EP 34 - The Evolution and Future of Online Learning with Dr. Judith Boettcher

In EP 34, John and Jason discuss with Dr. Judith Boettcher the evolution of online learning, the importance of instructional design, and the centrality of student engagement. The conversation also touches on project-based learning, AI's impact on education, and the critical role of teacher-as-mentor. Tune in for an insightful discussion on making online learning more effective, human, and future-ready.

See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com

Join Our LinkedIn Group - *Online Learning Podcast (Also feel free to connect with John and Jason at LinkedIn too)*

Learn more about Dr. Judith Boettcher on her website: http://designingforlearning.info/about-dr-boettcher/

Resources:

• PLATO Computer System
• Judith’s Website
• Judith’s book: Online Teaching Survival Guide (2021)
• Jason’s other top Online Teaching Books
  • Michelle Miller “Minds Online”
  • Flower Darby - “Small Teaching Online”
  • Catherine Denial “Pedagogy of kindness”
• Judith’s article: Student-Centered Learning in Dewey’s Holodeck – It Doesn’t Get Any Better than This—Now!
• IHE article - The Absurdity of Asynchrony

Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Transcript

We use a combination of computer-generated transcriptions and human editing. Please check with the recorded file before quoting anything. Please check with us if you have any questions or can help with any corrections!

[00:00:00] Jason: Today is a fulfillment of a little bit of a dream of mine. Do you know this? So thank you for helping me fulfill one of my dreams.

[00:00:06] Judith: Wow. Sounds like excellent planning, Jason!

[Intro Music]

[00:00:10] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston.

[00:00:13] Jason: Hey, John. Hey, everyone. And this is Online Learning in the Second Half, the online learning podcast.

[00:00:19] John Nash: Yeah. We're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation we've been having for the past. Wow. Are we going to start our third year of this soon? Yeah.

[00:00:28] Jason: I guess so.

[00:00:30] John Nash: About online education, online learning has had its chance to be great and some of it is, but still a lot of it isn't. So how are we going to get to the next stage, Jason?

[00:00:39] Jason: That is a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it?

[00:00:44] John Nash: I'd love to do that. What do you want to talk about today?

[00:00:47] Jason: Well, I'm very excited today, John, because we have a very special guest with us. Somebody that I've been reading her work now for a while and it is Judith Betcher. Judith, welcome.

[00:01:00] Judith: Well, thank you very much for being here. I'm delighted to be part of your series.

[00:01:04] Jason: Yeah, well, it's so great to have you. Judith, why don't you tell us just a little bit about kind of your your background? What have you been up to for the last little while? I know that a big part of your life is online learning and you've done it both in various capacities. So just tell us a little bit.

[00:01:19] Judith: well, actually, getting ready for this podcast, I started going back and thinking, and when you're as old as I am, that's kind of dangerous, you realize, and I thought, Oh my God, my first experience with anything approaching online learning was when I was working for a computer company and we were building and designing. What was called at that time computer based instruction.

So, as man, as we've moved along here, over these years, I was thinking it's actually online learning has become it actually is a merging of the computer based instruction movement with the traditional distance learning, in the old distance learning correspondence learning.

So what we have Today in 2025 is really elements of all of these different movements, starting back with the like I said, the computer based instruction movement.

[00:02:11] Jason: Yeah, that's great. And do you mind me asking what year that might have been with a computer based instruction? I just think it's interesting to think about historically our, trajectory with online learning.

[00:02:24] Judith: Yes, actually, I will confess that was the decade of the 80s and it was with control data corporation in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And at that time we built computer based instruction and it was designed. For the Plato system, which

was a mainframe computer application. And so then I'm afraid I have lived through moving from the mainframe application to the microcomputers, to the now, of course, to the powerful computers that we Carry in our pockets and our watches on our arms, it's been quite a journey to be honest, but after I finished that work at Control Data, that was when I went to Penn State and at that time for a few years there at Penn State. I Managed a group very similar to what it sounds like you do, Jason.

I had a group at that time, the folks at Penn State were very innovative and forward thinking, in that we, I had a group of instructional designers and video folks, and, programming folks, and we. Assisted faculty in, we actually would load up a van and put, computers, these huge computers, and take them around campus and set them up and say, wow, look what you could, Mr.

Faculty Member, what can, what, see what you can do with these computers. It was quite, it was, it's been quite an adventure to be honest.

[00:03:47] John Nash: You bring back memories, Judith, because my dissertation at the University of Wisconsin contained the word microcomputer in the title. Um, that's what the desktop computers were. They were like, just, yeah, it's funny. We still don't use that term because basically we're just all running microcomputer, microcomputers on our desks, but we don't use that anymore.

The Apple IIe days. Yes. Right. Yeah.

