Why Distance Learning?

In this episode of Why Distance Learning, Seth and Allyson speak with Rebecca Petrone, the educator/technologist at Central Michigan University's Museum of Cultural and Natural History, and Kayli Adams, a graduate assistant at the museum. They talk about how a museum with a full-time staff of three trains undergraduates to design and deliver live virtual programs for real classrooms, and what students and audiences get out of letting novices present.

Together, Seth, Allyson, Rebecca, and Kayli explore how the museum moved its distance learning from a green screen and webcam to a campus lightboard studio, how Rebecca builds programs around the objects in the collection, and how she uses the chat, open-ended questions, and a co-designed Valentine to make up for what students can't touch through a screen. Rebecca describes her shadow-then-present training model and her plan for a free virtual series that audiences book knowing the presenter is a student. Kayli talks about leading her first program before she felt ready and about the coloring pages she now keeps on hand for shy kids. The episode closes with Kayli, who was homeschooled, remembering what a thirty-minute virtual session meant to a kid who couldn't go on field trips, and Rebecca on how a single comment in the chat can make an older learner feel like they made a friend.

Key topics
  • Training undergraduates to deliver live virtual museum programs
  • Shadow, practice, present: a scaffolded model for new presenters
  • Object-based learning when the audience can't touch the objects
  • Using chat, open-ended questions, and gamification to drive engagement
  • Student-built exhibits and programs, including the international New Year Traditions program
  • Building leadership and confidence through real stakes
  • Distance learning as connection for rural, homeschooled, and lifelong learners
Links & Resources
Guest Bio: Rebecca Petrone
Rebecca Petrone is the Museum Educator/Technologist at Central Michigan University's Museum of Cultural and Natural History, where she develops and delivers the museum's in-person and live virtual programs and teaches museum studies courses on public programming and museum work. She previously managed science labs at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, leading school groups both virtually and in person, and has also worked at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, the National Museum of Ireland, and as an associate teacher in a Chicago elementary school. She holds a BA in History from Central Michigan University and an MA in World Heritage Management and Conservation from University College Dublin.

Guest Bio: Kayli Adams
Kayli Adams is a graduate assistant at the CMU Museum of Cultural and Natural History, where she works mainly in collections and presents the museum's virtual programs. She started at the museum as a student assistant in education and led its Curious Curators summer program in her first year there. She previously worked in early childhood care.

About the Hosts
Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and a host of Why Distance Learning, a podcast for education leaders and practitioners making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts

Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring are co-hosts of Why Distance Learning and members of the team at CILC — the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration — which connects students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences. See https://cilc.org

Creators and Guests

Host
Allyson Mitchell
SF
Host
Seth Fleischauer
TM
Host
Tami Moehring

What is Why Distance Learning??

Why Distance Learning? is a podcast about the decisions, design choices, and assumptions that determine whether live virtual learning becomes shallow and transactional—or meaningful, relational, and effective at scale.

The show is designed for education leaders, instructional designers, and system-level practitioners responsible for adopting, scaling, and sustaining virtual, hybrid, and online learning models. Each episode examines the structural conditions under which distance learning actually works—and the predictable reasons it fails when it doesn’t.

Through conversations with researchers, experienced practitioners, and field-shaping leaders, Why Distance Learning? translates research, field evidence, and lived experience into decision-relevant insight. Episodes surface real tradeoffs, near-failures, and hard-won lessons, equipping listeners with clear framing and language they can use to explain, defend, or redesign distance learning models in real organizational contexts.

Hosted by Seth Fleischauer of Banyan Global Learning, and Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, the podcast challenges outdated narratives about distance learning and explores what becomes possible when live virtual education is designed intentionally, human-centered, and grounded in evidence.

# Why Distance Learning — Clean Transcript
## Guests: Rebecca Petrone and Kayli Adams, CMU Museum of Cultural & Natural History
## Cohosts present: Seth Fleischauer, Allyson Mitchell (Tami Moehring absent)

---

## [INTRO — recorded separately] [00:00:00]

Hello, and welcome to Why Distance Learning, the podcast for education leaders and practitioners who are making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. I'm Seth Fleischauer, founder and president of Banyan Global Learning, and my cohosts are Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration. Every episode we try to surface at least one assumption worth questioning.

