 Today we have with us Marcy Paul and Darcy Hardy, both keynote speakers at this year's Eden annual conference in Barcelona. Welcome Marcy, welcome Darcy. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today in preparation for the Eden annual conference in Barcelona. It's only two weeks away and together with Belinda Tynan from the Open University, you'll both be presenting on the topic from the classroom to the boardroom, personal perspectives. Can you tell us a little bit about what we can expect? Well, I guess I'll start Darcy. Yeah, thank you Darcy. I knew you were going to say that Darcy and I, you know, first of all, when you have names like Marcy and Darcy, you get used to where you know how to work with each other because they're so similar. So I know she would say, why don't you take it away? So we're really excited about our keynote. We want to try something a little different and be more, you know, just a more creative and innovative in our approach to a keynote rather than standing up and delivering, you know, short segments with a PowerPoint behind us. We thought that the audience would gain a lot more if we did this more conversationally among three female leaders in the world of distance and e-learning. And so we're going to try more of a conversational approach similar to what we've seen done at a few other conferences where it's more like a couch interview, if you will. Darcy, what would you add to that? Well, I just, I would echo what Marcy just said, that we really want this to be engaging with the audience and actually, as we're going through the session and when we talk about these things in this conversational way, that if the audience has something they need to add or want to say or have a question that we're hoping our facilitator, Don Alcott, will encourage that even during the session. We really, as Marcy said, we really don't want this to be a typical stand-up and speak at the audience. Rather, we'd rather it be more engaging between us and the audience. Well, that sounds terrific. I'm really looking forward to it. Darcy, from your biography, I saw that you co-edited a book with Eden fellow Don Alcott, and it was called Dancing on the Glass Ceiling, Women, Leadership and Technology, which won the Charles Wettemeyer Publication Award. Can you tell us a little bit about the book and your own experience of Dancing on the Glass Ceiling? Sure. Really, that book was, we put that book together back in the early 2000s, and it was, it's really about, it's a collection of stories, and it's, it was really designed to help point out the fact that women have indeed broken through the glass ceiling, in many cases, certainly not everywhere, and not in every country, and not in every field. But we felt like in the area of technology and certainly distance learning, that women have a lot to celebrate as far as where, how far we've come. And the book really does get into these essays from different people in, in different fields about women and leadership, and how they got there. So it's, it's really about, you know, how, how did you get there? And I think, like my own experience with the glass ceiling, I think while I was in higher education, I don't think that I was actually paid equal to some of my male peers. I think it was close, but it wasn't quite equal, and that's something that I continue to fight for, it's equality in the workplace for women, but I do feel like I'm dancing on that glass ceiling. I think that I found a way to go through, and what I do now, and what Marcy and I both do now, when we mentor younger women leaders, is help them figure out that path so that they don't feel they're constrained, that they're not hitting a cement ceiling, and only glass, that they can break through at some point. Marcy, what's, what's your experience been? Has it been similar or the same as what Darcy's experienced? There's been quite a bit of similarities, but I think, and there's been times in my career where I even recall working for one gentleman who only promoted all of the male counterparts across our team, and all of the female, females were kind of kept almost at an administrative secretary type role, even though we were doing all of the work, we were not getting the credit. It was, it was interesting to see what we were up against, but what I've learned when you're working with someone like that is just to continue to do, to work your hardest and work with integrity and don't play the politics, and eventually things will come around. I mean, the next person that took his place, he left shortly at eight months into me being on his team. He left and we got the next vice president and, and he was just, he looked at records and looked at the work and very quickly saw the, the ceiling that had been put in place and he removed it as quick as he could and then corrected even records to show the work that we were capable of and did. So I think in those experiences you, you realize that there's going to be, you know, especially like I'm from Texas, as you know, and we jokingly say there's the good old boys club and, and generally, and unless I was a football coach, I'm joking, I don't have a chance to, to grow up past that or if I was through that glass ceiling, but so it has been very similar. And, and as Darcy said, you just work hard and, and continue to lead and innovate and don't let it stifle your career. So that's part of the message that we share as we mentor younger women who aspire to be leaders. And Lisa, can I just add one thing? You know, I do want to go back to the fact that, you know, Don Alcott is going to be facilitating our session and, you know, it's really Don's idea to come up with this, this book that we edited together. And what I found out, you know, really outstanding about that is his recognition of the role that women play in technology and distance learning and the contributions that, that women have made in leadership positions in the field. So hopefully during the session, you'll have a comment or two about that. I'm sure you will. Oh, those are great stories. And it really, it's a great buildup for your session. I'm really looking forward to hearing more about it. The next question that I have in reading through some of your biographies, both of you have held really important leadership roles in ODL and you both have extensive experience in industry, not just academia and crossovers like these are not really that common within academia from, from my experience where many researchers and