[00:04:10] Judith: Yes. Yes, exactly. But anyway, and to finish up a little bit after Penn State, I moved down here to Tallahassee, to Florida State, and in, in part of this time period, I did start consulting with with faculty who were teaching online at Duquesne University. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And as I, start was consulting and meeting with them, I started developing these tips and ideas and best practices.

And as you can anticipate, it was all of that work, the tips and the practices. When I found myself repeating myself over and over again, that was when I decided, well, maybe a book would be a good idea.

So that was kind of the genesis of the survival guide for teaching online.

[00:04:58] Jason: And that's really how I came to know you, Judith. and I was talking to John about this. Today is a fulfillment of a little bit of a dream of mine. Do you know this? Of being able to have you on the podcast. A little bit of a goal. So,

[00:05:09] Judith: No

[00:05:10] Jason: yeah, because these are the four books, and I'm being honest about this.

Well, three, these are the three books, actually, over a long time I've I have recommended to people. And then I've added one,

in the fall Michelle Miller's "Minds Online." Flower Darby's Small Teaching Online, and then your book, the Online,

Teaching Survival Guide. And then recently added, because it just came out in the fall, Catherine Denial's Pedagogy of Kindness, which is not an online book, but is such an important book, I think, particularly for this day and age. So those are my four book recommendations for people that want to get going online with practical tips and not so much from a development standpoint, more from a teaching standpoint. So first year we had Michelle Miller on the show, and then last year we had Flower Darby and Catherine Denial on the show, and now you are joining us today.

So thank you for helping me

fulfill one of my dreams.

[00:06:08] Judith: Wow. Sounds like excellent.

[00:06:15] Jason: Well, and it wasn't actually too calculated, except that, as John and I are talking just about what kinds of, people and conversations we want to have on this show, we realized we started almost two years ago. And, we realized we kind of just jumped into things. We started talking about making your online courses more human and creating student agency. And we talked a lot about AI and about some of the risks and challenges and opportunities around that. And we haven't really gone back to talk about more foundational teaching online.

Because it's online learning in the second half, we're kind of positioning it as looking back on the first half of online learning. Now, , we know how to dump information on people now online, right? We can do it.

What do we hope for in our second half of online learning? And as John and I are peering into our second halves of life and well into our second halves of lives, we're thinking about that in terms of online learning. So , that's a long introduction to say this is one of the reasons why we have you on today.

So,

[00:07:19] Judith: Well, let me just mention, I did start listening to the podcast on the Pedagogy of Kindness, and I didn't get very far because I ran out of time this morning, but I look forward to going back. It sounds like a great, perspective to add to our designing. And in fact, then, to add to that. The whole reason my website is called Designing for Learning is that's my passion

Whenever I started working with faculty, trying to ask them the question is what is it, what are the outcomes, the takeaways that you really want your students to take away from a course I'll see if I can remember this.

Remember there's that five minute short video of the person, who tried to summarize the college education in five minutes, and he said, okay, here's what I learned from Spanish, como esta, and that was it, that was the total impact, from the whole Spanish, sequence. And similarly,

so just when we have our wonderful students, who'd commit to time and energy and focus. What, in fact, and how will they change

as a result of those experiences? And I think if we really want to service our students and serve them well, we have to be ready to answer that question. If somebody says, Okay.

I'm going to take this history course, just what is, how am I going to be different? What am I going to know? What am I? How am I going to think about this going forward? And just what am I going to get out of my course? So going back to how do we design the learning experiences to achieve those goals? But to be, and then to be very explicit at the beginning of a course as to what is going to happen, what, in fact, will the students gain from that.

[00:09:07] Jason: Yeah, that's great.

[00:09:09] Judith: I, I actually have a granddaughter who is she's, I've got a number of granddaughters, but anyway, the one I'm going to refer to is 19 years old and a long story, but rather than going to the full four year experience, she wasn't quite ready for that, she took some courses at the community college and she just shared with me the other day, I thought, well, I'll give her, give Carolyn a call, okay, and say, and ask her for her opinion.

And she said, some of the courses are designed and a faculty member will just stand up there and start talking. And what the students do is they turn on their computer, a bit like we're doing here now. And they turn on the video, they turn off the camera but leave the audio on, and then they go off and do, they take a shower, and they eat pizza, and do everything else, and then just checking in every now just to appear that they're there, and then at the end it's all over, they'll push the button, and then they'll go back and actually read out of a textbook, or read something, maybe do the discussion board.

So my first response there is, Oh, my God, gosh, I really wish we could have an instructional designer work with that faculty member and really design a course that really will engage the students will make them part of a conversation and go from there. So, we're fortunate.

We're talking about the first half and the second half of online learning. One thing that we've lacked I think with faculty is the knowledge of pedagogy. In fact, that's the very first part of my book tries to focus on, okay, I know you guys haven't had a course in pedagogy, but here are the core ideas, the core principles about how people learn and a lot of faculty don't just don't get any exposure to that and therefore they just and just grade and that's it.