Today we have two guests from the Museum of Cultural and Natural History at Central Michigan University. Rebecca Petrone is the museum's educator/technologist. She builds and delivers its in-person and live virtual programs, teaches museum studies courses, and trains the undergraduates who help run the museum, which has a full-time staff of three. Kayli Adams is a graduate assistant who started on the education side and now works mostly in collections. She also took part in distance learning programs herself as a homeschooled kid. Tami couldn't join us for this one, so it's Allyson and me.

The assumption on the table today: live virtual programs should be delivered by polished professionals, and students should watch until they're ready. Rebecca and Kayli describe a different model. Undergraduates shadow a program a few times, then present it to real classrooms themselves. Rebecca also wants to launch a free virtual series that audiences book knowing the presenter is a student who is still learning. We talk about what that costs in quality, what students gain from real stakes, and how to make object-based teaching work when nobody can touch the objects.

*This episode is brought to you by CILC, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, connecting students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences — visit cilc.org to learn more. And by Banyan Global Learning, which connects K-12 classrooms with global peers and expert facilitators through live, thematic international exchange programs — find them at banyangloballearning.com.*

And now here's our conversation with Rebecca Petrone and Kayli Adams.

---

## [Recording begins] [00:02:10] *(approx)*

**Seth (02:10)** *(approx)*
Rebecca and Kayli, welcome to the podcast.

**Kayli Adams (02:14)** *(approx)*
Thank you so much. Glad to be here.

**Rebecca Petrone (02:14)** *(approx)*
Thank you.

**Seth (02:17)** *(approx)*
Allyson, could you start us off with our first question?

**Allyson (02:19)** *(approx)*
Yeah, I'm so excited that you're here. It's been so fun to learn along with Rebecca, learn from her, along the journey of the years that we've gotten to know each other. And I'm so excited to learn from you, Kayli, about your perspectives on the field. But before we jump in too much, because not everyone lives in the world of museum education, we wondered if you, Rebecca, could tell us a little bit more about your museum, since it's a university museum — a little bit about the collection, and then your unique role within the education department. It would be awesome if you could also share a little bit about your team, who you serve, and the different ways you do that, just so everyone has a great overview of what you do at your amazing space.

**Rebecca Petrone (02:58)** *(approx)*
Yeah, sure. So it's called the CMU Museum of Cultural and Natural History. We like to shorten it to the CMU Museum. We're a cultural and natural history museum, so a lot of our collections revolve around natural history — animal specimens. I believe we have about twenty to twenty-five thousand zoological specimens that we use for programs, for researchers, that type of thing.

But then we also have the cultural side. This museum's been open since the seventies, so we've collected a wide range of things, but for the most part it has to do with local history, Michigan lumbering history. There is the great Native American museum here in Mount Pleasant already, the Ziibiwing, so we really talk to them if we have questions about Native American history in terms of tribal questions or tribal history. But there are other cultural items, like dresses, and a lot of what CMU alumni have donated over the years as well. So there's that vein of it.

Then there's the educational arm. So who is on my team? We are small but mighty. The museum itself opened in the seventies, but the museum studies minor program opened in about the nineties. My director, Ron Bloomfield, was an alum of that program himself, so he's been here since the beginning of the minor program. So there's him as the director — he's also the collections manager — and then I'm the educator. So it's him, myself, and we also have a secretary named Annika who helps with administrative things. And ever since the beginning of this program, we've had a lot of students, CMU undergraduates. Kayli is a grad student, so we will have grad assistants from time to time. But for the most part, it's been a core team of a director, educator, collections manager, and then students as well.

**Seth (05:31)** *(approx)*
And Kayli, like most grad assistants, does your job basically shift by the day? It's just whatever's needed in the moment?

**Kayli Adams (05:40)** *(approx)*
Very much so. Currently my main focus is collections, but I actually started out as a student assistant before I got the grad assistant position. I started out in education, and then I slowly moved my way towards wearing many hats. Now it's just kind of wherever I'm needed best on a given day. I'm mostly in the basement of Anspach, where we process our collections. But wherever Rebecca needs me, I'm happy to be there.

