7: Remote versus Online Learning with Holly Owens

Holly Owens  0:00  
It's kind of like giving somebody a car without an engine and saying, "figure out how to make this run." The teachers, the educators, the faculty across p through 20 were not prepared for this.

Heidi Kirby  0:17  
Hello friends and welcome to the BLOC, the Building Learning and Organizational Culture podcast. I'm your host Heidi Kirby. On this episode we have Holly Owens, who is assistant director of instructional design at Touro College and founder of Jolly Holly Ed Services. We talk about some of the recent criticism of remote learning with the COVID-19 pandemic, and how remote learning and online learning are different. Holly gives some best practices for online learning that may help some educators who are teaching remote for the first time this fall. It's the perfect back-to-school episode with a little something for everyone. So I hope you enjoy This episode after a brief word from our sponsor, Verasana.

Verasana Narrator  1:04  
Your business needs a better way to train. The better that your team needs is training that leads to performance. Verasana is interactive and repeatable. So, your employees can return to lessons as many times as they need to. And we optimize the training so they, and you, can review their progress. The power of mobile makes it possible. Our team has decades of experience and expertise. We do it because we've been where you are. Verasana - a better way to learn.

Holly Owens  1:34  
Hi, Holly, how are you? 

I'm great Heidi, how are you? 

Heidi Kirby  1:37  
I'm good. So let's just get right into it. And if you could just tell me a little bit about your background, and how you got from education into instructional design. 

Holly Owens  1:46  
Absolutely. It's a very windy road, but I will start at the beginning. So I started out my career as a high school teacher, a young high school teacher. So, coming into the school, the principal designated me as the edtech specialist of the school. I did a grant through the state of Maryland and I got my own Smartboard and clickers in my classroom. So I just began incorporating those into my classroom lessons, you know, using the different technologies, some other teachers were starting to notice. So I was doing trainings with other instructors in my school, and then eventually, that led to more trainings. After that, I went into elearning development for about a hot minute, I would say, and then in the higher education as an Instructional Technology Specialist at Northern Virginia Community College. And from there, I moved around to various institutions. I also taught adjunct on the side because I love teaching so much and I want to hone my craft. So, I wanted to make sure that I was actually doing what I'm telling the instructors to do. That eventually led me to New York for an instructional designer position - instructional technology and design are very similar. If you look at their attributes, there's just a slight difference in terms of the technology aspect - like instructional technologists really know the technology really well. The instructional designer knows how to incorporate it into the pedagogy of the instruction. And then I got an internal promotion at my institution, which is Touro College and University System, about a year ago. And I've been the Assistant Director of Instructional Design ever since. So, that's the short version of it. Yeah, so teaching and instructional technology instructional design. have been my life since 2007. 

Heidi Kirby  3:31  
Awesome. Are you a TV person at all? Do you watch TV? 

Holly Owens  3:37  
I do when I can. 

Heidi Kirby  3:39  
Okay, because I was going to ask you a fun question - what is the most recent show that you've binge watched that you enjoyed? 

Holly Owens  3:48  
Oh, that's a great question. I love that question. You know, I was - I'm an old millennial, so probably Fuller House. You know, and of course it's not a show, but I recently watched Hamilton on Disney Plus and I've definitely binge watched that a few times. 

Heidi Kirby  4:07  
Okay, perfect. Yeah, great, awesome. Well, you have a really unique background that's really timely right now, I feel like, and something I've felt really passionate about because I have teachers in my family is all these headlines that have come out pretty much giving the axe to remote learning and online learning. I'm thinking of a particular one from the Wall Street Journal that I have here that says The Results Are In for Remote Learning: It Didn't Work. And I would just like to get kind of your - your thoughts and your feelings about some of the ways the media has kind of framed the whole COVID remote learning online learning situation.

