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GSD Episode 12: Dr. Rob Gibson
27 Plays1 month ago
Kelvin and Fritz welcome Dr. Rob Gibson, Dean of Academic Services and Director of Instructional Technology at Wichita State University Campus of Applied Sciences and Technology (aka WSU Tech). We talk about how WSU Tech is thriving in the difficult enrollment environment, how AI is making its way into higher education, and have a few laughs along the way.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
All right. Hey, welcome everyone.
00:00:21
Speaker
welcome everyone to getting stuff done. This is Kelvin Bentley. I'm here with, again, with Fritz. um Kevin, unfortunately, could not join us today, but I'm just really excited to to have our guest today, Robert Gibson, Rob Gibson. Rob has been, Rob, you know, we've we've actually been colleagues for a long time.
00:00:48
Speaker
Currently, Rob is actually a Dean and Director of Instructional Design at Wichita State Tech um in Kansas, Wichita, Kansas. Served a lot of years in Emporia State University.
00:01:02
Speaker
And Rob is the type of person where, you know, you need to follow him on LinkedIn. Rob will, you know, kind of also kind of confirm his LinkedIn profile. But he's the person that I feel like I can always, I always learn something new from Rob. So why don't we actually get right into our conversation
Rob Gibson's Career Journey
00:01:22
Speaker
with Rob. Rob, welcome again to the Getting Stuff Done podcast today.
00:01:27
Speaker
Hey, thanks for the invite. I look forward to the conversation today. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, You know, before we we get into lots of different aspects of your background, but one of the things we like to to always kind of start with is getting a better sense of, like, how did you get started? Like, you know, what is your...
00:01:51
Speaker
If you could just tell us a little bit more about your professional journey, like how do you how did you even get started in higher ed and were there other paths that you were considering, you know, kind of take us on a walk back toward how things got started for you and then we'll go from there. Oh, wow. That's going to be a long, arduous walk, I'm afraid. um well i'll try and I'll try and make this a little bit more succinct because I've been doing this a very, very long time. Actually, I started my journey back in the late 80s, sort of rolling off of you know some economic challenges. There were a lot of challenges with the economy at that time, and so I was a professional student, as many of us were in those days, and sort of stumbled into this thing called instructional design and technology at my in my home state at my home university, University of Wyoming.
00:02:49
Speaker
And it was kind of a weird happenstance. you just They happened to offer a lot of the things I was sort of interested in and gravitated toward. you know Media production, you know all that sexy stuff the end of the day. and It was sort looked like it was going to be a fit for my passion with my graphic design background, which was kind of a nice blend and did some you know video work and yada, yada, yada. And so it was just sort of a one of those things I like kind of backed into
Pioneering Online Education in Kansas
00:03:21
Speaker
it. It was a really weird deal. You know, like go okay, I don't know what this instructional design thing is all about, but kind of see sounds cool.
00:03:28
Speaker
And, you know, one thing led to another sort of fast forward a little bit. I ended up out of grad school. I got a position actually at Wichita State, the main campus here in town. I've since moved around a couple other places, as you mentioned, but yeah.
00:03:43
Speaker
I landed back here toward toward the throught the sunset of my career. I'm actually back on their technical campus, the sister campus. But yeah, it's been an interesting interesting journey. I was there.
00:03:58
Speaker
um i like to say I was there. i started off my career doing, in those days, most of your audience is not even going to relate to this, but we used to do a lot of live video classes. That's how distance education was offered back in those days. So that's how I started. I was hired as an instructional designer for off for delivering live courses to nursing students and so forth across the state.
00:04:22
Speaker
And then this nascent thing called mosaic appeared. don't know if older people remember that. And this whole thing called the web, you know I'm like, I said, this is I think this is going to be kind of big. you know So this is 93, 94?
00:04:41
Speaker
It was around 94, yeah, somewhere
Rise of Career and Technical Education (CTE)
00:04:43
Speaker
around there. And I actually cobbled together, just on my own, just a sort of passion, sweat equity. I cobbled together what I still think is the first online course in our state, certainly at the university at the time, which those days it was pre-LMS.
00:05:00
Speaker
So we were, you know you'd find disparate products and sort of a stitch them all together, you know ah a quiz thing here and a discussion board thing there. and hand code stuff you know yeah it was for a nursing class and so uh you know one thing led to another of course and boy i couldn't have anticipated all the changes and trajectories in my career but here we are i'm actually interestingly i'm back at a uh as you mentioned a technical college and what's interesting about that i think i've worked at r1s worked at the university of colorado i worked at small parochials
00:05:34
Speaker
I've worked at teachers' colleges. I've worked at metropolitan campuses. I've kind of been around. but But it goes without saying, i think that – I think anybody who's in the know who follows what's happening in higher education right now will, I think, appreciate the fact that there's a huge shift in momentum toward technical training. career We call it career and technical education or CTE.
00:05:59
Speaker
If you follow any of the musings of and any of the, you know Michael Horn or any of those, Jeff Selling, any those guys, they will tell you that there is a shift in focus and student. Brandon Busteed was just talking about this yesterday on LinkedIn.
00:06:15
Speaker
And we're seeing it. I'm seeing it here. Whereas or my the campus I was at formerly is having a precipitous drop in enrollment, traditional campus.
00:06:26
Speaker
Here, it's we we're on an 11-year rocket ride. It just keeps going up, up and up and up and up. you know It's just amazing to see. I never would have anticipated that, ever.
00:06:38
Speaker
I mean, if you would asked me at the beginning of my career, you know, We used to think of career technical education as kind of a cast off. It's like, oh, yeah, it's the people that can't make it, you know whatever. And it's like, oh, no, no, this is this is a deal. This is a major, major, major deal. and So it's kind of an interesting shift at this point my career you know to and actually end up in that in that space. So we'll talk about that later.
00:07:03
Speaker
We're going to go in a direction. I didn't think we were going to the gate, but this is good. This is part of the fun. um Are these, what are the kind of credentials? you're saying you're on a rocket ship of enrollment, which is great. and We're in a world that is not like that. So I'm glad to hear that. it means you'll, you know, you're going to stay employed, which we all want.
00:07:19
Speaker
um What are the credentials like? Are they certificates? Are they, you know, small, small, short form certificates, bigger ones? Are they, you know, going up the scale, associates, bachelors, masters, et cetera?
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah, we're um it's it's interesting in Kansas, a lot of this is governed by our Kansas Board of Regions. So there's some, you know, they have some guardrails around what we can offer in terms of credentials and degrees and things like that.
00:07:46
Speaker
um We are not a community college, um hence we cannot offer associate's degrees. We can offer what are called applied associate's degrees, AA, yeah which is a little bit different of a variant, but So we we offer those. We have a lot of short short certificates, short courses.
00:08:05
Speaker
um take it if ah you know If there's no other program in the state that's off the locallk locale that's offering a particular type of of a degree pathway, we do that.
00:08:17
Speaker
We're really big into, as in many places now, I'm sure you're ah well aware of this, that we have huge dual credit, huge. We have the biggest school system in the state here in Wichita.
00:08:30
Speaker
And we are deeply embedded with them. We have what are called Future Ready Centers, which is kind of ah kind of a kitschy name, but it's ah it's a place for our high school students to to envision career pathways. They can actually take courses while they're in high school and get college credit in immersive environments. So we have a manufacturing, we have a healthcare, we're soon to have an IT t version or variant of that as well.
00:08:54
Speaker
So students can actually come in
Technical Education and General Curriculum
00:08:56
Speaker
and they do, and they can... start to upskill, uh, you know, into these career ready, uh, pathways or areas very popular.
