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It looks like we're still at the 1999 party for e-Learning... listen to Laura & Kelvin Bentley discuss how this distance education disco has and hasn't changed in this Between the Chapters episode.
25 Years of Ed Tech is a serialized audio version of the book 25 Years of Ed Tech, written by Martin Weller of the Open University and published by AU Press. The audio version of the book is a collaborative project with a global community of volunteers contributing their voices to narrate a chapter of the book. Bonus episodes are a series of conversations called "Between the Chapters" to chat about these topics and more!
"In this lively and approachable volume based on his popular blog series, Martin Weller demonstrates a rich history of innovation and effective implementation of ed tech across higher education. From Bulletin Board Systems to blockchain, Weller follows the trajectory of education by focusing each chapter on a technology, theory, or concept that has influenced each year since 1994. Calling for both caution and enthusiasm, Weller advocates for a critical and research-based approach to new technologies, particularly in light of disinformation, the impact of social media on politics, and data surveillance trends. A concise and necessary retrospective, this book will be valuable to educators, ed tech practitioners, and higher education administrators, as well as students."
Credits:
Text in quotes from the book website published by Athabasca University Press CC-BY-NC-ND
BG music Abstract Corporate by Gribsound released under a CC-BY license. Track was edited for time.
Artwork X-Ray Specs by @visualthinkery is licenced under CC-BY-SA.
Audio book chapters produced by Clint Lalonde.
Between the Chapters bonus podcast episodes produced by Laura Pasquini.
0:03
Between the chapters, a weekly podcast discussion focusing on a chapter of the book 25 years of edtech, written by Martin Weller. here's your host, Laura pasquini.
0:18
Here we are chapter 690 99 elearning I'm still allowed to host this Laura sweetie here and I'm here with Kelvin Bentley have a conversation around E dash learning. E learning. Hmm 1999 Okay, can I ask you like, how many ways do you know how e learning is written out there in the world?
0:39
Oh, geez. Yeah, he well, elearning is one word, right? You mentioned the dash. I've seen E. Things that I had a previous conversation about e capital L?
0:54
Yep.
0:54
What am I missing?
0:56
I think that's it. Um, I was looking up just to prepare, because I was kind of like this term came about adding he and Martin talks about this in the chapter, adding eats, everything became a thing. I guess that's what happened when they added it to everything when the iPhone came out, too. But he was like a catch all for anything learning delivered electronically. So I say this to break it down for anyone listening. That's not in educational technology, online learning. Basically, anything digital is where it got started. And I guess it started around 1999 for Martin, but what was it like for you to think about learning? In the electronic ways?
1:35
Oh, well, I mean, for me, when I, when I was 1999 brings up a lot of memories, right? It's just, you know, it's a thing of prints, of course. That's right. It's kind of weird, right? It's like, Hey, I used to listen to Prince when I was in high school, and it is now 1999. What is that all about? But, but yeah, I mean, for me, I you know, when I first started teaching, a lot of I mean, I relied heavily on PowerPoint slides, and, you know, maybe some voiceover I love and still do digital learning, like in ciliary ease. And so when I, you know, taught my first online courses in 2001, a lot of that a lot of that content came forward, where I kind of dropped into Blackboard and then call it my e learning course, you know, even the school that I worked for two years, you know, in 2001, was the, you know, he was we had he in front of Northwestern State University. So it's the E campus, right, or the wer e NSU. Where you could go to find out about online courses and programs. And so, yeah, so, you know, for me, it was almost like it was such, my focus was very myopic around digital content, but not, but to the exclusion of everything else, like research and theory. And this also 1999 was way before Maryland online, you know, even created Quality Matters, right? So I feel like it was still very strongly the wild, wild west, given academic freedom, you know, you could go to 50 different courses, at your institution, even within an academic department. And they would be very, very different in terms of how they were structured, how they were maybe facilitated if they were facilitated. Because I think some faculty treated it as almost kind of like an E correspondence course, versus an actual opportunity to do small group, you know, discussion, a synchronous discussion. So yeah, so those are some of the things that come to mind for me around around that time.
