 Let me welcome everybody welcome to the Future Trends Forum. My name is Brian Alexander I'm the forums co-creator host chief cat herder And I'll be your guide for the next hour But first let me just introduce this week's program and describe where the forum comes from before we get to our guest So to begin with the forum I was started in 2016 And the idea is to provide a space for people to have conversations about the future of higher education So this isn't based on presentations the slides we have here are just for a quick intro the idea instead is to have Conversation to have discussion among people as we collaboratively explore where higher education might be headed One of the great things about that exploration is that we do this with a wide range of people We have people from multiple countries from multiple professions different types of institutions all kinds of background We have college presidents government officials professors We have scientists. We have humanists. We have students. We have librarians and technologists We've a really wide range of people and one of the great things the forum is our ability to network and connect across all those folks Now looking ahead a little bit to the next month or so We have a whole bunch of different programs. In fact, I am right now scheduling into July I'm gonna put up a new blog post about all those sessions But for the next few weeks, we have a great session on supporting equity in higher education Another one on e-learning from one of the great scholars and leaders in the field another one and reinventing a public University where our guest is a president of an extraordinary university and next week We have our fifth year anniversary program. So this is gonna be very silly and playful I'm gonna be giving out t-shirts and free books. We're gonna have contests and games I'd love to hear your thoughts your reflections and where you'd like to see us take the forum over the next five years If you'd like to learn more about those different programs or sign up. Just go to tiny or L.com slash forum 2021 Now, let me just quickly thank some of our supporters before we go further I'd like to begin by a banking nicer net in New York State That's a nonprofit that helps that state's colleges and universities get online with great broadband and do excellent collaborative work together We're very excited by their professional development and very honored by their support We're also grateful to Shindig because as you can see Shindig makes available the technology we're using right now So if you haven't been here for a while or if the Shindig technology is new to you Let me just quickly show you how to make it work for you First of all where I am right now and where our guest is gonna be in just a minute It's called the stage now It's called that because everybody can see and hear everything that goes on stage In fact, we came up to six people up here at one time if you're a Shindig Habitua. Yes, that is new is expanded to allow more Not below us if you look around the bottom half of the screen you should see a bunch of different people I'm looking around and I'm seeing a Cape Arouski. I'm seeing Sarah shown. I'm seeing Marcus I think it's long that's That's roughly 20 or so people who have logged in around the same time with you Now that's your chunk of the audience and these are all people that you can chat with if you like So just mouse over them and if they want to have a private conversation with you click on them Your two icons will snap together like Legos. You can have your own private audio visual bubble I think of it is like being in a show or being in a lecture and leaning over to somebody whispering to them Now I said this is all about conversation How do you do that? Look in the bottom of the screen You'll see running along in a white strip with a few different buttons The key two buttons I want you to see are a question mark and raised hand Now if you press the question mark up pops a little box where you can type in your question or comment And when the time is right I flash that on the screen for everyone to see and I read out loud So everyone can hear it So that's a great way to get across your thought or question for our guest Next to that you'll see a raised hand button if you press that that tells me that you want to join us up here on stage So if your camera is on and your audio is on and you'd like to be up here for face-to-face Conversation just press that button and when the time is right I'll press another button and you'll be right up here alongside our guest So those are the two main ways that people can share their thoughts and participate Now if you'd like to also just chat informally folks back on that white strip on the left most edge You'll see a number and a button you press that that'll give you a chat box That lets you chat with most of the people who are nearest to you in the audience And that's often the way for people to chat Informally to say hello to each other to share jokes try out ideas sometimes to share Links that camp during our discussion, but that's another way And also if you're on Twitter just use the hashtag FTTE I'll be checking that throughout the program and people can Often tweet out from inside the event and we'll see people tweeting into it of those who can't quite make it So those are the main ways to participate Please join us during the rest of the hour because the rest of the hour is entirely yours And we're really grateful the shindig for making available this technology And we're also grateful to our supporters of patreon if you don't know patreon It's a crowdfunding site which lets you collaboratively fund an ongoing project in this case It's our project of exploring the future of higher education So some folks contribute as little as a dollar a month, which is great Just to help keep the lights on some could you be ten dollars or more a month? We've got a wall of their credits right here right now as you can see all those fine people We're really grateful to them for their support You can join them just go to patreon.com slash Brian Alexander All right now all of that all of that is an introduction so that you can get a sense of where the program is What it's about what we hope to accomplish now what I really like to do is welcome our guest Shannon Dunn is at the University of Florida Which is the assistant director for the UF's information technology department Among other things she just won a great award from edu cause an award for being a Rising star in