**Seth (06:08)** *(approx)*
What does it mean to process a collection?

**Kayli Adams (06:12)** *(approx)*
So when we get artifacts donated to us, we have to process them, which means we get them all into our collections database and into our system. They get their own catalog number, their own documentation, to make sure that we know what this item is, where it comes from, what year it might come from — all the data we can get from it. So that way, if you come to us and say, "Hey, I'm looking for information on this business," I'll be like, "Hey, I've got a few advertisements from them," and I know that because I can look them up in our database. And we can't do that without processing.

**Allyson (06:54)** *(approx)*
Oh my goodness. I think processing a collection is so exciting when you get to wear an educator hat, because all of a sudden you can think about all the different projects that can be built around that artifact — from a make-and-take experience to maybe even a workshop or a lesson that can be delivered in person or virtually. And I know that you've had some experience doing some of the virtual work.

Rebecca, I wanted to learn a little bit more about the way that you shape your educational experiences, because you have your museum, your school, and your virtual learning, and then you also are a mentor. Could you tell us a little bit about how you shape each one of those experiences? Are they different? Do you change things up based on the environment? And just a random question about the history of your program: was distance learning always a part of the program since the start of the minor in the nineties, or did that come in later? Because you get to work with really awesome equipment, so I always like to know.

**Rebecca Petrone (07:51)** *(approx)*
Yeah. No, I will say that was a big benefit of my previous position coming into this position, because distance learning was not a thing that this museum was doing. I know during COVID the previous educator and team, the students, were doing Facebook Lives — they were dabbling in it, definitely. But at my previous organization, the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum — I had no idea until I started working there — I was just thrown into it, in a good way. I learned a lot. And the great Tami Moehring with CILC was great with helping me understand it.

So when I first came in here, the idea was, we'll establish a distance learning studio. And we tried that with the green screen, but just with how often that would need updating, and I'd have to go through OIT, it was getting a little tedious.

**Rebecca Petrone (08:54)** *(approx)*
And so we just happened to have a tour of the instructional spaces with the library here on campus. They have a great lightboard studio and a green screen studio, and, amongst other things, a podcast studio. And I think the students — Kayli's gotten to experience it — the lightboard studio they have is just great. Any of us can just schedule a time, walk in, and use it for our programming. So it's really made our programs pretty dynamic and a lot more fun than just the green screen we had upstairs.

So that was a benefit. But how I approach creating programs depends a lot on what we have in our collections, because I am very much about object-based learning. Getting students who are here from local school groups to actually interact with objects and artifacts, even if they're replicas, is always great. But I've had a fair amount of schools wanting customized programs. They know we have rocks and fossils, and they say, "Hey, we're doing this special lesson. Can you make something for us?" So lately it's been a lot of customizable programs that we don't necessarily advertise on our website just yet, but schools reach out to us and we create programs that way.

For distance learning, lately it's more based on what we have in our collections and the feedback that you guys provide about what people are looking for. So we've done some holiday ones, like using our Valentine's Day collection cards. We don't have a lot, but we have enough that we can highlight those — close-ups, pictures, all that good stuff. I think the last one we did was Pumpkins and Pop Culture. That one's a little harder, but it was more of a fun one.

A lot of times how we approach it is: what is our mission? What are the things we collect? We have our Michigan lumbering history, and we have a one-room schoolhouse, with a lot of artifacts related to that, so we try to focus our programs on those. Birding is another one of our programs.

**Allyson (11:24)** *(approx)*
Oh my goodness, Seth, their lightboard is so fun. I don't know if you've ever gotten to play with a lightboard before, but you're drawing in front of you, and the way they set up the content and move their bodies is so great. And Rebecca, you have such a great model for object-based teaching. It's always so nice when questions come up and you can relate it back to your collections and really give students that authentic experience. And for anyone who might be working at a university museum: always go check out the libraries or spaces that might have innovation connected. You never know who you might be able to work with and get access to those cool tools.

**Rebecca Petrone (12:00)** *(approx)*
Exactly. Yeah, it was a game changer, I will say. The Office of Curriculum and Instructional Support here at CMU is really, really great for that. So yeah, shout out.