3:59
It's funny, you aren't the first one to bring up the Wild, Wild West. I spoke with Jim Gruen, between the chapters Episode Two, talking with the web, like these were early days, and people forget, it wasn't that long ago. So elearning could be like you said, a synchronous drops in the repository. I love that you brought correspondence, which is the old school distance learning, right? that education was mailed out a packet received maybe back of a VHS, maybe beta, or even a CD ROM, and now they can put them online and there was no real regulation. So elearning, if people look at it now could look at how it's synchronous. So it could be facilitated, or it could be asynchronous. And we're still in this debate right now. So we're recording and the beginning of November of 2020. We're still in a pandemic, despite people's beliefs. And this is still a contentious topic of what you learning is.
4:57
Yeah, and it's just it's amazing, right? So We have a big, you know, Doctor Who fan. So I had my own TARDIS and to go back in time and say, Oh, you all this crazy shits gonna happen? You know, it's like, you know the guy that does the apprentice, he's gonna be our president and there's going to be a pandemic, and then all these people who thought they could leverage academic freedom not to teach online. Well guess what they have to because everything is closed down. Like it's just it's amazing now that everyone has to put their their little toe at least in the water, right? Because if the campus is shut down, what are you going to do? If your contract does require you to teach? I mean, I mean, I remember back then, and in the early 2000s, you know, when I was teaching my first online courses, I mean, we were all just trying to do our best to figure it out. Not everyone taught online. But you know, we had enough folks to pull together and have a fully online degree program in psychology on the undergraduate level, and even for that period of time, it was the only program of its of its type in the state of Louisiana. This was 2001. But But, you know, it's it's interesting, you know, in some of my, our travels, in our conversations, right, you and I have met some folks who have said, Oh, well, in 1996, I remember, you know, teaching my first online course, or 97. And that's, that's pretty amazing. Again, given the fact that web browsers, you know, there was no YouTube and then web browsers were very limited in terms of what they could do. But I really felt like it was more about I'm going to take this content, I'm going to dump it somewhere, people are going to maybe log in, they're going to log in, they're going to view it. They're going to take their their quizzes and exams. But I didn't really feel to be honest with you, I didn't really feel a super strong connection always in terms of discussion boards, like I did them, but I think I really could have done them much better. And I think other people were also, you know, our students, too, because of their various, you know, their new timeline learning. And they're also juggling jobs and families. I think at times, they felt almost like, yeah, this is kind of awkward and weird. So it was kind of difficult at times to really create a sense of community in those early versions of my online courses.
7:28
Yeah, we're still piecing together and reading through the first few chapters. I think, like I talked about bulletin board systems, CMC, computer media, communication, these are all still early days, we're still hodgepodge together like a little puzzle. And he was really funny that you say that, because I actually went to looking up the definition of E learning all these IE campuses still have this legacy. So the campus or university, and I think an interesting piece that was brought about in the late 90s, maybe even the early aughts, for at least universities I saw in Canada and the US at the time, they were starting to say this is a bigger space that we could occupy and scale our learning. And we think about that happening later. But that this is really the formation. So the quotes that nobody talks about is the digital diploma mills, they were really concerned about the economic costs and the risk of the student or faculty alienation. But when we jump into these elearning spaces, what will happen? And will we really be challenging academia and what knowledge is if we put this in electronic format? And the answer is no, but there's lots of concern then that I don't think has gone away to you
8:42
