Online Learning in the Second Half

In this episode, Jason and John talk about why this podcast is called what it’s called.
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!
EP1 - Podcast Trailer: Why is this Called “Online Learning in the Second Half?”
[00:00:00] Jason Johnston: what are we going to call this thing?
[00:00:01] John Nash: God, I don't know. I'm going to ask Chad again.
 Well, let's see here it goes. Growing pains, examining the evolution. Now breaking the mold from a, huh? The rise of student-centered online learning. Here's 10. I'll put him in chat.
[00:00:23] Jason Johnston: How about, um, online learning in the second half?
[00:00:28] John Nash: I don't think it's awful. I think I've been too hard on myself trying to stay away from sports metaphors, but I don't think that's too awful.
[00:00:35] Jason Johnston: I love sports, John.
[00:00:36] John Nash: No, they actually, see, that's what I think from a marketing standpoint, we should do it because, people freaking love sports. Okay. Let's, I like it. I actually do. Yeah.
[00:00:47] Jason Johnston: Yeah. Let's do it. And then we can do second half of life. We can get philosophical. Yeah. We can get all sports metaphor about it. Whatever. We can come in with the coach talk. Here's, here's the second half talk. John, you're
[00:01:00] John Nash: at halftime. You guys come on.
You suck. You gotta go. Let's go.
[00:01:05] Jason Johnston: You call yourself a football
[00:01:06] John Nash: team. You call yourself an online instructor.,
MusicIntro
[00:01:11] John Nash: I'm John Nash and I'm here with Jason Johnston. Hey
[00:01:14] Jason Johnston: John. Hey everybody. And this is online learning in the second half, the online learning podcast.
[00:01:20] John Nash: Yeah. We're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation we've been having for the last two years about online education.
Jason, look, online learning has had its chance to be great, and some of it is and some of it isn't. Right. How are we going to get to the next stage?
[00:01:35] Jason Johnston: That is a great question. And how about we do a podcast to talk about it?
Woosh
[00:01:39] John Nash: You know what? Today let's talk about why our podcast is called Online Learning in the Second Half. Well,
[00:01:45] Jason Johnston: it's, it's obviously, it's because we're such huge sports fans, right. John.
[00:01:50] John Nash: Right. Kind of not fair, fair-weather sports fans, maybe
[00:01:53] Jason Johnston: fair weather sports fans.
Exactly. And there is a sports analogy here that we actually thought of a secondary kind of way where, you know, I, I, I don't think this podcast is really going to be kind of like that between the two haves talk that a coach gives to their team to rally them. But there might be a little bit of that now and again we'll try not to get too, too rah rah about those kinds of things.
But a lot of it came from a book we were reading by James Hollis that is called Living an Examined Life Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey. It's not about online education at all. It is really about thinking about the second half of your own life.
[00:02:38] John Nash: Yeah, I think it's actually a pretty cool analogy to think about as we've been looking at how well online learning has been advancing the educational goals of institutions and learners for a long time and where it can still improve.
And yeah, Hollis Hollis's chapters actually really resonate with me talking about how it's time to grow up, how we have to let go of the old how we seek to make amends. Mm-hmm…. where have we made big mistakes and where can we admit that and then Val to get unstuck. I actually like that chapter title a lot.
[00:03:15] Jason Johnston: Yeah. And his book is kind of structured almost like a pivot. Half of it is looking back at the previous half of life, and the second half is kinda looking forward. Starting with, this, stepping out of this parental shade, making your amends, getting unstuck, coming back to your task, which I think is, yeah, probably something we'll talk about over and over again in terms of the task of, of educating humans and, and then choosing the path of enlargement, which I really love that, that chapter title as well.
[00:03:49] John Nash: Yeah, I do too. I think a lot about where online learning, and even, let me just say before there was online learning, there was, learning with computers and, computer integration into the curriculum. And how so much has changed in terms of ways to deliver. And also, so many things have not changed in 30 years.