**Allyson (12:10)** *(approx)*
Yes, a shout out.

**Seth (12:12)** *(approx)*
And I know that you allow students the opportunity to work with real collections and develop exhibits and educational programs based on their feedback. You mentioned Pumpkins and Pop Culture — I want to hear more about that. Is that an example of a piece of student feedback inspiring a new program? And what do pumpkins and pop culture in Michigan have in common? Why that program?

**Rebecca Petrone (12:38)** *(approx)*
That one was more of a "holidays, let's tap into that fun spirit." I love pumpkins, so not so much a student idea. I did have Alexis, who's in the office here, observe that one. A lot of times when I'm doing a program, if the student's not ready, I like to model it first so they can shadow and then get the confidence of, "Okay, this is what this is supposed to look like." So that one in particular was more of a pet project — although pumpkins are native to North America, so they do grow here in Michigan.

But other programs have been more student-led. For distance learning, one of the first programs our former director wanted us to get into was with international students. We had quite a few international students helping and working at the museum, and the program we focused on was called New Year Traditions. We had students from Brazil, Ghana, Nepal, Mongolia, Spain. If the program got booked, four or five of them would present, and it was a chance for people to interact directly with someone from that culture.

Which is great, because I learned quite a few things. When you're researching online, you learn a lot of cool things, but sometimes you ask, "Hey, do you do this tradition in your hometown?" And they say, "I have never heard of that." Not everything you read is always practical to that culture, or an actual thing that people do. So it's always good to have that firsthand experience.

Usually, when it's a student-led program, we try to start from their interests: what are you wanting to focus on? For instance, for our in-person programs, our latest exhibit was on the history of games. Our newest exhibit is called Magic Circles: Society Through Game Spaces. The students had a passion for that topic, so they started brainstorming. From the brainstorming, our director at the time, who was leading that project, elected a team lead or two, so they develop some project management skills — the trials and tribulations of trying to keep their peers on track and researching. And it just kind of snowballs from there.

We definitely give them guidance and try to steer them in the right direction. But at the end of the day, we want the students to walk away saying, "I created this thing from practically start to finish." There are things where they say, "Wow, this worked really great," and other times, "Yeah, we probably shouldn't have pushed for that. It didn't work out when there were actual visitors." So there are a lot of good lessons they learn. Even if I think, "It's not gonna work," I give my advice, but we still want them to experience those hits and misses.

**Allyson (16:32)** *(approx)*
That's learning too, so it's nice you give them the opportunity to try it out. We've worked with Rebecca on a lecture series with some of their international students at the time, and it was really fun to have them come back each week and to see them each establish their own style — an opportunity to teach in, like you said, their interests, their culture, their style. We also did International Museum Day together. One of your Ukrainian students was there, and she was able to connect us to her mother, who was helping a museum in Ukraine keep its collections protected. And she did the translation, correct? And she led that idea as well?

**Rebecca Petrone (17:12)** *(approx)*
Right. Correct, yes — Masha. We knew she had that connection and that her mother was still over there working at the museum. So her mother was able to talk about the trials and tribulations she was experiencing as the director of her institution. It was a very interesting collaboration, because Masha was serving as the translator in real time. So that was a great program.

**Allyson (17:57)** *(approx)*
Kayli, you get to work alongside so many museum professionals, and also, in your role, your peers — students who are looking to you for guidance in many cases. How has it been to learn about museums in the classroom through that virtual outreach lens? Is there a moment when you just knew that this was something that worked, that you had ownership of something — you got to develop it, deliver it, and see the success? Or, like Rebecca was saying, something you really wanted where you realized, "I've gotta modify this"? What were some of those experiences like for you?

**Kayli Adams (18:39)** *(approx)*
Oh gosh. I think it was my first summer working with Rebecca. We have a yearly program called Curious Curators, where we invite about four to six students from the area to do an all-day program on a certain topic. We let them feel like they're building the exhibit themselves while we teach them about the topic, and I got to lead that project.

Which felt insane to me at the time, because I had just started working at the museum. But it was such an eye-opening experience, because I had never been given that type of leadership role before. Our topic was conservation of endangered animals in Michigan, and getting to work with these kids one on one throughout the entire day was just phenomenal. Sure, there were things I felt didn't really work. I felt like maybe I should have had more things for kids to do if they felt a little too anxious, because I had some pretty shy kids. But overall I got the experience of, "Wow, okay, these kids are looking to me for this experience. I've gotta deliver this." In those moments it's a little bit sink or swim, but in a good way, because that's how you learn.