Holly Owens  4:52  
Well, I obviously feel I have certain type of bias that that's incorrect, and they are using the term, I want to point out - remote learning. They're not using the terms online learning or online education, and those are very different. Remote learning is if you're, you know, kind of like what we're doing right now and talking synchronously and maybe giving some lessons online, but online education, online learning incorporates the pedagogy, the methods, all the different activities into the situation. And you know, it's kind of like giving somebody a car without an engine and saying, "figure out how to make this run." The teachers, the educators, the faculty across p through 20 were not prepared for this. They get to see their students in class and to unfairly say that it didn't go well, you know, that makes it - that puts a bad rap on online education. I don't like that because it takes years to hone that craft of online. It's very different from the face-to-face classroom. As you know, a lot of people try to mirror face-to-face and online but they're two different modalities, two different methods. It's really difficult to make it the same because of the human context situation and body language and all that stuff. So, yeah, the goal of online education is to not necessarily mirror what face-to-face does. It is its own entity - you are there to present the content, whether that's asynchronously or synchronously. And you're also there to give the students a dynamic learning experience by using technology. That's a huge component of online that isn't necessarily a huge component of face-to-face. So when somebody's bashing online education, I'm like, I'm like, "wait, take a step back." Think about how prepared we were for this in terms of the infrastructure for online, the internet. Lots of kids live in rural areas; they don't have access to the internet, but the schools are like well, we'll provide them with you know, access to our internet, but you have to drive to the school. And then you got to sit by the front door - I actually did this. My mom lives in in a rural area of Maryland, and you have to like - it's not feasible, you're gonna - the kids gonna sit in the car and gonna learn? You know, sitting in the car... I think we haven't found the right, you know, with COVID, we haven't found the right formula yet for success. We're still testing out everything and like anything with a lab, like if you're doing something scientific, you have a hypothesis, you gotta test it, it may or may not be wrong, and then you gotta go back - it's trial and error. So to unfairly state that online education - remote learning, not the same thing, that it didn't work... that really puts teachers in a tough position because they feel so much pressure right now and faculty members to learn all these different things. You should be lifting them up and saying, Okay, this is what went wrong. But now this is what we're going to do to make it go right. 

Heidi Kirby  7:53  
Right. No, I absolutely agree. And I think it's really uncovered something... I read someone's Tweet or post or something that said that we need to stop treating the internet as a luxury, it needs to become more of a utility, especially because of the amount of learning, job seeking, everything that requires the internet. Do you think that that's, that's true? 

Holly Owens  8:20  
Yeah, I definitely think that the internet is another technology that's a tool that teachers can use. There's so many great resources out there that teachers can use in their classroom, like virtual field trips, simulations. There's a plethora of things where the internet is very educational. And of course, we have our other stuff like the celebrities, the pop culture, that sort of thing. But, again, the students nowadays, even if we took COVID out of the situation, we would still have to teach our students these information literacy skills, we would still - they would still have to learn technology because they're going to be going into jobs that don't exist yet. So using the internet, using webcasting, that's stuff that they're really going to need to know. And who knows? They're going to be swiping one screen and just putting it on another, those different types of things that exist. So we have to be sure that we're preparing them for that the future. And if COVID wasn't here, I don't think it would have been rushed as much. But sure, but definitely, it's something - the internet is something that we should use as a tool. But there's another opportunity there, you can teach the students how to evaluate resources, like is Wikipedia a good scholarly resource? Well, it depends where those - where they're getting their information from, you know, how to search databases, those sorts of things the internet is great for but, you know, they run into other things, obviously. 

Heidi Kirby  9:45  
Sure, sure. One of the arguments that I have heard over the years about just online learning, in general, is "well, they could get distracted" and "how do you know that they're doing the work?" and you know, all of these things that you know, as somebody who was a professor in the classroom, I said, "Well, my students got distracted." They got distracted by a bug on the wall, right? Like - class was done, you know? Or they'd have their - they do the, you know, they'd be looking down at their - what looked like looking down at their privates, right? But they really just had their phone in their lap. They do the old look down and act like they're paying attention but like, oh, you're on your phone, right? So in person, you can be distracted as well. So I think that that's a really kind of a lame argument against online education - "well, how do you know they're not going to be distracted?" They're going to be distracted because you get distracted. It's preparing teachers on the best ways to engage their students, which leads me to my next question for you. What are some of the tips and even best practices, even resources - I'm just gonna let you tell me everything here in a second - for some of these teachers who haven't had any formal training on teaching online, who are now finding out, weeks before school starts, that that's what they're going to be doing this year?