know, yeah, that's a great point. I don't think it's gone away. I think it's just been simmering. And I think it never really, we never really come to a total resolution on this topic. Because, again, if faculty have a choice, if not all faculty need or are required to teach in an online way, even maybe even blended right? Then it makes it difficult, right? So there are still many naysayers out there, because that's just not their day to day, right. They are used to again, you know, maybe, especially at research institutions, especially right, they are doing their research, maybe teaching a little bit, you know, but their research allows them to get out of teaching in a certain way. But then you have just the opposite in the community college, right? Yeah, people teaching a five, five load, a six, six load, some even teaching seven courses as part of overloads just to make ends meet. And so they've had to adapt. And maybe they've seen online learning for some of them. I think they've seen online learning as a way to, you know, kind of deal with some of the stress of teaching so much, and some do a great job. Some I think, you know, kind of treat online. It's kind of this You know, again, in the corresponding scores, right, let's just do this work, and I'll create it when I create it. But I think, but yeah, but I think there's still a lot of fear, I think, you know, there are many faculty who feel like, you know, they could just lose your jobs like that adjuncts are already being leveraged by many institutions to fill the instructional needs of students. And so why not, you know, why not also fear, where elearning is going, because if I can just hire an adjunct to take some online courses in place of me as a full time faculty member who's teaches, you know, just face to face, or maybe I've protected some of my booty key like horses. You know, that that is that is a challenge. I mean, I like the fact that now with the pandemic, at least in 2020, you know, now there's more of an open conversation, because now it's impacted the entire institution. So no one can hide from the reality, which is, again, we don't know if we're going to be open, or if we're going to be open, how many of our courses will be allowed to be offered face to face, and then faculty, I mean, you know, humans were selfish, so many faculty are also saying, you know, what, like, I don't like to sunlight thing, but I also don't want to get COVID. So I want to stay at home, I want to be protected. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm an older faculty member, or I have a, you know, some type of pre existing condition. So I don't want to expose myself to to the craziness of the pandemic. So it's really up ended, I think, a lot of assumptions of faculty, who now maybe are like, you know, what, maybe I'll do online and try it. But I think we still need to do our due diligence, right? So let's, you know, let's put everything on the table. Let's let's do a better job of measuring the quality of that. And not make it punitive, but just say, yeah, you know, encourage faculty to share, okay, what's working really well, your course what's not working? so well? Can we provide exemplars of faculty teaching similar courses, both within an institution and also outside of it, so that we can also help faculty grow as instructors in terms of what they do across all modalities, right online, face to face. And that's a tall order to do when, you know, there's just lots going on right now personally, for folks. But we have to get to that point. And so I think of the pandemic, now as a way for us to do more of that.
12:35
I like that you said a couple things. It's it's making us think about pedagogy and this paradigm shift of how it's offered. And in this chapter, Martin blatantly calls out like he's at the Open University in the UK, and they are embracing it, and the colleagues from the US and so I now a newly freshly minted American, I'll own this the North we really value face to face experiences and the romanticism of what learning is, and isn't it? And how can it be replicated? I will say we're late to the game because like you said it. Quality Matters is the standards of kind of how we teach and learn on line. And when do those standards? When do they form? Do you remember?
13:14
One of the say, the Quality Matters standards were like early aughts. Okay, maybe like 2003 2004. Feel free to fact check me but I put
13:24
in the notes for our listeners, because this is saying something that in the UK at the Open University, they were more interested in the open, flexible online option. Whereas a lot of us institutions still to this day, push back and we see a high flex, we see multiple modes, we see flipping it around in this pandemic, it looks different, like how learning happens does happen on a campus more traditionally in the US. And that's something I've learned and embraced over the last decade or so since I've lived in this country. It it says something where our value comes in when there's put into online, how is that not different? or How can that not be the same? And what kind of pushback Are you seeing as you're helping campuses go online?