So whatever we can do going forward, you were asking the question, how do we make the future of online learning more human and more connected? I think we really need to work with faculty, work with curriculum and really do serious design for learning according to basic pedagogical. Principles.

[00:11:10] John Nash: I love that. And I think you've struck a chord where I've long noted that, well, the second half of life or online learning in the in sort of the first half, there was a sort of a transmission model or I forget who said this. It's "shovelware" we're just going to shovel what we did over here onto the online area And do it over here.

[00:11:30] Judith: I have to,

John, I have to interrupt. It turns out it was Alistair Fraser at Penn State University who coined the term shovelware.

[00:11:38] John Nash: Thank you so much. There's the other great reason we had you on today. And so, doesn't it seem as though the, particularly with COVID, but long before that too, when there was a movement towards moving coursework online that it truly laid bare how important instructional design is. Because once you get online, as you noted, it's very easy for things to slip and then we've sort of missed it. It's a good instructional design is just good instructional design, whether you're face to face or online.

[00:12:11] Judith: Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:12:14] Jason: having a lot of discussion over the last few weeks or so around a inside higher ed article by a professor Robert Zaretsky, who, it's titled the absurdity of asynchrony and he basically talks about how awful online learning is and this that and the other But as you read it, anybody that designs and is part of online learning recognizes what happened.

He was thrown into an online learning class two weeks before the semester started. No design, as you pointed to Judith, just the importance of having thoughtful instructional design on the front end, be thoughtful about what it is that you're trying to do. And some of why we're having these conversations here and then concluded from that.

Online learning is horrible and nobody else should do it either, basically. And unfortunately, this is where some of our instructors are. Some people again post COVID, some of them learned that, "Hey, I actually can do this. There is some advantage to this and there's, it's not all good, but we can build upon what I've learned already."

but other people, they did remote teaching. And they just felt like, oh, "I just can't wait to get back in the classroom where real learning takes place" kind of thing.

And so this is one of the things that we're battling all the time because we're recognizing and it sounds like some of your perspective as well.

[00:13:40] Judith: Well, if you go back and look at a course when I first went to college, which was obviously a great, a very long time ago, there was remember that formula. If you're in class for one hour, you're supposed to dedicate two hours outside of class for every hour of class. So if you think about it. Those two hours of outside dedication and study were actually part of some of the stuff we do with online learning. So the, when we started moving to online learning, the component of a course was, that went online, was really just that one hour, of instruction. Instruction or the as it turns out 30 hours of instruction So it's another way of thinking about again designing for learning.

What are the students doing as far as listening to the faculty member or meeting with the faculty member? Versus what are they doing on their own? And then also then the third part of it is, what are they doing in conversation or dialogue with other students? Actually, if I could go back and remember, oh, it was the, an analysis of John Henry Newman's book on the idea of a university, where he talked about, that most learning actually happens outside of the classroom.

That it really happens when students are thinking and conversing and talking and expressing their ideas.

With other students. So that there's the formula there. It's I think it's one third, one third, and one third there as well. So we've got historical precedents for the kinds of basic pedagogical principles we ought to be helping faculty analyze and figure out how does this apply to my course.

[00:15:19] Jason: Yeah, I was part of a few people trying to reshape our definition around those Carnegie hours here at the University of Tennessee. Because of that, it just doesn't, it doesn't apply. I mean, it's just a different application. It's not about butts in seat. For a certain amount of time,

[00:15:37] Judith: Right, right.

[00:15:38] Jason: It's different, right?

You activate your students in a different kind of way online. That is harder to pin down in terms of those time spent.

[00:15:49] Judith: Yes. That actually brings back memories of what I was trying to do with the legislature here in Florida in 1995 when we were trying to get approval for online learning..

[00:16:02] Jason: As you were describing that, I thought about a space in your book here, if we turn towards the book, where you talk about how our online course is unique and you talk about a few major differences, which I completely agree with. You talk about faculty role shifts to coaching and mentoring talk about asynchronous.

And then one of them Yeah. Is learners are more active and you talk about how their dialogue is actually increased in online learning. This has been my experience. Like if you think about, being in those large lecture halls where, I'm fairly chatty here, but get me in a room of 100 people.

And I just figured there's other people that, that are going to fill up the space and I'll just sit back and let them say it. If I was a student in a hundred person class. You may never hear anything from me in a lecture hall,

Even though I may have things to contribute and I think about things, versus my online experience, I took two degrees online and it gave me an opportunity to be able to, express myself because there is space for everybody to do that versus the amount of time in a lecture hall room for a student express themselves is very small compared to the number of students there.

[00:17:16] Judith: Well, that's true. And in fact I think that brings up the Element of the different personalities of students. There are some students in 100, personal classroom that they don't mind just jumping up and talking off the cuff, whereas I share with you the idea that "I, Hey, I want to think about that a little bit. , and what do I really think about that? And how do I express what I think? So taking a little more reflective time. and within the online "environment, I think there is room for both types of personalities to shine.