education technology, and I just want to read this to you so you get a sense of just how awesome she is She was awarded specifically for contributing to advances in the structural technology advocating for excellence of teaching and learning for promoting student success for championing diversity equity and inclusion And for being a supportive mentor and insightful leader Shannon, I'm absolutely delighted you can make it. Thank you for being here. Absolutely. Thank you for the invitation Brian Oh, it's our pleasure. It's our pleasure Listen, we have a tradition here in the forum. We ask people to introduce themselves in a particular way We ask you not to talk about the past but about the next year So what do you what looks large what looms largest for you for the next year? What's going to take up most of your time and also most of your thought So I will speak hopefully Uh, I hope that what takes up most of my time is helping my staff debrief From and understand what we can take forward from the past year And also think about how we can make our services more inclusive So I manage instructional design and educational technology services in a central unit Which is situated within it And before the pandemic we were always busy. We didn't really change our services because we had a lot of folks coming to us During the pandemic. We realized that we really weren't reaching as many people as we wanted to and in particular We weren't reaching people who maybe were earlier career were um members of different marginalized communities or groups And so we really want to figure out how we can be more supported intentionally of different folks across the next year Pretty quickly share this out on twitter. It's I think that's admirable and I tell us a lot about your strategy and and your thinking um friends I have all kinds of questions for uh for shannon But the key thing here in the future transforms for you to share your questions and your thoughts So again, just reach down to the bottom of the screen and either click the raised hand If you want to join us you can tell that shannon is friendly not just because she's nice But also because she has a great painting of a dog behind her. So, you know, she's gonna be Or if you'd rather just type in a question just go to that question mark and type in there And before I could say anything more Already a hand is coming from the awesome maria anderson Long time friend of the program guest and we're just a great person now. So let's bring her up on the stage Hello Oh, my camera isn't showing up one second. Okay. I'm getting it up for you There we go There we go So i'm curious what you think The faculty are gonna do once the pandemic is over. They're back to their face-to-face classrooms. What are they gonna do differently? What do you think they're gonna do differently? Yeah, that's an awesome question um One of the things that we noticed and I kind of hinted at this a little bit um We we encountered a lot of faculty who didn't have As much technology confidence or knowledge as we anticipated So I think I think there's different groups, right? There are different folks in the The scale of of adoption for technologies Um, I think that people who were formerly technology shy or technology of verse Are obviously a different position than folks who were already maybe teaching online or doing some innovative things in their classroom I suspect that in the next year faculty are going to go through their breath I could be wrong But I I wonder if folks are going to need some time To kind of rely on what they've done rather than really being geared up about what they might want to do um That's that's my suspicion That said some of those folks who Were more innovative as a revolt as a result of the pandemic were more excited. They pushed themselves They found out that maybe trying something and failing wasn't that bad And trying something and failing the students actually model something really great for them I think that those folks might be really excited to continue to try to do different things So again, those are the folks that I'm anticipating our unit is going to hear from more um, the folks who again already were doing really innovative stuff They often know what they're doing. Uh, and while we like to help them, that's often very exciting for us They don't they don't need us as much um, so I think And then then there's going to be folks who go back into the classroom and Are going to be happy to return to their paper syllabus and Those folks are still there and we still need to support them too, right? I mean everybody's in their different their different place So we very much try to support people where they are And if they're not really interested in changing and growing That's okay Are they still delivering the educational outcomes and experiences that their students might benefit from so I don't know. I that's not a very specific answer Maria. I'm sorry, but I um I wonder if part of it too is that I'm in a really large r1 And we have such a wide range of faculty And the faculty Enthusiasm for different approaches that we kind of have to support all of them Yeah I am kind of hopeful that um We see some people As they're taking their pause because I also think probably we're going to see people want to take a little pause after this I hope that as some folks are taking their pause. We also think about How to restructure the actual curriculum goals so that Because I think a lot of people realize there's way too much in my class, right? Like You can't do this online. It's like well, guess what you couldn't do it in person either. You know Uh, if you thought that students could keep up with this in person, you know That was just because you were going to build rapid fire and lectures Um, but it was still too much, you know And so I kind of hope that there's during that pause where people catch their breath. There's some thought about intentionally making some changes to the curriculum That can then be you know implemented in the year because that that that work does take time and it's It's careful work and it's thoughtful work But it also gives people a chance to take a pause, right? So I kind of hope that slide That's my you know in a perfect world that slides itself into the year of pause Yeah, yeah, and one of the things that made me think about maria was um at uf We've got a task force that recently kicked off and equity and assessment And it's they've just started their work. I'm going to be a part of that group But I'm really excited