Holly Owens  11:17  
Yeah. So, I want to kind of comment on what you were just talking about first, and then I'll go into some of the resources. So, I think that instructors, like I said, they're not prepared - they weren't prepared for this. So we can't hold them accountable for not preparing them. And also, it's important that they, like you said, they know where to go. So at the institution or at the organization, most school districts in K through 12 have a area called instructional technology or instructional design where they have a group of educators, you know, past educators who become designers, and they're there to support you in these efforts. I think one thing that happened is the technology wasn't tested enough. So like today, I have a little sister who's 12. She started middle school today. And the whole system was down this morning. This was the kids' first experience with, you know, online, not through March, it was kind of like they were just doing some worksheets and stuff and picking stuff up from the school, but preparing the students and then they just get there like, okay, the technology doesn't work for hours. And you know, she started Middle School. So that's a whole different thing. So one of the things I would recommend, especially for the designers and the teachers, is piloting and testing the technology, making sure that it works for the amount of people you're going to have on your system. Like, right now it's just me and you. But when you have 20 or so people want to call, especially in Zoom, or more than that, the infrastructure is just not there. We don't have the infrastructure in the United States that other countries have where we've set up web everywhere. We don't have that yet. We have to go to the Starbucks or the Paneras of the world to get reliable internet access. So, we really need to test things. So talk to those people who were considered the experts as my first thing because they are there to help. And they've been in your position most of the time. So they will give you the advice and the resources that you need for your district. I would also say seek out professional development opportunities on your own. OLC - there's Online Learning Consortium who does K through 12. In college, they have a bunch of workshops, some free stuff. I know idesign, which is an OPM, an online program management company, they actually came up with a free online teaching course. So faculty or teachers can take that and you get some best practices from that. But I would say in online, you really have to you have to think differently about online. And when I go to design my course, I'm not there to like check the students all the time. They're adults. I know some of the younger kids, you have to check them, but you have to present - you have to put in some structured assessments, and goals and objectives and everything has to be aligned. It has to be purposeful. It has to be meaningful. It has to be relevant. And it has to be clear to the students because you're there to guide them. You're their guide on this journey. So you have to incorporate those things that are necessary for them to take the next step. I think instructors think like, "Oh my gosh, online, I'm not going to - all I'm gonna do is throw all my documents up there." And then that's online... that is NOT online. It's active, it's interactive. So in my class, the students and I actually get to meet synchronously once a week. So that's good for me to clarify things. And even if you teach asynchronously, you can use Office Hours, the web conferencing, to meet with the students, or you can reach out to them individually, depending upon how many people you have in the class. But just knowing that you're there, it makes them more comfortable because they're like "we're all a team here. We're a community." And I think one thing a lot of people, administrators and educators, faculty try to do they try to find the one solution. There is no silver bullet in this equation, no silver bullet to correct this problem. There's a multiple, you know, step thing that you have to do in order to make this successful. And if you're looking for like, I don't like it when when teachers say or faculty say, "I want to make sure that they're doing this," like they want to micromanage their students, that's going to create a mood in your class that you just don't want. You want it to be a collaborative area, you know, that sort of thing.

Heidi Kirby  15:32  
Yeah, and encouraging the collaboration rather than it feeling punitive is really, you know, something that I feel strongly about, and I've - granted - I've mostly dealt with adult learners. So I've been very against, you know, forced completions in elearning or, you know, just some of the things that the more micromanaging designers or instructors put in place. Because, "well, they have to do the work, and they have to do it like I say," and you know, I have students in college who are writing their papers on their phones. Yeah, guys, that's not a great idea. But I'm not going to tell you not to if I can't tell the difference, right? You know, I think that a lot of times teachers just don't know where to go. They feel like they do, like you said before, like, they have to just do the exact same thing that they would be doing in the classroom, online. And that doesn't necessarily translate well. Some of my family members, my niece's who just started school, they were expected to be present online during the same hours that they would have been in the brick and mortar building and school and if they weren't, they were penalized, which I think is... 

Holly Owens  16:51  
I'm shaking my head right now. 

Heidi Kirby  16:55  
madness to expect that. What do you think? 