14:10
Well, you know,
14:11
I think some of the pushback again is well, I think some faculty are just saying, you know, I don't really have the time to invest and researching what I need to research to do this work. Some faculty for I think, you know, some companies similar to the ones that I worked for, are seeing some schools hiring these companies to kind of be their faculty development support, right, that provide maybe one on one or small group support to faculty because they're teaching and learning center a either doesn't exist because of previous budget cuts. Or if they do exist, very limited staff. And so now because you know, now you're kind of scaling that need of faculty who need to, you know, teach in these digital learning ways. Didn't, you know leveraging digital teaching more? That's where I think, you know, faculty are like, Oh, yeah, I'm overwhelmed, I'm stressed. I think some faculty again, just for just various reasons, don't trust it. They they know what they know, in terms of how they teach and the responses they've received, traditionally, from students. And then I'm sure some of that has been, you know, I think part of that is perception. I think sometimes faculty think, you know, all of their students love them, and that they're doing a great job. But that's not always the case. And sometimes students are not always, you know, open to providing that feedback, maybe because of fear of retribution, or chelation, whatever. But I think, and I think, again, you know, there's this, there's always that tense, dynamic between the faculty and administration, right, like, oh, you're asking me to do one more thing, and I'm already serving all these committees. So I think is trying to, you know, we need to kind of help our faculty have the space to have these more open, transparent conversations about the pedagogy, about the edtech we're using, right? There's all these studies that are saying, Hey, we're buying up all this stuff, but we're not really doing a great job of evaluating its impact on learning, right? Do we even know the research on learning science, for example, like, we need to pull those in more. And I think it's just it's just difficult, I think, in some ways, academic freedom, and not to beat up academic freedom to death. But I think in some ways, it's prevented us from really having more of these open and honest conversations about and I think, in many ways, tenure and promotion policies to create that roadblock. And so what can we do to reshape those, right, like, I want to say was maybe, you know, there's a University of British Columbia added some language to their tenure promotion. So they didn't destroy it. But they added a clause that says, hey, you know, you can be you can get credit for leveraging Oh, we are right. So in some ways, we need to find additives to existing tenure and promotion that allows faculty to be more innovative to test out, you know, edtech resources or, you know, pedagogical models that are evolving, such that they buy in early on and see it as a part of their journey as faculty at an institution.
17:39
Yeah, I think that is right, the incentives for reward if they could have a creative creation, and some institutions do that for faculty. The other flip side is I think about the learners, they are used to going to an America, this campus where they have this community experience on a campus that has everything from student activities. Sports is huge, like people associate themselves, like I go to meetings and people like, this is where I went to school. And I'm like, cool. I don't know what some of these universities and colleges are. But I do now, like I am a Canadian transplant, but I will say, this hasn't mattered in other parts of the world. So maybe that's also the piece of nostalgia. But are we holding on to old things, because that's how it's been, or this is the student, the learner themselves, not just the faculty or the staff members that might be coming to campus. So I wonder if it's a combination of all the stakeholders on campus thinking, that's what college or university life is, like, here in America? And, and some of this article kind of gives those examples of how we shift our resources or how we give incentives or what we frame is a campus experience of the college experience. I think it looks different than some of other colleagues around the world. They're like, no, I went to school to go to school, and that was it and get my classes and got my degree and things like that.