too to see what comes out of that because there are it's it's faculty led It's faculty driven. Um, I'm there representing it as support So how can we bring in technologies to support with these outcomes? But there are folks who are really interested I think in doing something a little bit more transformational a little bit more revolutionary Then returning to the status quo, which I see in the chats and folks are are concerned about too And I think we're going to have folks at every part of that spectrum Yeah I agree Thank you maria. That's a great question And Shannon, I love just tracing your thinking as you move across this bringing the different issues from The task force to the sizing and challenges of being on one Thank you. Thank you very much. And if you're new to the forum, by the way, that's a great example of video question It's just really that Let me give you an example of a text question now from last one of last week's guests. Oh, this is great This is from professor Beth Benedict said to Paul who asks what are your strategies and personal experiences using IT to enhance project based? What is work best for you? So i'm going to give you a Kind of a cheating answer, right? And it's to work closely with the faculty because One strategy isn't going to work well across classrooms across outcomes. You have the same class Ta online the same class taught blended or hybrid the same class taught face to face You're going to use different strategies and different outcomes. And then what faculty are willing to do, right? So In making the jump to an online delivery in spring of 2020 I would have loved to have seen more transition at at uf Then we saw it said that it's some other institutions in terms of tackling authentic assessment instead of exams But that's what a lot of folks did So as an instructional designer in my background here is an instructional design I would work with the faculty to define their specific learning outcomes and talk with them about what they're prepared to assess Because doing authentic learning one of the reasons that I've found that faculty are resistant is that it does often take A lot of time and dedication To evaluate to provide meaningful feedback to students and help them understand Where they've been successful in illustrating their learning and where they've been Maybe less successful and have some opportunities for growth Brian, I really want to learn who this This this is one of our cats. This is um, this is ash She's um, she's a shameless photobomber who whenever the whenever the video light comes on she climbs up. They just just automatically So so we now have that ghostbusters moment. We have cats and dogs living together Hello ash So I know that was a little bit of a of a cheat with my answer And so I will say that one of the things that we rely on for sure is collaborative learning In the LMS we have a lot of cloud products that we use Obviously, it depends on the discipline as well It's not always necessarily an it solution But it might be an it way to share the outcome of the project. So my background is in archaeology and One, I was very happy to help an archaeology instructor with was creating a digital curation In a team. So that wasn't an it Solution necessarily it was just which it solution helped them meet their specific outcome They were still working very much with their hands. They're still very much working in the the physical world It was how they just represented that within their team to each other so Go ahead Brian. That's it. I teach a lot on gaming and design for education and so students will make Game or modified game and either they'll do a digitally or they'll do a paper and cardboard The key thing is the Oh, it's a great question and again, thanks. We should welcome this through an answer Not so much in a cheat. I think this is a very good strategic Here's your piece guys Um, so if you're again, if you knew the forum, that's in depth with text question So you can just type that in no, let me give you another video question We have victor of a lighthouse picture if I'm mangled your name. I'm sorry. It's an oregon state Um, and we're bringing up on stage Victor, how'd I do? Uh closed. It's vegas double l is kind of like a y sound Thank you, but but thanks for bringing him up and uh, thank you shanny. Congratulations on the award It's awesome. I like to hear about the diversity inclusion I'm a champion for that uh here at oregon state and my question is Not necessarily just in your university But have you seen any trends people talk about diversity equity and inclusion but to me That means different things to different people, right and for me it's representation So as our demographics, especially on the west are Are increasingly latino hispanic Do you see people putting Actions, you know other than just saying hey, we we believe in diversity equity inclusion But are they actually hiring folks to? increase the percentages so that they're Reflecting and representing the demographics that we're trying to reach Personally, I haven't seen a lot of that. Um, I'm the only latino hispanic bilingual in our division and When someone needs help with spanish, you know, they point to me It falls to me to do a lot of bit of that. There's also international students So i'm not talking just latino hispanic, but you know students having other folks that uh Speak their language or at least uh are familiar with their experience. You know, I think is very important so Just wondering do that every time I come onto these things I look at all these pictures and things and it's Sorry, it's so white It knows and it's not necessarily a skin thing. It's more of a cultural thing. I realize that but have you seen any inroads in that? That's a tough question Thanks victor. Um, I hope so Uh, I don't I don't have insider visibility into you know, higher ed challenges or The hiring patterns outside of like, you know kupa hr reports and things like that I I hope that we're making a difference. I definitely see like you shared Where it's meaningful and where it matters one of the things that Locally at our institution started occurring a couple of years ago. Um at some of our internal conferences uh tim brophy who's our director of institutional assessment started including a student panel and students would talk about the impact of assessment and their curricula and their programs on them and their lives and one panel a A young black man who was uh, I think it was a fourth year engineering student said in my entire time here I've