Holly Owens  16:58  
I agree, I think there need to be strategic breaks because of you know, we talked about like Zoom fatigue. We've seen that come across the media a lot or you know, computer fatigue, that's a thing. People get tired of being in the Zoom meetings. I know I definitely do. And I can't imagine the younger students whose brains have not fully developed to, to cope with some of these issues, how they feel, just putting them in the classroom for that length of time in a virtual environment is not okay. Now you can say we're going to do 45 minutes of in-class synchronous instruction, and then you're going to do you're going to take your lunch break, and then you have 30 minutes of a certain activity. So you plan those breaks within the day - I just can't imagine why they would penalize the students for something that they can't control. That's another thing too, I want to mention is that the faculty and the educators, it's really hard for them to let control go, because in the classroom, it's more teacher centric. But online, it's very much student centered and it's not a lot of teacher. You're really just guiding them. Like I said, you're taking them through the steps. So another thing is releasing that control. Once you realize that you can't - like anything in life - you're not in control of the situation, you can control the content. You can control the goals and objectives and the activities. But the students are going to make it their own. They're going to interpret it and they're gonna give you back maybe what you want, but not necessarily, but that's your cue to have a teachable moment and put them back on the right path. It's not something you penalize them for. Especially - what is it doing if the students sitting on the computer for six hours? Okay? Is there some sort of osmosis that's happening through the computer screen where they're, you know, like those sci-fi movies where they're plugging in, like an outlet and they're getting all the information? That's not - that doesn't say there's no goal tied to that there's no objective tied to that there's no assessment. So to me, that's, that doesn't, that doesn't make anything happen.

Heidi Kirby  18:57  
Right. And we've been in school. You can't tell me that you learn the whole time you're in the school building like, come on, come on. 

Holly Owens  19:06  
No, I was there to go talk to my friends and pass notes. I mean, we didn't have texting when I was in school, we had - you're passing notes and you know, trying to make the teacher put us in groups so we could have fun conversations. We're not learning all through that. Yeah, that's also a good point that you bring up it's, it's important to have the social aspect in the virtual learning environment because now that's gone for them in person. So if you take, five minutes before class or after class to ask them about their day, or have them in breakout rooms, and just have them chatting with each other, getting to know each other. That's important for the students: they feel isolated right now just like the teachers do. I'll tell you, you and I met on LinkedIn through a friend, I would have never met you otherwise through a virtual environment. Unless we were at some sort of conference together, we kind of bumped into each other. So I'm really grateful for that virtual environment because I've made so many connections and lifelong friends who I've never met in person. So that proves that it's possible. You know,  that this can work even even in a semester, even in a marking period, it can work, you just have to put in the work. 

Heidi Kirby  20:16  
Absolutely, yes, I will say I'm very proud. Shout out to my mom, who is a foreign language teacher of high school students who has already talked about using breakout rooms to let them have some practice and have some conversations, so great job! Proud of you, mom!

Holly Owens  20:34  
Yeah, good job, mom. Keep it up. 

Heidi Kirby  20:36  
Right? So the other thing that I've seen a lot of lately and I'm sure that you have to is teachers, in their panic about going back to school, looking to now transition into instructional design because they don't want to deal with whatever situation is going on at their educational institution. What kinds of quick tips fore transitioning would you have for those educators who hope to be an instructional designer?

Holly Owens  21:05  
I would tell them that they already have all the skills, they need to be instructional designers, as teachers, the education, all the stuff you have to do like the creating goals and objectives, creating assessments, putting something in a learning management system, or some sort of platform - that's what we do as instructional designers. We're basically on the back end, supporting the teacher. So if you would just take the step back and you would kind of be behind the curtain. And you would be supporting those people who are teaching and telling them what are the best practices, what are the things that work that work, it's also based on research to if you look at the research in terms of online education, you know, COI - Community of Inquiry model, those sorts of things. You have to know the learning, you know, learning theories, adult learning theory. You have to know those things so that when you encounter faculty, or people with, you know, more advanced credentials, you're saying, "Okay, this works, but this is the resource that backs it up". So you're kind of proving your point. And I would say for the teachers that want to go into instructional design and have been thinking about it, I've been talking to a lot of people since I started my business who want to go into instructional design, who are like "I don't even know where to start." I'm like your skills are completely translatable to instructional design. So let's start with you know, have you updated your resume? You know, what does it say? Have you been trained on this? Do you know how to you know, the the Big Four LMSs? Canvas? Moodle? Blackboard? DTL? Are you aware of those, so the teachers really come in with the set of skills that they need to be an instructional designer, they're just taking on a different task. It's like you're not - you're not in front of students every day, you more or less become the catalyst to the faculty who then interact with the students. So you're indirectly impacting the students. You're just doing it through the faculty. 

