From Campus to Cloud: Dustin Ramsdell on the Digital-First University Journey

learning products. Now magic wants to bring its pedagogical and engineering expertise to make your key learning products accessible, sticky and well adopted. Check them out at Magic Ed tech.com, which is Ma GIC. Ed Te ch.com and when you get in touch tell them Ed Tech Insider sent you. Welcome to Edtech insiders where we speak with founders, operators, investors and thought leaders in the education technology industry and report on cutting edge news in this fast evolving field from

around the globe. From AI to xr to K 12 to l&d, you'll find everything you need here on edtech insiders. And if you liked the podcast, please give us a rating and a review so others can find it more easily. Dustin Ramsdell is an ed tech content creator and influencer who aims to drive meaningful conversations with top leaders in the higher education field.

His show the higher ed geek podcast explores all the nuances of higher education with a focus on innovative technology and practices from his fellow professionals. Dustin also works as a community engagement lead at pacify. He loves craft beer, good pizza and sustainability and lives happily in Delaware, with his wife Jen and their daughter, Ellie, Dustin Ramsdell. Welcome to Ed Tech insiders.

collective. So yeah, I just had the itch to get back, wanted to kind of like start my own thing, and kind of, like, grow that up, you know, kind of grassroots. So yeah, just got that started, kind of, you know, working off sort of the muscle memory of what I'd done before. And I just wanted to, like, put myself out there kind of, you know, network and learn, but also, you know, it is sort of like a service that I feel like I kind of give back to the field, it's given me

so much kind of thing. So, you know, yeah, I mean, over the years, it's just been super enjoyable. And even, you know, sort of being at the place I am now it's just created some cool opportunities, you know, to get out to events and just meet a lot of people that I really respect in the field. So yeah, it's been quite the journey.

it has been a blast. So you've talked to people throughout higher ed, you've talked to a lot of different folks in both the tech field and sort of the higher ed ecosystem in various places. So, you know, tell us a little bit about some of the things you've learned from them. Like, what are some things that sort of blew your mind a little bit or sort of surprised you when you heard them in your podcasting? Yeah,

Because yeah, I mean, it all kind of like, you know, I guess understandably so like, starts to blur together the point because, yeah, like as a content creator, and I think you probably, you know, feeling this and it's just It is that kind of like, you got to keep the hustle going and everything kind of just like onto the next one and everything and it all sort of like may sound sort of like dismissive in a sense, but it's the idea to that, like it's blurting out or sort of blending

in and all sort of informing the perspective on the work, the respect for people doing things, and it's just that idea of so many people are firmly committed to working in higher education, making students experiences better, and even just all the sort of like other, you know, stakeholders, parents, alumni, community members, faculty, staff, everything, but like, yeah, throughout the years that I've tried to keep a pretty diverse diet of people on the

show. Okay, so it's like just seeing all of the nuanced ways, and kind of how like, all the details matter, you know, all the way from sort of the 30,000 feet view perspective of a president, you know, kind of running an institution to folks who are like, working to just like, you know, implement an intricate Chatbot. In a website, it's like, that's just like, obviously, it's like, even just on your screen, it's a very

small thing. And it could be just having like, micro interactions, you know, with a person here and there over time. And obviously, like, it sort of can kind of have an exponential impact and just the value that it brings. But it's just like a minor thing. But it's just a great quality of life improvement and talking through the strategy and how you build

that, how you improve it. And all that to like, that's what I've really appreciated is that up and down the chain, all those people who are working at institution or working with them all really have like a really firm focus and commitment and kind of, you know, that mission driven mentality, which is just always refreshing. And it just, that's why I love and can't see myself working in any sort of

other space. And even like now, where I have various podcasts that I do, like, they're all still tying in to higher education, that's always going to be kind of the tie that binds us and kind of has some affinity and shared language and sort of experiences and everything. So yeah, it's definitely like, it's very powerful. And that's the idea of being addictive, I