You don't learn just by watching and watching and watching. You actually have to do it. And it just clicked for me that day, because those kids left smiling, and the amount of hugs and high fives I got at the end of the day made it all worth it. I realized this is where I wanted to be.

**Seth (20:27)** *(approx)*
And so that's an in-person experience. You've delivered both in person and virtually, and the name of the podcast is Why Distance Learning? What have you learned about helping your students feel connected to these objects, ideas, and educators when you're not all in the same room?

**Rebecca Petrone (20:48)** *(approx)*
Yeah. That can be really tricky, because like I said earlier — and I try to teach my students this — with object-based learning, being able to touch something, interact with it, smell it, is a lot different than just seeing a picture of it on a screen. So that can be a challenge with distance learning. But the nice thing with distance learning is the chat.

I always like activating students, and adults too, in the chat. Some of the tricks I use are just asking a lot of open-ended questions: "What do you guys think of that?" Usually a lot of students or visitors will be on the same page and answer very similarly. But sometimes you get two very different answers, and it's kind of nice to say, "Why did you guys think that?" Even with webinars, where they can't see each other or really hear each other, they're having this nice interaction through the chat. Knock on wood, I've always had very positive experiences with that. Maybe once or twice I've had to say, "Let's stay on track," or CILC has helped intervene. But definitely keep those questions interactive.

I like to try to gamify it, too — incorporating some multiple-choice questions can always be fun. I always love the Q&A parts. That was always great with the international students, giving people the opportunity to ask them questions about where they live. Those were some of the most rewarding interactions I've had. And also just being animated: "Hey, how are you guys doing?" I try to teach my students that too. Kayli, do you have any tips or tricks that you've tried?

**Kayli Adams (22:50)** *(approx)*
I definitely agree with being animated. This is a bit of a unique experience, but I was homeschooled growing up, so I think about the number of distance learning programs I got to see as a kid. Every time I do a program, I think back to what I would want to see if I was the kiddo on the other side of the screen. So: being more animated, using sound effects if you can, using the lightboard. Don't be afraid to use what's in your toolbox. There have been times when we've been allowed to use sound effects, and oh my gosh, the kids loved that. So I definitely agree with a lot of Rebecca's points. Don't be afraid to get animated, get a little silly with it, because you want kids to feel wanted.

**Rebecca Petrone (23:32)** *(approx)*
Yeah. That's a nice thing with the lightboard too. For instance, in Valentine Design, at the end we get to design a Valentine together, so we ask, "Hey, what should we add next?" Someone yells out a rose, and you get five or ten people building this Valentine's Day card together, which is nice. So, again, like Kayli said, use the tools you have. If you can't physically take the collection to them or be in their space, that's the next best thing.

**Allyson (24:11)** *(approx)*
It's so nice to hear about the different approaches you get to share with your students and how you give them that doable action. Rebecca, there aren't a lot of museum staffs that cross-train teams to do virtual. What does the model for the course look like? Are they reading different works? Is there a tiered system — they complete some research, then they learn the lesson, then they're in the studio? How does that work in the distance learning realm?

**Rebecca Petrone (24:45)** *(approx)*
Yeah. For my students in class, I will introduce distance learning so they're familiar with CILC, definitely, but also with the different routes people can take to connect online. It's really the students who work or volunteer with us who actually get trained on the distance learning platforms. And how I always like to model it is to get the students to shadow me a couple of times. It really started with Kayli watching me do it a couple of times, until finally she felt comfortable enough to do it on her own. Same with other students: as we hire freshmen and sophomores into the museum and programs get booked, they observe.

Obviously, being one person, I'm always thinking, "Gosh, I need to do that more." So it's always on me to say, "Okay, this is a semester where I'm just gonna book a bunch of studio time. I'll do a program, they can watch it from the office, and then they can do a practice run for me." We haven't quite hit that stride yet.

I think I had mentioned this to you, Allyson: this is how we model our in-person programs. We offer free educational programs to the community with the understanding that these are students who are learning — this is a lab for them. And I want to bring that to the virtual world too: create a program that's free for anyone to book, where our students present on a theme and the audience asks questions, so the students get a sense of what it's like in an actual virtual setting. It's tabled right now, but my goal for the end of the year is to get that up and running, so students have a lot more opportunity, not just with me, but with actual audiences who go in knowing, "All right, this is a student, someone who's brand new." So they might go blank, they might throw up — you never know. That's really how I try to approach it, because like Kayli said, it's one thing to watch it, but you really don't get a sense of whether it's for you until you're actually doing it.

**Seth (27:31)** *(approx)*
Yeah, I think it speaks to the nature of having stakes in a learning experience. When there's a real impact on the other side of it, there's a mindset shift where you're still experimenting, but you understand that every choice you make is going to have a real impact. And that might allow you to come to a clearer set of actions more quickly than if there weren't those stakes and you got crippled with possibility. At some point the show must go on, right?

When we look at young people as having had such a different experience growing up than we have — you're looking at two sets of young people separated by half a generation: the students you work with and the students you serve through your educational programs. Rebecca, what are you seeing in young people nowadays that calls for something different from the way we've approached things up until now? And Kayli, after Rebecca: as a young person, what do you want from this moment in terms of educational experiences, whether put on by the museum or as part of your experience as a graduate student, that would meet your generation where they're at? I'll start with you, Rebecca.

**Rebecca Petrone (28:59)** *(approx)*
Yeah, I think just getting them in front of these experiences — getting them outside of the theory and lecture side of it, which is very important. I just witnessed this with a program we did not too long ago: there's this hesitancy to take leadership. And I think that is learned. When I was a student in this program, I was just like, "Well, someone tell me what to do and I'll do it."

But knowing when to read the room, learning how to improvise a little — "Okay, this isn't working for this group of students. What do I have in my bag of tricks? How can I think on my feet?" — and letting them know that it's okay to make mistakes and fail. At least in our setting, you're not gonna get fired; this is a learning experience. It's about giving them those opportunities to hold the reins. Because in a lot of organizations, at least with university museums, museum studies students don't get that experience until maybe graduate school. Yes, they're shadowing and learning from their mentors and bosses, but it's not until they're much older that they actually get those experiences.

So I think it's about starting students off at the undergrad level, even the high school level: "Here, you're in charge of this. I'm gonna be here to help you. What are you gonna do?" Getting them to think on their feet. And it's a huge confidence booster. I never thought I would go the education route. I always wanted to be in the basement of the collections of museums. But as I started to work more with people, I realized, "I enjoy this." It wasn't until I was forced to do it that I realized it was a good opportunity.

**Kayli Adams (31:24)** *(approx)*
Well, I can certainly agree with that. The best way I can put it is pushing people into the pool a little bit. I was kind of in the same boat. I was very fortunate that I had worked in daycares before, so I had a bit of early childhood education experience before I came to the museum. But a lot of my fellow students don't have that experience, and they don't get the same push a lot of people get. Which is very unfortunate, because I see a lot of them and think, "Wow, you could do this. You absolutely could do this. You just need a little push."

And on top of that, a lot of that freezing comes from feeling a lack of preparedness. The truth is, you're never gonna be a thousand percent prepared for every situation ever. That's part of the learning experience. If we let every situation like that freeze us up, nothing's ever gonna get done. They can always be encouraged to have a couple of things up their sleeve. For example, now when I'm running more custom programs, I try to have something for kids who maybe don't want to interact — maybe some coloring pages or something like that. But before then, I needed to learn that that's what I needed. And like Rebecca said, it's okay to mess up. There's no way to do this so wrong you're gonna die. I think that's the best way to think about it.

**Rebecca Petrone (33:10)** *(approx)*
Yeah. And it can be hard. I'm always thinking about the quality of our programs too, and it can be hard not to say, "Do it this way," and jump in and kind of take over their experience. But I do think there's a lot to be learned in that follow-up conversation: "All right, what do you think you could improve? What do you think went well?" So just exposing students to more of those opportunities is really beneficial.