[00:17:49] Jason: One of the other things I really like about this book and it's a space that I've come back to over and over again and used as part of different aspects of training that I've done , with faculty and so on over the years are the four phases that you talk about in your book.

Would you be able to briefly describe those for us first? And then I had a few questions about them as we think through the four phases.

[00:18:12] Judith: Sure. In many respects, I personally like that four phrases too, because it emphasizes some of the ideas of planning. In fact, in some respects, a course might be compared to an event. So, in some

Okay. an event of such magnificent, importance. And so, It emphasis, The first phases, the four phases emphasize the importance of planning before the event even starts. So you've got all of that planning happening. And then there's also when the students first come, you have this great excitement. Okay, we're together, we're going to do this. People get excited. I was always excited. You get a new book, you find really fascinating articles. Oh, I get to read about so and so or whatever.

And so there's this great excitement at the beginning, but there's also all that planning and being very specific again about your outcomes, your takeaways, et cetera, and sharing that with your students, we couldn't go down the path of, the importance of having a really fantastic syllabus and a content framing for the course because there's not time for that. So in the first part of the phase of the course, the faculty is very, the, all the planning happens, people are excited, they're getting to know each other. Then phase number two is kind of getting started. Then that's when the students, in phase one and two, where students are really doing the knowledge and focusing on Core concepts. And again, they have been identified. This is what we want the students to really learn. And those are the, um, articles, resources, experiences that are focusing on those core concepts. And then in phase three, well, everything overlaps, of course, but then students start. I really like in online learning I like teams of two and three. Where students actually like we are doing today, forget these groups of four and five and six or whatever, I like teams of two and three and they start working together and they start planning their own projects. There's one of the other charts in my book.

I was, as I was kind of going over this on, I'm customizing content resources where you've got the core concepts in the center. And then as you move out, the students start self selecting resources that fit their particular interests and everything. So as the course. The students themselves customize the course. And then by phase 4 is when students really share what they have learned, what they have done is important. And then do that wrap up, and then a celebratory event. One of my faculty that I worked with ended up having the students send noisemakers and other kinds of things to, in the final celebration, to really celebrate it.

So the four phases of the course, it's really, it has a beginning. It has a middle where the students really get involved in the content, and then you've got the students really being much more active and dedicated towards their personal interests, and then you've got your wrap up. So it becomes this nice package, so to speak.

[00:21:23] John Nash: Judith, I really appreciate that framing because as I talked to colleagues and I also reflect on my own teaching online and when I think about Canvas, so much of the planning phase is about just how do I get all this into Canvas? And then I default to thinking about, well, what are all the modules? And then if I have a 16 week course, all right, I guess I'm going to have 16 modules, if that's how I decided to do it. And then that's sort of how I think about the framing. And so this meta framing is super useful. In my design courses, we talk about flaring and focusing, and so it's the same sort of thing. We think about this, there's an arc that's happening above the modules that.

I need to be more attuned to about where students minds are likely at as we take this journey and I, that's a, that's helpful.

[00:22:10] Judith: Was, rethinking about things too, I thought about the concept of, I don't know whether, um, It's where it is in the book, but on online that my tip 85 talks about book ending and that's the idea that when you actually as part of that whole arc process is that what you bookend by having starting potentially with a problem or a case study or a scenario at the beginning of a course. And then throughout the course, you get, gather and acquire, for hopefully, the skills and the knowledge and the, perspectives, and then that towards that phase four, you apply and figure out, okay, what are the various possibilities? There's always more than one way to solve a problem. What are the various ways, perhaps, solving or addressing this case?

So again, you have this larger I like your word arc, the larger arc then of the course. And the students, again, then can feel, oh, well, they can remember that, well, in that course, we did X, Y, and Z. We solved this kind of a case over that kind of a problem.

[00:23:15] John Nash: Yes.

[00:23:17] Jason: The other thing that I'm really glad you mentioned was how, though there are these kind of four phases, they do overlap and it's not like you're in the course. And you'll be like, "okay, everybody, all students now move from the early middle. Now we're moving into the late middle. And this is exactly what late middle is going to be about."

Could you talk a little bit more about why that there's an overlap or how that's managed from a instructional standpoint?

[00:23:48] Judith: I think maybe the best way to talk about that is, that one of the very first changes in moving from in person to online that, faculty experienced is the elimination of tests. That we really, as we look at assessment, we move from that testing and multiple choice and however, or even short essay kind of things to move it to projects. And in that four phases, you actually start identifying a project very early on, and that's when you start meeting with one or two or three other people, to really talk about what are the various possibilities of projects and. Having a, a kind of a community collaborative effort, posting about those ideas and then in phase two is when you really start examining what resources you need, what kinds of things are, is your project, does your project require you to do, I mean, when students start, started early on building videos, rather than writing papers, I know somewhere else in the writing I did is that, you don't always have to do assessment even with a written project.