Right. And so, I think when we think about the path of enlargement, we will have interesting conversations cuz it's not just about enlarging the pipe and the, the data flow, but it's also enlarging learner voice and audience Right. And sensitivity to the way people learn and new topics. So, I think it's going to be really important for us to touch on all that.
[00:04:30] Jason Johnston: Mm-hmm... Yeah. And as you were talking, like, others around, our age, we sometimes speak in decades. So, you were talking about 30 years. And just to kind of put this kind of in perspective or just in terms of understanding who we are... We've been at this for a little while in terms of higher education, or I also worked on at high school as well with educational technology.
And right now I'm the director of online learning and course production at the University of Tennessee, where really what we're doing is trying to leverage our capacities to, to take the University of Tennessee into the second half of really expanding our courses, but ideally doing it in a way that is good for the students, has better outcomes that we can all feel good about and go to bed with clear consciences at night.
So, and John, you've had a lot of experience as well.
[00:05:24] John Nash: Well, yeah, I, I'm the director of graduate studies and an associate professor at the University of Kentucky in the Department of Educational Leadership Studies. And we've been an all-online delivery department for go on nine years or so now. And I, I teach complex problem-based curricula online and synchronous and asynchronous platforms specifically a design thinking course.
, and prior to that, I've just been an, an astute observer of what's happened since kids had Apple two E stuck in front of them up until today. And how do we think about leading for creating that change in a positive way? How do we think about bringing learner voice into that process to make it better?
So, it's, yeah, it's been an interesting journey. And as I say, so much has changed, but so much remains the same, and so I'm excited to. Have us all talk about and think about how we can collectively
[00:06:17] Jason Johnston: improve this. Yeah. Yeah. When you said Apple two e I got a flash of like chasing numbers with like an alligator or something like that.
I, I think that was some of my first computer-based learning that perhaps that I did. Yeah. And it made me think as we're thinking about this podcast, we don't want this to be a podcast about technology.
However, I think that probably a lot of our podcasts, we will be talking about technology, about things that are emerging, about ways in which technology is being used in good and bad ways. What other topics
[00:06:52] John Nash: I think we're going to talk a lot about leadership. I think we're going to talk a lot about the ways in which institutions can lead to make this work.
I think we're also going to probably talk about how instructors can lead to make this work.
[00:07:07] Jason Johnston: Yeah. Yeah. Those are two enormous topics and I hopefully people who are listening will, get some, some really good take homes as well as my hope as they're taking part in this conversation. And as you talk about that, I also think about something that we come back to again and again, which is humanizing online education about ways we can really, for the student, whoever the student is,
[00:07:32] John Nash: right.
[00:07:32] Jason Johnston: That we can make it something that is a transformative, positive experience for the student. They're not only achieving their goals, but they are being seen and they're part of a learning community that, I think we've all experienced Face-to-face. And many of us now have experienced online. We know it's possible. But I fear as we scale our online education that we leave the humans behind.
And I, I don't want to see that happen. Yes,
[00:08:01] John Nash: I agree. And it's, it's what drove us actually to start talking to these microphones. I think I see that humanizing of online education as a spoke in that hub of leadership that we'll inevitably talk about because. The act of humanizing the online experience is a, is a deliberate act.
It doesn't come necessarily naturally to every instructor or every instructional designer course maker. And we rely so much on the platforms themselves that vendors sell, institutions that we use, be it Canvas or Blackboard or what have you.
[00:08:36] Jason Johnston: Mm-hmm…
[00:08:36] John Nash: and the conversation too often ends right there.
Here you go, instructor, and here's your platform. And, and so the humanizing is, is an important aspect that we need to also help people build
capacity for.
[00:08:49] Jason Johnston: Right. Yeah. And it reminds me something I'm very excited about, which is our upcoming O L C Conference Design Thinking Challenge. We're going to be together at O L C Nashville on April 19th.
If you are listening to this before April 19th, 2023, then please join us. Titled, how might We Use Design Thinking to Humanize Online Education?