Heidi Kirby  22:54  
Right, and I would add to a couple episodes ago, we had a guest on - Jeremy - who said that one of the issues he encountered was when an educator became an instructional designer, but the reason they were passionate about education was that they loved seeing the light bulb come on. You don't really get that opportunity in instructional design. And you have to be okay with that if you want to, if you want to join the dark side. 

Holly Owens  23:22  
Yeah, definitely. And I would say that that happens with your the staff that you support. I've worked with staff who started at the very low or lower level of technology and comfort, and they've become great online educators. And to me, that's the rewarding part. And when they come back to me, and they say, "my students are really enjoying the class, and I'm really enjoying the class." Learning equals fun for everyone. So yeah, you can make it fun for everyone. And I'm not saying every lesson is going to be fun, every activity is going to be fun, because you obviously have to get through some cumbersome content, some concepts. It when you're - it's fun, like - I'll share an activity I did in my class if that's okay. 

Heidi Kirby  24:03  
Yeah, for sure. 

So this semester, every semester, I try to do something different. And that's another thing too. A best practice for the faculty, if you just keep copying your course from semester to semester, it's going to be outdated. And that's going to get boring. So try something new. Every semester, I went outside of the box, and I was thinking, I was like, what, in the real world is really like getting popular right now? And what a students need to do, you know, what do they need to know? And I teach students who are going to become, potentially, future instructional designers. So it's really a great course for me. A lot of them are educators, but are some of them are going into the corporate track. So the activity we did was, is they had to either develop a podcast where they were in pairs, one was the host and one was the guest. And the topic was intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The other option for those who want it to be a little bit more like a visual was they had to create a video like with Moovly or PowToon and the work that I got was amazing. It blew me away. I'm sitting there grading and I'm listening to these podcasts. We're looking at these videos and I'm like, some of the people that I know in the industry can't even do this. 

That's great. (laughs)

Holly Owens  25:24  
It was awesome. So I just like what, think you something creative, sit down and like, you know, do your your, your like meditating and get the creative juices flowing and think of something different. You know, your content, whether it's history, whether it's math, whether it's, you know, any social studies science, it lends itself to creativity. So, that's, you know, I was just, I was blown away by my students. I was so proud of them. And you know, they're adult learners and they need just as much positive reinforcement of somebody in like first grade, and I sent them all a message. I was like, "This is amazing work." And you know - and the reviews that I'm getting talk about that assignment. The reflections are talking about that assignment. 

Heidi Kirby  26:12  
Yep, no, as a former English professor, it's absolutely those assignments where they get to be fully creative. I used to have students write a poem during our poetry unit. And the only stipulations is that it had to be at least 10 lines, and it had to be about a color. That was it. And so, you know, they'd ask questions like, "Can it be more than one color? Can it be a pattern?" I'm like, "a color. I'm not telling you any more than that. Yeah, you can write it on a piece of paper." And I'm telling you, I still have a folder where I've kept all of the poems that my students wrote because they were that good. Some of them had me in tears in the classroom, when presenting them, you know. Some of the students didn't want to present them because they had written something so very personal. And so it, I think you'd find a lot of educators that would say, the creative assignments were where they have seen the best work, you know?

Holly Owens  27:12  
And you know that that's translatable into the real world where they get some sort of task to write, or do something, maybe with a report, even though it's not a poem, and they take that and they make it their own, and they they like blow away their supervisor or something like that. That's the other thing to think about is how these assignments translate into the real world. There's a huge gap between stepping out of K through 12, to higher education, and then stepping out of higher education into a job. So we have to minimize these gaps. And I always try to make sure that the things that I I'm providing students with the resources or the activities are something they're going to be able to use in real life. I don't remember the last time I use geometry, and my real my geometry teacher in high school, but I got See? And now I know why because I, I don't need it. 