19:06
Yeah, no, that's a great point. I mean, I think we do hold on to the past tradition. There's some there's a lot of security there is, you know, it's like Schroeder from the peanuts, his security blanket. So, you know, it's and that's where, you know, a lot of the faculty fears come from right. Trusting this new thing called e learning. I don't know what it's going to be. How will How will it impact me? Of course. So I think you're right about that. I mean, I think in some ways, instead of saying, you know, what, what is the college tradition now we need to be thinking about, okay, it's the 21st century, right. So what, how can we evolve? And maybe there are pieces elements of the of the past that we hold on to, but in some ways that you know, I remember Paul LeBlanc, the President at Southern New Hampshire. In a podcast was kind of just talking about how even at his institution, residential students are going to have overtime, a very different experience, right, where, you know, maybe you stay on campus, but maybe you're taking slight majority of your classes online, you know, maybe initially, or maybe in your junior year. Sure, you know, you need that you need online courses to give you more flexibility to do internships, right, or to have an urge to do other projects that will help you be successful in the world of work. So even what we think about as the traditional 18 to 21 year old or 20 year old college experience, my hope is that that really changes so that students have that flexibility. And it's not just about being in a classroom and, and you know, being at the feet of a faculty member at you know, a faculty member is definitely a piece of that, and those relationships are great. But what about outside of the college or university? What type of life is the student gradually building for him or herself? And how can digital learning assist with that, right, and maybe not just in terms of the courses, but it's also about, again, maybe even providing remediation. So hey, I took I know this route math, because we beat up math a lot. I took algebra back in, in freshman year, but I need a refresher, you know, maybe, maybe I need to take a Coursera course, that helps me kind of refresh some of those skills right before I need to use them at a higher level in the workforce. So we need to kind of think about how, you know, a college experiences needs to be much more fluid, much more focused on the lifespan of someone, how universities and colleges are a part of that, but they're not the end all be all of that experience? And how can we really help students understand that it's, it's a tapestry of learning experiences? Right? And, and how can we help them plug into those? As much as possible?
22:10
I think you're absolutely right. I think the idea of who our learners are that new, normal, whatever that means, in this world, right now, normal is not a word, even the new kind of student is a working student, it is a full time professional, maybe has a family maybe is a single parent maybe is a student that's first generation undocumented, they might have a lot of things going on, like they're just not coming to campus, like we used to see. Yeah, like you said, 18 to 22 year olds, that's not the same student coming to campus anymore. And we have the need to be flexible. And this chapter goes from I love that you brought up Coursera, it goes from talking about elearning up to the MOOCs and 2012 2012 that we'll talk about later on this podcast. But I will say we've never really thought about updating on how we iterates that we design, like the rapid updates in the cycle of online learning is still a challenge. And we've never put the time and investment from 1999. Like I was laughing because I proposed a book on online learning research last year. And I said, we're still struggling with this 20 years out, and it's 2020. And we still don't have a really good solution on how to support instructional design support the online students support services, advising career paths counseling as well. We're still figuring this out. So I guess it takes time. It's like a marathon. Is this true? You're a runner? You know this?
23:43
Yeah. And so and so are you a trail runner, especially? And so yeah, I mean, I think it takes time. But, you know, my my concern is that again, time is running out, or at least not running out time is being compressed. Right? So now that we're in a pandemic, now that state legislatures are cutting back on aid to colleges and universities in some ways, you know, definitely before the pandemic, maybe now with the pandemic, they'll loosen up those purse strings, but I'm worried about time being compressed, causing a lot of stress. And unfortunately, what's going to happen is that there are there there will be schools that will respond. I hope that there will be many other than just, you know, the usual suspects that respond in a very creative way to really kind of create the next iteration of their institution. I think you know, boards have a role to play having a very heterogeneous board. Lots of you know, new voices to helpfully put some pressure on schools to change up things bit and to try to change and to your point, do more iterative change, right actually collect data Look at it, process it and then use it to hopefully, you know, of course, correct do things in a way that the data suggests you should, you know, go and so, but I think some schools won't, I think in some ways, there's some schools that are going to be caught in the headlights of change and will basically fold. And so we need to be prepared for that. For that reality as well, again, I think, you know, public education, even private education is not too big to fail. I think in some ways, we've been kind of coasting. And so it's a great opportunity, even though it's a scary time, it's a great opportunity to your point to figure out okay, what do what can we do differently? And let's pull in students more so that they are more the center of that conversation from day one, right? Yeah, they have a voice, they can remind us of what they're up against. And we need them to help us chart to course, the course forward. If we don't do that, well. That's where, again, anything we build, or think is cool, will fall will fall apart over time.
26:14
Yeah, I think he you going back to the Doctor Who and transporting yourself, Martin talking about, I see you talking about the production cost, and the economics of how many students need to go through this, not all institutions or campuses will be able to do this. And in the coming year, we are going to see some economic fallout like no other. So I, I'm wondering about those institutions that are thinking to be a bit more agile? And to be a bit more, let's test this out. And can we scale or distance education, because we know there's some high fixed costs Martin talked about in the chapter. But we also know they also have to higher volume of students to break even on some of that. And I'm really concerned about what's going to happen the next year or so in higher ed specifically, because some of those models require butts and seats. And that's not the elearning butts in seats, but the physically being on a campus. Because we haven't shifted all the other support structures around elearning. We haven't shifted all the other entities that support a campus that moves to online and,
27:22
yeah,
27:23
I'm afraid of future. I don't know, is it my wrong? Is this a fear that you have? Or what are some things you're thinking?
27:28
Oh, it is a fear that I have? I mean, again, I mean, my my fear is that there, again, I worried that not enough schools will do this work well. And, and but you know, to sleep at night, I really I think about how maybe not maybe now in the 21st century, especially given that online learning, you know, you can be in North Dakota and taking courses easily online, from you know, from Southern New Hampshire, right, you don't have to, to get your undergrad or your masters or your PhD or your your or even a certificate by being physically in a location these days. And so, you know, so I think there will be enough schools, on some level to meet some of the existing need. But the problem that we have, too, is that, again, the continuing education needs of students and, and maybe again, we need to, to say, we can't be everything to everyone, maybe some of that continuing education will come from our employers, either through, you know, learning experiences that they provide, or through relationships that they have with other companies to provide, you know, education as a benefit. But, But to your point, I think there because online learning for so long has been an add on a bolt on to the existing structures of residential colleges and universities, it's tough to shift that, you know, to make it more diverse to provide services for students that are, you know, influenced by technology. So, for example, to your point, why can't we do online tutoring for all students? Right? Because maybe I don't have enough time to come to a tutor or face to face or, or, you know, to what extent what would it look like for us to offer online tutoring face to face during supplemental instruction? But again, that comes with dollars. And so how can we actually seed a menu for students in a way that doesn't break the bank? So so so schools are going to have to make some tough choices about what that actually looks like tactically, as well as strategically over time?
29:47
Yeah, I think institutions that were thinking about this before but not my last one, the Learning Center did have supplemental instruction tutoring online, they did multimodal and we're gonna have to think about offering some of these resources, not just courses and more Always and I love that you said, and you said this before I should have brought that out is we need to think about our relationships to learning and ongoing learning. Like we have more needs to tool up. We had micro credentialing been a big issue, and partnerships with, I think a number of companies that are doing well, like we knew. And we know there's a gap in, I'm thinking about my partner with cyber security and his company. Price Waterhouse said, we're going to partner with Coursera and design curriculum, because we don't have enough people to come into cyber security and technologies and forensics and data, we need to tool it up more. So I think there's going to be those institutions that should Nish well into I'm an undergrad, or I'm going to be doing more executive or prepare professional training, like getting your lane, pick it going forward. I think that's a great suggestion. And I hope that some people are recognizing that they can't be everything to everyone, because I think that it's going to limit how they can scale and design and develop really quality learning experiences for their next generation of learners to come or come online to their campus.