It can be other kinds of projects. It can, in fact, be a podcast, interviewing one of their, an expert on another topic, so well, what do they need to, what tools do they need? What knowledge do they need in order to do that kind of a project? So you actually, and now that I even think about it now, the whole course is a way of starting a project, investigating what you need for the project, and then applying it, and then sharing it.

And that's how

Apply, hopefully, some of the knowledge that they are gaining.

[00:25:28] John Nash: I see that being very powerful on a couple of levels, not only the sort of chief learning intention or an outcomes you have for the discipline of the course, but that by doing the project work, you have almost this benevolent hidden curriculum of all the, skills and capabilities and knowledge that come with working on a project together.

Thinking through a problem with a team that are all transferable to other work that they'll do outside of your own course

[00:25:59] Judith: Yeah that's nicely, really nicely put.

[00:26:02] Jason: I love project based learning in general, and I kind of always thought that was partly my own temperament and the fact that I just didn't do that well on tests, like standardized tests were not my example of my best foot forward for what it is that I learned or. you Or my trajectory in life.

[00:26:22] Judith: But I come to realize that actually a lot of people really like project based learning when it works and a lot of people find it really valuable, especially as they, as we think that we are, as we think about developing students, not just for a life of being a student, but for the life of being a worker, adding something to this, the rest of the world and doing something outside of school outside of learning.

You know, If we focus on having students do some of these types of projects, by the way, they do collaborative work during the, the course, but the project itself is an individual project, which avoids all that stuff about, responsibility, who does what with the teamwork and all the rest of it, so you, the end product is in fact an individual. goal. But then that can be added into and become part of a student's portfolio. So as they, proceed again through life, they can go through and say, hey, I remember that project. And when applying for applying for an internship or some type of job, they can bring in that type of thing and have that demonstrate.

[00:27:29] Judith: So I think it's pretty powerful. And it's a, again, starts to address the challenges of, engagement. I know I've seen a lot off a lot of email recently about how do you engage students? So I think it helps to address some of the engagement challenges of online learning too.

[00:27:45] Jason: . I had one more question about the four phases. And then maybe we can get into talking a little bit about the future of online learning. You described phase three, the late middle, as letting go of the power, and we've had a lot of conversation. in our podcast about student agency, about giving students more kind of direction and is there a, is this really the same or is there a kind of a different, more time specific power change happening in a late middle? Or are they related in some ways in terms of, Allowing students like to be a little more self directed and those kinds of things. How does that, how do those two kinds of ideas, overall idea of student agency and this phase of letting go of power, how do those two things interact?

[00:28:45] Judith: Well, you're challenging me a little bit Jason, since it's been a while since I wrote that all about, but the idea, I think, coming back to the student agency, again, in the first part of the course is when you really want to be building in the knowledge where the faculty member is act, is the expert,

Real expert. And there's another whole body of literature focusing on how do we grow students from being a novice to being an expert. And that Erickson is the, now I had to stop and think, is Anders Erickson is the expert in that field of building expertise. And in order So the part of the question for faculty, again, is how do I help a student grow from being a total novice, perhaps on a topic, into being at least knowledgeable or more of an expert? The only way that happens is through practice and actually applying knowledge. So while the first part of the course, in fact, going back, John, just let me jump out on a limb, get on a limb here, your 16 topics.

you might want to figure out how do you quote unquote cover 16 topics in the first eight weeks. And then spend the next eight weeks figuring out how do you apply the knowledge

that you want, that you really, and so, and how do we design those experience to get the students to interact with the knowledge and to apply it. So, and. I know there's the whole, so the whole idea is how do you get the student, I say get to, I guess that probably isn't the best term, but anyway, but how do we engage the students to actually do more and generate more, which gets into your idea, Jason, of student agency. In some respects, even having students write things, write well let me come, I'll come back to this.

How do we have students write things that then apply that knowledge, and that becomes part of their practice? of, becoming an expert. I've got a couple of other, young people I was talking to, and the whole idea is, Oh my God, they say I have to take calculus or pre calculus and whatever.

I said, well, you know how to be successful. The only way of being successful in those kinds of courses is to work the problems and to work them and work them, until it becomes second nature to you. That's the only way to be really successful in that. And So that comes back to that whole idea of practice.

How do I practice using this knowledge? How do I apply it in various case studies? And before we move on, I want to mention one other aspect, I think, that bears on this. One of the actions, That I really think online learning just very simply could help a great deal is that you know how we have the students answer questions supposedly and address things in a discussion Form and all the rest of it.