**Seth (33:40)** *(approx)*
Yeah, I mean, you're definitely not gonna die, but you might, like, *die*, you know.

**Kayli Adams (33:44)** *(approx)*
I mean, yeah, but you'll get over it. It's okay.

**Seth (33:46)** *(approx)*
Practicing agency is cringe, and it's also the only way to actually operate independently, right? So it's tough. You wanna push them into the pool and have them swim in the deep end, but you don't want them to drown. So what sort of scaffolds do we as educators need to provide to make sure that the swimming happens but not the drowning? But definitely not standing by the edge of the pool. We have exhausted that metaphor.

**Kayli Adams (34:19)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Allyson (34:20)** *(approx)*
And I think it's nice to think about how building your teacher voice, especially in a virtual setting, takes time. No matter what, it's kind of like: learn how to survive, learn your content, learn your voice. And having a little taste of that agency before you're in the professional world is, I think, an exciting model for other museum studies programs that are thinking about how students can get some practice, whether within a museum or in distance learning — since live virtual outreach is now part of how people connect.

At the end of each one of our sessions, we always like to ask the question of our podcast: why distance learning? To both of you: why do you think this medium works within your field? And if you want to share a golden moment, we always like to hear about the moment you thought, "Okay, I get it. Distance learning is a medium that can make an impact."

**Rebecca Petrone (35:29)** *(approx)*
Yeah. You go first, Kayli?

**Kayli Adams (35:32)** *(approx)*
Okay. So, again, I was homeschooled growing up, so I got to experience a lot of distance learning programs as a little one. And I often think back to my educators in those programs. It meant a lot to me as someone who wasn't able to go on museum trips all the time, or go on field trips with other kids, because I was at home. To have that connection with a bunch of other kids, even if it was just for those thirty minutes... You often forget that this might be the connection that this kid gets. And you also get to learn something super cool while you're at it. I think it's just the connection, for me.

**Rebecca Petrone (36:17)** *(approx)*
Yeah. And it just opens new worlds. We're in central Michigan, which is rural. We do have a Target and a Walmart, so we're not totally helpless here. But the closest big museum — a Detroit Institute of Arts or a national museum, that type of thing — is pretty far away. And for someone like myself, who grew up in a small town, just having those opportunities to connect with people outside of what you're used to is great.

I think it's great for loneliness too. I see it not just with kids, but in older programs as well — lifelong learners who feel like, "Hey, even if I just said a thing in the chat, it made me feel good, and I felt like I made a friend." So I think distance learning is a way to open up new worlds, to grow, and to just feel connected and not so alone in this very large world.

**Seth (37:22)** *(approx)*
Where can our listeners find your work on the internet?

**Rebecca Petrone (37:30)** *(approx)*
We offer a lot of our distance learning programs through CILC, so you can find us there under Central Michigan University, Museum of Cultural and Natural History.

**Seth (37:41)** *(approx)*
We will put it in our show notes. Thank you, Rebecca and Kayli. Thank you so much for being here. It was wonderful to learn more about your work and for you to share your expertise and what you've learned operating in this medium. Thanks so much for being here.

**Rebecca Petrone (37:53)** *(approx)*
Yes, thank you so much.

**Kayli Adams (37:53)** *(approx)*
Thank you.

**Allyson (37:54)** *(approx)*
Thank you.

---

## [OUTRO — recorded separately] [00:38:00] *(approx)*

That was our conversation with Rebecca Petrone and Kayli Adams of the CMU Museum of Cultural and Natural History.

Rebecca's training model is simple enough to borrow. Students watch a program a few times, run a practice version, and then present to a real audience. Afterward there's a conversation about what went well and what to change. She was open about the tradeoff: she cares about program quality, and it's hard to step back and let a student struggle in front of a class. Kayli's point about preparation fits alongside it. You will never be fully prepared, so carry a backup or two, like coloring pages for the shy kids, and learn the rest by doing.

On the virtual side, Rebecca uses the chat to make up for some of what's lost when students can't handle an object. She asks open-ended questions and pays attention when two groups give different answers. Both of them also came back to connection. Kayli remembered what a thirty-minute session meant to her as a homeschooled kid. Rebecca talked about rural classrooms, and about older learners for whom a single comment in the chat can feel like making a friend.

We'll have links in the show notes to the CMU Museum's programs on CILC and to the Lightboard Studio at CMU's Office of Curriculum and Instructional Support.

Thanks as always to our editor, Lucas Salazar, and thank you for listening to Why Distance Learning, and we'll see you next time.