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Let's Get Together and We'll Feel Alright
253 Plays2 years ago
Looking at EdTech conferences, what are the themes behind disappointing events and what are valuable experiences? Phil, Neil, and Morgan also discuss conferences they recommend.
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Transcript
Holiday Preparations and Reflections
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome back to the Online Education Across the Atlantic podcast. And as usual, I'm here with my colleagues, Glenda Morgan and Neil Mosley. It's great to see you guys. Good to see you too, Phil, yeah. Yeah, great to see you both. You guys both getting ready for the holidays?
00:00:24
Speaker
Yeah, we are. Yeah, we're definitely getting ready over here. The house is decorated. A decent proportion of presents have been purchased. And I think we're all looking forward to a bit of a break. How about you guys? Well, this is one of the first years. Well, first of all, things have been very busy. So I'm looking forward to the holidays and taking some time off because I need it. And actually, all of us are. My wife's been going to the East Coast to help take care of her parents. And it's just been very stressful.
00:00:54
Speaker
Betsy has been very stressed with school and work and stuff like that. So I think we're all looking forward to something that's taken some time off. And for the first time in years, actually have ideas for presents to buy ahead of time. Normally, I hate presents. The whole process, giving and receiving, it's stressful for me. So I'm looking forward to this year for that reason too. I actually have some ideas.
00:01:24
Speaker
That's good. I only have one gift that I'm giving and I've sorted it out already. I'm making somebody a collection of rocks from their house because I tumble rocks. It's not something that they will have gotten from anybody else. It absolutely would not be. Wow. That's an interesting present.
00:01:46
Speaker
And maybe, is that, there's no kind of precedent of that, that's not a kind of tradition that we should know about, is there? No, no, I just started, I got into rocks in 2022 and it's actually my in-laws, I can name them because they're not going to listen to the podcast. They had a house in Tucson.
00:02:07
Speaker
that they sold and gave up and they're gonna be staying in Iowa. And I picked up a bunch of rocks from outside the house and I've tumbled them. And they're actually kind of lovely, various kinds of jaspers and some, even some turquoise. Wait, have they sold the house? Cause if so, wouldn't that be theft? Because I was in it or? No, no, because you took the rocks if they sold the house already or did they still load it?
00:02:35
Speaker
I took the rocks before they sold the house. Oh, OK, OK. So yeah, but it's good.
EdTech News Slowdown and Policy Discussion
00:02:44
Speaker
But what about some EdTech news? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's interesting, isn't it, that we're talking about Christmas and we're kind of veering off the point because it feels like we had a period where there was lots of stuff going on in EdTech. And I don't know about you guys, but I'm thinking about our chat today.
00:03:04
Speaker
a little bit, yeah, struggling to find quite the rich sources of information and the rich sources of kind of what's going on, then perhaps we've had enough of weeks. But what have you guys kind of been thinking about recently? What's kind of been on your radar?
00:03:23
Speaker
Well, I mean, as I said, I've had been pretty busy on the work side, and I've actually appreciated that the news has slowed down over the past week. So I definitely have noticed the same thing. There's less news. Although in the US, it's less EdTech news, but even more political education news. So there's still stuff to read. It's just further and further away from EdTech. But I, for one, have actually appreciated
00:03:49
Speaker
be able to take a little bit of a break and hopefully through next week as well. Yeah me as I'm in there with you as well but you know there's still stuff coming like they passed a bill in Congress about short-term Pell that will allow
00:04:10
Speaker
student financial aid for short term programs, but there's a little writer in there that says that colleges that have really big endowments are excluded from financial aid altogether. So I mean, it's unlikely to get through, but it's it's a bit of a humdinger.
00:04:27
Speaker
What's meant by short term programs Morgan? Is this a nod to micro credentials or am I? Yes, yes. So sort of nine to 12 weeks or eight to 12 weeks. I can't remember what the exact numbers are too. So to make those eligible for federal financial aid, which they haven't tended to be.
00:04:45
Speaker
Well, in the Pell angle, particularly for overseas listeners, that gets to grants for low-income students, so not the typical student loan, although quite often they get tied together. So it's basically the government saying that, hey, we're willing to invest financial aid dollars into these programs.
00:05:07
Speaker
You know, when that first came out, there was a lot of questions. The first big, strange thing with that introduction, if you will, or discussion was no online programs. And then there was a lot of pushback. And correct me if I'm wrong, but that was sort of a big issue for a while, was there was a natural bias. It has to be face to face, yet nobody could say, but why? What about these programs that add value?
00:05:33
Speaker
And then now they do have the no endowments or high endowments, which is political in nature, or you could say it's strategic, but there's always something tied to it. It's not something just straightforward. Does this add value? Is it eligible for aid? Let's just fund it or not fund it. It has to have a political angle or some other anti-online angle.