31:13
Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I mean, there's so many schools that have you know, they have their undergraduate programs, graduate programs, continuing education, international student, I mean, there's all these different services. And so, you know, again, looking at their data, they're going to have to really kind of decide what do we really do? Well, right, like, given our mission, and given, given our faculty and the superstars that we have in terms of instructional design, you know, what do we do well, and then what are the gaps, right, and maybe the gaps are, are filled in various ways, maybe we refer students to, to other institutions, which, you know, institutions don't like to have to do, but maybe we need to do that, or other resources, like MOOCs or other opportunities there. But yeah, and so that's going to be an interesting exercise for institutions to do. But again, the clock is ticking those, so how quickly can they do it? And maybe, again, that conversation requires, again, bringing in a consultant bringing in someone to, you know, kind of have a level playing field, really, you know, the consultant slash psychologists, right, I mean, I think, I mean, my background is in clinical psych. So I think about some of these conversations is almost like group therapy, where everyone kind of brings their hang their hang ups and concerns and their biases, and those things are gradually exposed over time, not to make people feel, you know, totally uncomfortable. But we want to take some of that uncomfort and say, Yeah, why have we done these things this way? And maybe we're not serving all of our students. Well, how so? How can we do a better job collectively, to help our students because if we're not here to help our students, given where they are and where they need to be, then why do we exist? Right? It has to be more student centered, not about the faculty wanting to teach a certain course, for a certain semester is about the students.
33:17
I love that I'm going to put on my coaching hat and my talk with faculty or designers, I always ask them, the how and what they already know. What do you already do? And what can you do to put online and keep it simple? And how will you do that? And how do you want to be most effective? Because I think it's these incremental steps. I know this chapter was written in 2018. Martin, we are really grateful, because some of what you said is very applicable to what we're doing and talking about today. And I know it's a building foundation for the coming chapters that we get into MOOCs and other things like blockchain and AI. But what are some things that you either want to ask to Martin or the community that they're thinking about now, like one of mine is, what skills are you putting into your own practice or your own toolkit these days? To learn more about knowing that we're going to be in this E learning, remote learning online learning? It's not just a fad. But this is the question I want to put out to the community. So what are you working on these days community? And what are you thinking about? What about yourself? Calvin, what question you want to put out to the listeners?
34:24
Yeah, no, I mean, I think your questions are very, very good one. I mean, I think I asked that question too. Like, how are we preparing ourselves for this evolving future? Right, like so. What what skills should we have? You know, in some ways, I feel like I've been always tempted to go back because graduate school was a long time for me that was 1999 is when I got my doctorate. So sometimes I think about going back and getting a Master's but maybe that's not what I need. Maybe it is, again, a micro credential. So what what types of skills do I need to have to be successful? to, you know, help schools evaluate their own data to make strategic and, you know, better strategic and tactical decisions. So, so I think I think your question is a good one, you know, another other kind of other things I've been thinking about as well, it's just like, you know, what, what, what are people thinking about the future of professional organizations? Do you find them still helpful? And can is there almost kind of like an on an unconference way to still stay engaged with folks without having to subscribe to all the different professional organizations that are out there, because, again, money is tied and in the game with the pandemic causing us to, you know, not be able to maybe see each other all the time face to face? How will we chart the future of our own professional development to you to your point? So I think, I think that's, that's definitely something that I'm concerned about. And then another one is based on what we talked about, like, I would love for the community to find for us, what conversations are they having now, or planning to have soon, about what the future of their institution is going to look like? Right? Is it? No? Is it? Is it captioner future proofing? Or is it, you know, more focused on the pandemic? And so how can we make things better for the pandemic or post pandemic? So that that's what I would love to know, and have that information be very transparent? Because right now, it's very unclear to me what schools are actually planning for other than saying, oh, we're going to be on campus or not in the spring, right or the summer. Like, I want to see the bigger the bigger plans that the schools are shaping for themselves.
36:52
Yeah, I think you're right, the proactive strategy versus the reactive. We're in it now and trying to figure it out. Well, he Calvin, he, Laura here thinks we've done a good job on this elearning chapter.
37:05
Thank you. No, it was great talking with you. As always a
37:08
pleasure so community, let us know what you're thinking around elearning still relevant. We'd love to hear what your campus and your folks around your table are talking about these days when it comes to the building blocks of elearning till next time.
37:23
You've been listening to between the chapters with your host, Laura pasquini. For more information or to subscribe to between the chapters and 25 years of edtech visit 25 years dot open ed.ca