guess. It's just like, yeah, like more people, I want to talk to more people about this, and maybe even like, revisit with old people being like, Yeah, let's do sensory talk two years ago, or something? Yeah,

field. And I love what you're saying about the sort of macro and micro that you know, from the strategy, you know, the people at the very top setting strategy, looking at like 10 year trends to people who are, you know, working directly with students, or looking at the very small details that make things that really matters, especially in higher ed, they really, really matter. Everybody all has to be sort of aligned on certain things for something to work,

which is really hard to do. When you're talking about a big organizations like many universities, it's a nice way to look at it, I think that's a, it's very fun to see the same kind of issue from many different perspectives. And I think speaking with people on a podcast is an incredible way to do that. You mentioned a few different podcasts. And we will get into those, you've done a few different and you have a new

one this year. But let's talk about your edtech work, you are the community engagement lead at path of phi, which is a engagement hub sort of college portal, tell us a little bit about what path phi is and what you're doing to foster connections between students, faculty, and alumni. Yeah, so

that I have with this work. So yeah, I mean, they are building kind of, I think is the easiest way to explain it is that sort of like, you know, college portal, but very much in kind of an elevated sense that, you know, does have that front facing portion that a student uses to kind of manage their daily academic life. But on the back end, there's kind of a secret sauce of middleware that's pulling together all the platforms that the institution uses to kind of have them work

better together. And for that front end student experience, they can at least have little sort of modules and integrations that show them high level

summaries of information. And perhaps they can take action, right there from that portal versus having to go deeper in the system, sometimes they may need to go into that, you know, LMS are something to, you know, take advantage of the full functionality, that platform, but we're kind of always working to build out more and different integrations and also deeper

integration. So that, you know, you go into that dashboard, you go into that engagement hub, you can kind of start to do your business of being a student kind of have an idea of what's in the dining hall menu, and different things like that. And there's also like community building feature, you know, very simple kind of, you know, Facebook

style sort of experiences. But it's also like that, something I've kind of recognized is that we're at a place that's like social medias and very, like, awkward teenage years, whatever. Institutions leverage those tools to try to build community. But I think you need to kind of move towards a more social media agnostic approach, because it's like, if you're like, Well, we have a Facebook group for all our first year students like, so

we're good, right? That's like, be it if you don't have an account, then you're sort of out of luck, like, you're not really going to be able to, you know, take advantage of that space. So like, if you have something where it's like, you know, you don't need to make an account, it's all single sign it like it's all just sort of all integrated to what you have there as a student. And so you have that there to use to connect with other students and faculty and staff and all those

sort of things. So it's really exciting. Yeah, because I think there's just the student engagement piece of it. But then there's also just the idea of like, where we're at, and I think there's, you know, we'll talk more about this, like sort of the digital infrastructure of institution. It's really kind of taking a refreshing approach of how institutions look at their existing tech stacks.

sort of an agnostic approach. It integrates with a A wide variety of different types of tools and allows students access to them, including, you know, competitors, including, you know, different edtech companies that college would only have one up, like, you know, you integrate with all the big LMS is with Canvas and Brightspace and anthology and, you know, Moodle, but any of them will work or all the Google Suite, or Oracle and Salesforce are handshake, which is the the job

search platform or in space, which is a really cool, I believe it's a meeting like,

like a meeting platform. So it's a nice idea, because students especially come into college, and they have so many things to manage, like you said, the business of being a student, they have to understand their finances, the daily life, their classes, or registration, their credit hours, their vacation schedules, and then you know, all the actual work, it makes sense that behind the scenes, there's a lot of different systems, you know, working on their behalf and working on the

university's behalf. But they shouldn't have to navigate them all separately, it makes a lot of sense to have a sort of single point portal to put them together. And how are students reacting to this kind of portal?