never had a faculty member who looked like me And there were times he shared that that that made him feel less confident About what he could achieve and I think That was the strong by far the strongest takeaway from the entire conference. Um And I can say locally that yeah, I mean we UF has definitely made some inroads in in hiring More folks who look different like you said not all Um, not all diversity is about what's apparent, but racial diversity is absolutely essential And making sure that we've got different voices represented I definitely hope that we start to see some changes and it's prevalent across Across higher ed in a lot of ways, right? So I mentioned that my background's in archaeology Um, specifically I was very active in the society for historical archaeology and for a decade We wrestled with the fact that we didn't have many black colleagues. We didn't have many black students. Why was that? In part, I think a lot of times folks might be smarter than to go into that field honestly But you know, it takes a lot of privilege to go into a field where you know You may not be compensated very well or you know that you can always find another career option It takes a lot of privilege to go go into a career like that um, and so I think A lot of disciplines are in the same place from talking to colleagues It sounds like a lot of disciplines are starting to understand that Their structures are built on privilege And a lot of that is baked into academia and that has definitely steeped over to the staff side Um, I think that I see it changing a little more rapidly on the staff side, but that's anecdotal um And I think some disciplines are doing a better job than others but I don't I don't know for sure. I know the only thing I know for sure is we've got a long way to go Thank you. Thank you both for the experience question Uh, and and about the forum, this is something we've been recruiting more and more from BIPOC populations Both for our guests and of course For our participants. We have more work to do and we'll keep the network I'm grateful for you today We have more questions that are coming in and thank you Shen for answering this one Let's bring up one from Steven airman. He was author of a new book And he has a question specifically about the word revolution Use the word revolution there. What kind of revolution would you like to be a part? What factors might help some version like revolution happen? What factors make the revolution unlikely? I would love to see Higher ed. Thank you for leaving that up. I'm probably that's helpful. Um multi-part question. I would love to actually dig into And evaluate what parts of higher ed are successful? What parts of higher education are serving our students? um, I read an ed surge article recently about, um amazon's likely approach toward k-12 education and certainly that's going to impact higher ed and I admit that going into it my um, my my gut reaction was This is terrible. I want absolutely nothing to do with the capitalization the corporatization of of education Some of the outcomes they described in the article I would be attracted to um, so I don't have children, but some of the models of education Were actually attractive to me. So I have to I think get over my own of what Might be possible. Um In terms of revolutionary I I'm hoping so I mentioned the the task force on equity for assessment At our institution. I'm really hoping that we can talk more faculty into really evaluating How they assess learning and what learning means From from many faculty that will be nothing short of revolutionary, right? Because there's a lot of faculty who have been through traditional higher ed systems, which were established by So standard hetero white men. Um, these are still the structures that we very much replicate and reify every day um it would be in some ways revolutionary to Re-approach what assessment means even in a single program at an r1 public institution That's not to say that it hasn't been done It's not to say that we wouldn't be borrowing from some of our colleagues in different places. My husband teaches a local Formerly community college now college with a with a new BA program. He teaches in welding. So he teaches in a competency-based program But there are a lot of ways that I think we could borrow from that model Do I think it's likely to happen short term? No, could it be revolutionary? Absolutely Well, thank you It's great stuff We have more questions And I want to test that future here to share one of them This is uh, this comes from uh, paul walsh and twitter. Let's just see if I can share this for all of you There we go, uh, paul asks How will you leverage campus leadership seeing designers? I'll bring that back up There you go How will you leverage campus leadership seeing designers and supporting faculty is more important? And I imagine this will be a brief window opportunity Yeah, um, that's a good question. I I don't know specifically paul one of my concerns is actually How to protect my staff, um And so we've got we've got some instructional support instructional designers centrally We've got distributed instructional designers. So some of our better endowed colleges also have strong teams Um, I don't have influence over over what happens within their teams So my my sphere of influence is very much in the in the central unit in terms of instructional design faculty support I think short term um, I Am very concerned about making sure that they feel supported even to do things like take vacation Right. Um, I think what you're asking is more about how to make sure that people value Their input in ways that maybe they didn't before um, if anything I think what I've seen recently is faculty Deculating that value and that's oftentimes where the gap previously existed So, you know, at my institution, we're not tenure. We're not tenure recruitment to your track. Um But getting the faculty's appreciation for our roles and our background and our education and our expertise I see that shifting a lot. Um, I and it started I will say pre-pandemic. Uh, I think In the pandemic, we've been able to kind of capitalize on that shift and that change We've been able to work with more folks and help them understand that our roles exist to support them They're the experts in their discipline, but we have expertise in pedagogy. Um, and applying technologies so In terms of campus leadership This isn't always true, but campus leadership often listens to faculty and oftentimes at our institution Campus leadership is