Heidi Kirby  28:06  
That is great. No, that's that's entirely true. Sorry, Mr. Brainard. 

Holly Owens  28:10  
Yeah. I'm sorry Miss Norris. I did not use the geometry and I haven't yet but um, you know, I'm hopeful maybe at some point I'll need to know the triangle ABC equals whatever those things are, right? 

Heidi Kirby  28:24  
But hey, if I was an architect or you know, hey, maybe it would come in handy. But no, I think that that's another important thing too is to remember coming from the corporate side of things too, like how many times does a manager or someone even higher up than your manager give you this super broad, "hey, I have this idea," right? And they're like, "I want to do an employee engagement event, come up with something." And now you're like, "Oh, great. Cool." So now I have to do this, right? Or you know, even for smaller companies, do you think you could write a blog post about x? And it's just like, you know, these broad ideas that somebody up in the C-suite or near to it come up with that all of a sudden get passed down the line. And now you've got to be very creative and very problem solving to give something of value. Right? 

Holly Owens  29:19  
Exactly. And you're like, I have no, just like your poem when they were asking you, I'm sure the person's like, "what are the...?" you know - "just do it, I just want this, I'm not gonna criticize you," then you do that. It's like, oh, my goodness... the criticisms just flow in and you're like, "that's why I asked for some formatting." But, you know, it's really nice to have that in a position where you can be creative. And then you have a supervisor who's like, you're kind of meeting in the middle with things and compromising so that's really nice. And that's also you know, another skill when they have to work in like groups and stuff. They have to deal with that. 

Heidi Kirby  29:52  
Absolutely, absolutely. So in your experience, because I just thought of this - are group projects? Maybe this is a loaded question. Are group projects more or less painful, from the students point of view, if they're virtual? 

Holly Owens  30:10  
If you ask the students they're more painful because people can ghost you in the online space, you know?

Heidi Kirby  30:16  
And there's no - you can't talk to - say to their face, "hey, you haven't done anything." Okay.

Holly Owens  30:22  
But my students are really good about, we develop a relationship where they come and ask me anything. So if somebody is not participating, I will know about it. And I incorporate an extra layer to the group assignment, they evaluate their group members, you know, anonymously. And that's important because I want to know if somebody goes to them, I want to know if someonewasn't doing the work, because we've all been that group member that does everything because we want to get the grade. But I grade them individually from the group project based on those evaluations. So I have four group members, and obviously, if three out of the three  other group members are saying you didn't participate. I trust that, and I'm going to have a conversation with you about that. But I want to know what happened. And if they say something happened in my family, or I just didn't, or that will happen, I'm gonna say - "You are expected as an adult learner to come to me and tell me these things, so that we can handle it appropriately." You know, "Your group members had to really pick up your slack, which is unfair." So I would say they, they work in the online environment. And I've had students who say they love it depends on the people they're with. They said, they love the group assignments. And other people are like, I don't like the group assignments. But you have to be very strategic about how you set them up. You're not in the classroom saying, I can put them in four groups of five, and then you're walking around, but like you said, breakout rooms, you can jump into those breakout rooms with the students and check on them. That's me walking around the classroom, put them in the chat room, make sure they're doing what they're supposed to. And also since we meet synchronously and my class, we do the group activities in class, you know, "in class," and then they present at the end. So they're definitely, you know, they're being monitored. And if it goes - or if it's a bigger group assignment where they're doing it, as you're gonna see, like I said, I incorporate that peer feedback, because I don't want anybody to feel like they're doing more than what they need to. And also they each have a role. They have detailed roles like leader, and I know it sounds K through 12, for higher education, but it really works. You're the leader, you're the editor, you're the presenter, you're the whatever. You have to know they know what they need to do, because that - in the workspace, that's what we do. I'm the leader, my designers are the presenters. They come up with the content, you know, and then maybe give some feedback or the editors. 

Heidi Kirby  32:46  
Yeah, no, I mean, and that's how we have done it in my PhD experience even - is someone will be dubbed the leader and then it's on them to kind of figure out everybody else's role. But I think that probably, my current PhD program is the first time - and that includes two other graduate degrees and undergrad - that I've not had a painful experience doing group projects. At the PhD level, everybody's pretty serious and pretty hands on. And sometimes the problems more of like, who's going to be the alpha, rather than people slacking? 