Well, one of the assignments that I would recommend Is assigning what we would call a discussion wrap. So often, you've got all this discussion going on, think pizza and beer, okay. So you've got all, people gathered around pizza and beer and talking. And then it, the conversation closes.

Well, what is the takeaway from that? So you have the students do a discussion wrap. What, after all this is said and done, what do we take away from this? And to have the students do that now in the early part of the course, the faculty member could do that and model that. And then gradually, again, with student agency, we can move the students into doing that and summarizing it again.

And again, it's a really important life skill. What do I take away from this experience? What do I take away from this conversation?

[00:32:34] Jason: Yeah, I love that. And so it's the letting go of power, both for knowledge building, because students are then really building their own knowledge in practice as they go along. And also some of the perhaps power for even organizing knowledge and driving discussions and conversations among the students.

So that's good.

[00:32:56] Judith: Yes.

[00:32:57] John Nash: Well, would this be one of our episodes if we didn't talk about artificial intelligence? No, it would not.

[00:33:05] Judith: Wow.

[00:33:06] John Nash: Judith I'm curious how you're framing assessment here in 2025 in light of generative AI arriving on the scene. I, would it be fair to say that in asynchronous online courses, faculty may default to text heavy assessments like postings and discussion forums, short papers, and that may be alluring or suited to the student use of generative AI. You talk about assessment should be, and I agree with you, continuous and multi phased. You almost talk about community input there. And I wondered if I could even call that co designed with the learner. And then that it should be focused on an individual faculty dialogue. And so where is your head at now with students? AI And assessment.

[00:33:55] Judith: Well, wow. How do we address this? But just as a way of prelude to this, you realize I've got about three or four Amazon Alexas throughout my house, and I, and, Oh, and it's shining and saying, I've got notifications for you and all the rest of it. I'm thinking, they're all Anything in our world, wine food technology, whatever There are good uses and there are not such good uses of things. So I do think our challenge is going forward is going to be how do we make the bet? How do we make the best use of ai and in fact, When we think about instructional design I do think that One of our questions that we really need to grapple with, and I, it goes back to that educational holodeck article I wrote, almost, over 25 years ago, the idea of just what mix, as we designing a course, what mix of faculty interaction with and how much use of, computer tutorials, which are really valuable, that stuff, some of that stuff that's been developed is fantastic and wonderful. So what mix of faculty, personal faculty with all these automated, tutorials and simulations, et cetera, And AI robots. Just what mix, how do we design a course that makes the best use of that?

Now given that, how do, and how do we know that the, what is happening, how do we know what's happening in the student's brain? Maybe that's the best question. Because if we rely on the AI generated stuff, what's happening in the student's brain?

I mean, to some respect, if the student even reads it, what they've asked for, is probably a question. So, it, I mean, don't know quite how to, somehow, and I don't know, because of being efficient and effective learning, and, cost wise about things, somehow we still have to get a Personal relationship between the faculty member and the student for the faculty member to be able to adequately assess students knowledge. How do we do that? And I do think, obviously, we've got a lot of technology tools, and just meeting until they have an AI robot in your place. John, how do I know I'm really talking to you? How do we, in fact, know what the students skill level is? At some point, I think we may want to go back and maybe we can learn something from the old medieval model of apprenticeship.

[00:36:46] John Nash: Yeah.

[00:36:48] Judith: and again it maps on to the novice to expert thinking, that the person Worked side by side, step by step, going back to Dewey's Continuum of Learning. Step by step, side by side, that a person, in order to develop a skill, that they worked with and were apprenticed to an expert as they learned a skill and developed knowledge. How do we do this

use of The technology, and yet Lord, we don't want to miss that personal relationship is one of the most important things, not only for learning. but just for life.

Want to use robots. I mean, they're going to be good. We've got the vacuuming robot.

I don't have one, but I know my daughter does. We have all these Cars, maybe self driving cars. I mean, it, they bring a lot of possibilities, but I think we. No, nothing, this is my perspective right now in my belief, nothing replaces person to person in real time

[00:37:50] John Nash: Silence.

[00:37:59] Judith: we've, so how do we do that? Yeah, And going back to these pedagogical principles, how do we integrate all this? So we've got more questions than we have answers.

[00:38:12] John Nash: and I'm now, I'm sort of, I'm smiling because I'm wondering if you might even have your own answer as I what I, what struck me as I was looking through the book was you noted that you, that I wrote it down, I quote it. You note that mentor is your preferred term for the instructor or faculty member who is directing the students learning experiences. And I think,

and I've never. I mean, we think about that way and I like to think that I'm a guide and I facilitate their learning, but I haven't had anybody say so directly to me that you are a mentor, you're not a teacher, you're not, you are a mentor in this and it reminds me of when we talked with Michelle Miller and one of her blog posts was around this idea of same-- it seems like every episode I talk about this Yeah, that we're on the same side together learning this together. And so the mentor can do that. I wonder if that's part of the answer to is this, that replacement for that mentor. Who's helping the apprentice move to make progress on a learning goal.

We've decided together is going to be something. we -want to reach.

[00:39:15] Judith: .

I and I'm glad that you like the term mentor because I think

it changes the dynamic a bit. And in fact, going back to the very first thing we talked about the power dynamic between people. I mean, it really, you know, a mentor really is supportive is helpful. A mentor really knows the student.

In fact, that's one of the things as I was thinking about AI and if AI is really going to be helpful for students. They need to get, this really scares me totally, by the way. The robot has to get to know the student. Now, I'm okay. If the robot is somebody like Spock, because I kind of would trust Spock. Okay. But, what's scary, I think, is that human beings are in fact programming these robots.

[00:40:03] John Nash: Yes. Yeah. And in a biased way we've come to learn.

[00:40:08] Judith: We, well, it, yes, and when and where and how and all the rest of that. So, again, that's part of what, I think is part of our challenge moving forward. I definitely don't want to, I would avoid designing a course right now with using short essays and all this other kind of stuff that's so easily, in fact what a robot can do really easily right now is what you don't want to have students doing.

[00:40:31] John Nash: Yeah. Do you mean like in terms of being able to do sort of the transmission model of assessment? Like the five paragraph essay is in my

estimation, chiefly dead.

[00:40:43] Judith: Yes, I would agree. Yeah. You don't want to do it, because there's no way of knowing, how much of it is happening in the student's head versus what's just, generated from their digital phone, with their phone.

[00:40:55] John Nash: Jason and I talk about, we wonder often, how might we make our courses un AIable?

[00:41:01] Judith: That's a nice question. I think

that's part of what, to be going. Now, again, now are still, are using AI to some extent. as a way of getting started, it does remind me, of the first days before, before Wikipedia got captured, that I thought that Wikipedia was a great starting point for a lot of ideas.

Okay. And I think maybe we can say the, maybe we can say the say same thing about the AI generated stuff. It may be a good starting point, but then how do we find out, and how do we converse and have a conversation with a student to know what's in their brain?

[00:41:37] Jason: It made me think of something you said earlier in terms of how important practice is, especially in that late middle phase of the online course. And one of my concerns, although I use AI all the time and I like it, I think for starting point, to get you over that blank page, it's amazing. Like truly, it's amazing.

Like it's like a jumpstart sometimes to get something difficult. Done because it gets you started However, one of my concerns in terms of practice is that writing and John and I have talked about this at different points but so much of writing is thinking and that is part of practice, which is We have this content now through the course beginning in the early middle And you, that, that content knowledge is being built.

What we don't want is just a regurgitation of that content back to us through a five paragraph essay. Right? What we want then is students to now start to really Digest this information and reproduce it in some levels, in which it's

Applicable that they've thought through it with their own concerns and backgrounds and approaches and put it out in such a way that it's actually gone through their brain, not.

Like, I know it all goes through your brain, but gone through, through your brain in a way that it's just not like transcribing it. It's just not putting out something and that's one of my concerns with AI is like, I, think that it could be a shortcut for students to, to not think, and not really ingest information and put it out in their own words and in ways.

[00:43:19] Judith: Well, I think one of the things that I really like about project based approach is getting students away from just writing and regurgitating to actually doing something.

Case studies, starting with scenarios, starting with problems. So many of our You know, problems and challenges in our world today are complex and we need to depend on multiple different disciplines, physics, chemistry and problem solving and people. I mean, there's just everything that needs to be integrated into problem solving. And I think if with more of a focus on that type of how does this work in this environment?

Um. can be much more valuable and it gets us using AI, but then moving beyond AI.

[00:44:10] John Nash: Yeah, I've been toying with ideas about how AI could be more of a tutor than a tool to produce output. And I haven't perfected this yet, but I think there's some interesting ways-- it's funny, that Ethan Mollick, a year or so ago, wrote a piece on how to prompt the large language models to do deliberate practice, , which is a, route to expertise, Judith.

And so interesting that if we can think about it also as a partner to the mentor and helping the Apprentice learn, that's kind of appeals to me.

[00:44:43] Judith: Yeah, that's interesting. Deliberate practice is the term, I think, that Anders Ericsson really coined and really applied in all of his work. He died a couple of years ago, so his, but

[00:44:55] John Nash: Yes, I think that was the article that he cited. Yeah,

[00:44:58] Judith: Okay. Oh, okay.

Yeah.

[00:45:00] John Nash: But

I'm enamored with this idea of deliberate practice because it's that experts are not born, they're made and they're made through deliberate practice as it turns out.

[00:45:10] Judith: That's right. That's right. And oftentimes that's where the role of the mentor comes in because practice, you can practice doing stuff the really wrong way. So you need to have a mentor who is, by your side, so to speak, at least at some points, ensuring that the deliberate practice is in fact moving you along rather than having you stuck in one place or doing something wrong.