made up of of people who are in that position who were in faculty lines And so I've also seen that starting to shift as we see people moving into campus leadership positions from faculty positions if they've worked with Instructional designers educational developers, then they have already an understanding of Where that support can contribute? Um, and I'm starting to see that shift too. So so we were reached out to recently by an associate dean who wants us to help with We're a land-grant institution and we have a lot of faculty in our extension offices and their main focus is sometimes supporting Is the agricultural community and programs like 4h We would never have heard from them previously and now we're being tapped to help support their instructional efforts now that's not Maybe the the focus of our funding And it's not where we'll put the focus of our main efforts But to be able to help with that just to be asked. I think Shows a shift that's starting to happen Yes Thank you for for meditating on that question so well and thank you for the question We have more questions coming in friends and for those who've joined us Recently again, we have Shannon Dunn here from the University of Florida And we have a ton of people who want to ask more and one comes from Eric mystery who's actually thinking about the faculty again How do you encourage your faculty to come learn with you? One of the biggest challenges is for us folks don't know what they don't know Time energy or such limited resources Yeah, so this is This continues to be a challenge no matter what right because faculty Hopefully they stay with you for a while But for a huge variety of reasons faculty move on just like staff move on We partner with our center for teaching excellence our center for teaching excellence is under the provost They've started doing some learning communities and invited us to participate. So that's really nice. We get to create relationships there um Another strategy that we've taken on is just outreach So we ask for 10 minutes at a faculty meeting once a year and we go and We do our spiel and sometimes the faculty who were sitting in the room the year before Forgot that we existed and so it's just nice to have that opportunity to have that reminder To go through the huge range of services that we offer um Now we do get folks who aren't necessarily looking to learn and grow They're looking for folks to maybe do some data entry work Put their quizzes into canvas We just try to take people where they are. Um, I know that's I said that earlier, but Um, we try to help people understand what we can do for them. What kind of supports we can provide Uh, very much. That's the case with accessibility so we don't A dedicated team of staff to help with say pdf for mediation and and other things like that We do have captioners on staff, but we try to help faculty take ownership for the accessibility of their course materials For someone who's never developed Any kind of digital course content before That can be hugely overwhelming if you go through Everything at once So sometimes we take a stepwise approach, right? And so just the first time you work with them, we might broach Um document structure and headings and how important that is And then we might talk about some of the challenges of exporting to pdf And why you might want to just use nato file contents instead Uh, we talk about for folks who want to do some graphic design when we talk about Um color contrast and why that might be important. So A lot of it is again just meeting faculty where they are some faculty are really excited to come in and have us do an evaluation of their course and um, here are recommendations and and some faculty aren't so it's it's Taking them honestly where they are and and trying to bring them along with us It's a very good If I Don't Can you repeat that brian just kind of still a little bit for me? Yeah, which accessibility issues has a pandemic highlighted? Can I answer which accessibility issues has it not highlighted? um I mean it's It's everything right. I mean we had so many folks who didn't We had somebody who'd never worked in canvas before Uh, so helping them was something as simple as a template that already had some some page structure Built in because I didn't know what headings were um definitely documents So we we do use canvas and we use ally and that's really helpful because the faculty Once we coach them to access it they can see their accessibility score and get kind of Moved through some coaching on how to make their course a little bit more accessible at least the digital components Um captioning is huge a lot of caption Thank you just froze up um Here shan, let me make sure Yeah, I'm just going to uh Reload uh Shannon side just um moderately quick fixes. Uh, they're things that really get down into the design of courses themselves So I don't know. I think I think while it can be painful to acknowledge where we are and acknowledge all the problems that The pandemic highlighted in some ways. It's really it's really good because we can't Move forward unless we acknowledge what we need to work on I appreciate that. Oh, we just had a little stutter for a few seconds. He froze up. Um, so Okay, just I was about to relaunch you on on the screen, but I think you're okay. Okay, that may just be uh Maybe a buffering issue, but that's that's a very good answer um, well, let's um, let's bring it. We have so many questions I mean One of our favorite guests or participants one of our long-term Supporters for just a general awesome thinker with a new book out. This is tom hams. So let me bring up on the stage Hello, tom Hello, I get to be the giant I get to be the giant head. Yeah You're wearing a black shirt now. You're ruining the whole background. I was hoping for more blue But now the blue shirt's in the laundry Oh You had a question Yeah, so, you know, one of my things uh is always about how much Drives what we do versus us what we want to do driving technology And one of the things that I have been working a lot with faculty on my own, uh, you know We've kind of had this informal faculty support network Uh, I used to do this formally. I'm just a regular faculty person right now But I've had to uh, shovel with the best of them when when it comes to coven But one of the things that uh keeps kept coming up as conversation and you mentioned it earlier Is this question of assessment? And I was kind of wondering in as far as your own experience of florida was concerned uh, to what extent Did remote