Holly Owens  33:26  
Yeah, it's a bunch Type As trying to work together. 

Heidi Kirby  33:30  
Yeah, so that becomes the problem then. But even in grad school, you'd have like three people meeting and the fourth persons missing and you're agonizing over, well, is this person going to come through or not, you know? And so, I mean, that's a problem all the way up. And it's a problem at corporate. Right?  You're working on something with a team and somebody keeps not showing up to meetings. I mean, that's just the problem you're going to run into when you're dealing with people. So avoiding groups projects because people don't like working in groups is probably not the best way to do it. Because it's one of those again, real life transferable skills. Right? 

Holly Owens  34:11  
And I mean, the teacher or the faculty member, just set it up where there's like - you're thinking about in advance the questions that students are have gonna have or the challenges they're going to run into. And I just did in my design assignment, what challenges or questions are they going to have? What do they need? Like I have a little checklist in my head, but that's because I've just been doing it for so long. If you have to write it down, write it down, you know, make sure that you're going to encounter things you didn't think of. So that's, that's okay. You just deal with it as it happens. So the students will, they'll, they'll assimilate, they'll be fine. I do group assignments in all my online classes. You know, we haven't done any of my my cohort in my doctoral program because there's four of us. It's a little bit of a challenge as a newer program. I'm not  having the same experiences that you're having because it's new, and they're still figuring out their way through. But I would say is that I think at the doctoral level, that's definitely an important component is to have the groups working together, because that's how you find your accountability buddies. That's how you find your people that you're like, you feel like you're the only one. And this is true in K through 12. And in higher ed too, you feel like you're the only one that's having these problems, but you're not. If you didn't open up and the students just start talking and then they don't feel as isolated then it becomes more of like an in person experience. Like you're making buddies. 

Heidi Kirby  34:33  
Yeah. No, I think that's a really important point. And I think that K through 12 students are going to start feeling that a lot more when they're doing virtual environments for learning is, "well I'm the only one dealing with XY and Z problems." And so I think I would challenge teachers to really consider taking time to just let your student and get to know each other, you know, and not necessarily do a cheesy icebreaker, every class. You know?

Holly Owens  36:09  
Those are fun! That's how I found out my favorite color.

Heidi Kirby  36:14  
(laughs) I love it. Yeah. And if you were an animal, what animal would you be and why? But what are some other ways in the online environment that you can kind of combine that social interaction with goals and objectives?

Holly Owens  36:37  
Yes, so I, you know, the so just talking and having discussions with the students or is it is like in a normal classroom, just - what I like to use, I like to use TED Talks, and whether it's related to my content or not as something quick, but eventually we get back to we round back to the main point and we watch a TED talk. And then I just ask some very, you know, I write down some questions, and the students answer them and you, it would, it's amazing to see what they get from it. Everybody's interpretation is different. My interpretation is different from Student A or Student C. And they're all just pulling in like a constructive constructivist point of view. They're pulling in their personal experiences, and they're expressing what they took from that. And that, that's design. You're bringing in your personal experiences, and you're putting it into practice on what you're designing your class because we typically teach the way we learn best. So the students - that's one way I definitely get them talking. Or I can bring up a controversial topic like this one with how remote learning and they actually talked to with them about and they're like, "yeah, we totally understand the difference now. Remote learning is totally different than online education since we took this class. We don't think - It's not the same to us anymore." And a lot of my students were also saying that they're going to be a better educated after the semester because they took a class where they learned about the differences between asynchronous and synchronous and the remote and online education or they feel more prepared to be better educators. And I, you know, faculty don't necessarily see themselves as educators. But a lot of stuff higher ed is doing now is very K through 12 based. And as much as faculty don't like that, that's what's happening. We have objectives in higher education. I remember just sitting in front of a sitting in like a 200 person lecture hall, I had no idea what what the topic, you know what the topic was - like DNA replication, RNA replication, what am I supposed to get from this hour and 15 minute lecture? No follow up just - the information. It's very passive. So today, it's different. Faculty have to learn objectives, they have to learn pedagogy. And that's another thing I actually meant to say about instructional designers who want to go from education. instructional designers, instructional designers have this like, they're like the unicorns of, you know, everything. They have pedagogy. They understand pedagogy how people learn the methods behind that. Higher education faculty are not there yet. There's very good and experts in their field. The're the subject matter experts this means, but they don't understand how what they do impacts the learning of the student and how the classroom environment. So instructional designers really are the bridge to that. 