academics will stay rooted within the academy and very few will cross over to, to venture, you know, the once in industry, to venture back into industry. Where do you see the benefits of, of crossing over, so to say, to the other side? And where do you? Do you want to go first or sorry, Lisa? Oh no, go ahead. I guess I'll start then. This is Marcy. So one of the things that I see is that there's so much, it grows you, it stretches you as a person and as a leader to cross over between academia and, and the business world and industry. There are so many ways you're stretched when you move between the two. To me, I was very comfortable in a world of academia. I had not really reached a plateau so to speak yet. I thought there was plenty of room for growth and for change. But I was at a point in my life where I was offered a, a big opportunity I had written a million dollar grant that was specifically for distance learning. And then a subsequent 10 million dollar US Department of Education grant that was funded and with distance learning all the way through it. And what happened for me was that as I led this, the outcomes for these grants and what we had promised we would do, and the major company called me up and said, you're wearing us out. All of these people are calling us saying Marcy Powell taught us, you know, this and now we're wondering if you could connect our institution with an institution in Europe, for example, Spain. We want our Spanish students directly, directly working with Spanish students in Spanish language students, I should say, speaking with the Spanish students in Spain. And so they just had come to work for us and take care of what you created. But it was a perfect time in my life with my children going off to university and so forth. So I did. And what I'd learned through that crossing over was that there were so many more things that were outside the realm of academia that I was not accustomed to. I had to really learn much more intensely about change management and strategies and marketing and business development and all of the things that come with working in an industry. And so I think that there's a lot to be said for stretching and going between. Fortunately for me, it was a blessing to be to move into a role that was specifically focused on distance and e-learning. And so it wasn't a drastic change in the sense that I was getting to still serve academic institutions and and still my whole role was still surrounding what I was passionate about and what I loved. So I wasn't really giving up anything that I was able to really pave the way and innovate, particularly working with a technology company to innovate and meet the needs of what we needed in academia and where I saw all the potholes, if you will, the places where we were missing in technology and needed some development to take place. So it ended up really being a well-rounded or has been and still is a well-rounded experience. I guess my experience is similar to Marcie's and my views on that. Very, I think it's important that that crossover means a lot when you do it. Now I spent, you know, 25 years in public higher education in the U.S. and I just crossed over to industry a year and a half ago. And for me it was it definitely was quite a shift, you know, working in the in public higher education in the U.S. I mean it's sometimes, I mean, and sometimes the bigger the institution, the slower it can move on making changes and moving forward with innovative ideas. And then when you cross over to industry, in the same field, because I work from Blackboard and we're closely tied to online learning, like Marcie I didn't really give up what I did in academia, but I see the world from a completely different set of eyes from the industry standpoint. And I think one of the big benefits of folks in academia crossing over to industry, and probably vice versa, I just don't have the experience, has been, you know, I really enjoy being able to help people in my company that have never been in academia or in education at all. They've always been on the industry side, helping them really understand the quirkiness of higher education. I don't think it matters what country you live in. There are quirkiness, quirky things that go on in higher ed, but helping the industry to understand how higher education looks at vendors and how higher education looks at companies and the support that is given to the higher ed institutions, how they appreciate it and where it can go wrong. So that to me has been very rewarding to be able to help people in my company that really need to understand higher ed that have never lived and breathed it. That's been great. And I also think one of the benefits of crossing over is I feel like I have a better understanding of all of the different types of issues that industry faces when they're trying to serve higher education. I mean, I think sometimes when we're in education we think, oh, these vendors, they just want to sell us something, they don't really care. And now that I've been on the other side, I definitely see it differently and it gives me more appreciation for both sides of the coin. So I think going back and forth would probably be a lot of fun, although I think I'm getting too old for that, just change careers again and again. But I think at this point in my career it was a great move to cross over to industry and be able to help shape and mold some of the things that are coming out of the industry to serve the field that I love back in higher ed. Amy. That's terrific. You're also very deeply involved in the United States Distance Learning Association, USDLA, which is a key partner of Eden. Marcy, you're currently chair, Emerita, I don't know how to pronounce that word. I came from the other side. I went from three to academia, so all of the Latin words I don't really get. And you were also a past president of USDLA with 13 years of experience working with the organization. And Darcy, you've been involved with USDLA since 1999 and were president from 2000 to 2005. When Belinda Tynan was giving her pre-conference interview and she'll also be presenting the keynote together with you, she talked about the need for further collaboration amongst professional organizations for online and distance learning. I was wondering, do you see opportunities for collaboration where there should be more of a focus? And if you do, what would those be? Marcy, this is right up your alley, so I'll let you take this one. Okay. Well, what I see really is yes, collaboration is king. And when we in the world of distance and e-learning know that it's a small world, because of the technologies that we are engaged in, and it makes all of the distance disappear. And more than anything, we have the capability and we can lead the way of showing others how to collaborate across institutions, collaborate with the industry, collaborate among associations as Belinda alluded to. And so we at USDLA feel that it's very important that we provide our membership, the networking and the network, if you will, of connecting with organizations. We highly value our relationship with Eden. We're looking forward to actually growing it in much bigger ways. We've been meeting with the current past president, Jenny Joplin, and myself. Antonio and Allen Bruce have been meeting to come up with more ways that we could benefit all of our members through this cross-collaboration. And so hopefully we'll be hearing some of those at the Eden conference, just to wet your appetite a little bit. One of the other things we're going to do is to have a session on Friday morning that will be a USDLA session where we're taking some of our award-winning institutions and they'll be sharing their best practices in the field. And so when you have that level of collaboration, you have the ability to not only learn from each other and see what innovative things are happening, but you are more so even the direction of creating more collaborative opportunities and networking and coming up with greater ways we can impact our world utilizing distance in e-learning. And I'll just add one thing to that because Marcy is really our lead person on international relationships, but she's also involved with, we have a conference that USDLA has been offering every other year since 2004 or five. It's called the International Forum for Women in e-learning, also called IFWE. And I'm bringing that up now because one of the reasons why we decided to have an international forum was because we felt like it was important to involve our international friends and colleagues and certainly our friends with Eden in the conference. And so I want to make sure that the next international forum for women in e-learning will be in 2016 because we just had one in December of 2014. And we want to make sure that we get information to all of Eden and give opportunities to the women who are in leadership roles or up and coming leadership roles in Eden, an opportunity to come over and present and share and network with their colleagues in the US and other countries as well. So that's all part of the USDLA experience that we consider part of our international role. And Darcy, I'd like to add to that is a couple of years ago, we had Ingeberg Beuh, who came and spoke at our conference and all the ladies just fell in love with her as expected and just thought she's wonderful. It was such a wonderful networking opportunity. Well, that sounds great. I'm really looking forward to the conference and I'm going to do my best to try to get there next time, Darcy. Next, I'd like to borrow a couple questions from Steve Wheeler that he asked some of the keynote speakers in the pre-conference interviews. The first question is, what do you both see as the next big thing in education? I'll jump in. Darcy, why don't you... Thanks, Marcy. When I had the opportunity to work in Washington with the Department of Labor for a couple of years and I was there specifically to work on a historical federally funded grant program that was $2 billion in grant money that went out over four years to primarily community colleges in the US but also universities in the US. Then one of the key parts of that grant program was that all content that was developed and still being developed as a result of that grant program had to be provided with a Creative Commons license and therefore become part of the Open Educational Resource Community, or OER. Since that time, I became a huge fan at the time and since then I've followed it, I've tried to be involved when I could, but to me the whole... One of the next big things in education is that infiltration of open educational resources that allow for costs to be lowered for students both at different levels of their post-secondary education and even stemming down into elementary and secondary education, being able in countries where dollars are just so incredibly precious for education that there are ways to provide these open educational resources so that anyone anywhere can learn and so to me while it's not related to distance learning or online learning, I'm hoping and I really believe strongly that it should be one of the next big things in education. It's just the movement for OER which is already taking off but that it becomes bigger and more pervasive and that we really work hard as, when I say in industry I mean in education, that we work hard to make sure of these materials that we're developing do carry these licensing capabilities that allow others to use that content freely, publicly, make changes to it, adapt it, and then reduce it again and again. So I just feel like that's huge in my world, OER, definitely. And Darcy I'd like to add to that because what I think plays off of what you're talking about and I think that it really stems around the use of the data and analytics that are behind and we use them a lot in distance learning e-learning. I think the next big thing is going to be and I see the development taking place in learning management systems and others is for that personalized learning opportunities where when you have an assessment or a polling it immediately can look at your answers and where the shortfalls are and use that data to push and grab those open educational resources and pull those elements into take a moment to look at this. We suggest these next steps and so it becomes more personalized in your wherever your building blocks are weak in your education using those OERs for your growing and your learning to really build a solid foundation to build upon. So I think that that's going to be the next big thing is we know the analytics big data and micro data are being used in great ways so I think that's going to be big and then of course you have all of the other big technologies that are coming people are already starting to use robots in the place of people or with video so the person is the robot so to speak on campus or and then we have the within the world of video where it's heading towards where you just click on the university