And in this 45-minute session, we're going to do some active design thinking work together, really to come up with ideas. And this is ki a little bit like this podcast, John, in some ways, is that we're not, we're not coming into this each day with, here are the 10 steps no. That you're going to do. In many ways we may be asking more questions than giving answers, but hopefully in it all that this conversation is good for people to contextualize what they need to in their situations to be able to maybe find some solutions and at least be thoughtful about what it is we're doing.
So, if you can join us that day, if not, we'll be rounding up about that, probably, maybe a little bit as we get closer to the date, but also certainly afterwards in the things that we learn.
[00:10:04] John Nash: Yeah, absolutely. I think the opportunity to use human-centered design to help. People who are in the professional world of online learning make that more human Right.
Is a, is a neat opportunity. And I know we'll talk more about that. No, we don't come to this podcast with the, the top 10 list of what you should do. It's, I can imagine most of the times we'll come in here saying, can you believe what they're doing over at x, y, and Z institution? Right. And hopefully it's either, well, it's good or it's bad, and we'll talk about why.
Mm-hmm...
[00:10:33] Jason Johnston: Yeah. Yeah. Or what does this. Fill in the blank for Yeah. Online education. Yes. I read this this week. What does this mean for online education? Yeah. And I think that has been the nature of our conversations for the last couple years anyways. Yeah, right. Sometimes we got down to some other work, but
But that has been the nature of our conversations. And speaking of too, the conversations, we do want this to be a conversation, not just between us, but our listeners as well. And so, we have a website online learning podcast.com. Online learning podcast.com. You can go there, you should be able to find links to not just these shows, but also any of our notes.
We'll try to put in links for specific things from, whatever episodes that we have. Ideally, I can put a link in there to the LinkedIn community or the LinkedIn group that we have set up as well. Yep.
Called Online Learning podcast or what is it called, John?
[00:11:28] John Nash: Yeah, that's what it's called. Online learning podcast. Because we are the online learning podcast.
[00:11:33] Jason Johnston: We are the online learning podcast. And we're excited to continue the conversation with everybody there as well. If you can either jump in, we'll post the episodes there so you can comment underneath those episodes and get, keep the conversation going.
We'll also have a place where you can post anything that you want to talk about as well.
[00:11:51] John Nash: Absolutely.
[00:11:52] Jason Johnston: And we'd love to be able to cover some of those topics and really get going.
[00:11:56] John Nash: Hey, is it okay if we foreshadow a couple things? I think we'll probably talk about. Yeah. So yeah, we do often say to ourselves like, what do you think Jason is going to be the impact of?
Hey, can I take the thunder away? Was that do I steal your thunder? When I say driverless taxis, what's, what's the impact of driverless taxis on online education? Yeah, that's good. Yeah, so, because we're going to talk about that you took a ride in one and it was mind blowing.
Yeah. And then the hot topic of the month seems like in higher education, and again, if you're listening to this in the future, it may not be the hot topic anymore, but right now there's a lot of hub bub around AI technologies chat, G P T Google what they're doing, as well as the, the Bing search and Bing chat engine.
It's crazy what's going on right now. And so, we're going to spend a couple of episodes talking about.
Absolutely. Yeah. There's a lot on the horizon. And at the pace of what's been happening in the last, I don't know, seven or eight weeks as we sit here in the middle of February recording this I, I know.
We'll, we won't run out of things to talk about.
[00:13:00] Jason Johnston: No. There'll
be no shortage of topics and I partly just appreciate the chance just to be able to unload isn't the right word but certainly process the things that I'm seeing and talking about. Mm-hmm. and hopefully even for my own practice, be more intentional about thinking about how technology is used, how design is being implemented, in classes.
[00:13:22] John Nash: Yes. Cool. Well, I, I'm glad we had this chance to talk about what we're going to talk about, and I hope that it's of interest to others and we're going to find out. But that's right. We're, we're short and sweet today to say we're here and we're interested in bringing in everyone's voice.
And so, look for us on LinkedIn. Look for us at our website and send us your ideas for topics, what's a burning issue that everyone should be talking about. And we'll take it out.
[00:13:53] Jason Johnston: Let's continue the conversation.