[00:45:33] Jason: Yeah Sal Khan of Khan Academy has kind of envisioned a future of chatbots that basically act as mentors for students at any point of the way, with the idea that, we're in a teacher shortage. We students. Most students, especially if they're in lower economic, they don't have the access to smaller classrooms and one on one connection with teachers and so on, which I agree with.

I think some of my concerns around that, I think there's a lot of space for that to happen with AI, but is. as a replacement of teachers then, in terms of that connection that you talked about that was so important, the teacher student connection as a help? Yes. As a replacement, I have concerns as we think about the next 10 or 20 years.

[00:46:26] Judith: Well, another analogy I do like to apply every now and then is, people keep saying, Oh, well, the internet, the fact that we've got all of this information available and yes, we've got all these tutorials and the Khan Academy. I mean, if I forget how to do a crochet stitch, all I have to do is go online and Google and I can find this little nice little crochet stitch. But the idea is that it is not. It's in some respects similar to a library. Remember the Carnegie Library, movement? All, anything anyone wanted to know, and they could be self learners, by going to a library. So now it turns out the tools have changed, but I'm not certain, you know, just again focusing on how does this apply and how does it enhance our lives and enrich our lives and our relationships with people?

[00:47:13] John Nash: Yeah.

[00:47:13] Jason: Yes.

thought the same thing about the computers. And then we thought the same things about Internet and then Wikipedia. And I think we're in a similar space with a I and it has its own challenges, especially when it comes to assessment. But I think that I believe that we'll continue to find that, that teachers will continue to be a, an important part of this mix and use it as a tool. As you said, Judith. So,

[00:48:02] Judith: Yeah, well, I certainly couldn't agree. And again, it takes us back to this. Just how do we design, courses and learning

for the students to achieve. And, one of the other things, why do students even go to college or class right now is, or why do we take programs? It's because you have a consistent, clear sequence of instruction, and you can do it faster than you can do it on your own.

So that, that's some of the reasons why, the online learning is still, I mean, it's going to continue growing at all levels, including, as we've said, lifelong, lifelong learning is because, in fact, it helps us to learn things that we need to learn more quickly, and hopefully more substantially, but, oh gosh, but again, coming back to, I just want to maybe make one final comment, in my best practices section of the book. Absolute number one, most important thing, a variable that came through with all the design work I've done all my life here, is the importance of a faculty member being present, part of the experience, and again, we can do all the self learning and everything else without that faculty member. But when you sign up for an learning experience, the faculty member and the presence and contribution and expertise of the faculty member is paramount.

[00:49:26] John Nash: Yeah agree. And fits with the theme with Jason's past three amazing books that he's decided that you get to be a part of, but the pedagogy of kindness and Catherine denial certainly gets to that. And the small teaching online also there needs to be a real presence and that human connection, the mentor, everything.

Yes.

[00:49:46] Judith: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I'm thank you again, Jason. I'm so glad I'm one of a quartet of books. That's exciting.

[00:49:53] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Well, well deserved. Well deserved. It's just another plug for the book for those listening, and we'll put the link in the notes, but it's just a great practical handbook really for teachers teaching online. I think the last, if I'm right on this, the last version was 2021, I think.

So we continue to update it and it's available. So yeah, we'll put a link in for that. So that's fantastic.

[00:50:17] Judith: Okay, sounds great.

[00:50:19] Jason: Judith, thank you so much. I think we're going to round off here, but yeah, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it.

[00:50:27] Judith: Well, thank you. It's been fun, again, talking about these really, really important issues, and it is exciting to think about what's going to be happening next.

[00:50:36] John Nash: Yeah, it is.

[00:50:38] Jason: Yeah, I think it is as well. Yeah, it's interesting, exciting to think about next, and hopefully we'll continue to make it better, not worse. That's my goal. How about you, John?

[00:50:49] John Nash: I will do my best to not make it worse. Yes.

[00:51:00] Judith: And again, let's continue talking to our students and asking them how they want it to be better, how it can be better for them, I think, is a, we sometimes forget to ask them, how is this work for you, so, yes, I think that's a, they're a great source of both inspiration and innovation.

[00:51:17] Jason: Absolutely. Yeah, that's a great point and a great way to round things off because in the end it is about the students.

[00:51:24] Judith: Okay.

[00:51:26] Jason: Before we go, I'm just going to say for those listening, we'll put a notes and links for the articles and the books and connect with Judith on our notes at OnlineLearningPodcast.com. That's OnlineLearningPodcast.com as well as links. to connect with us on LinkedIn, if you would like to but yeah, just thank you so much, Judith, for being with us and for not just for being with us today, but your contribution to the field and for helping so many people over the years become better online teachers.

So we really appreciate it.

[00:51:58] Judith: Well, thank you both very much again.

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