learning Force people to take a hard look at what they were doing in assessment and and and Make creative use of technology in order to accomplish that Uh versus and and how much of that do you think is sustainable? Uh versus those people who Wanted to keep doing what they were doing and just layering on handcuffs to make sure that no one cheated Yeah, I think I think that's an awesome question tom. Um I think there's a mix of both I think that we because we're in support wound up hearing a lot from the latter folks who really wanted to understand how to use proctoring software, which is um, you know, I think inherently problematic uh, I think too I want to I want to give faculty some credit because Asking them to make major changes even though it's what I would like to see During a pandemic when a lot of them are learning new technologies. They're learning, uh, Of course management. They're learning management system. They've never used before Um, they have challenges in their personal lives. They're trying to learn how to use zoom Maybe they've used it as a participant, but they've never set up their own meetings It's a lot. It's a lot of cognitive load for them. Um that on top of just the stress of of not knowing necessarily What's going to happen in six weeks or a month or even two weeks, right? So Um, we did we did see a mix. Uh, I do I think that the general approach here is you know, syllabus is contract and Once you've gone into a semester and the students understand what's going to be expected of them. They have some justifiable Um expectations that that's those are the assessments that they should expect Um, and that's that's what I mostly saw is the approach now that said I do think people made adjustments to their assessments where they could a lot of times at our institution The flexibility that was provided was given to the deans To make the decision about and so that varied a lot across the institution um I definitely hope That this has given faculty reason to think creatively um Because honestly as much as onerous as creating an authentic assignment and thinking about how to grade it might be for some faculty It's no more onerous than setting up proctoring software, right? Yeah And it gives you a much better sense of what the students can do Then some artificial environment that's created in a test But um, yeah, I know that I mean, you know, one of the things that I typically I remember early on I had one teacher she was teaching English as a as a foreign language and she was saying I have no idea how to do these little quizzes that I do Where I asked the students to read something and then they have to explain it You know, and then they have to decode it using the quiz I'm like well just have them pull out a phone and record a video Of them explaining what they read. I mean you'll get a much better sense Plus they get the verbal on top of the reading And I don't you know, and it was like a light bulb went off in her head and I'm like this isn't that hard I mean seriously, uh, it's just a question of stepping back and saying Okay, just because this is the way it's always been done doesn't necessarily mean it's better or even easier Right I've seen my kids teachers with proctorio and stuff You know my kids are in high school And and and watching that go, you know, it's just been I've just been scratching my head One teacher was giving proctorio exams in the classroom Because she wanted to give them the same way with The in the classroom as she did on online And they have like a mixed thing right where the it's supposedly hybrid or whatever It's called half of them are online and half are in person And of course the problem with proctorio is it it it goes off if there's motion in the background Well in a room full of people somebody's gonna move And she gave it up because she's like I can't make this work so Tom I think there's a kernel in what you shared if I can pick up on that Which is that When for us, right? So we work in technology all the time and in helping people Make that transition and figure out how to best use technology to meet their needs is is really fun and exciting for us And sometimes when the answer seems so simple to us We think like like you did like just do this, right? But faculty sometimes are so and this is what I meant earlier There's sometimes not always so tech shy or so tech averse or they just don't have the confidence To try something that maybe won't work or maybe they thought okay I can have a student record on their phone or on their machine, but then what do they do? It's a second time Here I'm gonna quickly pause your channel and bring you back up. Hang on one second Let's just do this Brian is so evil. He just pauses people and brings them back up again He's like a god Okay, Shannon you there Uh-oh Didn't work that time try the crank Shannon it looks it looks like you're having a problem With our bandwidth on your side So here, I'm gonna ask you to relaunch the page And and to do that Tom, thank you. Let me let me bring you down to clear some room and see if we can bring Shannon right back Hang on friends. Let's see if we can If we can repeat this and get Shannon back on stage Well, it looks like you're still frozen Shannon So here, let me see if we can get this right back hang on friends as we Cop with bandwidth this may be an issue at the University of Florida or it may be something that has Just come up in the In the bandwidth area itself Let's say Yeah, I think Shannon has to remote the page. Well, while we're doing this I just want to point out that we have a whole stack of questions That have come in from some great people And they write they range from technology from caperowski to questions about diversity from george station to questions of planning from mix and team and Some very interesting questions about services from bob erdes check and from jessica solvent So let's see if we can get Shannon back out There you are Well, that's embarrassing not at all not at all. I mean one of the things 2020 taught us is that Everyone is I think very comfortable with technology Blows and stutters of all kinds The key thing is you're okay And you're with us. That's my good point No problem. You were you were answering tom very very nicely Thank you for that Can you hear me okay? I can yes very good very good Well, in each time and how that we got you back Let me just Bring up one of the technology questions because this changes very a little bit and I think this is a Really interesting deep question. It's from caperowski