00:09:05
Speaker
Um, it just, it's sort of mind blowing because I, you know, I'm a traditional higher ed guy. My background's in traditional higher education and, you know, the humanities and all of that.
00:09:17
Speaker
And that is, as you know, and i need to tell you guys that is, uh, undergoing some stress points right now. And, um, Enrollment is shaky in those areas. And, you know, you counter that with what's happening over on this career technical education side of It's just absolutely staggering how fast it's growing. It's just incredible. you can't They can't bring them on fast enough.
00:09:40
Speaker
You know, it's just amazing. Where are the students coming from? Meaning are they, are they coming from outside of Kansas? Are they coming? Would they have gone? i mean, it,
00:09:52
Speaker
It's to know all these things, but these are kind of rhetorical questions, but this is the things these are things that interest me. are they coming from in If they're coming from within Kansas, are they just deflecting from, say, KU, you know Kansas State, towards you all in these kinds of programs?
00:10:09
Speaker
you know, what's driving, you know, who's driving the growth and where are they coming from? Because that's, to me, the demographic intersection of this is really fascinating because we hear so much about states where the population is declining or it's planing off and it's growing in others. I will admit, I don't know where Kansas is in that net headcount of people in the state and, you know, 18 to 24 plus demographics. But I'm really, if you have any insights in that, I'm really interesting really interested because you know, like market shares a thing and some, you know, people move between and for different reasons, you know, technical education is very, it's very clear what the ROI is for learners and graduates right now. so
00:10:48
Speaker
that's my, my big question. Yeah, no well, there's a, it's a great question. and Thank you for that. First, there's a, um, there's a kind of a clear demarcation, a bright line between what we refer to as in-house or working languages, adult, um, students versus the high school students.
00:11:05
Speaker
Um, About half of our population is high school. So they're they're coming from the the the general locale and, you know, making that transition over into this career and technical education pathway. It helps the fact that, you know, we have a strong backbone of industry in this area as well. There's several aircraft manufacturing plants here. Yeah.
00:11:27
Speaker
other things that kind of serve as a natural pipeline for a lot of these. So, i mean, these kids can come out. It's it's impressive. They can come out and go through a program in 18 months or whatever, sometimes less, sometimes more.
00:11:40
Speaker
and land in a pretty decent paying job. you know I mean, minimum $60,000 in some cases, depending upon what they're doing. um I mean, I would have taken that coming out. I mean, I went through a lot of lot of college, and I didn't land a job at $60,000. So that would that's pretty impressive.
00:12:00
Speaker
The adults are are you know to come from the general location. they don't we We don't have a traditional campus infrastructure with you know residential of life, that type of thing, like you'd think of. So there's not a lot of that support, wrap those wraparound services like you think in a traditional campus so we don't attract a lot of people from outside the locale it's it's usually so you're really local in quasi-regional we are yeah we are yeah that's great yeah and i wanted to just add one thing kind of circling back to your former question i didn't get to um we also have a uh we we absorbed some curriculum from one of the community colleges years ago long before i got here And so we do have a whole general education pathway as well. So echoing what you would see in ah in a community college with the humanities and so forth and so on. So there's a very robust, fact, I teach in there, there's
Innovation and Collaboration at Wichita State
00:12:55
Speaker
a paraeducation program.
00:12:57
Speaker
So we have a very robust gen ed program as well. But, the you know, the heartbeat is really the ah CTE programs. that's That's what drives and and health, health care, as you can imagine.
00:13:12
Speaker
Yeah, I, you know, Rob, this conversation kind of, you know, I'm interested to, and one of the things I didn't say at the beginning of today's conversation is that you and I have kind of this interesting Kansas connection because i actually did my pre-doctoral internship in clinical psychology at K-State, which maybe you and I talked about previously, but yeah,
00:13:37
Speaker
But living in Kansas, a Michigander and in and Kansas was right definitely different at the time. But um I wanted just to know, like in Kansas and Fritz, I think you kind of brought this up before, but what is their tension right now? Right. Like there's only so many.
00:13:59
Speaker
like in in kansas right now with like again with students maybe staying more local versus going outside of this state you know again depending on programs and things but are you noticing or hearing concerns from like faculty at like a k-state or university of kansas like worry that you know tuition has maybe gone up so much that students are starting to look at other options and And also there's this anxiety around you know the fact that, hey, first, I don't want to go into debt. And second, I also want to make sure that there's going to be a job for me on the other side of this. And so maybe I'm not going to go to UK, mean, KU or K-State.
00:14:45
Speaker
Are you hearing worries or concerns from from faculty um um about all of this? and I'm just curious. I don't have a pulse on that specifically.
00:15:02
Speaker
but It could be happening. I'm not aware of it. It seems to me that there's still a market for the folks that you know have a desire to go to the flagship institutions or the land grants and and pursue those career pathways. i don't see that flagging at all. I think that that is still an attractive option for people.
00:15:23
Speaker
um The smaller institutions, traditional institutions are probably gonna be have more stress points coming up, I'm sure. But I think there's a, the market is generally I think very favorable toward flagships right now. Their enrollment seems to be doing quite well. fact, I follow a guy the universe. He's a prognosticist. researcher, higher education issues. His name escapes me right now. I follow him quite closely on LinkedIn. but
00:15:59
Speaker
Robert Kelchon, think is his name. Oh, yeah. Yeah. he um I think his his campus in Tennessee is like has record enrollment right now, something like that, I think. So they're doing quite well. so But I do want to volunteer one thing that I think is important. You remind me of that, Kelvin, is that there's, I think, a ah push toward, even for the some of the larger institutions, the land grants in particular, to start to build out these career and technical education options. In fact, K-State, your alma mater, has an entire campus over in a town close to Manhattan. It's called Salina. It's not too far from here
00:16:41
Speaker
But they have a whole campus. It's a polytechnic, but much like this one where I'm at right now. And it's it's intended for drone piloting and machining and advanced manufacturing. We call it manufacturing 4.0 or smart factory types of stuff.
00:16:59
Speaker
So all of that is starting to be built out quite successfully, frankly, by a land grant. They they have that whole offering.
00:17:09
Speaker
And I think there's some... pressure would volunteer from the legislature to to see more of that. I think they would like to see even the traditional universities start to offer more of these hands-on applied ah you know programs that have options for students to get some application and applied experiences. There's even a call for things that are in the traditional humanities tracks, which you would never think of being applied, you know, what's applied about, you know, English and history to build out some, you know, some support structure around some, some applied application based around those, to those disciplines as well. So were so I think we're going start to see more of that. in In fact, our main campus over here, I point over my shoulder, our main campus, has on it, which is kind of unique and it's really cool. They've got a whole thing called an innovation campus, which is kind of like if you've ever been to the University of Central Florida, they've got a research park down there. It's very much like that.
00:18:15
Speaker
So there's companies such as NetApp, which is a huge company which builds out ah data storage arrays. so Airbus,
00:18:26
Speaker
TechStrong, another aircraft manufacturer, on and on on. There's about 20 companies that have actually spun up corporate headquarters or footprints on this particular campus. And so what it does is it allows the students who are in engineering programs and applied programs on the main campus to just step right across the street, literally, and they're in an immersive environment. They're actually working with and for the companies doing some really cool things.
00:18:55
Speaker
Our campus, my campus, which is a a corollary to the main campus, we have just opened up a brand new building called the, they call it the Hammer Building, the of Applied Manufacturing Research Hub for Applied Manufacturing Research, HMR.
00:19:14
Speaker
It's a huge building and we are going to have a presence in that to do all of this advancement. Advanced manufacturing is a big thing. I can't stress it enough.
00:19:28
Speaker
Deloitte has a thing on our campus on that campus called the Smart Factory.
Adapting to Technological Advancements
00:19:34
Speaker
you can't I can't even get into it. It's a all this advanced, way, way, way advanced advanced manufacturing stuff. it's a From what I've heard, secondhand, ah it costs $10,000 just to get a tour of this facility.
00:19:49
Speaker
Very expensive, very sort of siloed. You have to be somebody in that business and is serious about it to even get a tour of this particular place. so that's over on that campus as well.
00:20:01
Speaker
So all of that, Kelvin, to help along with answering your question here is to say that I think what we're starting to see is even the traditional campuses are starting to develop and nurture that infrastructure to help to support even the traditional programs and to provide pathways for traditional students to sort of articulate into these these applied fields.
00:20:26
Speaker
It's a huge deal. like it It was sort of mind blowing coming from a teacher's college. I'm like, wow, I didn't even know this even was a thing. Yeah. yeah Yeah, I i mean, i'm I'm very interested in in this space too, because, you know, like, for example, there was a recent Strata report that that I think, you know, we all of us has probably heard about or or seen.
00:20:50
Speaker
i know it's been highlighted in LinkedIn post too about the fact that, you know, there's value in internships and things like that, but the the there's not really democratized access to these things, right? So some degree programs have it built in, and so it's automatic that you will you'll get some type of like practicum or internship, right? Education, healthcare-related areas like nursing.
00:21:20
Speaker
But let's say you're a philosophy major, like what type of, you know, internship will you get? and And you can definitely, you know, kind of pursue these things on your own, but it's not a guarantee that you will get get them. And even if you do, right, like, again, there's this worry that you're going to, you know,
00:21:41
Speaker
You're going to be on site and you're going to be like the the gopher for coffee or something, you know, coffee and donuts and not really actually get an experience that will actually matter and help you, you know, move forward in terms of acquiring the skills that you need to to be marketable.
00:21:58
Speaker
and a very evolving world of work. And so it's great to hear that your campus is really trying to fill that gap in terms of you know improving experiential learning. I still worry that it's um that higher ed still hasn't done enough to ensure that democracy yeah democratize access, even like with things like micro internships, right? Like bite-sized experiential learning pieces that's guaranteed to all learners.
00:22:28
Speaker
um I'm just not sure we're really there yet in terms of all institutions making sure that that's in place. And I'm a big fan of like you know companies like Ripen and you know some schools use Parker Dewey, which is free. But then then the challenge there is that you still have to sign up for these things and you may or may not be selected with Ripen. It's more faculty driven. You can embed it into the course, but not everyone is using Ripen for lots of different reasons. Maybe the cost or maybe again, it's just the knowledge is not there by a faculty member or a dean to bring it into a program.
00:23:05
Speaker
I'm sorry, Frish, you were going to say something. Oh, i was just, you know. Yeah. That is ah it' an important point that, you know, not everything is available everywhere. And with the resource environment and constraints getting worse, it is pushing.
00:23:21
Speaker
it is pushing. And it's like a seesaw. Some institutions getting elevated. Wichita State, excuse me, your technical school, Rob, you know, those programs are gaining popularity amongst a broad de ah demographic group.
00:23:34
Speaker
swath you know you got young people you got returning adults or continuing education you know people who are into their twenty s thirty s and beyond you know in minnesota we see a lot of pressure on our minnesota state colleges and universities minn state um so you know we're i'm at the university of minnesota we have five campuses minn state has tons of campuses they have the technical community colleges they've got four year regionals. And so there's varying pressures on those institutions, depending on which population they're serving, because, you know, there's, there's only so many people going around or the the round to to takes to take programs that want to take programs. So um I think it's interesting, Rob, is to pivot a little bit is inflection points in education, in the economy,
00:24:27
Speaker
i I look at your career path and you got a a master's I saw on LinkedIn, you had a master's in instructional design and technology in like 1991.
00:24:39
Speaker
So, you know, instructional design was, it's been around for a long time, since about the 60s, 70s from the military, you know, that's the the standard history of instructional design. Oh, the military developed this thing to help, you know, serialize education for the giant, you know, the huge population of people in the military, especially back then.
00:24:58
Speaker
So, but you know, you were, you're an OG instructional designer, you know, a lot of people now who are advanced instructional designers weren't born yet. I'm not trying make you sound old, but it's important, your knowledge and you were, you know, you were well into your career when the internet came on the scene. I was a sophomore in college when ah when Netscape dropped. That was a big deal. And my, one of the guys my fraternity had ah hit his own dial-up account.
00:25:24
Speaker
we're all just like, yes, let's, you know, let's ride on Matt Thayer's dial-up account. um So, but, you know, like now we're at this other inflection point of many, the demographic cliff, the financial pressure, the dropping of college going rates, et cetera, for certain kinds of degrees and AI. So now we've we've got this confluence of other inflection points. So i want to get your thoughts on,
00:25:48
Speaker
for others who are listening and maybe early, mid or advanced in their careers, how do you adapt to these kinds of inflection points? Because you, you gotta be able to see them and you gotta figure out how am I gonna leverage this? Cause you know, you said you have a graphic design background and then you shifted instructional design, your masters and your doctorate.
00:26:09
Speaker
So how do you negotiate inflection points to leverage them and to use them to the betterment of your career and the places you are working and serving?
00:26:17
Speaker
Well, that's ah just a great question for us. Let me ruminate on that for just a second because I could- Take your time. I can cut the gaps out. I can probably go a number of different directions here.
00:26:30
Speaker
Obviously, and you you I think he did a great point of illuminating that i've i've you know over my trajectory of my career, I've seen, I've had to pivot a number of different ways. you know the Moving away, as I mentioned earlier, kind of moving away from some of those legacy- delivery products you know over to internet-based products and so forth. And frankly, i'll just volunteer that you know along the way, um i'm sure you guys have experienced this You face a lot of, when these technologies surface um and these changes surface that have an impact on our institutions,
00:27:11
Speaker
you know higher education has never been accused of being fast to pivot. And so what I oftentimes have run into more than anything anything is just internal opposition, internal friction to get to get things you know turned around. you know I remember, if i could if I could digress just a minute, when I first saw my very first website, I'll never forget it. It happened to be ah when I first got Mosaic up and running and whatever. and it was ah It was a flower shop, of all things, in California. i was like, what?
00:27:43
Speaker
I couldn't believe it. Look at this. I'm looking at a flower shop in California. I can't believe it. I called my boss. I'm you got to see this. This is going to change everything. looked at it and like, get out of here. It's one of those things where we have a lot of people that, unfortunately, in higher education that are just not familiar.
00:28:02
Speaker
they they're pretty comfortable in a routine and, you know sort of the way things have always been. they You have to convince them to try and, you know, pivot. and change some direction sometimes. And I've i've always been a little bit out there on the cutting edge. And it's, I think it's, you know, unfortunately I think it's cost me a couple of career moves here and there because I've been a little bit too aggressive than I probably shouldn't have been because higher education is not ready for that type of aggression. You're among friends. Yes. Like, no, you're a, get out of here.
00:28:36
Speaker
You're a little too weird for us. um But yeah, so, you know, things that I think, so I was a big advocate, big champion for online learning when that became kind of a thing. And, you know, the campus where I was at at the time was very slow to gravitate toward that. It took, you know, actually was actually, I left out of frustration that they finally started to do something in that space.
00:28:59
Speaker
And, you know, sort of fast forward. So I think we were, you know, we had the pandemic, of course, and all of the permutations which came along with that. um And then there's this, as you mentioned, first of the the this whole AI thing now, which is another thing that we're all sort of trying to get our heads around how this is going to impact us. And I've been having some conversations with my instructional design staff, my entire staff actually, but instructional designers in particular about what this means. what what does
00:29:32
Speaker
How is this going to impact what we do? and how we do it. and How is it going to impact how faculty are working with students? How is it going to impact what students are doing? How is it going to impact operational things that we do?
00:29:48
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of abstraction with AI right now. And what I want to see, and I'm playing around with it too, we we have Gemini, we're a Google campus. So we have an enterprise Gemini presence now, which is really helpful to play around with.
00:30:02
Speaker
But I want to see the rubber on the road. Like how... You know, how does it get operationalized? How is being used? And so imagine you have a range. And how how big is your instructional design staff that you that you manage?
00:30:14
Speaker
Well, I have um have three. One of them happens to be kind of over a teaching and learning center. sort so Her dimension is a little bit different. She's more on the professional development side.
00:30:25
Speaker
We just actually hired a person to, it doesn't work for me, different different area, but an an industrial, industry-facing instructional designer. So not an academic, but a person dedicated purely to industry-facing sorts of activities.
00:30:44
Speaker
um But, you know, so, Bridget, such a loaded question, I don't even quite know how to grab the tiger by the tail here. It's the, you know, the worst case scenario, if I were to be a little bit of Debbie Downer, would be to tell my staff that this could, this technology could displace instructional design. um I just saw a demonstration of a, there's a professor at one of the Cal Poly institutions, was recorded video, David Wiley posted it on LinkedIn and I,
00:31:18
Speaker
We're like, oh, my God. This guy went through was demonstrating. we recording. He was demonstrating how he was generating a Canvas course using Gemini. I think it was Gemini. No, it was Claude. Claude did basically an entire differential equations course in about 12 minutes. He was doing the whole thing at Claude Code, built the entire course. And it was pretty impressive to watch it. Really bright guy.
00:31:41
Speaker
So what what does that mean for our business when Claude Code can build a course in that fast, you know, 12 minutes? We don't have to labor over, yeah you know, subject matter expertise and all this other stuff. I mean, because it...
00:31:56
Speaker
weve The three of us have seen the this change in the labor intensity of
AI's Role and Energy Consumption
00:32:00
Speaker
those things. I've said this before in other episodes. you know I started, I didn't call it instructional design back in the early, early 2000s. I was what we call teaching and technology or a developer. i mean, we built, we coded.
00:32:13
Speaker
I had to learn ASP, then ColdFusion, then PHP and Macromedia Flash before it was, actually before it Macromedia, was Allaire. remember that all. No, I'm sorry, that was Allaire ColdFusion. That's right. Yeah, yeah. you know i ah So i had to you know i still I still use a lot of SQL, but you know we build stuff from scratch. Then you get these tools, these GUIs that help build things like Dreamweaver. And then we start getting LMSs that have built-in tools. but This is different where you can it accelerates things so much. So what does that mean for someone who had to move things around? you know like you ah Every instructional designer has these stories. like You're just moving things around for someone. You're building modules. You're building assessments, stuff like that. So now you can power through these things so much faster. So what does it do to the to the role? What does it do to the number of people you need? it's ah It is an unknown.
00:33:07
Speaker
I got to share with you real quick. You just reminded me of it. It's a funny story. Digress. cut this out if you want to, but you mentioned Alleric ColdFusion. I remember we we were heavy user of that particular product back in the day, and I'll never forget this.
00:33:21
Speaker
Our site got hacked. Our public website got hacked, and there was ah it was an outfit from Portugal, as I recall. They said, well, you' you know, we've taken over your site, whatever. The interesting thing about that was the exploit was through Alleric ColdFusion. There was a hole in it, and there was a reporter that was with sitting alongside the hackers actually documenting the entire process. And so he later wrote it up in an article that came out in the National Magazine. So, well, I'm here in Portugal and we're hacking Wichita State University through a exploit in a little cold fusion. And they're actually showing me how they're doing it. i'm I'm reading in real time. I'm reading about a person hacking my own site and how they're doing it. It was the most, I'm like, oh my God, you know, but I just had to share that real quick.
00:34:10
Speaker
Actually, Minnesota is home to your campus is home to Flip. Flipgrid. or Oh, yeah, Flipgrid. Yeah. Charlie Miller was on my dissertation committee. I took a course with him in the fall of 2007. That was, he's one of these guys, one of these persons is just scary. He had all the design chops, but all the tech code. I mean, he had the whole package of being able to assemble and and really leverage technology in the service of teaching that, um you know, he's, and he's gone really great places with it. But I'm glad he was on my committee. He was he was
00:34:44
Speaker
He still lives in the metro somewhere here in the Twin Cities, I think. but And then Minnesota is also really big into open educational resources. They've got a really great hub up there as well. So yes kudos. that's a Boy, what a great place to be. we We're the home of Gopher. That's right. Oh, my God, yeah. How could I feel that? Yeah, that was my very first exposure to internet was Gopher and Veronica and Archie and all that, if you remember that that. That's when I was in high school and I was – just thinking about other things. You know, just living the dream of the early 90s high school in St. Louis, Missouri. You're bringing up a lot of old memories.
00:35:23
Speaker
Well, anyway, so you started to to ask me a question that I pivoted from. So the, yeah, I mean, this whole this whole move toward artificial intelligence is fraught with both optimism and challenge. I'm sure you could probably both relate to this. It's, um, it's on one hand, I, you know, I follow a lot of people who pundits and are pretty glasses half empty about this. And frankly, they make great arguments. Uh, I, I will not discount their arguments at all. There's a lot of concerns.
00:35:55
Speaker
Um, there's a lot of concerns about what this is going to mean for society, what this is going to mean for education, for democracy. And there's a lot of worrying things about it. Oh yeah. i mean, think of all the efficiencies in, uh,
00:36:10
Speaker
Electrical efficiencies and reductions in, you know, electrical consumption ah and in industry and consumer and households, you know, LED bulbs and really efficient furnaces and water heaters. And now AI is pushing up electrical consumption, right?
00:36:28
Speaker
way there's no you like It doesn't matter. I mean, it matters, but you know all the gains we got there are now gone. And then some because ai is so power intensive. So hopefully down the road soon, there's some paradigm shift with electrical production. Maybe nuclear fusion will finally hit the scene. But that's that's something that, you know...
00:36:49
Speaker
That worries me, you know, like now we're giving up all these gains that were, that were a good thing. Like it brought our electrical bills down. Now there's this pressure from AI that's making our electrical bills go up. So there's all these things that are going to flow off of this that like any new technology, like, you know, like the developers of plastic really foresee microplastics in our, you know, in our like,
00:37:12
Speaker
in her brains and blood vessels? Probably not, you know? ah So, I mean, and to that effect, you know, I i also see it's gonna settle to some level of utility to me.
00:37:26
Speaker
Meaning it's not gonna be the worst, it's not gonna be the pie in the sky that everyone, no one works anymore. or that it's going to go away. It's going to settle in somewhere to some level of utility. Cause right now, you know, we use it. I, I don't think it's at least for what I do. It's not really good for research because it, it doesn't know good from bad. So we've tried some things where we have it help us write a report. and i'm like,
00:37:52
Speaker
This isn't a real data point. It's actually it found some little mention in a report that's 10 years old saying it's current information. Like, no, this there's a lot of spot checking, if thorough spot checking you have to do to make any make sure any claim it makes. But if you want it to go, like I used it the other day to go through a report that we wrote and just say, hey, can you summarize, give me a two page summary of this funding mechanism.
00:38:17
Speaker
for, you know, for the president's cabinet. Yeah, that was good. It was good for little framework. It was compact, you know, it wasn't like, and i went through and cleaned it up, make sure sounded like a human instead of lots of ampersands and things in double quotes. um But there's a utility there that was helpful. It actually helped kickstart because I was tired. I was like, oh my gosh, I got to write this thing. So I'm interested to see where the, where the utility settles in.
00:38:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's ah it's such a great question. And I, you know, i wish I had a, a crystal ball to to kind of forecast what's going on. i you know I think most campuses are still trying to reconcile how this is going to impact different service areas and and operations. Like all of us, I think we could all probably know relate to that.
00:39:02
Speaker
Interestingly, one of the areas is that has been fast on our my campus has been fast to gravitate toward this is the student services area, which would not be a candidate that I wouldn't necessarily put up at the front of the list here. would think that, you know,
00:39:17
Speaker
this would be more operational academics. You know, the academics are folks that, it's kind of interesting. I'll volunteer this real quick because is an interesting insight with respect to career and technical education and sort of the traditional education higher education pathway folks, the humanities and so forth.
00:39:37
Speaker
So the humanities folks by and large, ours are probably not unlike yours, that they're there's some level of freaking out as what's going on right now because of of plagiarism and all of the you know the things that we all know about so well.
00:39:52
Speaker
So there's a lot of hair on fire about what's happening. you know The antithesis of that is over on the career and technical education side. Those folks by and large, I think, sort of feel impervious.
00:40:06
Speaker
They're like, you know, we work with these machines or planes or whatever, you know, and it's not a, it's just not a thing for us. you we're not real, not real. We work on cars and diesel mechanics and heavy equipment, you know it's like, yeah, not a big deal.
00:40:23
Speaker
But interestingly, I've been sort of looking and investigating how artificial intelligence is starting to permeate even those disciplines in those areas. And you would be surprised.
00:40:36
Speaker
For example, a lot of car mechanics now who are just folks that are, know, shop down folks, are using artificial intelligence on their phones to diagnose cars and things like they put the phone the car. yeah yeah It tells them exactly what's by the the ticking in the motor, they know exactly what's going on. um we're so We're starting to see it. Actually, one of the high exposure um Microsoft came out with a report this last summer, I believe it was a few months ago, about high exposure occupations.
00:41:07
Speaker
One of the highest exposure occupations is actually in our career and technical education area. It's the folks that do the programming for what are called the CNC machines. Machines that actually do the extrusion of things that build parts.
00:41:20
Speaker
the operator the The programming of those machines are very expensive, multi-million dollar machines. The programming of those is actually now being outsourced over in many cases over to artificial intelligence so there's going to be a direct impact of folks that want to go into you know the cnc and manufacturing positions they are going to be augmented or perhaps in some cases replaced with artificial intelligence um ah there's other occupations as well you know and we all kind of a similar thing you know
00:41:53
Speaker
printing printing went from a very manual process printing presses literally to automated printing presses to so people were doing less of the manual labor and managing the tools that to do the thing yeah is it is that the kind of direction is going in so thereby you reduce the need for your human labor, you're just increasing your cost of equipment and capital expense. is that Is that the kind of, was that what you're describing for that? Yeah, I think so. I think that probably comes to work. Yeah, yeah. i So where I think this, at least in the near term, I mean, it's hard to, I hate to go out on a limb too far because I've been wrong before. If you, my famous, why I blew that one was MOOCs, you know, that was, wish I had that one back. I was like, oh yeah, this is going to really request hiring. Yeah. No, that didn't happen. But anyway, so this is another one of those, I don't want to get too far out on the limb and start to do too much forecasting because I just don't think any of us really know where this is going. But I do think that i do think that all of us, all of our occupational areas in higher education now are going to have to learn to adapt this. It's not going away. I know a lot of people say, oh, that's you know that's a little bit you know too, you're being too much of a of a defeatist.
00:43:02
Speaker
No, i don't think I don't think it's going away. i don't think you're going to turn this tight around. So how do we adapt to it? So the kind of circles back to one your earlier questions about how do I approach my instructional designers with some of those type of thing? And what I'm trying to do, is I'm trying to impress upon them that this is not something that you can just cast off. You need to understand how to use these tools and use them well and start to develop around them because it's going to become inculcated into your workflow.
00:43:35
Speaker
your work streams. And I'll give you a perfect example that so product we're working on right now. That is just exactly what I'm talking about. So, you know, and we all can agree that faculty onboarding has been kind of a, it's been ah a pain in the and the rear for a long time. It's just um difficult process to, you know, to matriculate people's people into the, into the workflow and to get them to understand all of the terminology and your culture and yada, yada, yada. It's just a cumbersome, laborious, time-consuming process that's fraught with all sorts of of issues and friction.
00:44:11
Speaker
So I said, OK, so we're going to build out a ah product. We're using an articulate product, which uses AI. It's infused with AI. And then we're also sort of laying another product, some video product called Synthesia. It's an AI-based video product into that to have personalities sort of introduce people to some of the products and things.
00:44:33
Speaker
as a way to improve the entire onboarding mechanism or process that we do, which Every place I've ever been onboarding is just always a problem. It's always been a problem. It just never works well.
00:44:48
Speaker
People just can't crack that net. How do you onboard effectively? know How do you get people the you know the the essential information, the critical information they need to know to be able to function quickly? Because it usually we have a lot of 11th hour hires. So how do you get them onboarded very quickly?
00:45:05
Speaker
So we're going try this and it's very much an instructional design based product. That's its bones, that's its genesis. And we are sort of pulling in elements, AI elements like the video and so forth and so on. And that this Rise Articulate has AI components built into it as well.
00:45:27
Speaker
But that still requires somebody to orchestrate that. You have to have an instructional designer with So vision can pull that type of product together. Yeah. I mean, that is not, I can't just go on to some sort of elite today. I can't go on to an AI product and go build me an onboarding course, blah, blah, blah, bla blah. And, you know, yeah it spits out it that it's going to be what I want. It'll spit as that something out, but it's probably going to a hot mess. And it'll be your expertise is going to have to go in and fix it and trash the pieces that suck and...
00:46:01
Speaker
recreate yeah out of whole cloth or however you're doing it, make the parts that need to be good, make them better or just build them outright. So to me, AI is still, when I see it at its best, it's when it's leveraged by people with vast expertise in whatever domain they're using it in. So I work with someone, a faculty member here at the University of Minnesota. He is a professor of geography and geospatial engineering.
00:46:28
Speaker
do spatial computation. um And he uses AI a lot, but he also, you know, his expertise is, is exponential in his field. So he knows exactly what it to do what he wants. He knows where he wants to go. so when you know where you want to go, cause you're vastly X, you're a huge expert. You're a deep expert in something. You know, like you can handle the meandering, but if you don't know where you want to go because you don't know what you need or what you want or what's what's valid, that's when it becomes dangerous.
AI in Educational Technology
00:47:00
Speaker
So you're talking about
00:47:02
Speaker
You know, you need if ah AI is controlling a CNC machine to manufacture something, especially it's something critical, you said, you know, I think Boeing has a big presence in Wichita, right? So you don't want AI guessing like, oh yeah, yeah, this ah this is how we're going to manufacture this door plug.
00:47:18
Speaker
Boop, press a button. You want someone who knows like, ooh, that is wrong. We need to redo that, you know? That's where I think people think AI somehow, and I've said this before, Kellen, so I'm sorry, but people think it's going to leapfrog them into become experts. Like, oh, I can skip the struggle. You can't skip the struggle.
00:47:35
Speaker
yeah Not cheat the struggle. Yeah, the struggle is just redefined, right? And the the human in the loop, it still will continue to be important regardless of what we do with AI. And bouncing off of Kelvin's thoughts there, um actually, it's really interesting you bring that up. It triggered a and ah I remember here just not that long ago, about three four months ago, um our School of Business over on the main campus has luminaries that come in and give keynotes from time to time. And back about three months ago, they invited in the CIO,
00:48:14
Speaker
and the head of the human resources or people and culture department, into a du a guest presentation, invited thing coming in. And we got a chance from Textron.
00:48:26
Speaker
It's a Textron build Cessna, Beechcraft planes, that type of thing. They also have military, have a military presence. So they were talking about how they have actually, from a corporate perspective, they have actually infused artificial intelligence, everything from the'm excuse me from the clear down to the manufacturing floor. So they're actually all up and down the chain of employment. They're actually utilizing artificial intelligence. I thought it really fascinating. Now, you know there's going to be so some obvious concerns, which are probably going to you know jump out in your mind about
00:49:04
Speaker
you're talking about proprietary intellectual property information being absorbed or ingested into these systems. I mean, they have a lot of copyrights and patents. Oh, yeah. What's going to happen with all this stuff? just gets up into this, loaded up into this into the ether.
00:49:21
Speaker
So so they were we talked about that during this presentation. The questions came up about that. and and You know, the way they've architected their tenet is such that it's sort of siloed off. They've got, they work very closely with Microsoft and yeah the co-pilot ecosystem is kind of where they've landed at. But, um, um, so they've got a sort of, sort of walled off if you will, in that particular area in that space. And they, um, you know, they invite people from the, from the, uh, from the company to use it, but there has to be, they have a, you know, a very, um,
00:49:55
Speaker
regimented process for how they instruct people to use it, what type of information to upload. All of that. We were the same way. took a while to get Gemini enabled and one of it was, we only want a walled garden at the university. There's so much intellectual property and student data, all sorts of proprietary data and regulated data. So we had to have a walled garden because people were just like, oh, I'll just hop in a chat GPT. No, don't do that.
00:50:22
Speaker
Yeah, you know, one thing is, and this is, I'm glad we're going in this direction, like this conversation, because there's one thing I wanted to volunteer here as well. um An old colleague of mine is Robbie Pencey. He's the CIO at the University of Michigan now. He and I worked together here Wichita State many years ago.
00:50:36
Speaker
And Michigan's doing, with Robbie's vision, they're doing some really cool stuff. Of course, they have the horsepower to do it. You know, they've got a lot of ah depth in their application development area.
00:50:48
Speaker
But I don't know, maybe a year ago, year and a half ago, something like that. I can't remember. They they introduced a a product called Maisy, M-A-I-Z-E-Y, I think is how they spell it. There's some association with the coloring of their school colors. and thinking I'm not sure where that comes from, but some internal knowledge there. but anyway, um it's ah it's an internally facing product that lives inside of their Canvas ecosystem. So this faculty can opt into it. They could you upload an engineer healthcare faculty can upload her content.
00:51:23
Speaker
And Maisie will you know train its algorithm on that content for that particular course and then surface of an interface for the students to be able to interact with the content specifically to that course.
00:51:36
Speaker
This to me was just sort of, when I first saw it, was like, this is mind-blowing. This is the direction i think we're going to be going more of. And I talked to Robbie about it. I saw him at an Educause conference and I discussed it with him and his lead developer about it. And said, I think these internally facing products are what we're going to start to see more of. It makes more sense in many respects for people to do that as opposed to, mean, if you have the the depth and the the ability to you know negotiate for contracts, like Arizona State's got a big contract with OpenAI and so so does the the California system. And youve mentioned you mentioned you're with Gemini.
00:52:16
Speaker
That's wonderful. That works great. But for the smaller little institutions, the other 3,000 of us out there that don't have that type of wherewithal, it's it's sort of difficult. We're at the mercy of the commercial products and what they can do. I think you're going to see more application and interest in internally facing products where, you know you can train it on your own internal data and you can kind of control the boundaries of who has access. Cause this is going to, this is going to drive your registrar insane with know people putting potentially FERPA protected information out there. And yeah, it's fra with all sorts of issues. So, um,
00:52:57
Speaker
Our office, Office of Distributed Learning at the University of Minnesota, we are the we administer the Coursera relationship and the content the university puts into Coursera.
00:53:08
Speaker
And Coursera is really moving to make AI part of the not just the experience for learners, but the part of creating content. So you can, you're talking about Maisie at the University of Michigan. There's something similar where you can give it a syllabus and say, hey, I need to create a specialization or single Coursera course, which is a fraction of a credit hour equivalent for us in our world.
00:53:30
Speaker
And it'll, so you know, it'll turn that into what it thinks would be a good Coursera course framework. doesn't do all the things, but if you have links in there, it'll pull that stuff in Even if you have videos, you could have videos and it'll say, oh, we you know it'll go it should go here, here, here. That's ah that's a great thing you know because developing Coursera content takes time. I mean, so if we're going to do a specialization, which is a three to four Coursera courses, so a specialization is about the equivalent of a three credit course. I tell people faculty, we budget a year because we got they got to develop the content. They're also doing this in in the midst of their academic rhythm of an academic year and their research expectations and agenda, et cetera.
00:54:10
Speaker
if we if we can speed that up for them in a way that's not compromising anything, it still gives them total control. they can Coursera can spit something out and they might be like, this is garbage. I'm going to start over, start from scratch. That's it. It's not like it locks them in anything, but that's a great thing.
00:54:26
Speaker
um So that to me is where I think the you talking I was talking about, you know where is where's the utility of gonna settle out? That's the first place as I hope it does is that it just gives people who are experts and the doers, we're a podcast for doers, that's one of our that's our tagline, that gives them a big lever, a bigger lever to do what they do, stronger, faster, better, and and ah more of a volume that they wanna do. Like, I wanna put out more content, okay, here's a way to amplify what you do to create content.
00:54:59
Speaker
It's interesting you bring up Coursera because about, oh gosh, 24 months ago, 20 months ago, something like that, when this AI thing was just starting to germinate, right? We're starting to see some application of it. I saw a presentation that happened to coincide with Coursera's annual. They do a big annual conference thing where they but they did. off they told they they maybe i was changed labor but They brought it back, I.
00:55:24
Speaker
we ah we went We met up at one in Vegas. That was fun. Okay. course It's a great event. I remember the question connect yes Jeff, I can't think of his last name now. He was the CIO in those days. Anyway, he was he was um rolling out. They did those Apple-like rollouts, and he was rolling out a Coursera course compendium.
00:55:46
Speaker
It was AI generated, and and he yet ah one of his young talents was there with him, and they were demonstrating You know, how it could build out all the assessments and you ingest your syllabus and, you know, hit the magic button and videos. andda All this stuff is all generated for an act. I was like, what? I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I went, you got to see this.
00:56:08
Speaker
And I happened to know a guy was with Educause at the time. And one of the guys that was co-teaching with me at Educause was at to Duke at the time. And they were a big Coursera campus as well. And he goes, oh, yeah, they came in. you know they went but Duke, you have kind of special invites things. So they came in to Duke and actually were demonstrating this in real time. And he said it was just mind-blowing what was going on. i was like, oh, my God, this is going to change everything.
00:56:34
Speaker
It worries me at the same time because I – you know, from putting my instructional designer hat on for a minute, I – What I worry about is that we're going to have, I'm sure you all can probably relate to this, is that this this technology is going to match right to the point that I can see it already.
00:56:54
Speaker
We saw it with the course textbook compendiums when that whole you know when that whole thing started to to get rolling a few many years ago now. where the textbook publishers go hey you know buy our textbook and we'll give you all these powerpoints and all this other stuff for free in fact we were like oh yeah you know and they were you know installing that stuff left and right this is going the same thing where faculty are going to go i can just push the magic button and you know poof my course is built for me with all of my tests yada yada yada and i'm i'm heavily involved with quality matters i'm chair of the academic advisory committee and We have had these conversations with the QM folks at the conference. I just rolled off the conference in November down in Arizona. And we have, know, these conversations are starting to percolate, you know, about what does this mean for course development? What does this mean for quality control? yeah the thing and Actually, interestingly, i don't want to go too far on the limb here because of non-disclosure, but QM is sort of working with a person
00:57:55
Speaker
potential company, ah you know, kind of developing a product that will do at least an initial pass of a course to to see if it meets some QMS and not a whole review, but just to sort of reduce some of the friction that people, you know, go through with some of that type of things so the interesting thing. interesting things happening. I think everybody is like, you know, we don't know, we don't know what to do. That's a valid concern though is, is,
00:58:19
Speaker
pushing the fast lever of the iron triangle, you know, fast, cheap, done well, is it just gonna displace the quality, the done well lever? Is it just gonna subsume quality just because we can get it fast and cheap, maybe even free to the user, not to the institution, of course,
00:58:38
Speaker
Yeah, that's a valid concern. You don't want to give up quality. You don't want, you know, that was one thing about those. I remember faculty pushing back on those kinds of textbook add-ons because they're like, no, this is not the this is not the article about 19th century geopolitics that I want to, or the story that I want to be told about this topic. You know, it's not, it isn't a boilerplate for everything. It shouldn't be. That's what are we paying for? If it's just a boilerplate, then that means we're truly a commodity. I don't want to believe that.
00:59:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting, right? Like even Lumen Learning eventually came up with like adaptive courseware, right? To kind of like keep, you know, kind of keep the learner to to hopefully help the learner, but then maybe also to entice institutions using their content to give them another reason, right, to to stay with them. So it it is interesting. my my thought about all of this too is like will institutions really care right like we do have quality matters and this is not a slide on quality matters but i don't know to what extent institutions are really saying we are going to be a quality matter school or or maybe they're selecting other frameworks like accu right like we're going to be an accu institution
00:59:56
Speaker
But not everyone
Governance and Risk Management in AI Adoption
00:59:57
Speaker
does. and not everyone will say, hey, let me take a peek at your course so that I can evaluate the quality of it. It might just come down to, well, I don't need to look at your content. I need to just see what your, you know, yourre your, your, your, how students rated you in a given semester or for the academic year. And so it may not come down to someone saying, well, let me look at the quality of what you put together in in in a learning journey in Coursera. So it's like, so so that's a long way around to say, I still worry about the fact that many faculty will still you know embrace academic freedom to do whatever they want, but there's still unfortunately a freedom to teach badly, regardless of what tools and resources. Exactly, I guess, quality matters, all those things that there's ah there's a an administrative lift to do it. you
01:00:53
Speaker
if you were to run the university of Minnesota, every course online or otherwise, let's say online through quality matters, we don't have the staff for that. We're a giant R one big 10 school. Um, so there's an, there's an, again, and if this is where AI can help because it's more cost effective, it's maybe just as good or as good, you know, that if it's just as good, that's great. I welcome that. But, um,
01:01:24
Speaker
You know, we it can't increase a burden somewhere else that institutions already can't sustain. Right. Right. No technology can or should do that. I mean, it's just not sustainable.
01:01:34
Speaker
But that's the thing. I remember reading once someone said something like education is the only industry. And I'm saying that with air quotes that. you you know you're, it wasn't that you know you're doing well when you're failing, but like when you're pushing your mission so hard, you're actually financially on the edge. Because it means you're you're adding all the services you can to help people learn, you know, whether it's student success resources or, and you know, retention support, whatever, engagement. um And that's's that's true. You know, like I build program performance pro formas with units right now and I see this in in the weeds. Like,
01:02:13
Speaker
We're paying for staff. We're paying for administrators. We're paying for faculty first and foremost. And like balancing all those dials, it's it's real and it's not easy to do in a way that's still cost effective to learners, but doesn't go negative revenue.
01:02:29
Speaker
wanted to share something real quick. um If you'll indulge me, I'd like to just, it's a very brief um quote a posting on LinkedIn from a colleague of mine, a CIO, you used to be in Kansas here, Baz is his name. I'll be happy to share with you later. I thought his insight into this whole artificial intelligence thing was really, really interesting and poignant. I'm sort of on a like probably you do too. I serve on one of our AI steering committees and I've shared this with that group because I thought it was such an important insight. So if you will indulge me, it'll take just a second here.
01:03:08
Speaker
i'm gonna read here. so please do yeah So he says, in higher education has quietly crossed a line. This is no longer about pilots, classroom experimentation, or which tools faculty are using.
01:03:22
Speaker
It's about institutional risk, and he highlights institutional risk. Here's why AI governance is now a board level responsibility. First point, AI-driven decisions increasingly affect admissions, financial aid, grading, HR, research, and advancement.
01:03:41
Speaker
Second bullet point, the data feeding AI intersects with FERPA, public records laws, donor agreements, contracts, and discovery. Third bullet point, vendors are embedding AI by default, often without transparent accountability, audit rights, or risk ownership.
01:03:57
Speaker
Fourth bullet point, faculty and staff adoption is outpacing policy training and oversight cycles. Most institutions responded by placing AI governance inside IT. That move is understandable. It's also insufficient.
01:04:10
Speaker
yeah The core issue is not usage. It's decision authority and accountability when something goes wrong. Boy, did that ever. Yeah. That was a home run for me. I went, yeah, brother. That's one of those powerful nuggets of insight. You know, it's compact and it packs a punch. I love those. Yeah. Who owns the risk? Who owns the guy risk when something goes wrong? Who sets the guardrails? I don't think we have those answers. And I really, really worry about that. What's going on? And this notion about, and we see it too, I'm sure you do too, that our grassroots, our,
01:04:44
Speaker
grassroots utilization of these technologies are starting to outpace policy. yeah The people on the ground are saying, well, i don't know what to do. you know There's no guidance, so we're just going to do it. you Well, and the the historical, to me, this one of the historical precedents for this was accessibility. And i look, I'll be the first to admit, we were building things in the early 2000s, really awesome tools with Flash and other web, you know, Web 2.0, before we call it that. um And it was not accessible at all.
01:05:15
Speaker
But we were way out in front of these things. We were ahead of the policy, even though the ADA was already there and accessibility needs were there. We were, we were thought we were so far in the bleeding edge, which we were in a lot of ways, but we were leaving that behind. So we had to ratchet things back, get tools that accounted for that, helped us do it, helped us audit those things and make sure before anything went out the door,
01:05:41
Speaker
it passed accessibility standards. We had to have the standards. So this is this is that at and at a much ah riskier, to me, a riskier, it's a riskier ah position to be in because of all things you just mentioned, that really useful quote, and we will, you know, please put that on LinkedIn. That's ah it's a golden one, but you know, the pulse, the risk to data, the risk to proprietary data, all these things.
01:06:07
Speaker
Well, it's interesting you bring up accessibility. I'm a huge accessibility advocate. I have some certifications in that space and it's, I champion that all the time. um That's actually one area where I think we're, there's really sort of, it's undeniable that we're starting to see some really positive trajectory in the accessibility space as it relates to artificial intelligence. I wrote an article on EDUCAUSE about a year or so ago about that particular topic, which, you know,
01:06:36
Speaker
is already is already dusty because there's just so much that's happening in that area. But the the advancements of that technology to support or our student population, our faculty population with artificial intelligence is just really exciting. I'm really, really glad to see that. And that's an area I don't think we we pay enough attention to. it I don't want us to lose sight of that. With all of the naysayers and the pundits and the negative thing about AI and education, boy, it's really helping our support our disabled community. Not only that, just even folks like myself, I have a hearing impairment.
01:07:12
Speaker
um I'm not technically deaf, but I do have tinnitus. But I use captions all the time. I mean, I do, even at home. And so having an artificial intelligence-based caption is really, firsthand, it helps me a lot.
01:07:26
Speaker
And it's really going to help when Title II kicks in here in a couple of months because we are all going to be facing things like audio descriptions and things like that. AI is going to help with all of that. It's going to help bolster all of that stuff. So I don't want us to lose sight of that.
01:07:41
Speaker
The accessibility component is extremely important. And I think this is going to help that community. So this, I'm going to put something take-ish out there.
01:07:51
Speaker
It may be that AI and education or higher education, that the the most important, the the most useful part about it may not be in learning itself. It might be the things that wrap around the learner. Student success, things like, um you know,
01:08:10
Speaker
I don't chatbots like, hey, I'm struggling with this math problem, you know, so tutoring, ah tools for for staff, you know, to see like, oh my gosh, this student is struggling in this course and it pings them and things that, you know, amplify the the other experiences the other important parts about learning that aren't necessarily in the classroom, which is an old, I can't remember the scholar who said, look, like college experience is not just in the classroom, it's everything that wraps around it and in there. So it may be, that it's not the learning part, how much it facilitates learning is not the most important part of it. It might be all the other things around the student experience, certainly in post-secondary, but also in, you know, k through 12 as well. Yeah. Mike Horn, just, it's interesting you bring that up because I was just digging here as we were talking. he i thought I, um,
01:09:02
Speaker
reposted, but maybe I didn't. He just had a conversation about that. I saw it came across my feed just this morning. He says, Mike Warren, of course, is Clayton Christian, one of his protégés.
01:09:17
Speaker
christian one one of his pretege Most education talk it focuses on chatbots in the classrooms, he says, but one of the highest leveraged uses of AI might be in the back office operations. And he goes on, he talks about, but tim echoing what you're what you're seeing, Fritz, I think there's going to be a lot of opportunity for folks to start to look at this in areas which...
01:09:43
Speaker
don't you know are not high visibility or high surfaces maybe that they just they they ease or eliminate friction in those spaces and just make they displace time and space for faculty and learners to do their thing you know like i always say the best technologies are boring and not that they're not effective but they just get out of the way you don't think about the utility of a chalkboard or a whiteboard except when the chalk breaks or the The dry erase marker doesn't work, but you know no one's like, oh my God, this whiteboard, like is this the right marker to use on the surface? I mean, yeah, occasionally, but it it just disappears. So maybe that it just helps all these other barriers disappear.
Preparing Students for AI-Driven Industries
01:10:26
Speaker
um And so that learners and faculty can do what they're there to do, which is to really engage and learn things and become experts. And then the learners graduate and they go off into illustrious, fulfilling career paths. It's really interesting you bring that up. And I'd be kind of curious to flip the script a bit and ask you guys about that because there there seems to be a little bit of ah a debate about um should we...
01:10:52
Speaker
Should we be preparing students for these jobs, the jobs of the future kind of thing, when we don't really know what they need? We don't know if industry is actually using these products or how they're using them and how we could adapt or or marry our institutions up to what they are doing and in those in those fields. So should we should we be preparing students for you know the jobs of the future using AI? should Should that be a core competency for them?
01:11:25
Speaker
I don't know. I've seen debates on both sides of that. Yeah, I mean, i'll I'll just chime in real quickly. I mean, i think they're I think we have to, to the best of our ability. i think the the challenge, though, of course, is, right, we we can't see the future totally.
01:11:44
Speaker
But one thing that I think we need to do probably more of is, like, regardless of whether we're preparing folks for AI literacy, improving that, whether it's...
01:11:57
Speaker
preparing you our learners for other types of um skill sets that are needed, like cybersecurity, data analytics, project management, of other areas where we know there's going to be at least a need in the short term, we need to kind of follow through and find ways. you know Texas and some other states are trying to find a way to track learners over time to find out To what extent are they acquiring skills that actually do matter and are given some way by employers? and
01:12:31
Speaker
And so we have to do more to make that happen. Well, it's a metacognitive thing to me is that you, I've had this debate with people, you know, why is my daughter, why is your daughter taking French, Fritz?
01:12:45
Speaker
Shouldn't she take, shouldn't she learn Spanish or Chinese or something? I remember in the 80s, everyone should learn Japanese because that's when The thought was that the Japanese economy was going to dominate because of their technology dominance.
01:12:58
Speaker
My thought, and there's plenty of research back this up is not saying it doesn't matter what language you learn, but you learn to learn language you learn languages and then you learn to learn other languages. Like learning French or playing music helped me understand how to learn to code, honestly.
01:13:13
Speaker
um So there's a metacognitive aspect, like you need to know how to use, yeah, you got to use, look students need to learn, learners of any age, if they're trying to get a credential, you need to learn how to use ai to do things. But you also need to learn how to learn to adapt to AI. it just And this is where, you know, humanities was always relevant to me because I have multiple humanities degrees, but that's what humanities does. It's it's you to reflect on things.
01:13:38
Speaker
at a high level and then adapt and then, you know, apply things to different kinds of discipline scenarios, problems, et cetera. So to me, like there's you don't even just need learn how, don't just learn Gemini, how to deal with Gemini, learn how to be in this space and adapt. Cause you're going to adapt many things like us, cold fusion to PHP, to macro media flash, to, to, to the, know, like all that stuff, HTML, all the way up to whatever.
01:14:03
Speaker
So you gotta you have to learn how to float above this stuff because you're not just going to be settled in COBOL.
Conclusion and Reflections
01:14:10
Speaker
You're not going to in one program in FORTRAN forever. you know Well, I honestly, when we entered this conversation this morning, I honestly did not think we'd be talking about Flash and FORTRAN. Right, or authorware, you remember that one. Oh, yeah. It's great. Boy, what a blast from the past. It's awesome.
01:14:32
Speaker
Well, it seems like this is, well, first of all, Rob, this has been a a really fun and insightful conversation. yeah Thank you for being on, getting stuff done in higher ed. We really appreciate you being here. Absolutely. This was fun. I could have, I could have talked on, you guys got a, you got a bolt here, but I could have talked for another hour. This is such a great conversation. And, you know, this is an area that is a,
01:14:55
Speaker
as Kelvin can attest, this an area that's very, I'm very passionate about this, uh, follow very closely, try and keep my ear to the ground in terms of what's happening. And I really try and balance the debate. Um, I, I definitely, like I said, I see it, I see the concerns from both sides that the people who are, you know, fervent adopters of this technology and other people that are like, what's, whoa, we, whoa, you know, this is, this is fraught with all sorts of issues. I can, boy, I just don't know what, I don't know how to balance that. I think it's going to be interesting to see we are. we were in this conversation again in a year, where we are, how much has changed, because it's going to change quite a bit. Oh, yeah.
01:15:35
Speaker
For sure. Well, Kelvin, parting thoughts? No, thank you again, Rob. And thank you for also for just being a great example of someone who is a lifelong learner, you know someone who again wants to to make a difference in higher ed.
01:15:53
Speaker
Your selflessness in particular, like you're you're always willing to share um you what you're learning along the way on LinkedIn and through other means. And so we'll make sure to let the learners know how to connect with you. So thanks again.
01:16:08
Speaker
Absolutely. It's great to see you guys. Well, have a great weekend. and we hope to see you online or at a conference sometime here in 2026. Absolutely. Thanks for listening, everybody. Have a great weekend.