Heidi Kirby  39:32  
No, that's absolutely true. Because that was me at one point, you know, that's the whole reason I kind of started my whole education path was because I was teaching and just kind of guessing my way through, right? And okay, "why does this assignment work for some classes, but other classes hate it?" You know, and I didn't understand the pedagogy around it and why or how and I was like, "I really need more of a background on this." And that's why I ended up going back to school for it because I was like, I don't - I'm just muddling my way through. 

Holly Owens  40:11
You probably learned a lot of muddling your way through though you probably -

Heidi Kirby 40:13
I did, yeah. Yeah, so, you learn more than you think you just have to know. You have to understand how to apply it and that's really I think the key for those who want to transition is like you said you already know what to do. Now you just have to make sure you understand the background of it and the theory of it, and then you're going to be able to talk the talk. When it's time for a job interview or something like that. 

Holly Owens 40:41
Absolutely. And we're preparing them to be career professionals we're preparing them for something greater than our classroom, so we have to keep that in mind too. We're not just in this narrow minded like - you're just in this class, it's it's so much more than that. You're there preparing them for another big class after this like a capstone or, you know, a dissertation or something and then you're preparing them to be professionals and go out and find a good job. And you know, yeah, be good people give back to the community so there's a whole lot of things that are incorporated into education, besides just learning the technology, or you know bashing online education because something didn't work. You have to think about the things that you're doing that are greater than yourself in the classroom. 

Heidi Kirby 41:26
Sure. So my last question for you might be a little bit of a difficult one... It tends to throw people off a little bit, but if you can choose one video, TED Talk, book, online course, handout brochure, you get the idea - one piece of media that would help people to really understand online education, what would it be and why? 

Holly Owens 41:56
Okay, that is a difficult question. There's a lot of them. And I would say, I'm gonna say two things actually, I'm gonna say the first thing is, Ken Robinson he recently passed away - Sir Ken Robinson... I was introduced to his book, I want to make sure I get it right, Finding Your Element. So I listened  to this - like finding what your element is... he talks about a lot of different people in that book who didn't necessarily go through a traditional education and were successful now. He's not bashing and saying you shouldn't go through traditional education, but he's just like - you're thinking about what you do and what you can do well and I know mine's education - yours is education, you know, you've come to education or corporate. So I would say that, but also I recently read a book, and he's wrote another book... Aaron Johnson's Excellent Online Teaching, and he simplifies it in a way that is understandable to, like, even the simplest of, you know, like you're beginning, but it also resonated with me because I felt like he was writing for an audience of instructional designers. So I was or, I was in my head -  I know it's a good book when in my head I'm like connecting it to something else that I'm doing. And he also recently wrote a book about, you know, doing online instruction with Zoom. So he's kind of taking it to the next level. And I actually reached out to, you know, I told him thank you and stuff for his book, and I bought it for my whole team, because it's like 66 pages, but in that 66 pages, you learn so much, and I just, I read it in like an hour, and I was like blown away. I would recommend that to faculty or educators, but there is no one thing there's just so much, I had to do two. 

Heidi Kirby 43:49
For our listeners, I will say that is the second time, and we're only on episode, I think, seven. That's the second time someone has recommended you read Ken Robinson, so you better do it. 

Holly Owens 44:04
Yeah, it's good I listened to it on Audible is really good. I was on a long car ride. It was awesome, and I mean we have a lot of time on our hands nowadays, so just listen to it. 

Heidi Kirby 44:16
Right. So, take a listen... read it or listen. Good. All right, well thanks Holly
for your time. 

Holly Owens 44:19
Thank you so much. This is great. I appreciate it. 

Holly Owens 44:23
Thanks again for joining me on the blog. If you enjoyed this please share it with our viewers on your favorite podcast platform. I hope you'll tune in again.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai