 Hello everyone, and welcome to JSA TV and JSA Podcast, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. And today we are excited to share our JSA virtual roundtables on a new platform to include a first in the industry virtual networking experience with a unique opportunity to talk face to face with other event attendees before and after this panel. As a quick reminder for everyone who's joined us today, we look forward to your participation during this event. So please feel free to add any questions that you might have into the chat box or request the mic to come on camera and ask your questions directly to our panelists. If you have any questions about upcoming roundtables, whatever that might be, such as how to register or how to participate, feel free to reach out to us at our website, jsa.net. By the way, just a reminder to mark your calendars, our next virtual roundtable will cover rising above COVID-19, the latest developments in hybrid cloud applications. That's taking place March 18th at 1pm Eastern. So without further delay, let's get started. Our topic today is the new normal effectively facilitating online learning at every age. And as we continue to take appropriate precautions against the spread of COVID-19, we must consider a more permanent solution for online learning. Connectivity both for schools and students is as important as ever as the ability to access the internet and determine whether students can continue learning throughout the year. Our panel today will discuss the new and developing technologies that are being used to bring the classroom to the home and the connectivity issues that may need to be addressed to effectively facilitate remote learning. It is my pleasure to introduce to you our exceptional executive lineup who will weigh in on our topic. Joining us today, we have Andrew Coe, founder and CEO of Covexa. Dr. Kevin Ryan, professor of Stevens Institute of Technology. Melinda Ann O'Neill, senior technology executive at ComStar Technologies. And Chris Buño, senior director of Higher Education at Microsoft. Welcome to all of you and I would love the chance for you to introduce yourself and tell us about your company and your role there. Andrew, let's start with you. Thank you very much, Laura. And they'd like to thank all the individuals who are in the world of education, especially our teachers. It's been very challenging, I know, for the last year. And there's incredible positive things to share for sure today. So thank you again for having me here. All right, thank you, Andrew. Let's go to Dr. Kevin Ryan for a brief intro. Laura, I'm delighted to be here and I just wanna thank you for this opportunity. I'm a professor at Stevens Institute of Technology and I also run a graduate program on networking and wireless computing. So we have a fair amount of experience in teaching hybrid courses. So we were able to bring that experience into the pandemic environment. So I'm looking forward to sharing what I've learned in the last year and a half with everyone. And I'm looking forward to questions and I hope I can help. Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Dr. Ryan. How about Melinda Ann O'Neill? Let's hear from you. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for having me. I'm Melinda Ann O'Neill. I'm with Comstar Technologies. I'm an executive technology strategist. So I've worked in technology for just under a decade now, which I know is relatively new in the world of IT. But when this round table came to me as an opportunity to talk, I jumped at it because not only do I work in technology, I have seven kids, four of whom are doing hybrid or online courses only. And my husband is a provost of a university. So I also get to hear that side of things. So I'm just really, really excited to be here. Wonderful, and Chris. Hey, everybody. Thanks for having me here. Really great to be here. I want to echo Andrew's words when he opened that this has been a trying year for everyone. So we applaud the efforts of educators everywhere. I lead Microsoft's higher education business. I set the strategy and direction for how we work with universities, community colleges and vocational schools. And part of that is really helping schools build up the resiliency and the infrastructure to be able to deal with everyday work including pandemics and looking at how we can support students on their learning journey. So I'm excited to be here with the other panelists and talk a little bit about what we've seen and where the world's going. Great segue, Chris. Thank you. Let's get started with some of our round robin questions here. The first question is, we all know that the pandemic brought many challenges and still is. In terms of virtual and hybrid learning models, what technologies did you see emerge over the past year to help solve today's challenges? Let's start with you, Andrew. Yeah, thank you very much. I'd say, Laura, there's been so many different technologies that have emerged, but I think the basic one is clearly the use of video. Learning always had access to video just like the rest of the world, but never ever before it's truly become a real platform of collaboration. But some of the less obvious ones that I've seen also has been a lot on the systems and the back office has been the migration to the cloud. I think a lot of education institutions who may not have eaten that switch needed to get there to really have their applications and all the stuff running just as strong as a Netflix or an Airbnb would. So they really needed to modernize in a very quick way. Dr. Ryan, how about you? What are some of the technologies that you've seen come to light over the past year? Well, absolutely, Andrew. That was a wonderful answer. Very nice to follow that. I would echo what Andrew said. It's the presence of video and our school has decided to use the Zoom platform, which has worked out well. To add to that, what has also been done by our IT folks is that virtually every classroom has audio and cameras. So if we teach a hybrid class, Laura, if someone in the classroom asks a question, it is heard by everyone. And likewise, if someone speaks in the online format, we all hear it. So there's really this nice exchange. So I would answer Zoom and the equipping of the classrooms with audio equipment and cameras. And Laura, if I could add just one other brief thing. As a professor, what I found out is technology is absolutely key. But we also have to remember that it's not all technology. The students are feeling distance from us. So I'm especially aware to bring like an extra dose of enthusiasm to the classroom. And I wrote down a few things here. I have extended office hours with Zoom. I give exam review sessions with Zoom. And as many emails as we all get, I try to answer them very quickly. So I think technology is great, but the students wanna know that, hey, you're still out there that I can still reach you. Thanks, Laura. Absolutely. That human connection, yeah, so important. So thank you, Dr. Ryan for that. Melinda Ann, let's hear from you. I know that you probably have great insight both from your household and also your spouse too. I do, it's interesting because I thought about this. So while every institution already has access to whatever technology they're using to expand the need for multiple users to learn on a platform, right? Whether it's Blackboard, Google Classroom, Zoom, whatever it is, the product I saw truly emerge was consultation. And I know that's not a physical product, but we have so many people reach out. And this is in the world of my career in IT. We use Google Drive, we use Office 365, we use Zoom on occasion, this is our collaboration tool or hangouts for messaging, but what I need is, will this model be able to sustain 500 plus students? How do I get internet access across the board? Can you walk us through the bandwidth problems that we have currently and how do we expand that? So really for us, the world of consultation was the product that just sparked a managed service there. So we're finding that customers needed immediate solutions, they needed references to what our other successful schools doing because most of the clients we have are talking to each other in this circle here in the Metro Detroit area. We're talking to clients across the United States and in other countries, and we're helping them with solutions. So being able to offer those references on what others were doing was instrumental in creating relief packages and seamless rollouts for collaboration. So I think echoing what the previous two said about collaboration, that's obviously the emerging technology, but consultation was the tool we used. And I'll just back that with saying, can we just give Zoom an award for being an adjective now? The Oscar goes to Zoom for no longer being a project, but really being an adjective. And I've heard even IT leaders state that they have a Zoom meeting, knowing it's a WebEx meeting or it's a Skype meeting or what have you, but it's now dubbed a Zoom. So kudos to you for being the popular kid on the Black Zoom. Absolutely, well said, Melinda Ann. And to your point, we're learning a lot too, not just the students, but we're learning a lot and from use cases from each other, like you said pointed out and also connecting through Zoom and other channels like that. So Chris, let's get your take on some of the technologies that you've witnessed that are really shaping the way that we're handling today's problems and solving them. Sure, thanks Laura. So I think what we've seen is, and we really got into the response mode, I would say back in January of last year when we started seeing COVID show up in China. So we were seeing early signs of this coming. And the first thing we saw was this need to get classes moved to an online format. So really using the video platforms, using voice to just lift and shift existing learning models into the cloud. And I think a number of different technologies emerged, obviously Microsoft's offering the spaces, Office 365 and Teams, but we really saw that voice and video become the first way that people responded. Through the summer as the first, part of this pandemic response wound down, we saw schools starting to look at their recovery. And that was really to Andrew's point, a big shift towards the cloud, moving infrastructure and critical systems over and making sure that operationally they can keep on going. I think at the same time, one of the big outcomes that we saw from the first part of this was student success need to be a big focus. So thinking about how do we help students, achieve the results that they need. And the shift that we're seeing now is really into conversational platform and trying to bring back some of that personal touch and personal interaction. So moving beyond voice and video into chat environments, integrating assignments and workloads there. And I think that's where we've seen the real sort of power of teams come together as the platform for that. And I think we're gonna continue to see the integrated experience of trying to move all those different parts of a classroom into one kind of experience for students and faculty is really gonna come to the forefront. So some interesting developments still going even as we're still responding to this pandemic. Well, you just teed that up just perfectly for me, Chris, as we move to, and it's not even planned. This is great. This is just off the cuff. So thank you, Chris, for that. We're talking about high speed internet accessibility issues that there's still a concern. And really impacting directly the students' performance. And Chris was mentioning a little bit about the plans, how we're moving forward with the roadmap of what IT departments are doing and looking at how to work together to solve these issues. So what would be your insight into how IT departments are going about addressing the connectivity issue that exists now to effectively facilitate remote learning? What are they doing or need to do? Let's start with Andrew. Yeah, even at the onset, connectivity is a challenge even for the most high speed connected areas and buildings. And so we're seeing that challenge almost in like the Commonwealth of Virginia, where there's a great majority of rural students or rural families and households who can't get access to that. There hasn't been a silver bullet answer. I think that's the real genuine answer but where I've seen, whether it's a large district or rural one or an urban is a couple of things. Number one, they've been addressing a lot of them by purchasing them the little pucks and issuing those alongside with the devices. We've also witnessed individuals or organizations negotiate better deals and rates with a lot of the internet service providers. And then you got some really innovative individuals and I think Chris probably could speak to about other types of technologies that are starting to come out to pilot whether it's using different frequency on bands or even satellite, low orbiting satellite type of access and those but they're quite expensive in order to scale on the challenges balancing the affordability and the sustainability of a lot of the connectivity and making sure that there is sufficient connectivity. I think we just having connectivity is not the right answer. You have to have sufficient and especially with these high feeds of video. It's like even my experience when I opened up it's not always enough. I would also just say that what I've advised to one of the governors not too long ago is look not only at purchasing new things but leveraging already the fiber that's out there Department of Transportation. There's wires along those roads. Why are they not leveraging, finding ways to access those that are already there. So I'd say not a perfect answer but I think there's been we'll call it a maturity of understanding the solutions while the technology and the new advancement start to arise. Good point. Okay, well, Dr. Ryan from your perspective and leading classrooms, what do IT teams need to do or what are they doing that you're seeing that's working or what can I do to improve to facilitate remote learning? Thank you. Thank you Laura. Just to kind of follow along with what was just mentioned I kind of view it as IT support for two audiences and Chris had mentioned this is first of all the IT support for the professors and the teachers. So our university has responded by they call it a mobile technology kit. So they gave every professor a portable camera in case they're teaching at home. They gave us a high quality wireless microphone. So there was support there and we were fortunate that our campus has fairly good high speed wifi throughout. So as a professor I felt the IT department did a good job in supporting our needs whether we were teaching at home or on campus. For the students we've been fairly fortunate that our college students seem to have very good internet access. So we kind of lucked out there. The other thing that is stressed is that we as professors like we're getting hit in the northeast today with a storm. There's gonna be power outages. There's gonna be people not getting access to the internet. So we're very aware that not all of our students are going to have internet access when they need. So every lecture we have is recorded and Chris and Andrew and others this brings up issues that after the pandemic is over students love recorded lectures. So I mean, I think there's a fundamental change going on here and are we gonna keep this mode of hybrid classrooms even after the pandemic is over? So Laura I hope my answer helped. Absolutely, well said Dr. Ryan. Thank you so much for your perspective. Melinda Ann, I'm curious to your answer as you are working in networking and with different pockets across the nation and getting their perspective and feedback on what IT departments are doing to address connectivity. So what would you say they need to do or are doing correctly maybe at this point? Yeah, it's been interesting because connectivity issues have always existed, right? Nobody's connectivity has ever been perfect. So we come from a world where many students already had internet access at home and Dr. Ryan alluded to that especially in the higher ed market most students are already set up to work from home which is a privilege. What we were pushed into as a world where families are beginning to realize that internet is a necessity and broadband is a privilege with a price tag and that's not affordable especially for the area that I live in is low income. The low poverty rate of school aged kids in this city is 40.1%. That's below poverty rate. So if you think about that, IT leaders were tasked with addressing connectivity issues ensuring that students, they were great with sending out surveys. Do you have a laptop or physical equipment? Number one, to work from home on and number two, do you have internet access? So some of the things that the districts here did were very creative, very creative and we'll see how this emerges moving forward but something like putting hotspots on school buses, parking those school buses in apartment complex or low income neighborhoods to ensure that students who didn't have internet access, which again is a privilege, could somehow access the internet between those school hours. So those unique challenges are what, we've seen our leaders have to address especially in this area, extending wifi, adding access points, extending wifi into parking lots, adding access points to libraries and just areas where people could safely go to learn that wasn't necessarily in their household. So I'm kind of at the end of here on, it's not a perfect answer because it's constantly changing and moving and connectivity will be the backbone of IT moving forward because we're only moving into a virtual market where most of the things we're doing now will be offered only virtually in 10 years or so. Absolutely, that's a great point, Melinda. Chris, as we're just now starting this journey and we're figuring out kind of without a map and as we're looking at connectivity issues and as Linda said, this is the long haul as we move forward but we have the bumps in the road now, what do you see IT departments doing right and where do you think we need to go to facilitate remote learning? Yeah, it's actually all part of the journey that we've seen schools on for years. I think the one thing that we've seen is just the acceleration of these things coming, these trends coming to light. When we started seeing the pandemic hit and schools start to close, one of the first things to do was actually help schools get really online. A lot of schools have had online products but haven't really used them. Getting them deployed and ready for use and consumption was actually one of the first things that we were targeted to do. I think one of the pieces of Microsoft strategy in the space has been really thinking about the student experience and the teacher experience and how do we make sure that regardless of where students and teachers are, they can be connected and they can get access to the same sorts of content, class structure, assignments, all those different pieces. And we really focused on making sure that as much as possible we could support students on a mobile phone, on a laptop, on a desktop, over 5G, 4G, 3G, 2G, whatever kind of wireless network they might have, and making sure that experience was something where they could get a rich learning experience even if they're dialing in on a phone call. So that's where Teams has really been designed for all those different scenarios to bring that type of learning together. I think going forward, some of the things that we saw were partnerships with telecommunications providers to be able to roll out the POP kind of infrastructure that the Andrew is alluding to. But more than ever, the computing device that students are using as their kind of main access to education has become much more at the forefront. And we're seeing that become a major challenge and that become a major opportunity as well for students to think about their learning experience. But for the IT departments, the ones that moved quickly to move infrastructure to the cloud or move worker loads to the cloud really did take advantage of major scale players like Microsoft and Amazon having the infrastructure to support that and making sure that schools could be continuous. So I think that trend is gonna continue. Those that didn't go will go. I have no doubt that we're gonna see more schools migrating to the cloud. And getting back to Dr. Ryan's point, I think we're definitely gonna see this stay. I mean, if I take a look at what we've seen with Microsoft Teams, we have not seen a shift even for schools have gone back to in-person. We haven't seen a shift in that usage. So I think it's becoming a new part of the way that we learn. Supporting students in a different way and even extending to students that don't have physical access to classrooms with the weather events happening in the US right now. Those platforms are facilitating online education and that's gonna be something we need to continue doing. So I think it's setting us up actually to have more flexibility and capability in the future. No more snow days, Chris. They're all virtual now, weather days. Thank you so much for that, Chris. And we've talked about this throughout in some of this back and forth banter about just the impact and lessons learned and where we need to go moving forward. We talked about the IT department just in that previous question, but overall, how do you see the lessons learned from 2020 remote learning affecting 2021 and beyond? Did I know that hybrid and keeping that hybrid learning model in play is also part of that puzzle. So, Andrew, I'd like to start with you to get your thoughts and beyond the IT department and just whatever lessons they've been. Yeah, that's a big question. So I'll say from a macro level or I think it probably is just all the lessons learned whereas we were unprepared. We weren't ready, all the devices there. There's actually a shortage of devices on this planet because we had 1.9 billion learners trying to get access to devices connectivity all at the same time. And that was the preparedness was there. But, and I think the part of the preparedness was also we did not prepare and afford to invest in our teachers enough to even teach. And I would even include faculty. Faculty's are incredible. They're all very dynamic, but it's been challenging. And right now I think you're seeing a lot of the fatigue with teachers. I always say that be nice to your teachers because not only are they trying to take care of their kids, they're trying to take care of your ours. And 27% of them are right now contemplating leaving. And that was all, we already had a teacher shortage. So this is not good. And so I think we have to invest in our teachers and that's not just any kind of political rhetoric, but also really invest in the awareness and ability and people use professional development but some basic understanding and patience of preparing that. I think at a macro level, we also realize there is a incredible economic tie of what education has right now. That's why there's so much pressure getting back to school or hybrid learning because we have a shortage of even day care and all those and even the students themselves right now. This Zoom is so natural. You got their iPads and the surfaced devices glued to their eyeballs, but students are feeling more disconnected. So the mental health and physical health actually are going not in the good right direction. So other elements, and I don't think we've figured everything out, but I think there's been a lot of areas and I call them silver linings and opportunities because I think now that with data and the amount of devices that are out there, I think there's a whole different method and mechanism of appreciating what those data are and start to use that as an advantage to help teaching and learning and the wellbeing of everybody. All right, thank you, Andrew. Dr. Ryan, I know you gave plenty of lessons to your students over the past year and beyond, but what are some of the lessons that you took away from last year and how you'll move forward either differently or just moving forward in general in your role? Thank you, Laura. In fact, it's very nice to follow some of the direct points that Andrew just made. It's really forced us as teachers to look at how we teach. It's now a different environment. As I briefly mentioned in my introduction, I had been teaching hybrid courses before the pandemic, but now it was exclusively hybrid. So over the summer, all of our faculty, we joined what were called communities of practice and we started sharing with each other what worked and what didn't work. Now, we've done that in the past, but now there was a real sense of urgency. So we were looking at models which had the flip classroom. How do I effectively use breakout rooms and polling? How can I be much more interactive? And we learned a lot of things from each other. So I think it's really changing the way that we teach. And as Chris and I were discussing, that's not going away. So I think there's a fundamental shift here in how we're viewing our role. Yes, we're educators, but we need to be interactive. We need to be present. And we need maybe different models for teaching, more use of videos that people can watch in advance. So when we come in, we can focus on exercises. So there's a lot of ferment going on within universities as to how we can best use this technology and we see a fundamental change. Absolutely. Dr. Ryan, great points too, as well as Andrew and Melinda Ann, I wanna get your take on that as, the teaching model sounds like it's gonna have to shift or adjust or pivot to where we need it to be. I know that we just kinda jumped with both feet in the fire and now maybe some time to move forward and navigate. But what are some of the lessons that you've seen maybe similar to Andrew or Dr. Ryan? You know, it's funny because the most valuable lessons aren't taught, they're experienced. I think technology historically has moved fairly slowly. So it just kind of gave us a jumpstart into I think something we were moving into anyways. So school-based learning, home-based learning for students was one thing and we're getting through that, but you alluded to maybe not just in the classroom. So what about the healthcare appointments that you could suddenly do online with your doctor instead of going in, you could just talk to them virtually and they send in a prescription for maybe an appointment that you didn't really need to go to. So there are so many lessons that we learned in 2020 that moving forward into 2021 I think will benefit us greatly in the world of technology. If you scale it back and look at the way companies were budgeting, when I'm talking to our IT leaders now, the budget is very different, right? Last year there was an interim budget. A lot of companies, especially in the school systems were given grants. One of the school systems here was given $100,000 from Toyota and it's public knowledge. So I could say that I love from Toyota to supply them with connectivity solutions. So looking at the way a company budgets for the future of their technology needs will be completely different. And that's because of what we went through in 2020. So, heavily weighs in on what we did in the interim to what we'll look at for the permanent solutions moving forward. I think it's an exciting time and those lessons are experiences now. Thank you Melinda, well said Melinda Ann, rather. And Chris moved to you to round out this topic discussion on lessons learned. Yeah, well I think we ripped the band-aid off. So I think 2020 was the year that cloud is no longer a bad word. And I think we know that going forward it's going to be the foundation of things. I think one of the things that kind of stands out to me is the practice that we saw at Microsoft was really the resilience of educators and their creativity coming to the forefront. So some of the cool things that we saw happen were sessions to do graduation, run-on, things like Minecraft. So entire schools getting on board with Minecraft as a way to actually still reward students in a virtual environment. Or Flipgrid, which is another Microsoft tool that lets you actually drive social-emotional learning by having short video snippets where teachers can capture ideas and students can reflect. And I think the willingness of educators to embrace some of these new tools and bring them into the classroom and bring them into their experience has really changed the dynamics around learning. I think learning has actually become a little bit more personal, in terms of how we get connected with students, even though we're at distance. But it's really starting to reflect more of a direct connection. And there's a lot more support for looking at the things that individual learners need. So I'd love to see that continue. I think the fact that now cloud is accepted is a great way to start 2021. But I think we're going to see more of those capabilities coming into the learning experiences. Okay, so thank you, Chris, talking about the opportunities from those lessons learned. And we're going to continue that discussion about opportunities. We've been talking a lot about the challenges, which we know that we're managing and moving forward with from 2020 to 2021 and beyond. So with the challenges that are presented, then what are some of the opportunities? And I know that Chris talked about some of those, but Andrew, I'd like to get your perspective as well. Yeah, thank you. And it's all incredible stuff here. And it's easy to talk about challenges, but as you said, some of the opportunities, I think really resonated is we're all growing up and understanding that we have the technologies here. It's just a matter of now, how do we quickly and intelligently apply? One challenge I would say, we haven't really discussed, but it's very much out there is about equity. As we find that there is a significant disproportion of our student population and families of black and brown, as well as even special needs, IEPs. My kids right now are having a hard time learning that way with the learning challenges they have. We're even learners and families with English as a second language. Now, the opportunity is we have now a more incredible way to see how we can leverage those technologies, whether it's translation services, machine learning art for some intelligence. We have methods that social media already can predict and understand things and create sentiments. Why can't we use that type of, the same type of knowledge and technology to apply it to learn it, to ensure that we start to make education equal? We're not there, a little painful, but now we can start to look at getting away from just surveying and doing polls and now getting the real data right on to the actual application of assessments that are happening right on the screen so that people can understand, oh, that's an area that, Chris needs a little bit more help for Mary. So again, individualized learning becomes more of a reality. And I think the technology is there, it's just a matter of finding the right leader and the right technologists in order to make those solutions real and applied. Well said, thank you, Andrew. Dr. Ryan, what are some of the opportunities that you see from your chair there? Thank you, Laura. From my perspective, what putting this technology into our classroom has opened up my classroom. For example, it is so much easier to get industry leaders, many of whom are here today to give guest lectures, to get our young adults excited about opportunities and careers. It's a much simpler matter to go in on the internet. So it's so much easier to get more participation from industry experts, which are undergraduate and graduate students love. The other thing I've seen, Laura, is what would be unacceptable in a classroom traditional environment is now welcomed in a hybrid environment. For example, if I'm discussing something, someone may feel more comfortable sending me a private chat than asking the question in a class. And if they send a public chat, I've seen this and it's fantastic. As I'm busy answering maybe someone else's question, Mary may ask a question and John says, oh, I think I know the answer and he responds. So it's like you have side discussions which would be chaotic in a normal classroom, but it works in an online environment. So I think the opportunities are, it opens up the classroom and the students can now participate better and we can have invited speakers. It's actually pretty exciting. Thanks, Laura. Wonderful. I just love the positivity and the excitement around, even though around the corner, it's kind of going blindly over the past year, but really putting our footprint and moving forward. But it's really exciting to see the enthusiasm behind all this, even though with challenges present, what are the opportunities that we have in front of us? So Melinda Ann, what are some of the opportunities that you see that we can take advantage of? Sure, and I love this question, Laura, because we are really a glass half full organization. So when you look at campus leaders having to assess their day to day normal IT challenges and add a pandemic on top of that, which, you know, let's now find a solution for a problem we'd never ever had to experience. You know, that's an art. So for me, the opportunities here are kind of two-fold, right? One for the provider and one for the end user. So in the Metro Detroit area, we have roughly 500,000 people or so who have one point in their life started a bid toward higher education and then they had to drop out. So they haven't completed it for whatever reason, work, school, life got in the way. Now that we've had this time to really hone in on remote learning and virtual learning platforms, there are flexibility in course and program offerings. And we're seeing this throughout the nation for higher education. Schools that traditionally maybe would never ever have wanted to move toward an online program are now seeing, you know what, it really did work for social work or, you know, psychology, whatever it was. And they can offer that. They now have an entire bank of prospects, prospective students in an enrollment funnel that they never would have had before. So, you know, the opportunity is there for the institutions, more so in the higher ed space, less so in the K-12 space because they really are looking to get back on premise and teach in person, which I think we all feel is necessary. If you think about it, just two years ago, we were worried about what happens if an active shooter comes into your establishment. That was access control, right? Let's lock the doors, let's provide some training. Fast forward, now we're wondering what happens if somebody walks into our establishment and coughs on this door knob, right? Without wearing a mask. So still access control. The same solution, just a different definition behind that need. So opportunity definitely hasn't gone away. IT is ever changing and, you know, this pandemic and 2020 has been a true lesson for everybody, opportunity is still there. Thank you, Melinda Ann. Chris, I know that you talked about some of those opportunities, just a little bit in your last response, but if you could expand a little bit and maybe some other opportunities that you're finding. Yeah, I think, you know, this is gonna be, there's gonna be a real silver lining here, which is, to some of the other speaker's points, particularly Melinda Ann, we've built resilience into the education system in a way that has never been there before. So if we look at weather events, we look at anything that happens that would historically shut down a school, you know, we can get past that today based on the response that we've put in here. So I think we've really built up a new level of resilience in the infrastructure providing education. I think one of the things and I talk to universities on a daily basis, I think one of the big things that it opens the door for is thinking about new business models and how does university extend the reach into other students who may not have that access today? As was mentioned before, how do we connect students with employers in a more direct way? So how can we build programs that overlap between employment and education? And how do we think about, you know, new revenue streams for universities as they're going forward? Because I think the enrollment issues in the US are certainly gonna be a headwind for universities. And there's that opportunity to build out new channels here, either for education directly or things like research. So I just look at this whole shift to a more flexible digital environment as opening quite a few doors that were really not open before based on legacy infrastructure. Wonderful, wonderful. Well, thank you all. I'll thank you all in just a moment because we are rounding out our time together. We do though have time for one question from our audience. Just remember if we don't have time to get to your question, hold that question for the networking lounge. We're gonna head over there in just a few seconds. So I believe, raise your hand if you would like to ask a question. I did see some questions come through. I think Ian Horowitz, your question is prompted first here. So I wanna get to you. Wanna see if you wanna come on camera and ask a question yourself or would you like, oh, there you are. Yeah, I'm not sure if I'm on camera, but I'm here, there I am. There you are, yes, we see you. Everyone, I appreciate all the panelists making time for us today. This has been a really interesting topic and considering what we're all going through. And you think back over the last 20 years or so that so many of us that are watching or participating in this call today, the work that we've all done, the internet now is doing what it was built to do. And it's because of what so many of us have been, what we've done to make it happen. And it's exciting. The question I had is, and Chris, you too touched on, Andrew, you've all touched on a little bit. When you look at the students today, whether it's K through 12 university that are all doing remote learning, where do you see this going by 2025 or 2030? I mean, knowing how technology every 10 years, something new and exciting is coming out. What is your thought, so where we're gonna be 10 years from now? Who's that question to, Laura? Is it? I'm curious what you all have a different take on. I'm curious what you all think about that. I'll take a first quick, thank you very much, Ion for your question. I say it's almost gonna be like a consumerization. And I know that might sound silly, but, and I'll give it a little shout out to the Microsoft tagline that they've had for a long time to anywhere anytime learning is realized already today. I think that would ultimately unshackle. I think there's gonna be a lot of questions about how funding, because right now we have a time-based, degree-based versus skill-based type of education system. Time in the K through 12, that's how funding works. It's seat time, that's gonna be questioned. I think degrees, what is that really worth? Why am I paying so much? Is it occurring now? And ultimately, am I gonna get something that I can become a great digital or a citizen or get a job? So to me, right now that those three areas are sort of in this sort of battle between our public education, higher education vocational as well as lifelong learning calling it K to Gray. And this learning is gonna be a continuum. And I'm gonna be able to hopefully be able to get the things I wanna learn and not always be burdened by just some sequence of curriculum that may or may not be important to me. Skill-based micro-credentialing. Like there's a company called Midas Education. They're already in the state of Utah, Nevada, building micro-credentialing. And all the information that's coming along is gonna be incredibly important. And then the use of data. Like there's a company called Lightspeed that's starting to now look at the information what's happening a lot on the actual devices and that's gonna start to out on there. So I would say data is the gig economy and that's the new currency and we were becoming the products but we get to drive what we want. And that bestowed upon us. I would agree 100% with Andrew on those trends. Like we're seeing skill-based micro-credentialing coming to the four funds. I think a number of new institutions this week announced their micro-credential initiatives. So I'm not gonna name names but they are out there and they're increasing in frequency. I think the other thing in the short term that we're gonna see is a lot more adoption of new technology to support the learning process. One of the best examples that we saw of really being innovative with technology was thinking about mixed reality to help medical students finish their degrees. And we're gonna see tools like that continue to help support the learning process and get away from just this sort of translation onto the screen to really rethinking some of the way the curriculum gets delivered and how we need to help our next generation of educators really embrace that technology as a fundamental part of their experience. So totally agree with Andrew and think we're gonna see some huge innovations over the next five years in the way that learning is actually delivered and how we see that process taking place. I would just very quickly add I know we're getting near the end of time but I think Chris has hit upon a certain key points. As a professor, all things are on the table. What can I now do to teach better? And we're looking at perhaps augmented reality, virtual reality. So when you talk about something in physics or engineering you can now visualize it better. So really this has forced me as a professor to think about what can I do differently to engage and to excite students more. Thanks, Chris. Yep, and I'll just add real quick. You know, I mentioned earlier I think the K-12 market we're really, they're going to stay pretty much the same as they were before. Maybe revert back a little bit but have those offerings in place as a student needs a hybrid model. You know, I think in that market though you really need, you really want maybe to have an on-premise model for a K-12 student. In the higher education market though I think that's where you'll see those expanded course offerings. Universities and colleges will have the ability to offer way more than they have in the past and they'll have a different broader audience. And I think that is really key here to opportunities for anything that we've done in the last year as far as remote learning goes. Well thank you everyone. Thank you. I am for that wonderful question and panelists for answering. We have lots of great questions still lined up in our queue. We're going to get to all of those on the other side in just a moment but first I do want to thank our panelists for joining us today and everyone for participating in our roundtable and your great questions that were sent in. Just a reminder though, our speakers are staying on for the remainder of the lunch hour so they will answer any more of your questions. We're going to head over to the networking lounge at their table and they'll be there to answer your questions and you can pop on video and talk to them directly. So really be interactive face to face. And viewers, if you're one of the first 100 registrants, we hope you enjoyed your lunch. We hope it was yummy and delicious and just wonderful hour and thank you so much for being part of us with this hour. We're going to have more JSA roundtables for you coming out throughout the year so make sure you go to jsa.net to register for more of those upcoming roundtables. The next one takes place March 18th. That one's going to be about rising above COVID-19 hybrid cloud applications. That is a wrap for us. Look out for the playback of today's roundtable coming soon to JSA TV and JSA podcasts on YouTube, iTunes, iHeart, radio, Spotify and more. In the meantime, we'll see you over in the networking lounge. Happy networking.