website and you want to chat with your academic advisor in the next available one by video comes to you so regardless of where you're located or rule or you never step foot on campus you have a face-to-face with academic advisors teachers mentors and so forth and I think that is taking off holographs graphic images are heading our way in bigger and better ways. Microsoft has a big one that they're using so this whole personalization I think is going to be even what I should say on steroids so it will grow even bigger and stronger. Great sounds it's exciting it's very exciting to see how things are developing that the second question that I have from Steve is what do you think are the three things that educators should be aware of now if you could just you know name three things. Darcy you first okay you know I had this conversation recently and other than OER you know and maybe you know the use of analytics I think those are important things for educators to use if I drill down and I really think about e-learning and I think about higher education in particular so I'm going to go that that route for this question you know one of the one of the things that I see and I've seen it forever not even before I started consulting is educators who are administrators they they need to understand more about the process of developing and delivering you know high quality programs that use technology and and I just feel like too many times I work with administrators who I think they somehow think that there's this magic curtain and behind that magic curtain these things just all kind of happen to make programs and courses well designed and delivered well and faculty are supported and they're just oblivious to the fact that in order to do this well in order to do any of this well you have to put your money where your mouth is and so administrators I think have to embrace the fact that this is not just magic it's not just behind a magic coffin it all happens that they have to fully engage if they want to do if they want to deliver programs that use any kind of technology I don't care if it's online or video conferencing or whatever it is they've got to understand that I think the second thing would be when it comes to teachers teachers and faculty tend to if they aren't fully supported they tend to teach using technology the way they would teach face to face and they're not they're not taking advantage of the fact that they can make improvements in the way that they deliver educational opportunities to students so the way they can extend the reach of their educational program that they're teaching so it's sort of tied back to the administration but it's the faculty and teachers they need to at least understand that just transferring what you're doing in the classroom to the use of technology does not really do anything more than than allow you to extend what you're doing in the classroom which may or may not be as the best it can be so I think there has to be a willingness by people in education instructors faculty teachers to embrace the technology and really try to use it as opposed to just doing things the way they've always been and then I think I guess I would also show you another thing that I'm going to stretch it even further at least I'm sorry I'm going to extend the education part to students and particularly higher education students and what they need to know and I believe that what what students need to be aware of today are the many opportunities that can help them lower the cost of their educational experience and that's not I don't mean by getting grants or or loans I'm talking about taking being your own advocate for your own educational opportunities and taking advantage of some of the things that are out there whether it's you know whether it's MOOCs and finding a way for assessment which you know I will say let me add one thing to that that whole thing about what's next what's the next big thing I think another next big thing is the fact that we're going to have to have assessments that are designed around these MOOCs and open educational opportunities that students can take in order to transfer credit to the institution but the students themselves need to take on the responsibility of being your own advocate and making sure they understand what they're getting into and making sure that they are taking full advantage of every everything that's out there it's not just a one linear path they can join many paths and they should take advantage of that there's a lot out there for them right now Darcy you did a pretty good job of saying the three things I really don't have anything exceptional to add to that you just covered so many things I think the one thing that I would add is that now and this is for those coming to the conference I feel like we are the choir and so to speak so what I'm going to say is preaching to the choir but I think that at our own institutions we need to be aware of the strong need for professional development especially and pedagogically helping integrate technology the way it should be integrated and I think that that's a weakness that we have across our institutions worldwide we have subject matter experts who are not really trained to teach they've been trained in their field of expertise and so helping them understand pedagogically or androglogically how they should take these tools and utilize them to their fullest ability particularly as we're changing you know as they're coming at us so fast and we're in this mobile world and the students are already expecting it and demanding it so I think that's something they need to be aware of people are choosing institutions based on how well they integrate technologies into the teaching and learning um and the the other thing I was going to add just went out of my head so just well put it in this way we're having our senior moments yes we are but we'll add it to it when we get uh when we get on stage on Thursday morning at the conference exactly you hold on to it and you bring it and and we'll ask you we'll say Marcy what was that what was that point that you wanted to add so be ready for that question I really appreciate the two of you taking the time today it's wonderful talking to you and and getting just a glimpse into what you plan on talking about at Eden at the conference really looking forward to your keynote and to seeing you both in person and and thank you very much for sharing your insights with us today thank you Lisa you're welcome thank you Lisa Marie