00:05:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting because we have the same thing in the UK sometimes around funding and financing around online students not being eligible for maintenance. We have a funding change coming up. So it's interesting that actually you sort of see the same things happening in different geographies around online students being excluded in some way or another.
00:06:24
Speaker
Well, I know Morgan, at least in her head has got a blog post that's getting written on this topic.
00:06:30
Speaker
So yeah, well, in terms of specifically the bias against online, though I'm struggling with it. So, but it'll see the light of day some day, some day. Yeah. But the other one just this morning, and I know you want to talk about that, Neil, you already spotted with your early British reading of our news, the new Inside Higher Ed article on online program management regulations and
00:06:58
Speaker
basically announcing, hey, this is going to be expect some real news in early 2024. Yeah. You know, the thing that really strikes me with not just that article, but a couple of articles that I think we've seen and maybe kind of covered recently. And it's really how one sided, you know, some of the
00:07:22
Speaker
angle is on those ones so I don't know some of the think tanks that are mentioned as well as you guys will obviously but we may have heard of them in passing yeah you may have heard of them but I just find it fascinating that you know most journalistic pieces try to aim for some degree of balance you know it's a big debate that we have in the UK around different media outlets but it's just it's just surprising how much of a voice
00:07:50
Speaker
one side of that particular debate has been given in the higher education press recently. And as someone slightly on the outside looking in, I'm missing the counterpoint there a bit sometimes.
00:08:04
Speaker
Well, they, and so for people who haven't read the article, the Century Foundation, our old friends there that have, they used to be really the center of anti-for-profit, anti-online, for the most part. They're no longer the organizing group, but the Century Foundation is one. Another one was Center for American Progress. Stephanie Hall was quoted, but of course Stephanie Hall came from the Century Foundation.
00:08:34
Speaker
This is the reason I wrote the series of posts earlier this year about the Arnold Ventures funded coalition that in the U.S. we have this coalition of think tanks and foundations and nonprofits, people who think they're good on the side of angels.
00:08:51
Speaker
And they all, for the most part, share common funding and work tightly together on the same topics. So when it comes, that's the reason I wrote that, is people just don't see it. And I think what you're seeing with the article today, I'll go ahead and say, I don't think it's bias. I think it's a lack of preparation and lack of time to think it through, not bias. What happens is these think tanks, they're planting the story.
00:09:21
Speaker
And people get these stories and are getting advocating, hey, you should write about this. I don't know who contacted whom.
00:09:31
Speaker
But then reporters, it's so easy to fall into, oh, here's an advocacy or a nonprofit. Oh, I have three people that I can talk to. And they're not able to sit back and say, wait, these three people have the same point of view, and they all work together. And they're pushing this article for a reason. This is part of a PR campaign.
00:09:54
Speaker
And I'll be explicit. When I read this article, the immediate thing I thought was, oh, they're laying the groundwork or they're putting out feelers specifically in coordination, at least informally, with the Department of Education. So this is no accident that it's coming out now.
00:10:13
Speaker
And part of the reason that it's so one-sided is I don't think it's biased. I think it's just people aren't willing to question, wait, aren't you working with these other people I'm interviewing? So I know I could go on way too long on the subject, but that was my reaction. Yeah. But, you know, to be fair, there was another one the previous week and they did interview two people from the Century Foundation. So they, so they're getting better. Yeah.
00:10:42
Speaker
It's just like that doesn't count as viewpoint diversity. Is that called doubling down, I think. Yes, probably. But moving on from something that is better for my blood pressure, maybe.
Education Trends and Leadership Changes
00:10:56
Speaker
The other piece of news this week for me was the OECD PISA results that came out that it's more K-12, but some interesting findings there in terms of
00:11:08
Speaker
reading scores and other scores that have gone down, you know, starting in 2010 and some conclusions that it was smartphone related. I don't think we're going to, it was interesting. I saw that analysis from a couple of different sources as well. I think there's something to be said for that, but I think the way to read is not, we're not going to reverse that. It's a, how do we deal with that type of problem?
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah, there's definitely a move here in England around banning smartphones in classrooms. And I think in, not totally over this, but I think in one of the Scandinavian countries there has been a ban of smartphones. So there's a little bit of a movement around that happening, I think, in different parts of the world. And I know
00:11:57
Speaker
I think is it Jonathan Hight from Stern has done some work on not just in terms of mobile phones in schools but I think in terms of kind of mental health and well-being of students since you know mobile phones have been fairly ubiquitous amongst that age group so I mean it's an interesting one.
00:12:19
Speaker
And I think it's one that you kind of have to engage with the nuance. I think, you know, those that work in EdTech, I think, often have the sort of knee-jerk reaction to anything that might suggest banning technology in a place of education. But, you know, there's always nuance to all of these kind of things, I think.
00:12:39
Speaker
The thing I got, my immediate reaction with the PISA was more along the lines of what I read from Alex Usher from from HISA, Higher Education Strategy Associates, and his daily newsletter pointing out
00:12:54
Speaker
Hey, the PISA results are going down. And what it clearly is showing is, hey, this is not just a pandemic issue and a reaction to the pandemic issue. As Morgan was saying, this has been going on really longer term since 2010.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yes, the pandemic has made things worse, but we've got a real preparedness problem in higher education because of the students and what they're going through in the K-12 world, and it's getting tougher and tougher. And then the Hackinger Report also covered a similar angle saying, hey, this is a real problem, and it goes well beyond COVID, and we got to pay attention to it.
00:13:37
Speaker
It's not that nobody's noticed it, but it's just another sign of how challenging K-12 is. And that's going to have, it already is, but it's going to continue to have big implications for higher education in ed tech. How do you deal with students who do not know how to work in groups that are missing basic social skills that have their math skills year over year is getting worse and worse in so many different countries.
00:14:06
Speaker
We're gonna have to deal, technology's gonna have to be part of the solution on dealing with it. Wait, I'm on another soapbox, I'm gonna be quiet.
00:14:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's an interesting one. And Pisa's always one of those contested metrics as well. I think whenever Pisa comes out, I always think there's going to be a few stories. There's going to be a reflection on curriculum reforms in particular countries, which you've had here in the UK. There's going to be something about Finland. There's always something about Finland.
00:14:39
Speaker
And there's going to be someone just saying this is a load of rubbish and we should stop doing it You know those and without fail. I think we got those this year as well, but I was also interested as well I think this is something that we actually talked about Southern New Hampshire University, but Paul LeBlanc Stepping down felt like a big story as well recently Yeah, I definitely think it's a big story
00:15:05
Speaker
I mean, you know, I think we talked last week maybe about the idea of their evolution and, you know, obviously his role in that, but, you know, they, they seem like a real, yeah, real kind of important institution for online education.
00:15:20
Speaker
I mean, I would put it, well, he would hate to hear this, I would put it alongside OPMs that it's changed the definition of online education in the US. That's helped take it away from, oh, that's what the for-profits do into something completely different.
00:15:36
Speaker
And so Paul came in 20 years ago with Southern New Hampshire, fairly small school financial problems. And the big thing he did that I don't think they write about enough is he didn't just say, let's go online and go to scale. He really said, let's turn it into a study of how would you organize a university if you were going to serve non-traditional working adult online communities
00:16:03
Speaker
that quite often get into refugees and get into, you know, deliberately targeting disadvantaged student groups. And the question is, how do you serve them? And so what I think is so significant of Southern New Hampshire is they said, oh, well, then here's how we would organize. Here's how we would develop courses. Here's how we would support them.
00:16:23
Speaker
And then I think it just, that model became wildly successful. And then the numbers themselves started to back up, hey, everybody's talking about Southern New Hampshire. So I think it's, they're not dead, but the person behind the transformation
00:16:41
Speaker
is leaving. So even if they continue to be successful, it is momentous that Paul is stepping down. We'll be missing one of the leaders of online higher education, at least in the role he's known for. So I mean, to me, it's huge. Morgan, do you think we're just being too nice to them?
00:17:01
Speaker
No, no, I think it is a, it is a huge, it is, it's going to be a huge loss. Unfortunately, he's not leaving higher ed. He's going to go work on AI and some things there and hopefully. He was inspired by Martin Dugay-Amis from Moodle. Yes. But yeah, you know, but the one thing I would push back against, and it was something that used to drive me sort of crazy at Gardner, like Southern New Hampshire is a model, but it is not
00:17:28
Speaker
The only model, you know, and a lot of people think, oh, you know, everybody's going to turn into Southern New Hampshire and that's not the, not the case. So, you know, I think there, there are lots of different models out there, but certainly he sort of up the ante and added some interesting sort of things. Plus I don't, I don't know him personally at all, but he just seems like a, like a good egg. And, uh, you know, and he loves, loves good bourbon. So he's got that as well.
00:17:56
Speaker
Okay, so, you know, he's a loss in that regard, but on the same sort of topic. Yesterday I sat in on a
00:18:05
Speaker
a briefing session about the Online Learning Consortium, they have a leadership program, a leadership program for emerging leaders. And not because I necessarily want to go on this thing, but I was sort of just intrigued because I'm sort of intrigued by that sort of thing. And they are taking, they take in between 50 to 60 in a cohort every year. That seems like a lot. Yeah.
00:18:31
Speaker
of leaders and like, where do they go afterwards? Because they seem to be in short supply. But it did seem like a lot. So I was sort of struck by that.
00:18:41
Speaker
presumably there's a decent proportion of aspiring leaders in that. Oh, yes. Yeah, I think mostly they're aspiring leaders. I think it's emerging leaders. Yeah, they're, they're coming out of there. They're crystallized, but it's still not. Yeah. Well, I think it's an important topic because if you look at, well, we just talked about Paul LeBlanc, but there are others. Evie Cummings just stepped down from University of Florida online and
00:19:07
Speaker
It's a team effort, but Evie is the person that transformed that program from an OPM-based failure into a self-sustaining, internally run organization that's healthy. And when I say OPM-based failure, that's not to say because they worked with an OPM, they had to fail. There's a lot of nuance here. But they came in and they had completely unrealistic views of their growth potential.
00:19:35
Speaker
They were working with Pearson as an OPM, and their whole set of assumptions were wrong. And so when they hired Abby, I, for the record, was very skeptical. Here was somebody with zero online education experience they put in charge. And I was wrong because she came in and she was willing to say, hey, our assumptions are wrong. We're changing the definition of what we're doing.
00:19:58
Speaker
And within a year of her joining 2015-16, they had turned the program around and now it's successful. Well, I find it interesting that she just left as well. But in any case, it sort of highlights if you go to ASU, you have Michael Crow, the president of the university. It's so
00:20:18
Speaker
individual leadership driven, so much of the online education space. So of course it's important when there's a transition, but also going to the OLC thing, it's pretty important. Well, how do you develop new leaders? Because people are retiring, or not all retiring, but people are changing roles, resigning, different leaders coming in.
00:20:42
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think I've got a title. I think I'm going to write a book about online learning called Completely Unrealistic Views, Opinions of Growth Potential, based on what you just said, because that is a theme I'm seeing lately. Well, I'm going to beat you to it, or I'm going to write a post very soon, probably a premium post this week on the UNC Project Kitty Hawk.
00:21:05
Speaker
I don't know if you've read about that, Neil. It's basically another one of these, hey, we need to take care of ourselves and not use these evil external OPM partners. So we'll just do it within the system, a public system almost always. Build an internal OPM. Yeah, and we'll do it by building an internal OPM. And then we're going to highlight ourselves as a chapter in Morgan's book by having completely unrealistic growth expectations.
00:21:34
Speaker
So they're writing a chapter for her, but there's another interesting angle there. Part of the flaw is several members of their executive for this internal OPM that they're trying to create across the system come from Southern New Hampshire.
00:21:52
Speaker
And then if you look at the proposal, they do appear like they're trying to turn it into a many Southern New Hampshire, which is entirely inappropriate because they're a service organization. They don't teach. They've got to get other universities to sign up with them as a partner.
00:22:11
Speaker
But so it goes to this thing of leadership and also an unrealistic growth, but it also goes with this, well, not everything should be the Southern New Hampshire model. And I have some strong suspicions that that's what they're doing in their own heads. Yeah, I think there's a really interesting way of tying those two things together because there's something about, when I think about the leadership piece and also the variability in institutions, it makes me think of,
00:22:41
Speaker
I should say soccer managers, but I really want to say football managers. I'm going to say soccer managers because you can get a manager who's successful at one particular club with a particular type of conditions and a team and all those kind of things. And then you see how they move teams and they're in a very different environment. And some of them adapt and continue to succeed. And some of them seem to kind of ape what they've done before. And it doesn't work because
00:23:09
Speaker
you know, the club is different and the players are different and the culture is different. So, you know, there's something I think in both of those things, you know, about dealing with what's in front of you and actually being, having the, I guess, the wherewithal as a leader to come into an institution and say, look, I can bring with me a whole range of experience, but it's not going to be the same. And I can't use the same playbook every time.
00:23:37
Speaker
I was worried you were going to go into the, and don't kiss your players on camera after a victory, blessing as well. I missed that little piece of gossip. Oh no, that was a big news thing. It was one of the national women's teams. Oh, the Spain, yeah, yeah. Yes, yeah. That's what I was worried he was going to go there. He went in a serious direction.
00:24:01
Speaker
I think the lesson there is don't hire Luis Rubiales, I think his name is. So I think that's the lesson for everyone. There goes our sponsorship deal for next year. I know. Yeah, I know. I know. Well, I feel like I need to bring this conversation to an end before we go down.
00:24:22
Speaker
dubious pathways because one of the things that we said we were going to talk about last week was conferences because we got into talking about conferences maybe because of your trip to OEB Morgan or I think you've been at a conference recently as well. So I think we thought we'd kind of devote a bit of time to think about
00:24:42
Speaker
different conferences and I think we talked a bit about conference food and obviously that's one aspect of the conference experience but I just wondered you know what you're maybe thinking more broadly than foods. What makes a good or a bad conference?
00:25:02
Speaker
for you guys.
Conference Experiences and Critiques
00:25:03
Speaker
I'm glad you said good or bad because in our prep email you were sounding way too positive. What are the success factors? What works well? It's easier to talk about the opposite side which illuminates what does work. I knew where you would go Phil so I felt confident I didn't need to address that. Okay okay.
00:25:25
Speaker
Well, I'll add one in, you know, as far as what's a big thing. Well, it's sort of a characteristic of it. It's the curation of the sessions and how, yeah, the curation of the sessions. There are too many conferences where I go in, I read this set of abstracts. I'm excited to go and EDUCAUSE has long suffered from this.
00:25:51
Speaker
Man, oh, there's a lot of interesting topics. I want to go there and the abstracts look good. So I sign up to go to the sessions. Then I go to the sessions and there's no quality control. And so it might be that, oh, they're just talking about something so basic that the community knew about 10 years ago.
00:26:10
Speaker
or there's no real insight, or one that I saw recently, this is broader than EDUCAUSE, but where it was looking at online course design and how you need to think about designing courses differently. It was from the school that my daughter's going to graduate school and the presenters, I'm like, oh, I've got two reasons to go. I care about the topic and it's my daughter's school.
00:26:36
Speaker
Well, we go in there and all they were doing is let's go through a needs assessment exercise. What problem are you trying to solve? It's like I didn't go to a conference so that I can just participate. First of all, I don't have a school, but second of all, I expect some value and some insights to come out of the sessions. You can do it in an interactive manner, but there needs to be value that comes out of there.
00:27:03
Speaker
So a long-winded way to come around, that's the quality of the sessions in actual value.
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's an interesting one. Pick it up on that particular example, because I think there's something unique to it. Maybe it's not unique to higher education, but it feels a little bit unique to higher education in that. Different institutions are at different places with whatever things they may come to present. And some people may be new to the sector. And I think sometimes the conferences offer the opportunity for people to present their work
00:27:34
Speaker
And because of the variability in terms of where people are at, that can sometimes mean that what you hear is what you've heard before that isn't remotely new to you, but might be new to the person. And I think there's something interesting in that. Because as an audience member, I completely echo what you're saying, Phil, and I remember a conference this year where I went into some session and I felt I'd gone back in time by seven years or eight years or 10 years even.
00:28:04
Speaker
But also, I also kind of want to support the opportunity for people to go and present their work, too. So there's that kind of tension. But anyway, that's my that's my take. How about you, Morgan? Yeah, you know, and to some extent, I got spoiled by spending those years at Gartner and I have my issues with Gartner, but they do put on a good conference, you know, so they've sometimes people at Gartner joke that they that they're a conference company with a little bit of advisory attached, you know, because it's such a huge part of the
00:28:34
Speaker
the company now, but their conferences, especially the symposia, which is primarily where I participated, are well produced, but even to the level of content. So as a, you know, only Gartner staff for the most part present, except for some very
00:28:52
Speaker
small, high profile invited people. But you have to propose it and then you go through a heck of a process to develop it. You know, you spend several months doing it, you practice in front of often quite a vicious crowd of your colleagues. Somebody once told me that I had the worst voice she'd ever heard in her life. It was nasal and monotonous and I should never speak in public ever.
00:29:19
Speaker
Wow. That year I got a really, really high score. Is this part of the reason that you refuse to listen to our podcast and listen to your voice? Kind of. We need to do the transcripts for you.
00:29:37
Speaker
Yeah but you know the content is good because everybody puts a lot of effort into it and too often I think the content is problematic and part of it is, especially with big conferences like EDUCAUSE, you've got to propose so far ahead of time and things are moving quite quickly that you know by the time you actually get to present it's
00:30:01
Speaker
almost a year down the road. So I think that's sort of part of it. But I think a better role can be played in the people curating that content in terms of that sort of thing. My other big bugbear is the way that many conferences insist on show how it's going to be interactive and things like that. And then you get to the actual session and it's
00:30:24
Speaker
a horrible ballroom with with with chairs bolted to the ground so that no no matter what you planned you can't do it but years ago i was at a conference and obviously they had really impressed upon the speakers that they needed to be interactive but nobody knows how to be interactive so every single session you would walk in they'd say okay break up into pairs and talk about your own problem and then report out and
00:30:46
Speaker
After about five or six of these, I was at a session and the person said that and some guy stood up and said, damn it, I came here to hear you talk about your topic and I damn well want you to talk about your topic. And so the person said, okay, I just gave a presentation that was perfectly good. I'm of the opinion that forced interaction is worse than no interaction. Yes, amen.
00:31:13
Speaker
It is interesting, all of those kind of things. I feel like when I, you know, to your point, Morgan, around the sort of what you're going to speak about, I feel like I'm slowly getting used to writing an abstract for a talk that I give that gives me enough leeway to change and to adapt what I'm going to say when, you know, six months later, I'm actually at the conference speaking. I feel like that's that is a that is a challenge. I think like one of the
00:31:41
Speaker
One of my pet peeves sometimes around conferences is, I remember going to one a few years ago in which there was actually some interesting presentations, but none of the things that were being presented on had actually come to a kind of culmination point in which they could be evaluated. So there was a kind of a big hanging of kind of, so what, you know, what was the impact of what you'd done? You know, there's that kind of sense of just feeling like,
00:32:10
Speaker
uh you know the time was too soon to to kind of present because you want to know what the impact was and the lessons learned and all those kind of things um
00:32:21
Speaker
which is a really frustrating aspect of it. Well, to build on that, lessons learned. Could we please actually learn lessons instead of cherry pick what makes us look good on stage? If you can get a conference where you truly say, here's what we learned, here's what didn't work, and here's where we screwed up, that's valuable. Way too many things you can tell are just cherry pick. It's not really lessons learned, it's promotional.
00:32:50
Speaker
in nature. And I'm talking about institutions might be worse at this than vendors in presentations as well. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So you need to have true lessons learned. And I think that's a huge factor of whether people get stuff out of the sessions themselves. Yeah, I think that's where the
00:33:14
Speaker
kind of interaction and maybe the kind of community aspect comes in because I was thinking about this and I was thinking about what you were saying around I guess there's that bit in all of us that when we're up at a presentation at a conference you know the last thing we probably want to talk about is you know the failure and the misstep or it's maybe we're not inclined to think that way and it I find you know one of the one of the things I sort of look for and think about in a conference is
00:33:40
Speaker
who's going to be there because it's those conversations on the fringes, you know, often with people who presented who kind of give you a bit more of the under the hood kind of opinion of how things have gone. And so, you know, that's not really the kind of same type of interactivity that you were talking about, Morgan. But, you know, I think that's a really valuable takeaway for me for conferences, who I can speak to and who's there and
00:34:06
Speaker
those conversations outside of the main halls, if I can put it like that. Well, to build on Morgan's point about Gartner, I would argue that conferences today are really bars and coffee shops and hallways with some sessions that are upstairs if you care to go to them or if they're good enough for you. Like the core value of a conference is
00:34:31
Speaker
Comes from who's there and the informal conversations, but it's not just who's there Do they set up a conference in a way that facilitates and enables? These quick hey, let me grab you and let's talk about something or hey this group of people is talking I'm gonna join in so it does get down to
00:34:51
Speaker
enabling that and part of that it does it's bars it's uh coffee shops it's seats around the hallways it's uh and that's what things are that's the core value of conferences i would argue as much if not more than the sessions i was just going to say that sometimes i i think about conferences in the same way that i think about wedding weddings and i'm not talking about my own relationship status here i'm just in terms of the way in which
00:35:20
Speaker
You know, some weddings are, they're not always, there's not always been the kind of thought that's gone into how the guests are going to experience that thing.
00:35:32
Speaker
And I think, you know, you can maybe draw a similar parallel sometimes with conferences in that the focus is maybe on the program and all of the other aspects of the experience have kind of maybe been neglected. And as you were saying, Phil, those things, you know, are quite an important component of what makes a conference enjoyable and what, you know, enables you to get the most out of it, I suppose.
00:35:58
Speaker
Well, I have the benefit of my the most boring wedding that I've been to was my own. And we're we're Southern Baptists went to a Southern Baptist Church and
00:36:10
Speaker
And when we were getting married, I said, all right, I understand there's going to be some tie-in with that. Since we got married young, and so my wife's family, it was essentially they were paying for things. I said, just make sure the reception is not at the church. Because Southern Baptists, technically, you're not supposed to drink. You're not supposed to dance.
00:36:31
Speaker
But that creates an environment of it's not set up for people to enjoy themselves or even be casual. And so, of course, our wedding was in the church, and then we had the reception in the gym right next to the sanctuary. No drinking, no dancing. My friends are looking around saying, what are we supposed to do? How soon can we get out of here? And we didn't have, because it were dancing, the music wasn't encouraging people to have fun.
00:37:00
Speaker
So yes, we would fail as a conference if we redid our wedding. I feel like I could do a whole solo podcast actually on my wedding experiences, not me personally getting married, but on the experiences. But we should probably not take up all of our time discussing that and we should probably not take all of our time
00:37:23
Speaker
on our soapbox about good and bad aspects of conferences. I just wondered, you know, I thought it might be useful to kind of be a bit more specific and, you know, what are the conferences that you guys have been to this year that you got a lot of value out of or the conferences that you're kind of looking forward to in 2024?
00:37:41
Speaker
Morgan, you've been to the most recent one, so why don't you start? Yeah, so this year, I went to ASU-GSV. I went to one of the LMS conferences, I went to the Anthology conference.
00:37:57
Speaker
I went to OEB and then online I've done the degrees at scale, you know, and the energy cores. And, you know, they're valuable in different kinds of ways. Certainly, even when they don't work out, they're really valuable for me. And partly because, just to go back to my Gartner days, that they weren't always good in understanding how people follow or how people cover product. So
00:38:22
Speaker
in my first years at Gartner I wasn't allowed to go to vendor conferences and it wasn't just me it was it was all of us in the team and which was insane because I had to cover those vendors and so I find in order to actually speak knowledgeably I do need to go to those kinds of places not only for the sessions but also for those side conversations where I where I learn a heck of a lot so they are valuable
00:38:47
Speaker
You know, OEB was different and it was gave a different angle and I did enjoy it and there's another issue in terms of value for money, which I do want to touch on for a while, but those are the ones I went to and I did enjoy them. Next year, one of the ones I do want to go to, for years I wanted to go to Infocom, the Avixa conference, which is actually classroom technology, and it alternates between Orlando and Las Vegas and next year's in Las Vegas, which
00:39:14
Speaker
I could drive to. So I'm going to go try and get to that just to sort of see what's new in that sort of thing. You know, mostly hang out in the exhibit hall. But what about you guys?
00:39:28
Speaker
Well, ASU-GSV has become a must-go conference.
Conference Evolution and Future Outlook
00:39:33
Speaker
When it first started out, it was smaller and it was way too much venture capital focus, rah-rah, how do we invest? The joke was after each day at the conference, you need to go back to the hotel and shower because you feel so icky.
00:39:49
Speaker
Well, the conference has really improved that it's not so VC-focused, and they really have doubled down on bringing in really smart, important people to be there, even if they're not looking for investment. And so you get really good presentations, you get great hallway conversations, and it's become a must-go-to conference, in my opinion, one of the most important in EdTech, if you will.
00:40:14
Speaker
I always go, there's some level of the LMS conferences, Anthology, Instructure, D2L, and Moodle that for what we do, we need to cover all of those. I have to say, InstructureCon used to be the conference to go to. Nobody did a conference like they did.
00:40:35
Speaker
They would do it at a ski resort in the summer and you were coistered together. You weren't part of a city and, you know, getting distracted and going out. Everything was you were together and they provided all of the environments to enable conversations. And it was during the sessions, but it was also.
00:40:55
Speaker
hanging out in the evening, the activities they planned. So I think nobody has run a conference as well as InstructureCon used to be run in terms of enjoyable. I'm fully there and participating in the conference. Moodle for the past three times has had the very good benefit of being in Barcelona. And we're trying to make sure we spend more time there for the international angle. It's getting better. It still needs some improvement.
00:41:25
Speaker
OLC is an important one in the US. Then there's a couple in London. BETT used to be an important one. I'm going to be interested to hear your reaction, Neil, on BETT and what it's become. But there's also EdTech Week in June that I think that we need to do a better job. I've only been there one time for that. Now, one of my favorite conferences is WCET. It's smaller.
00:41:54
Speaker
It has some great regulatory discussions, which for better or worse, we care about that a lot. But part of what I love about them is it's ecumenical that they do not treat vendors as just sponsors and just providing the booths.
00:42:12
Speaker
They're actually fully participating in the conversations during the sessions and during the keynotes. And so it's really people together. So WCT has been a long favorite of mine. There's some others, like I went to Lucian Live last year, which is surprisingly large and interesting. It was, I learned quite a bit there. But sorry, maybe I've gone to too many conferences, but those are some of the specifics from my side. How about for you?
00:42:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, Bet is an interesting one in the UK when I've been to. I didn't go this year. I feel to a certain extent that it kind of probably falls a little bit in that bracket of you need to go back to the hotel and have a shower. Just because you're in this huge, big space and there's a lot of vendors, there's a lot of selling going on.
00:43:06
Speaker
depending on when you're there, that there's often kind of a big K-12 focus. So, you know, there's a degree of sensory overload as well as, you know, just the sheer number of vendors. I know that they have tried to
00:43:22
Speaker
open up a higher education track and that's kind of generated some interesting speakers but I've not had a chance to kind of go along to that just yet but yeah that's one of the big standout ones I guess in the UK. I mean for me you know the Times Higher Education Digital Universities Week I think is becoming you know a really important one to be at over here and I was at that one this year and I think you know that was a good conference in terms of
00:43:51
Speaker
the number and the composition of people who were there. That was a really nice one. And I think that would be good if that kind of became cemented in the UK as the one where a lot of online education and digital education professionals go to, because it's a good one, I think, and a good opportunity for people to kind of share stuff and get some good speakers. And we had someone from IBM
00:44:16
Speaker
this time round which is interesting on AI so this yeah they can also bring in bigger names as well for those kind of events but I guess one of the highlights for me I think I mentioned it on the last podcast was the online learning summit up at the University of Leeds and I think that
00:44:32
Speaker
you know that hit the sweet spot for me in terms of curation I mean it would do anyway because you know it's it's you know in my in my kind of firmly in my wheelhouse in terms of topics but they just did an excellent job at getting a good range of
00:44:48
Speaker
speakers who are doing interesting things in the UK and internationally. And there was plenty of opportunity for conversations and connections outside of that. So that was a really, really good one. And yeah, I've had opportunities to travel a little bit through speaking this year. It was interesting to go over to Norway. I spoke at a conference up there around distributed learning, but it was for
00:45:15
Speaker
for universities that are training people in the military so that was what was interesting about that I suppose for me was just you get another flavor of what's happening in another realm of education and what's going on there so you know there's always that aspect of conferences that I like that you know you get to encounter and discover things that
00:45:36
Speaker
maybe you didn't know that much about and just get a bit of a picture. And I guess one of the things I'd be interested in in the year coming up is again, maybe a bit more of a European.
00:45:48
Speaker
Focus, I think Morgan, you mentioned maybe like your reflections on OAB as a conference, but also what was happening in Europe around online education. And that's certainly something that's kind of on my radar around understanding a little bit better. So, you know, we have we have organizations like I think there's European Association of Distanced Teaching Universities that have a conference.
00:46:11
Speaker
So yeah, there's lots of good stuff out there. I wondered if either of you had a view on your preference for in-person versus online. And I guess what you thought about that, because it feels like for obvious reasons, conferences that were online are going back into person and whether
00:46:35
Speaker
actually there's a missed opportunity there or there's a kind of a bad balancing effect that's going on. I don't know if you know what I mean, but I wonder what you thought about that. Yeah, I have a strong preference for in-person and maybe I'm just old and crusty and get off my lawn kind of approach, but because I get so much from the side conversations and just from being in the milieu, so to speak, of
00:47:01
Speaker
of the conference, I find it difficult. I will take an online conference over nothing at all, but because things are so reliant on the content there, if the content is bad, then you're really dead in the water. And it's very easy not to prioritize it. So I find those less than optimal. I know, particularly in my time at Gartner, I had to work very well
00:47:25
Speaker
and very hard to make myself into a good presenter so that I didn't get comments like my voice was monotonous and boring and I did make myself a really good presenter. I never made myself a good presenter online so in terms of presentation I really prefer because I feed off the audience's energy and my humor can work and things like that and it doesn't tend to work online so I definitely prefer that and I just find the side conversation so much better in person but
00:47:56
Speaker
Yeah, I'd be interested in some of your perspectives. Well, for me, I mean, I 100% agree face-to-face is the way to go because of the side conversations. But there are a lot of conferences that need to be online, so do a good job with that format. And so I've enjoyed some online conferences, but my general preference because of the side conversations
00:48:20
Speaker
is face to face. But I will say if I end up retiring, I don't know that I ever planning on the horizontal retirement, but I will be happy on my deathbed if I never have to go to an online conference, not just the interaction of the sessions, but where they try to make a fun online event in the evening. If I can avoid those, I will be happy to retire, not have to do that ever again.
00:48:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's an interesting peculiarity, I think, of online conferences because I agree with you. My preferences were in person. But I think my observation around some of the online conferences is that we're not very imaginative about them because we try to replicate the experience. It's the whole online learning thing rolled out. You know, like they just take a class and try and put it online with all its different things instead of rethinking it from the ground up. Yeah, totally.
00:49:16
Speaker
I think some of the benefits of doing an online conference is to not think about it quite in the same way in terms of how compressed everything is. You have the potential for an online conference in which it spans a longer period, and you can really pick and mix what you see, and you have the on-demand component to it.
00:49:39
Speaker
if you were to curate a excellent online conference. And we often say in online education, look, one of the benefits, you can go and get that amazing guest speaker from that country to speak on your course. So there are benefits, advantages of it, but you could see how that would play out in a conference that you might have better availability to.
00:50:01
Speaker
a range of speakers, and if you thought carefully around how the conference played out, you might get a really good conference on the back of that, but too often it's just trying to ape the real thing, for want of a better phrase.
00:50:19
Speaker
But anyway, that's been a really, really useful conversation. And I think I feel like I found out a lot more about what you guys like and definitely what you don't like about conferences. So maybe I'll hand back to you, Phil, to wrap everything up.
00:50:39
Speaker
Well, we should make a goal of ours to find a conference in 2024 that the three of us go to together. Yes. So that's there. There's there's my New Year's resolution. OK, I'm down there. Yeah. Just just for the audience, I've never actually met Neil. Yeah. And Phil and I have only met once. So there we go. Twenty twenty four is going to happen.
00:51:02
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Hey, well, it's great talking to you guys and we look forward to the
Podcast Conclusion and Future Plans
00:51:07
Speaker
new year. This should be the last episode we're doing in 2023, but we will rejoin you in early January. Thank you.