In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss value of getting student input while making plans for Fall 2020. But that’s not always simple to do, or at least common to do. The discussion built on some of the concepts in in this blog post.

Hosts:

* Phil Hill* Jeanette Wiseman* Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Welcome,

everyone, to another episode of MindWires COVID Transitions. I’m here with

Janette Wisemen and Kevin Kelly and looking forward to our conversation today.

What we mentioned in our last podcast that we wanted to

explore in more detail is getting more of the student perspective.

Kevin, you mentioned this in your recent blog post talking

about that COVID-19 recovery and planning must include student perspective. And

if you don’t mind me quoting you to you. You made a good point saying “to

increase student success with the planning, we have to include students in the

conversation. Right now, for the most part, we talk about students without

talking to them.”

I think that’s a really important point that we’d like to go

through today, is that whole challenge and experience and ideas about getting

student input.

In particular, because there’s been a really significant

shift over the past week or two where most focus is now on what’s going to

happen in the fall. Colleges and universities have big decisions to make and

they’re making it worth partial information. And this is a key theme of your

posts were saying, well, as you do that, you need to understand what the

student perspective is.

Kevin, it might be worthwhile if you could just describe a

little bit more of what motivated you to write the post and how you see this

challenge, including what we’re not doing so far and what we need to do more of

on getting student perspective.

Kevin: Well, what

motivated me to write the post? I teach a class called How to Learn with your

mobile device. It’s the flip side of the coin where my day job I teach faculty

how to teach online my night job grading papers related to how students are

learning with their mobile devices. And the student voice has always been

important to me throughout my career. So what’s interesting is the consistency

with the comments my own students made at the bottom of the blog post you

referenced with some of the quantitative data from surveys that are out there

in the sphere that have recently been produced and publicized. There are some

themes out there that we can touch on throughout today’s conversation that are

consistent in both areas.

Phil: But before

we get into those themes, I guess I want to first acknowledge or deal with what

I believe we’re saying, which is we’re not doing a good job of of talking with

students, getting their input and more of that perspective.

So part of the question is why is it so difficult to get

student perspective?

I mean, one of the most obvious issues is the numbers that

you have far more students than you have faculty.

But there are also other challenges, I think that we have

any time we’re trying to get student perspective and this is not just a matter

of COVID-19 planning.

In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss the an overlooked aspect of the COVID response from higher education. Beyond traditional face-to-face models, and fully online models, there is a vast middle ground of hybrid – the combination of face-to-face and online components. Added this is the concept of Hybrid Flexible as shared in in this blog post.

Hosts:

* Phil Hill* Jeanette Wiseman* Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Welcome,

everyone. It’s great to talk again. And it’s been an interesting week and a

half since we did our pilot episode to work out the podcast issues. And here we

are, yet another week into the shutdown. How are you guys holding up?

Jeanette: Doing

pretty good, I think. I’m surprised that I just realized this marks the sixth

week that my kids have been out of school, which seems fast and slow at the

same time. But, you know, I think that there’s some maybe sadness that sort of

kicking in at the end of your school year. Things are happening, but also just

a level of comfort of being home as well. It’s kind of a mixed bag at the

Wiseman the household. How about you, Kevin?

Kevin: I think my

big problem is I don’t give myself time in a regular circumstance.

And, you know, I’m working on a book about online teaching

right now that we’re trying to get to the publisher. Every free moment that I’m

not on a Zoom call or doing work for a client is spent doing some other form of

work.

Even yesterday, I worked all day. Really nothing has changed

much except for not as much business travel.

Phil: But as for

myself, I’m the same way trying to deal with a lack of business travel and

wishing my family the best in the meantime. Today, what we wanted to talk about

is that it seems like there’s been a pretty broad consensus since we last

talked that the Fall 2020 academic term in the Northern Hemisphere in

particular is now really looking to be in question, that it’s not at all safe

to just assume that schools will be back to their normal method of delivery

where they’re free to do fully face to face with no restrictions for the fall.

And I’ve definitely noticed a pretty strong recognition of

this point, and that’s led to some interesting conversations.

But one thing I’m noticing that isn’t being discussed enough

is hybrid education and the possibility of a partial reopening situations,

where a school, certain parts of their activity can be done face to face, but

certain parts are going to need to be online.

And the challenge of trying to figure out what is the right

mix for a school to take, particularly given the fact that there are still so

many unknowns about what the reopening are going to look like. And that’s

something I’d like to explore in more depth today. But before we get started on

what schools are doing, I’d like to check in with both of you.

Have you what have you noticed with the online public

commentary or are you noticing the same trend about online versus face to face

and not enough about hybrid or what are you guys seeing?

Kevin: It’s only

just starting to hit the list serves I frequent in terms of people start...

In our inaugural podcast episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss the phased transition that higher education is going through as a result of COVID-19 towards increased online and hybrid educational models. This discussion builds off of the multi-phase response of higher education to COVID-19 as described in this blog post.

Hosts:

* Phil Hill* Jeanette Wiseman* Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Welcome,

everyone. I think that we’ve all got our dogs put away, the office doors

closed, all the mandatory activities in this day and age, but it’s sort of

funny. One thing that we’ve noticed here is you get so much people are talking

about having to work remotely and dealing with, you know, dogs, kids and

everything else. But part of it, I look at this saying I’ve been doing this

about 18 or 19 years. It’s almost reminding me what I’ve had to deal with.

Jeanette: You

know, what’s changed for me is that I’ve been working from home also for about

I have about twelve years. I think at this point and if not more, actually, I

think it’s more than that. But anyway, what’s changed for me is I always had

this excuse that, well, I’m the one working from home. I’m not going into the

office. There’s no way that I’m going on video with you guys, because part of

the luxury of working from home is that I don’t have to get dressed up. And now

everybody is on video. For the first time in, you know, over a decade, I have

been actually trying to not look as sloppy when I get up and start work every

day. That’s what’s changed for me, is that I’m actually doing better.

Phil: Kevin,

anything changing from your side?

Kevin: No, only

that people have at least realized that things have not changed much for me

other than a lot less travel.

Jeanette: You

were taking a shower before this. Come on. That’s just me. OK.

Kevin: I am

putting on colored shirts for four Zoom calls. Things like that.

Phil: Yeah, well,

I’ve always had the shirt, the taking in the bedroom for when you have that

last minute. Oh, man. It’s a video call. You’ve got to go. Run grab the shirt even

if you’re wearing, you know, sweat pants or something. It’s what Hillary, my

daughter, calls a work mullet.

Jeanette: That’s

a very easy for guys, of course.

Phil: Well, it’s

interesting doing our first podcast during this time when everything’s changing

day to day, week to week. I mean, it’s just been a wild ride over the past.

What has it been? Now about a month of the major impact of COVID-19 hitting

higher education where we work. It’s almost exactly one month from when the

University of Washington and Seattle University first shut down their face to

face classes and announced that they were going to be going virtual. I think it

was March 6 where they made that announcement, and starting March 9th, their

face to face classes were shut down. It just a month ago and to me, that was a

seminal moment when those two schools made that decision public.

Kevin: Similar to

our opening conversation just about life and how our eyes haven’t...