this climate where funding has already benefited for in some cases the last four decades so You know, if this is if this is the stimulus there needs to be more Good point. Um, and we'll be looking at that at that bill, especially if When the final bill gets passed through the house as under the white house Friends, let me just remind you we are 10 minutes from the end somehow 50 minutes have disappeared in the blink of an eye So we would love to hear more of your thoughts and your questions We have a few more in the queue but I just want to make sure that you guys have an opportunity to share your experience of Managing or working teaching being taught if there are topics that we haven't addressed such as grading such as teacher evaluations such as Which lms to use our tactics of video? Please either click the raised hand button to join us on stage. You see how we can do this here Or just type it in the question box and we can raise it Along those lines We have a quick note here from a kathiyan who mentions that Publishers and companies that have made things freely available If you will laptop or internet and free wireless is being offered by some companies and data plans for free for two months from concast So those are some things from the private sector, which is good to know And folks, uh kevin mentioned oer if you're new to the term that just open education resources Brea, what if you what have you been seeing in this great great transition that um, uh, we haven't touched on so far in terms of technology Uh, well a big one I haven't talked about yet is accessibility, you know when um we're Doing more videos and you know, there's the whole captioning aspect and making sure You know people who are blind or deaf or have other, you know, uh Issues, you know, how how can we tackle that problem? Well, that's a good point. That's a good point I was just on a webinar with uh educants and people were diving into this in great detail One school that had a pretty substantial accessibility office Described, you know, they're going to a great deal of effort to put in captioning to put in all tags for images and to really push for transcripts Um, and any that's that's one start Stephen Downs, um the fantastic researcher innovator blogger from uh Canada has said that he actually wants us to push more towards audio and less video Because among other things audio is easier to turn to accessibility Visually impaired can hear it and it's easier to turn into Into text and if anybody um anybody in this conversation has had any experience with uh rolling this out um, please either, you know, raise your hand Or uh type it in the chat box and and we'd love to hear from you Let me add uh one more uh question or one more topic to the mix And this is from one of your colleagues Um at campus technology What question just went away? Um Diane uh shawthouse and if you just Share the other it is you may bring it up on the screen This is from dan shawth I'm a shawthouser at campus tech and she asks for you kevin Are you seeing signs that faculty are jumping on the professional learning resources you're providing? Or they just stumbling along on their own Oh, they've been they've been jumping on them for sure Um, so even though we were on spring break last week my technologist and I scheduled individual consultations and held several Different workshops both in person and virtually as well and those were all well attended You know, we've been hopping um, whether it's on zoom phone chats or in person at the appropriate social distance, of course Um to get everybody ready It's so at my but my institution is also, you know, our culture is very strong You know student-centered pro teaching, you know, that's We really have that woven into our ethos. So that doesn't surprise me Um, but what i'm hearing from folks in through faculty development networks, especially at the in with my smaller college colleagues Is that it's fairly fairly consistent that faculty are, you know, hungry for these resources taking advantage of them Don't want to be stumbling along by themselves because Even you know regardless of what one's position is on online learning or comfort with technology You know faculty members do care about their students and their student's success And so if this is the hand that we have to play to you know, if even if it's the least worst option You know, whatever we can provide for support, uh, it is being utilized And so I've seen that you know happen in pretty robust ways at least in the areas that i'm familiar with Good and coming back to that it's kind of ethos of care Um, let me just share quickly a couple of uh comments that people made that relate to what we've just been talking about Uh, uh, john the sheen Um, though it's uh an article I read today state there is 14 billion in funding for higher and the stimulus package Thank you john That's 14 billion that we didn't have that's good them right Uh, and then mark rush comes back about the state department. He shares a link about the suspension of counselor services Um, so you guys can follow that if you'd like to get updated information from the very source itself Kevin I I had a technology question that strikes at um At your work in several different levels um You and many others have been observing That the practical use of digital technology is often biased By certain key ways especially by race especially by gender especially by sexuality identity And i'm wondering what can we do right now in this transition to make sure that such biases do not recur uh, i'm thinking for example of um a bit of a flurry of stories about zoom Uh, where people have been zoom bombing often with abusive intent And I'm wondering what how can people who are shepherding this great transition try to avoid repeating these terrible patterns Well, you know, so there's a lot of ways to answer that question. Um I think a few thoughts that immediately come to mind is first We you know We need to be very mindful of the tools that we're using and why we're using those tools So if i'm using zoom, how is this advancing the goals for my course? How is this advancing my my student learning goals for example? And how do I use these tools mindfully enough i.e Trigger the options so nobody can just randomly share a desktop for example and zoom bomb We need to be aware of you know, what's baked into the cake with these tools as well And I think that goes to a larger, you know thing when we think about You know, what are our assumptions about students and about learners? And so one of the frustrating things that i've been seeing is that You know the assumption is is now that we're online students are just going to cheat And so we need to get things like respond to some proctor you and all of these things because now that we're online You know, it's going to be the wild west and you know students will just be on their phones taking these tests And yeah, I think we need to sort of pump the brakes here and realize that we're telling ourselves a story about how students are Going to behave in an online environment That doesn't necessarily comport with the research that we have So some of the tools that we're using we should be asking ourselves You know, why are we using them? Is it because of a narrative that we bought into about students or is it because of something that's actually a problem? So I don't think the great online cheating wave is going to happen anytime soon You know all the research I've seen suggests that rates of academic dishonesty and online and face-to-face classes are pretty much similar You know, no statistically significant difference. So the same things that we do in terms of thinking about assignment design course design Um, you know to mitigate dishonesty and our face-to-face courses. We should be doing an online courses as well So I think the larger, you know to to try to circle back to your question here I think the larger could the largest consideration we need to have is What is our narrative about students and learning in this environment? And how is that shaping the decisions that we make about what tools we want to use as well as what tools we choose not to use That's a great great way to frame this. Thank you um Braille only if you have a as we come really close to the end of the hour I'm wondering what kind of big question you have to ask at the end Well, here's something maybe to end on a An upbeat note. Um, do you see any? Silver lining to all of this, you know, whether it's how people have come together in a crisis or the way, you know We're using more tech tools and will Impact courses and we get back to normal. Um, what do you think? Kevin, why don't you lead off? Go back to hope. Yeah, I do. I this is, you know, the silver lining such as it is is that, you know We have an opportunity to really remake a lot of things and maybe get them right When people say let's go back to the way things were You know my rejoinder to that was let's go back things to the way that things ought to have been So as we think very deeply about Student learning and about the ways that we educate and about the very decisions we make in terms of teaching and learning You know, we're forced to do that by these circumstances, but the fact that we are doing it I think gives us a chance to really think about possibilities, solutions, opportunities And in particular addressing the inequities that this crisis is laid there Oh, that's beautifully said. It's almost an alter in history perspective Real history is choices. That's that's what it comes down to right? What choices have we made? Um, Ray, I have several ideas for silver lining. One is that We're getting a lot of experience in a hurry And that's a tremendous amount of learning that's happening And it's great to see academic institutions working as learning institutions Where we're doing lifelong learning As we go and that's tremendous. That's a lot of growth And it's going to be a lot of data. I mean, there's going to be a lot of great research done on this I mean, Kevin, you're mentioning, you know, the rates of cheating face-to-face versus online You know thinking about tracing out all kinds of questions of achievement by I mean all kinds of good stuff So that's one that I think is uh is a bit of a silver lining Second is uh, I'll go back to um, what uh, Thomas said the, uh, CIO at Louisiana Tech And he mentioned that this is a great bonding experience for his team I'm thinking this is true both of technology enterprises. You got campus IT This is a great time for people to be really innovative and to try a lot of really exciting things Um, what a great question Thank you, Ray. Thank you It's it's the top of the hour and I have to thank both of you Kevin Gannon of Grandview University and rea kelly of campus technology Thank you for being up here and co-hosting and batting ideas around and taking questions seriously. Thank you so much Well, thanks for inviting me and rea. It was good to be up here with you. Yeah, this is great. Thanks so much Oh, it's a real pleasure. Let me just ask for everybody. Um, how do we keep up with you too? What are the best ways? So I'm on twitter uh at the tattooed prof is where you can find me or you can just google me uh on the internet Because that's where I yell a lot. So I'm pretty easy to track down But yeah, please do feel free to to pop on to one of those locations and say hey Excellent and for me campus technology dot com. We have you know a contact us page. You can find me there. Um, Yeah, send me an email We will we will and thank you to campus technology for partnering with us on this. I hope we can do this again Thank you Well, before everyone goes, uh, let me just quickly say, uh, thank you all for your questions your comments your attention These are all fantastic and I'm really glad of your time and sharing this We're living through an extraordinary moment and I'm glad to be living through it with all of you Next week. We're going to continue this focus on covet 19. We'll see what happens between now and then We'll see how this develops Now if you want to keep talking about this, uh, if you want to continue these questions about everything from grading To supporting students to the digital divide We have many many venues for doing that including through social media twitter facebook linkedin and slack If you'd also like to dive back into the past and look at our previous You know five years worth of uh sessions We have a whole stack of archived videos that are available for you at any time And in the meantime, please everyone keep thinking sharing your stories about this helping each other out And be safe remain unaffected keep the social distancing going I'd love to hear from all of you and again, thank you so much for your participation. We'll talk to you soon Bye. Bye