at southwestern Minnesota University who asks with cove in our use of low Speech to a home because of equipment who will seems to have access to the issue because they're in the expedition What's going to happen with we are an intervention? So I really wish that I had my educational technologist with me here It's a help answer this question. We are centrally only starting to explore VR As a service that that we help people Explore in terms of folks on our campus who are doing You know, they're a little bit further ahead of us We've got some really exciting things digital worlds institute media effects technology lab These folks are using VR really intentionally in their curriculum We I don't know who to give you a great answer. We just aren't we aren't there yet I haven't been as engaged in that space One of the things that that we're trying to do is is act like the Hub in that wheel. So we're trying to connect the folks who are doing all of that work I definitely think that In terms of What we're going to approach in part because we are one of those central support units We're looking at ways that we can help distance students as well as Our campus students engage in those spaces So if someone Can't afford a VR headset and they can't get to one of our libraries to check one out What options do they have? Can we make sure that we're helping faculty select and provide experiences that Also access from their machine whatever type of machine that is Uh, so that doesn't speak specifically to the technologies you were asking about But it's kind of where where we are with VR centrally I We have more questions coming in and we're down to about 12 minutes. I want to make sure that we get some of the Major highlights. We've got one coming from Cal State From the front of george station who asks beyond hiring. We should put down visual How do you encourage staff Yeah, that's a really great great question I think this probably has to to vary by service And by team and even by team culture Um, but I will say I think one of the things that that I love about our team and I I hope that people Feel they're bringing their whole selves in this way is that We tend to hire folks From a broad variety of backgrounds. Uh, so I I thought I was going to pursue an academic track There are a couple of folks on the team who who are in similar positions, but we've also got folks who Worked in other places in higher ed worked in libraries worked at help desks We have about half of our staff who came from k12 And it's really important to me that they also share their backgrounds and experiences In some of the decisions that we're making We know that a lot of times people who who've worked in k12 particularly as educators get more specific educational Focused education than the folks who are delivering education at some of our institutions Um, and that's just how our system is created In terms of people bringing their whole selves more generally um Again, I think that I think that's a tricky line to walk. Um, there are some things I don't want to know about my staff Um, but I do think that Dealing with the pandemic too has helped us appreciate You're the complexity of people's lives. So Um, because I don't have children I don't often think to ask people about their children immediately. It's just not something It's it's a it's a bias that I have. Um, I think more quickly to ask people about their animals than about their children It's just more front of mind for me But making sure that we're providing the flexibility For staff to be successful Um and be parents and to do all of the things that they need to do Or caregivers of any kind, um And to do all the things they need to do to provide that care and still Not feel like they're letting them any down on the job work the hours that they want to or need to work Um, I think we've had to explore that a lot more um I think also making sure that people feel comfortable creating Space to get to know one another Um in a remote environment that feels strange. It feels like Maybe you're cheating or you're not working if you do something social Uh, but in order to help help people get to know one another My team had that a little bit easier We'd worked together most of us for quite a few years before we went before we went remote But we had a couple of new folks with us who I wanted to make sure felt really Seen and prepared and supported um And that's been it's been a challenge. I want them to to feel like they're Supported and that their whole self is welcomed um Some of that too some folks Don't want to share some things and that's also Okay, some people won't feel more comfortable being more private In in their work environment. Um, and that's kind of the flip side So how to make sure that that they also don't feel pressured to share or express things that they might not feel comfortable doing George station has an excellent habit of asking very very deep questions And the answers have to ramify Um, thank you George and Shannon. Thank you for that Your staff and the Frank the scripture This is the end of the hour and we'd like to make sure that's the future And some of the questions were right to that So they bring up a question from the medical center And he has Strategic decisions For the future Yeah, so Nicholas I am a frontline manager So I would love to be able to tell you about the strategic decisions that are occurring on a high level I am not in a position to do that. Uh, that said I did have the opportunity to participate in the creation of our strategic plan for it um, I know that one of our major areas of focus is supporting student success in a way that Is even beyond what we've tried to accomplish before so I would say one of the ways that I know that it is focused on helping with that work is any way that we can support student affairs with some of the equity gaps that were highlighted in the pandemic um One of the things that was really Do I think within our our town gown relationship? Were some of that it possibilities that we could provide Additional support services to the local community in some ways um That's uh, that's all That's all big picture and again as a as a frontline manager. That's That's as much as I can probably Come into terms of the institution um, locally we are trying to reach out to Some of the folks and I can't know this at the beginning too Some of the folks who we don't normally hear from So we want to make sure that we're providing the services that they need to be successful That's something that we were not doing. Um, we were providing the services that we knew Were in demand But they were being used by the same folks to the same ends That's it. That's it But this is this is a good answer. I think uh, nick is uh Is teasing By direction of your future as we will stand up by hierarchy Florida And it's a really good question. I say it's really funny We have another future on the question that comes uh for jessica solvent at NYU And she asks regarding the suite of services we offer What are your new initiatives? And what services are most used by the company and have you developed any features or services with back of the input? And people just want to know everything about it. I know Brian, can you leave that question up for me? Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah So it was currently well pre-pandemic we offered traditional instructional design fairly white love service And an instructional designer might have anywhere between five and ten faculty. They were working with Um and some workshops some online workshops mostly The workshops we've continued the instructional design kind of white glove High touch service we had to pause on with a pandemic so that we could pivot The word that everybody loves so much and provide all kinds of other support We supported our help desk our e-learning support team. We took tickets from classroom support So we've been focused on helping faculty as well as our colleagues Our our instructional design support was designed early on with input from faculty We're looking at ways and I hinted at this with the answer to my last question To get more input specifically from faculty and in ways that I hope are very like bite-sized I don't want to ask a lot of faculty. I don't want to ask them to come to a focus group and spend hours with us I don't want them to feel like it's a burden to provide this I just want to know for them and we're going to reach out specifically to early career women and BIPOC faculty to ask them. What do you need? What could we do to support you in helping meet your instructional educational goals? um We're hoping to to turn that into Some kind of influence on our services So the future of our services after the pandemic I think is very much in in the air I really want to hear from faculty what they Would find most beneficial I suspect that a lot of people will still really want the white glove high touch service It's an extraordinary benefit for folks who've never built an online or blended class before We take on a lot of a lot of the work and we do make a lot of recommendations that We're told are helpful and people delivering instructors delivering those courses and The faculty workshops are really something that I think will continue We reach a lot of people once they're built They're relatively easy to maintain They continue with an institution of the size they continue to have really great enrollment We want to focus more on udl and accessibility and making sure that we're providing just in time resources so that faculty can access those Whatever they want. I think just in time resources in general It's probably going to be a theme for us Across the it organization and not just with an instructional design, but an instructional design as well That's very ambitious and for those who don't recognize the acronym udl with universal design for credit Very good. Thank you for that excellent question Now I I have Since we're last minute We could privilege the moderator and ask one question for myself, which is How can we keep up with you as you? As you raise forward to all these services and all all these And all these ambitions. What's the best way to publish shannon data in the future? To follow me, uh, so I do have twitter. I'm not very I'm learning I am open to learning from experts, particularly on the call recommendations I think that I am shannon underscore m underscore done I am also on linkedin there, too I'm very open and and willing and happy to learn from experts who are great at engaging in those spaces These are two things social media is not My strong place and I would love to learn from folks Um, that's how you can find me and where you can find me and send me all all the recommendations all the pointers I will take them That's very good. Yeah, let me just uh, I'll put that up for everyone to see There you go. We should be able to see this Channel underscore n underscore done And I'm sure all kinds of twitter themes will be happy to uh, fish to at you and to share all kinds of facts Um, this is uh, and you I'm sure you shared a really nice thing about the course mappings. No, our games I'm trying We we are the at the end of the hour and we have so many questions from child. We could just go on for another hour It's been so great to hear from you This is you already something that it is way way beyond your years in terms of thinking analysis and plans It's absolutely delightful. Thank you so much very much Thank you so much for having me brian and and y'all tweet me the questions and I'll answer them We will uh, in fact, uh, there were a bunch of people who want to follow up salt You know, you should be able to do that Be a twitter But don't and we're gonna have to circle back with you To see what happens when they rename swarga shannon dumbled Definitely definitely happen. Um, so thank you. Thank you again so much. Please. Please take care and be safe But don't leave anybody yet. We just uh, I mentioned a couple of notes of closing Remember that next week is our 50th anniversary program So you've got to be there and be ready to be silly and ambitious And playful and visionary at the same time and coming up after that We have sessions on equity on e-learning on reinventing a public university If you're a tiny world comm slash forum 2021 you can find out more of that If you'd like to keep talking about all this stuff about how to lead a research university How to deal with equity how to deal with the digital divide We have all kinds of venues for this and social media including twitter, of course If you'd like to go back into the past and look at some of our previous sessions Just go to tiny world comm slash f tf archive where you can find more than 240 sessions all available for your perusal And of course in the meantime for the next week or so Please thank you first of all, thank you for all of your questions today and all your comments are really really thoughtful In the meantime, take care work hard on on on this current semester. Stay safe above all and we'll see you online Bye. Bye