experiences like this. And also, part of sort of the package deal is mobile and web parity, where like, you get a dedicated mobile app, so you download the, you know, my college put out, you know, whatever the name is, it's usually how they branded them as like, you know, by USU, or something. So they have that dedicated app, it's the exact same experience optimized, you know, between web and mobile. So like, that sort of monitoring

experience is really great. And then, you know, the fact that, yeah, it's just like, efficiency, I think I'm probably gonna keep using that word throughout our whole conversation here, like, you know, like, it's like, students lives are busy enough, college is complicated enough, we owe it to them and ourselves, and just for this whole sort of endeavor to try to optimize and make things as efficient as possible, because I think it's just that tragedy of a student, they just

like, hit a breaking point of like enough friction and confusion and trying to make decisions in a vacuum or something to where it's just like, you know, they'll they'll bail out or stall out, you know, and just, we owe it to them to try to make that experience as easy as possible. So I think, yeah, the response has been really great. And do you kind of keep an eye on the things that we're putting out a path of IOC, some some cool milestones that

we're hitting? And yeah, it's, it's a really, really interesting space to kind of play in because, on one hand, it's a very focused platform, like we're just building out the engagement hub, but like, yeah, there just is more and more integrations. And we call like, sort of, like recipes and institutions in the US that sort of mix up and cook up, you know, what they want their platform to

look like. And then students can kind of customize their own view as well, which is sort of contoured around like, Okay, you're a second year business student who lives on campus, here are the things that you see, but then you're like, well, actually, I want like me, when I'm looking at my thing, based on what I've been personalized by the institution and role based permissions and stuff like, I want this to be bigger. I want this over here. But yeah,

it's just, it's really cool. I think just that that level of personalization, and customization really is kind of resonating with people

while. And can you tell sort of define what you mean by a digital first university and why it's so important for higher ed to sort of embrace that digital first mindset?

And I think it's simply a mindset that at work to implement digital tools, which serve online learners, first and foremost, because I think historically, they have been chronically underserved. But you do it in a way that is able to better serve all students, like if you're creating structures that make resources and tools and you know, all sorts of things more accessible at all hours, and from all places and all those sort of things like everybody's going to benefit.

So, you know, it's trying to bridge that chasm of like, well, we have our online student support stuff over here. And then everything else over here, it's like no, you just have your students support and you've built it in a way where you can schedule a zoom call with your coach, you can meet with them in person you can like do like any of those kinds of things, but the result is that students are able to access any resources

they need at any time. Hopefully utilize some level of lifestyle webservice because that obviously is kind of implicit if you're building on a really kind of powerful digital platform, and then again, have like, kind of full parity with the on campus student, like, you'd want to be kind of taking that inventory and seeing like, Okay, well, they can access this, but not that, like, how can we try to, you know, have each of them have everything that they need to be successful?

eclipsed there on grounds. So they really are prime examples of like, I don't imagine every institution is going to have that sort of level of scale. But like, you could kind of just like point to that and be like, yep, that's like kind of where you need to, you know, aim towards, but it's just going to be on a spectrum. And so that's the idea of like, what I've seen, it's not even expecting, like, Hey, if you're not here, if you're not doing it, then you're like dead and gone, or

whatever. It's just like, yeah, like, depending on how you sort of operate and where you are. Now, if you're at least sort of building the awareness and developing that digital first strategic plan. That is where you need to be epic. It's like, yeah, like the trend lines aren't, we're not gonna be going

backwards. So like, some institutions did do really well, with like, all the stuff that they implemented over the past, you know, three years, they're like, well, let's just like keep it and we'll just kind of keep moving on other ones were like, Oh, my gosh, I'm so glad we don't have to do this anymore. And just chucked it. It's like, okay, well, like, you're definitely going to be hamstrung

a bit. Because, like, I mean, we still even see websites, where it's like, they don't have any sort of mobile optimization or anything like, you know, so it's that kind of philosophy of like, okay, if you build for, you know, mobile, the build for digital first mindset, it's like everybody benefits versus like, yeah, you just got the one thing here, it's sort of just losing out on this whole other segment.

You know, like, if you're not building to be inclusive of online learners, hybrid learners, but like, honestly, anymore, like, these are requirements to be inclusive of adult learners, you know, working students, and just, you know, all the above the populations that I think it's a tutions need to be inclusive of, and mindful of, and really cognizant of, you know, you can't just like throw up an online program and expect students to be successful, like, there will be a very small

fraction that will be they'll be able to tough it out and navigate everything. But yeah, so I think all that to say, the implementation so far is sort of, like, inconsistent, and that's why I want to keep sort of talking about it and talking about as much sort of the, like, tangible pieces of it, I guess, are sort of like, you know, why

it's important and all that. I mean, yeah, so it's a big conversation, because it really is, the idea of like, a digital first university like this is an institution wide sort of thing that really is gonna take a lot of sort of coalition building and sort of people working together and all that. So it's not something that's just going to be, you know, sort of an overnight kind of flip the switch.

that are online. So they have to think digital first, when that sort of moment started coming out, where it became very clear that the biggest universities by learner numbers, were these mega universities. And it wasn't the University of Phoenix anymore. It wasn't this sort of like, slightly, but if not very, you know, odd alternative. It was genuine schools that had real standard that really cared that were accredited in real ways. But they were optimizing for online and he was just taking

off like crazy. And it felt like, oh, it seems like a pretty obvious thing that other universities we're going to do.

And some have, to some extent, I mean, you know, Penn State World Campus is incredible, some University of Maryland, that has done a lot of amazing stuff online, but I've always been surprised at how many schools you know, still consider they're on campus, you know, feet on the ground students, the sort of end all and be all of what their student body really is, especially, you know, faculty.

And maybe that's changed for now, like by now, but have you seen the rise in online learning both before the pandemic with the snooze of the world, and during the pandemic with everybody learning online? And has it changed the mindset of the faculty within any of these universities to say, oh, you know what, as a professor, I teach students all over the world all over the country.

entry, I teach people working learners like you're saying adult learners, non traditional students, quote unquote, have you seen that sort of mindset change? And people not think about regular old, you know, 18 to 2020 twos?

you know, in person. And like, we do just need to think about sort of adult learners because it's like, well, so technically, an 18 year old is an adult, but like, so I think, like, we are just marginally past that point where, like, you know, that is like one byproduct of the rapid transition to emergency remote learning, and everything is that like, everybody had an exposure

to it. And everybody had to start to like, you know, integrate it in some fashion and all that, like I said, like just varying levels on the spectrum. So I think that is sort of a, the majority of people do accept the fact that in certain places and certain ways online is equal, and you know, those sorts of things. So like, we're at a

good place with that. And that, I mean, yeah, if you look at the numbers, like most students anymore, are at like, you know, public institutions not for profits, and that most are starting to kind of the median

age is edging up and stuff. But yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where, like, I think, you have to be mindful of like, who's sucked a lot of the air out of the room, these conversations even see it with like those big mega universities, or some of the players that are working in the online space, or just anytime, like stuff comes out about higher ed and mainstream news outlets and stuff. It's all the ivy League's of the worlds and

those sort of things. It's just like, all of the other myriad of institutions out there, like it's happening quietly, and I think it's just, it's one of those things, where it's, like I said, it's just gonna be this sort of March for a while of really just kind of climbing up the mountain of having more places and body really intentional, positive Digital First, you know, sort of infrastructure and everything.

So I'm excited to see it. And I think that's the idea that, you know, you're gonna have the people and institutional leaders that are really committed to making this happen versus like the, I would say, like, increasingly small portion of naysayers or people that are going to drag their feet are

kind of those sort of things. So yeah, I'm really hopeful, because I think it's something that will really kind of scaffold this disruptive moment that we've been in, and we'll continue to be through with like it robot clips of AI and whatever, like keeping the sort of guardrails on there a little bit like, it's not just going to, you know, go fully out of control.

do it. I remember reading years ago, about, you know, some of the strategies in the early online learning days, they were like, what are the strategies to make an online class work, and it was things like, train them on the technology and have an onboarding about what online learning is, is like, and all these things that were like, even retrospect, of course, you do that if you're doing something completely new. But now we're past that we're past, you know, people know what

online learning is? So what are some of the key components or strategies of this digital infrastructure that universities should focus on to try to be digital first and serve learners digitally through their apps and sites and tools?

efficiency. So stuff that kind of has an ease of use and ease of implementation, we're seeing a lot more of that nowadays, where you're kind of being mindful of like, oh, well, this is gonna be a eight month onboarding, implementation, whatever kind of process or something, it's like, Hey, this is like cloud based, we can go as quick as you want. So that's one thing, you know, having it work well with everything else that you use. So that's sort of kind of what we're getting at

before too. Like that was really like an epiphany for me coming to pacifies. Yeah, again, where it's like, whatever you got work with it, or you need us to, like build something out, because you kind of use something unique, like we can talk about that. But yeah, it is trying to say like, what you have is good, we're just going to make it better. We're going to make the interface easier to use and all

that kind of stuff. And then yeah, just like the efficiency again, if you're not seeing that, I don't know maybe how this would necessarily happened. But like, if you've implemented a chatbot, and it's making your life harder, then it's like, we need to try to, you know, tinker with this a little bit like what's happening because probably the idea of like, you know, just right now was like, I'm challenging myself with this, you did not build the knowledge base to be sort of

robust or dynamic enough. So it's like, still just forwarding tickets to everybody. And it's like, okay, it's not answering anything that people are actually asking because we need to go back under the hood there. So it's that idea to wear like a key portion of it. I think anymore. under that I'm seeing with the key components and how you're sort of creating the strategy is like, you might think about any respective tool.

And I think kind of what you're getting at is an interesting example too, with like online learning, you might be like, yeah, you will, you know, you're going to teach the students how to use the platforms and stuff. And it's like, yes, and you need to teach all the faculty and teach all the staff and get a contract, maybe what their use cases, but like, depending on what the tool is to even need to be considered. What is the parents user experience gonna be? What's the alumni user

experience gonna be like? If you really have certain things that those constituents might be sort of like dropping into or utilizing? You just need to be mindful, you know, how are we kind of onboarding people to be able to utilize those tools so that people have the information that they want, and they need when they want it and how they want it? And all those sort of

things? So I think there's a lot of growth areas of appreciating that there's folks committed to working in like, the parent area, specifically and alumni areas, specifically different like that tech tools. So

digital first approach. And it strikes me that one of the trends that we've started to see, and I think pacifier is a great example of this, but as are some of the other platforms out there, this feeling of well, we need the interface, and the learning upfront to be as simple as possible, because people are overwhelmed with tools. It can't

be complicated. But we needed to interoperate with all the complex systems that are happening behind the scenes like the Aleutians and Oracle's and you know, student information systems. And that's sort of how you get to efficiency in some ways. I'm trying to put them all together, but like the idea of simplicity upfront to the users, but interoperability that allows it to actually go very deep into the complex tech ecosystems that

universities run on. It feels like a trend, and I've never quite thought of it that way. But I think, you know, pacifies, clearly doing this. But, you know, we've talked to nectar while ago nectar has like a community platform is trying to be slack for schools. And a lot of what they do is that to like, make it feel incredibly intuitive, because it uses consumer style stuff, front end, but on the back end has very

deep data integration. I'm curious if you feel like that is part of this philosophy.

the cheapest tool that sort of checks the box that it's like, you're really going to suffer in the sense of probably like, it's not going to work well, with any anything else, it's probably gonna get just a clunky interface or something. So it's like, really kind of want it

that balance. And there's always the other kind of balance of like, time cost quality or something, you know, like, you want to try to find that harmony, and maybe certain things are just going to be more important, depending on what the platform is, or something where it's like, oh, really needs to have that deep data integration and analytics, and all this kind of stuff, willing to pay any price for that, like efficiency that sits maybe, but maybe there is efficiency gains just saves

us so much time. So yeah, we're paying a lot of money in our budget, but like, our people don't have to work so much. And that's all this sort of analysis and sort of analyzing the cost and benefits and everything. Because yeah, like it all matters. And you wouldn't want to sacrifice any one of those three things too much for the others, and they all impact each

other. And, yeah, so it's really, you know, there are we gonna be, I think, this kind of next wave of ad tech platforms, and they're gonna boil to the top and I think be the ones that are sort of leading the charge and sort of exactly these three things. It's sort of the digital first mindset. And, again, like, it's not trying to replace the on campus experience, I think nectar is another good example. Like, it can bridge gaps where these things couldn't happen or

wouldn't happen otherwise. But then if you're having that traditional, and I'm using air quotes here for people, learner experience for that 18 to 22 year old and on campus, all that kind of stuff, it can still really augment that experience where like, it's sort of an asynchronous companion to what's happening live in person for an event or something like you can kind of, you know, chat afterwards chat beforehand, like you go to see the concert or something, those sort of

examples that I just really love. So, yeah, it's just gonna be really exciting to see sort of, again, those particular platforms, how they're sort of playing into this sort of development of the digital first. Yeah,

university. You've talked to university leaders, you've talked to, you know, a lot of people who do tech within universities, faculty, how can people who work in the university ecosystem lead the transformation and sort of push the university to become a digital first, how do they get buy in from everybody? What would you recommend for sort of getting everybody on the same page towards that goal?

interfacing with a tool. So bring all those different perspectives and stakeholders together to evaluate the tools, build the implementation plan and kind of baked in mechanisms for, you know, feedback loops, and just continuous improvement. But yeah, I mean, like, you're just not, you're not going to get very far if you're just sort of imposing tools on people just like leaving them to their own

devices. And in the other sense to you, because obviously, this is a lot more so structure that maybe some folks are used to, but like, at this point, we're not going to get very far, if everyone has complete autonomy, either if every single school at the university or school or college or whatever, at the university, is using different tools for different things, and it's just going to be a mess, and like, they may work fine, but they're not gonna be able to reach their full potential if

you're using, you know, pacify and like, you can't even there's too many things to even try to bring it like it would just be this such a laborious effort. So I think you need to try to have a centralized digital strategy that, again, is sort of bought in by the people, and you can find those champions, you know, those people that you will empower to advocate for whatever you're trying to do, I think that's going to be really

important. Because like, there's obviously that idea of like, you gotta build the committee, and you know, might just be kind of a peanut gallery, people give me their opinions, but he kinda want to be like, Hey, you seem to really get this, they seem to be really passionate about this, like, can we empower you to be that person who's going to train your fellow faculty members, or your fellow staff members, or be even like a student peer leader, advocate, because like, if

you're using something like path, like, this is institution wide, every student has access, and like, it honestly, benefits from as many people using it as possible. Because if you're trying to be like, hey, like, trying to make friends on campus, and it's just crickets out there, then you're gonna be like, Well, I'm just bailing out on this is useless, like, so you kind of want to try to drum up a lot of support and engagement

and everything. So, yeah, you'd want those champions kind of up and down, and just really be thoughtful, you know, as you're building out like that onboarding, where you can go as fast or slow as you want, we're just gonna be like, we're probably gonna want to take our

time. And I mean, you know, like, this person is on vacation, we should do this without that, like, just really try to be finding that balance of like, not, you know, taking all the time in the world to do it, certainly, but like having that intentional, thoughtful approach to be inclusive of everybody. So yeah, I think those are the things that I thought of, I think thinking about this because yeah, again, that's that's part of the ease

of implementation. Part of what I mentioned is just this sort of like that human element less so the sort of technical pieces.

needed. And I think that tension between sort of central authority and autonomy is central to the higher ed, you know, that balancing that is what higher ed is all about, right? They give people lots of power, lots of different people, lots of power, because the idea is it shouldn't feel, you know, these are highly educated people. And they shouldn't feel completely, you know, like

they're cogs in a wheel. So it's a really interesting approach, it strikes me just hearing you talk about it to that one. simplicity and efficiency are both incredibly valuable to the end users, right to students, for sure. And to faculty, if it's making things more efficient, saving you time and easy to learn, or easy to use, thumbs up all around, the interoperability is maybe how you get your IT folks on board,

right? You say, Hey, this is not something new that you have to maintain, that's just totally separate, and you got to port CSVs, back and forth. This is actually totally interoperable with all the systems we already use with our LMS is with our information systems, maybe with our financing systems. That is maybe how you get the people on the inside onboard. So I think your principles sort of apply here, as well. I would imagine. I have one more question for you, you know, it's a little bit

of a big one. It's sort of like a high level one. But, you know, this idea of the digital first University, and a university that sort of considers its online learners and its non traditional learners and as a sort of core use case, and then builds things for them, which then have major benefits for the, you know, on campus learners. Really, really interesting, and I'm sure it will resonate with people over

time. I'm curious what you see, you know, 10 years from now, what would happen if the Digital First movement really did take off if universities embraced it if they said, you know, Hey, we're gonna lean into AI and predictive analytics, we're gonna lean into, you know, communication tools and social media, we're gonna lean into all these things and make students lives easier and more, you know, give them the information they need, and answer their questions and everything. Like, what would

it look like? What do you think your impact would have on that higher education experience?

they need. And, you know, faculty don't have to be kind of bogged down with sort of, you know, things in the LMS, or something else, like it just those sort of meaningful interactions are some of the high impact things that happen for students on campus or, you know, online. And we'd want to try to be able to just create

more space for that. I think it's just going to lessen sort of the burdens and the stress on everybody, frankly, and I think we'll just see, I guess this I take a very utopian perspective on this question, like, you would just hope to see just a lot more student success, a lot more student graduation, a lot more sort of students attaining the goals that they originally set out, and there's just wave fewer hurdles and friction points in the way and even just the idea of the reach that sort

of the graduated check, like the path there is more pleasant, they're more satisfied. And they're getting more out of that experience, too. So I want to try to like hammer this out, bold, underline whatever metaphor you want to use. It just will make things better for everybody, while kind of raising the bar on those metrics. So I think yeah, it's just really great stuff that I really hope to see. And I think there's a lot of work to be done a lot of

nuances. But yeah, again, there's a lot of committed people focusing in on this. So it's very, very exciting time.

like, that's every student. It's the first experience people have with a class and it is all about delivering information that's non academic, or it's it's logistical, academic, that could all be done through a chatbot or through a text message. And you'd be like, Hey, this is how this class works. Now, on the first day, you're going to do something awesome, because the professor has planned an amazing experience for you. How much better would that be?

LMS, or different things. And it's like, Yeah, take that philosophy, and really move it forward to like, okay, let's just get rid of syllabus week, you know, let's build out the LMS, that should have a shell for every course, whether it's on person or online or hybrid, whatever else like, we do that all just in the LMS. It's self paced, and maybe you've done it times before. So you're just

breezing through it. Or you want to actually like, take some time to watch the videos and watch them again and do whatever it like, you might need that additional support, but allows that's something else that I've really appreciated about when you're building learning experiences that is creates that sort of self peace portion or kind of choose your own adventure where it's like, okay,

I didn't understand this. I'm going to like watch this three times or something like and that could be Yeah, just onboarding could be some concept in your course. Whatever.

and communities and stuff. So really excited to see that. Yeah,

topics and everything. So I think they're just a great resource just for maybe something kind of a little bit different sense of like, it's not a book or a thing. It's just like it's an event to look into. And, you know, I've been sort of itching to get out into the world for the past couple years. So I encourage folks to check those out.

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