Getting Learning Right

Greetings and welcome to the future transformum, a weekly conversation about the future of higher education. My name is Brian Alexander, the creator of the future transform. In this recording, we explored a new concept for improving undergraduate education. We hosted the authors of an important new book called Getting Learning Right: The Promise of Higher Education from MIT Press. They include Chris Gallagher, professor of English at Northeastern University, Christy Gerdary, associate teaching professor of English and director of the writing center at Babson College, and Kevin Smith, associate professor of English and co-director of the University Writing Center at the University of Virginia. We began by introducing the book's methodology, which focused on listening to students through their undergraduate careers. Based on these findings, the authors called for improved pathways through college, rethinking spaces for learning, improving transfer between classes, and involving students in redesigning post-secary education. The discussion ranged freely from desire paths to the use of AI to supporting students through curricular gaps. There are links in the show notes below. And as always, the comment box stands ready for your thoughts and questions. Well friends, on the theme of coolness and ancient history, let us begin this week's program because it is the top of the hour. Welcome everybody. Greetings and welcome to the future trends forum. I'm so glad to see you all here today. Uh we are speaking today with the authors of a fantastic book that I can't recommend enough and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. uh we've been covering since the beginning uh how we can best improve teaching and learning in higher education every year uh we've been focusing on that and approaching it from different ways. We've tackled everything from teaching and learning centers to the role of the library to different forms of pedagogy grading and ungrading all kinds of different pedagogies. Now what I want to do is introduce something a little different. Uh we have the authors of a new book and I just put the book uh in link in the chat from MIT press which ask asks us to reimagine the modern university or college if we make student learning central to it and the authors take a few different directions to go through this and we'll talk about these over the next hour. Um, and one of the things I find especially delightful about the book is not only the passion and deep experience of the three authors who you'll meet in a second, but also that they grounded their work in a series of interviews with Northeastern University students. And those students become very powerful characters in the book, not only as examples of different ways to progress through post-secary education, but also to help us think about how we can co-design higher education with students as partners. So, just to get the ball rolling on that, uh, let me just proceed left to right on my screen here quite arbitrarily. Uh, Professor Kevin Smith, greetings, sir. >> Hi, Brian. Thanks for having us. >> Oh, I'm really glad to see you. And, uh, you're at your office at UVA right now. >> That's right. Charlottesville, Virginia. >> Excellent. Excellent. Well, we have a tradition here on the forum um which is that we ask people not to give us their academic obituary description, but we ask them to think about the next year, what you're going to be working on. So, I'm curious what projects and what ideas are going to be uppermost for you. >> Yeah. So, um this next year I'm transitioning into a new admin role as the director of writing across the curriculum for University of Virginia. I'm transitioning out of co-directing the writing center uh and into this uh wack directorship. Um so I think that's going to take up most of my time and a and a lot of that will be >> um having conversations with faculty across the disciplines I imagine largely about AI and writing um but also kind of how we can help support their students. Um, I'm also hoping that we can I can build on some of the work of the book and think about writing as uh a way into and a support for experiential learning across uh across the university. And then completely unrelated and kind of fun for me, I've started a project uh Brian, we were talking a little bit about cycling uh before folks logged on, but about um kind of the rhetorical uh possibilities and limits of cycling advocacy. uh in a small southern town where I live. Uh so I'm I'm excited about that. It's really in its early phases, so I don't have a lot of details, but I am excited about it. >> Well, I'm excited about that, too. I'm I meant it. Please do follow up. I'd be glad to maybe between the two of us, we can achieve some critical mass. >> [laughter] >> Um but uh one u uh one just thing in in the audience to just to draw your attention to Kevin is we have uh former university president Elaine Mayan here who is among other things in her story career one of the founders of writing across the curriculum. So u please please feel free to connect with Elaine. Um and now I've got you on the stage. Let me add your co-authors. Uh Professor Goodary. Hello. >> Hello. I'm really glad to see you and um and you should know a few of the people on this call have been taking time in the aderondex as well this summer. So um what we need to do is we need to rebase the forum around Lake Placid or something. I mean I >> I agree. Yeah, we could do a writing retreat here. It would be fabulous. >> I'm I'm ready. I'm ready for that. Just say the word. Uh so uh what are you going to be working on for the next year once you descend from your your perch in that cabinet? [laughter] >> Yeah. So you mentioned the longitudinal interview study with the northeastern students that informed the book. Um we actually semi-replicated that study at Babson College but we had started in fall 2022. So that means we accidentally captured our students thinking about AI in real time. >> And so the future part is um and I think something we wished we had done at Nor Eastern. We actually got IRB approval to continue with an alumni study. So these students are entering the workforce. We'll get to see um how their AI thinking, usage, knowledge kind of shapes as they kind of start navigating all these crazy times. And then um I guess semi relatedly, I direct the writing center at Babson. And I know I see at least one Babson College uh colleague on the call. So, this is like brand new news. I haven't announced it yet to the broader community, but we're transitioning the writing center to a writing center and AI literacy lab. So, WC at all. >> Yeah. To kind of expand kind of what we're doing. It's really, you know, it's a bit of a marketing rebrand. Um, the model stays the same about kind of onetoone conversation um with students with whatever they're thinking about communicating, writing. Um, but I think it will hopefully um just signal that, you know, we're here to support you. How however you're thinking, whatever tools you're using. Um, we're a space if you're refusing, like we'll have those conversations. So, pretty excited. It's a a big undertaking, but um I just announced it to my staff and they seem on board. So, pretty excited. >> Well, I'm honored to be part of that early roll out. Uh, and in in all seriousness, we do a lot of work here on the forum on AI and higher education. If you've got a press release or an article about that transition, please share. I would love to share it around. Um because I people who thinking about AI and higher red, this would be a really really useful uh uh experiment and project to think about. >> Yeah, I will. Thank you. >> Well, good luck. Good luck. That's terrific stuff. Well, now that I've got Christie and Kevin here, let me bring your third number on stage, Chris Gallagher. Hello, Professor Gallagher. >> Hello, sir. Good to see you. Good to see everyone on this call. I know a lot of the names in the chat, so I'm excited for the conversation. >> Oh, I'm so glad. I'm so glad. And by the way, Christie, we have a shout out in the uh uh in the chat from our friend Elaine Mannon, who says that Christiey's done amazing work on the eth edition of her McGraill textbook um on this eighth edition of a writer's resource. So, brilliant, brilliant. >> Great. And I've never actually met Elaine, so I hope sometime we meet in person, [laughter] too. [gasps] >> Well, you should. You should because she's amazing. Um Professor Gallagher, now you're ready. You've had your two colleagues have take gone first and answered that this important question. So you've had time to prepare. What are you going to be working on for the next year? >> Yeah. You know, if you had asked me at the beginning of the summer, I think I would have said I was busy recovering from academic administration, which I've been doing for a number of years. Uh and then really recommitting to my faculty role. Uh but I've been dragged back in in a minor way. I'm going to be interim chair of my department >> uh in the spring actually. So I've got a little bit of time. So I'm looking forward to more teaching in fewer meetings. Um but in addition to supporting this book, I've got a couple of other projects going. One is called institutional literacy, a learner's guide. I'm working with that on that with uh Linda Adner Castner. Um, and that's a book that really aims to give faculty, staff, administrators, and grad students tools for reading and writing their institutions in order to participate more effectively in them. Something we think is much needed in this moment of uh necessary >> transformational change. And then the second one is a book I feel like I've been working on my whole career, which is basically considering how John Dwiey's educational philosophy can help us articulate and teach what I'm calling the human literacies we need to reconstruct >> democracy in the face of rising authoritarianism and pervasive artificial intelligence. So yeah, a little bit going on for me. >> Quite a bit. Quite a bit. I I just have a quick a couple of quick follow-ups. First of all, a request. when your uh Dewey book is done, let me know so that we can host you for talking about that. Dewey has been a leading figure on the forum uh for our entire lifespan. Um and there's also a joke in the chat at your expense, so you're going to have to explain yourself. Tom Tobin says, "First time I've heard someone say being department chair is a minor role." So you have to say, "What are you transitioning away from? What were you before that?" >> Yes, that's a good point. Thank you for that. Um, yeah, I've been vice chancellor or vice provost in various roles for the past several years. Before that, I was an associate dean. So, it feels small, but the small part is really the interim part, not the department chair part. Um, I'm going to try to hold down the the role while our current chair is away doing her research, which is great for her. >> Understood. Understood. Well, I'm I'm really glad you could make the time and I I wish you the best in this complex transition from dean chancellorship down to department to continuing to write. Uh these these are important tasks. >> Uh friends, if you're if you're new to the forum, uh the way this works is I'm going to put to our guests a couple of questions about their work, but then it's going to be over to all of you. Uh so based on what you've already heard and also based on what you're going to hear over the next few minutes, think about what questions you would like to ask, uh what comments, what requests, and again the chat box is open for you as is the Q&A box. Um so I whenever I I see a wonderful complicated book, I I have so many questions that get from the meta level to the detailed level. Um but I wanted to start off with a theme that's early in the book that I thought was really really striking and that you handled with such postcoid nuance uh so well. Um the book traces different ways by which students can learn better through higher education including through flexible pathways which sometimes work sometimes don't through project-based and team-based learning. But I'm really curious about the sense of place and the the physical environment as well as the climate, you use the term there, of where they learn. Uh, and you point out that students learn throughout their different spaces. They learn the physical classroom as well as the virtual learning environment, but they also learn elsewhere. And at Nor Eastern, because you have the co-op model and that, you know, that precisely positioning students into the workforce that they learn so much in that transition into work. So I'm wondering if you could if you could speak to this for in a way that all of us could rethink u the spaces of learning. Uh what have you learned about how where I should say where students learn best and how? >> I could start with that and perhaps my colleagues can jump in. This is something like most of the book that really we came to through listening to our students. Um, and just very quickly, we interviewed them every semester for their undergraduate careers from their first semester to their final semester, no matter how long it took them to go through the system. So, we had some that got through in three years and some in five and a half. So, we got to know them quite well. Um, and I was so glad to hear you say, Brian, earlier that they became characters in the uh book because we really did want to um give them voice, right, and help you understand how they think about their learning because really our insight was to say, "Hey, these students know things about learning that we wish many of our colleagues knew and that perhaps we had known before as well." So, one of the things they taught us to get to your question was just how many learning spaces they inhabited and moved across. And so, in the book, we have um we talk about learning environments. That's the the framing of the chapter in which we mostly talk about spaces and places. Um and we're talking about spaces that are designed for learning and spaces really that that not that weren't necessarily and that students found themselves in. So we followed them is the way we put it. We followed them across their classes across campus and the various clubs and organizations they participated in uh in various uh public spaces. So we were in Boston and so they were involved in all kinds of things in the city from volunteering um to taking part in um various kinds of forums and going to listen to speakers and this sort of thing. these were all all became truly important to them as part of their learning kind of ecosystem if you want to think about it that way. Um and then of course the workspaces through co-op as you mentioned um many of our students will go on most will go on two co-ops and these are six month um full-time jobs that students participate in or projects. They could be with nonprofit organizations. Um and the idea is that they will have enough time and space really to to inhabit the role in a community of practice, right? But it's also about thinking about well how does this space work? How is it set up? How is it organized to support the work that we do and the learning that we do? And so we started seeing students as they moved across their spaces really drawing our attention to the designed features of the spaces in which we encountered them and some of the um serendipitous spaces where they they found their own um learning uh opportunities. One of the lines that always comes back to me with this book is a a student who praised her boss by saying, "She put me in all of the rooms." >> And that to me captures so well >> um what a a what we call a learning sponsor or most people call a mentor can do for students. Um and that was really important for her and for most of our students to think across the different um spaces in which they were learning. Well, thank you. Thank you. Uh, learning environments, this is and the plurality that is so important. Uh, Christie, uh, Kevin, did you want to add to that, please? >> I just wanted to add one aspect which I I think people might be thinking about, uh, which is digital learning spaces, right? Um, and so one aspect of our book, uh, is that we, you know, include these student stories, these interviews from, uh, from students over the course of their undergraduate careers. We also uh tried to find institutional examples of um in the you know in this in the case of the chapter on uh learning environments um the way different institutions uh you know have designed learning environments productively for students. So other kind of models for folks who aren't at maybe a school like Nor Eastern where students are going out on co-op and and have all of these other opportunities. Um and one of the examples we uh we talk about in the book is Eli Review which is a a peer writing platform. So this is a digital environment um uh that is designed by writing teachers with a learning focus first. So it's designed you know um with in in the very kind of design uh you know phys architecture of it um are kind of best practices in in writing pedigogy. Um, so I wanted to flag that. Uh, and then the other is kind of the the maybe the inverse of what Chris was saying as we're following students. I think one of the things that really stood out to me in our students experiences is the way the classroom was kind of constructed as this like nominal space un unless you know it's like class is class I think is is a line from from one of the students and that often classes um it was more difficult for students to understand the ways in which the uh the design of their learning environment um was enabling or inhibiting their learning in class. Um, and I think in part because you know the the kind of architecture of a classroom is ingrained in students from a from a really young age. Um, >> and the exceptions to that were when the classroom like the walls of the classroom, the metaphorical walls of the classroom and sometimes physical walls of the classroom were kind of permeated by the outside world in some way. Um so um yeah so I just wanted to flag those two uh additional aspects of learning environment the classroom and the and the digital environments. >> Well thank you and in in the chat there's been a discussion about that right now led by our our good friend in Texas Tom Hayes about uh the importance of digital spaces. Um Christie, did you I I saw you grin when this was happening. What do what would you like to add? Um, I just want to add almost like a caveat. Um, just because we put students in the rooms or let them have these great kind of place-based learning experiences, um, should we just assume like that is enough for them to be learning? Um, so I would say that something that's really kind of stuck with me through this work is that students need time and space for reflection to kind of make the connections they need. you know, whether that's us asking or um assigning different kinds of writing, like there are ways that you can make sure and kind of help facilitate transfer learning, integration of learning across the different spaces and places. >> Well, thank you. Thank you. I mean, that theme of time really came out um and by the end of the book, you had some really good discussions, all three of you, about um uh how much time does it take and when is three years appropriate for a student versus six years for another one. Um well I I have so many thoughts. Let me just ask one more question about this at the at the more institutional level that um the book concludes well excuse me before the conclusion you discuss uh different pathways for students and the pathway idea was fascinating um because you managed to connect with a whole series of other issues. Uh so pathways included both the sense that you see now in some community colleges of coming up with smoother pathways for students especially first generation students through the really complicated thicket of so many classes majors minors departments certificates but you also talked about the transfer issue uh both the transfer between institutions helpfully you highlight community colleges to four institutions but also the knowledge transfer across classes and you mentioned that especially in terms of the core curricula and I after that great, you know, tour to the result of all of that. Where do you end up right now? I mean, trying to advise anybody how they could best structure institution. What are the best ways that we can structure things so that students can have the most productive pathways through us? I guess any of you can can can start. Although I'm biased by Kevin because he has a beard, I have to say. >> Well, Kevin Kevin could go, but I had a quick thought. um which was that we um pathways is an important concept out in the higher education discourse, but we also think it's a double-edged. Um it is important, we think, to offer students pathways, but it's also important to understand that they have agency in the or should have agency in the construction of those pathways. And that if we're thinking about pathways only as sort of greasing the skids on a line that already exists, Tom Hayes has been writing about the factory model of education. And this is it. It links up nicely with your question, I think, Brian, because if we're only thinking about getting them in and getting them out as quickly as possible or as efficiently as possible, our argument is we may be missing really important opportunities for students to identify their own learning opportunities and to have those reflective moments that Christie talked about earlier. Um, so that's that's critically important. So, I'll get out of Kevin's way now and let the beard speak. >> [laughter] >> Please go ahead. >> Thanks, Chris. Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, I' just echo what uh uh what Chris said. I mean, I think in terms of like our students, we found even really late pivots in their educational experiences to be really productive. Uh, right. And so um and sometimes you know some of the kind of flexible pathways that we highlight in the book from northeastern students happen kind of despite institutional structures and pressures rather than because of them. Um so you know we I guess I I'll say that we hope that uh th those stories in the book are instructive to to folks who are designing uh curricula who are maybe thinking about um you know guided pathways in the community college context for example. um how involving uh student perspectives and student voices can can help us to create these you know opportunities for pivots, opportunities for flexibility, opportunities for kind of co-creation and and co-design. >> Yeah, >> I'd love to please. >> Yeah. An example of that that we use in the book um about guided pathways. So is Christy Toth at the University of Utah had edited a special issue of a journal on guided pathways. Um and instead of just kind of publishing the same kind of faculty scholars, she ran an undergraduate research course with um students who had actually transferred from Salt Lake Community College through those pathways. And so they like conducted their own research. They wrote their own pieces kind of reflecting on the experiences. And if you haven't seen it, the the student reflections are like really sharp. Um, there was one that was asking like a question about like what good is guided pathway systems when the students who could benefit from the most like don't trust it or can't access it. And I'm like, wow, that's a really good question, right? And so, um, I I really like in that, um, there's kind of this call for co-design. So you can't build a system for all students without bringing in kind of our marginalized students into its design. And so I think, you know, that's really part of a major argument we're making. Um you kind of want to know whether the form is learning grounded like you got to ask the learners, right? >> Indeed. Indeed. And and I I mentioned you interviewed so many northeastern uh students, but they're also students from across all these other examples that you give. Uh, Phyllis, I I hope John gave you an answer to your question in the in the chat. Uh, he gave you a link. I I gave you a name without a link. Sorry. But see if see if that'll help. >> Yes. Thank you. >> Oh, perfect. Perfect. Um, uh, Kevin, Christie, Chris, thank you uh, for these awesome answers. Let me let me turn things over to the audience now. So, again, if if you're new to the forum, this is this is your car to drive right now. Uh, and please, you know, you use the Q&A box or use the chat with your questions. And we already have one from our our mutual friend, the awesome David Scobby in Ann Arbor, uh, who says this. I love the author's emphasis on student agency and creativity in connected learning environments, but I also think we educators don't help them do enough connective or weaving work. What are good practices for enabling students to weave their learning without dictating the structure to them? >> I think we've established a pattern here. So I will start um [laughter] um >> weave away. >> Yes, weave away. So I think the first thing we would say and this is actually an answer to your previous question too, Brian, that maybe we didn't answer as directly as we could have when you said what can institutions do? Um you start with your students, right? And you figure out well who are they as learners? What kinds of learning do they do? Where do they do it? Why do they do it? What are their motivations? and then how can we design environments, experiences, projects uh that will allow them to achieve their goals and um you know move forward in their in their lives. So to me it always comes back to that. I say that in answer to uh David's question because I also think what we did which was simply talking with students once a semester about what was going on with them was hugely powerful for the students. And [snorts] in fact they told us this. They said, you know, coming in here once a semester and having to or getting the opportunity to narrate my experience has been really helpful in thinking through how do I connect what I've already been doing to what I've been doing now. And by connect, I don't necessarily mean that everything was smooth and linear, but in fact, they were often talking to us about pivots. Christie used that word earlier, I think, and the ways in which they were seeing their both the continuities and the discontinuities in their experiences as opportunities for reflection and to think about, oh, where am I now? Um, and so I think we can do that as at the institutional level. I think we can make that part of our advising. I think we in depending on what your model is, it could be part of faculty advising. We do have a model in there from a community college in the book um that offers a kind of model for engaging students in questions about essentially designing your life, right? Thinking not just what courses are you going to take next semester, right? Or even what is the career you're aiming for, which may be different in a couple years than it is today anyway, either because you changed or because the workforce changed given the pace of change. Um but what are your values? Right? and what are your goals and where do you do your best learning and your best work? These are all super critical I think for us and I would start I would start there um with the students and then think about if there are moments in their curricular journeys um or their undergraduate journeys where you can introduce opportunities for reflection. Last thing I'll say is just as an example of that um we just instituted in one of my fall courses will be a mid- major seminar for the English majors and the idea here is that we have an intro course we have a capstone course but we also need this opportunity in the middle of their experience where they can say where have I been and where am I going right and how do I get what Dewey talks about the two pieces of an educational experience are continuity ity, right? So, you're able to move across spaces and interaction. So, it also brings them together as a community. And I think that's an example of what um what one could do really in any discipline. >> Indeed. Indeed. These are great answers. Uh David, thank you for the for the awesome question. Um the the chat has followed this up a bit. Uh Kevin Smith and uh David Scobby have have talked about desire paths or animal paths which some of you might be familiar with which is when you um when you see people uh walking across a space uh not necessarily in the already paved paths um but then you notice the desire they tend to take and then you follow that up by actually paving it. I I shared a couple of old photos of those for people to look at. Um friends, this is uh this is the time for your questions and so there are more questions coming in. Uh in fact uh Tom Hayes uh has been on fire right now. And Tom, if you haven't already, please please share your AI uh and pedagogy Substack in the chat. I'll put a link to that because it is I I think it is just terrific. He asks this question and I think I want to put a little spin on it. He says, "Does the structure of education itself authentic learning? And how do we break that structure?" And I guess the little spin I would put on it is is if you could identify and I know you can because you said so in the book, but some some structures that are prevalent in higher education that go against authentic learning that we should really target to change, redesign or replace. >> Yeah, I can I can get us started a little bit. I just want to say that that desire paths idea has is like really tickling my brain right now. So I'm really excited thinking about that. I mean that requires right that there's an open space for people to explore in a way that I don't think maybe exists in in current structures of higher education to maybe connect it to Tom's uh question a little bit more right in order to see this the these kind of paths of desire that we can later pave over. But I love this idea and like kind of imagining like how how we're building future kind of like infrastructures for student uh pathways. Um yeah, Christy, do you want to um jump in? >> Yeah. Um the question it made me think about um so coming into this I was thinking about like what are like the most extreme kind of versions of like what institutions have done and in the book we have um an example from Plymouth State in New Hampshire. Um about a decade ago the university was at kind of a financial crossroads as as they are. Um and so the new president had um like instead of doing kind of that usual like well let's just cut things um they rebuilt an entire academic structure around what they call a cluster learning model. Um so it's interd disciplinary clusters organized around like projects and like real community partnerships instead of the siloed departments. Um, so students were partnering with local leaders in New Hampshire on like real economic and social challenges. And so, um, I just I really liked this idea of kind of really interdisciplinary groups. Um, that really it's really for them really changing the structure in the way they work. Um, I don't think like that whole reorg is the easiest path um for everyone, but I just think it's a really cool like bold live experiment that we can kind of follow right now for a learning centered mission for an institution. >> Yeah, we also have in the book, as you note in the chat, Brian, uh, the example of Hampshire, which many of you know has announced that it is closing or perhaps already has. >> Yeah. Um that does speak I think to the original question. I think some of the most innovative interesting educational models have not been aligned very well with the way that higher education traditionally works. And so we may continue to see some of those real challenges. And that has to do, I think, with very deep institutional histories, having to do with how the disciplines formed, right? Having to do with the ways in which we set up our institutional departments, which then house majors. Um, we set up preset requirements for students before we even meet them and know what they want to do with their lives. Um so for us it it does seem important that we at least ask the questions about whether the way in which we currently organize our intellectual work and more importantly students intellectual work is really serving the needs um of our students or of our faculty. I mean frankly I think most faculty are not that happy with teaching in the kinds of classrooms we teach in teaching you know introductory courses to students who are not interested because they're just fulfilling a requirement for example I mean there are a lot of things that are built into the way we've organized ourselves that are not advantageous for either the learner or the teacher who really wants to engage those learners and and feel like they're working together where one's expertise is being leveraged in service of the others rather than this sort of transmission model that I think we're still stuck in uh in a lot of parts of our educational system >> and you cite uh some good scholarship on that. Um thank you um that Tom was as typically um a really good question and and thank you three uh for these answers. Uh we have quite a lot going on in the chat and I want to uh summarize some of the key parts. One is not a question but a comment and it's one I want to double down on. Uh Sylvia Rabininoitz uh mentions that quote librarians have been letting students drive environments for a long time. We know students identify where they like to work quietly or collaboratively and we try to support that with seating etc. Uh unquote. Just on a personal note a uh when I was in junior high a librarian helped save my academic career. Um he was one who listened to me and really helped me out and uh that meant a lot to me. Uh since then I've been working with librarians and you know Celia we've been doing library sessions here as often as we can. So just want to say thank you for uh for sharing that. Um we have um a couple of other questions that have come in. Uh one from Jennifer I believe it's Dashner says she wants to encourage students to write for trade publications about a topic they are excited about not scholarly writing. It's hard for them to find a way to see the benefits. uh she's hitting her head against the wall thinking they would do something outside of their courses and a bunch of people responded in the chat. But I'm wondering uh you know Chris, Kevin, Christie if you would like to uh have anything to say since you all work so much on writing among other things. >> Yeah, I think um yeah, two things. So, one on the on the library um comment. Um yeah, I I think we totally agree and and I think one of the one of the points we make in the book though we don't take this up so much in the study is that you know we shouldn't only be listening to students but should also be listening to other uh you know staff, faculty uh like the members of the community in which the learning is happening. Right? So there's a lot that you know uh that we can learn from other spaces on campus that maybe organize uh organize things uh differently. Um on the kind of public writing side, I would say that really aligns well with kind of how we think about you know projectbased and collaborative uh learning um being a kind of discernable set of experiences for students. So like some of those ways in which I talked about earlier the classroom being permeated by the quote unquote real world which was a a really loaded concept we can talk more about uh amongst students. Um but one of the ways that uh that the classroom is kind of permeated is uh is through these thinking of real audiences for writing is a is a great example of that. I have a colleague here uh Steph Saraso who teaches a writing with sound class where students work collaboratively over the course of a semester to create a season of an ongoing show. every every year it's a new season of this same show and they uh you know they create a podcast >> and they're assigning each other different roles and they have a real audience of the you know UVA community and they choose their theme and then they have to develop episodes on that theme right so I think these kind of like finding places where the work that students are doing even if it's just happening in our classrooms and they're not moving across workspaces and things like that but places where they can engage with real audiences um think about real stakes for their writing or other kinds of um kind of production. Christy, I'm sure you have more to say about that. >> Yeah, I want to just add something. Um so, I know we've been focused on the undergraduate learning experience, but what I'm thinking about now and really looking forward is um at Babson, we just started a new doctorate of business administration program. And so it's a three-year program and um I was asked to develop a writing and communicating data course that they would take in their fall semester of their third year. And so I thought about like what would be the graduate course I wanted um you know when I was at Nor Eastern and I was like I wish that someone explicitly taught me how to translate my work into an academic article. I think that we just kind of like assumed that would happen by reading them which yes. Um, but there is like there are real strategies that you can use to kind of translate your dissertation research and a big word that has come through this really interdisciplinary collaboration with the DBA program, it's all about impact. And so I'm really rethinking that course where yes, like the academic journal manuscript is one path, but like it's not the only. And so if you really want to make impact, I think writing for public audiences is is it. And so I think I want to walk the group of students through like I don't know if you want to write an op-ed or if you want to write for the Atlantic or New York Times like okay like let's go and study and reverse engineer those genres and think about um how you can communicate the work you're doing for like the biggest impact. >> Very good. This is I mean now we're we're we're moving to the point where where you're leading a workshop on on how to uh how to redesign um your pedagogy and your campus which is great. Um I'm so glad to see this. And by the way um Chris Christie Kevin throughout the chat um there are people who are recommending uh certain writers and texts that you that you use in the book. Um, so it's it you're you're hitting something. You're getting something on the right wavelength. Uh, which is great. Uh, we have more questions that I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to ask. Um, Jim McGrath asks this. Can the authors talk a bit about cases where students were particularly feeling challenged or struggling? Thinking about that in the context of things like DFW rates and the balancing act between student support and faculty accountability. >> Yeah, I can start with that one. I I think when our students at Nor Eastern struggled, it was largely to go back to the pathways conversation, right? It was largely figuring out how to put the various pieces together. The great thing about Nor Eastern is they've got an abundance of opportunities both on campus and off-campus. Um, by the same token, that's a real challenge. And so what students were often finding was that, you know, they would come in to an environment that was already very much in flux. So things were happening very quickly. People in their cohort were going off on co-op or study abroad very soon after they arrived in some cases. And no, you know, one of the lines we use here a lot is that no two students have the same path at Nor Eastern because there are so many opportunities. And so the students who struggled I think were it was really it came down to self-direction right it came down to well how do I make these decisions for myself and that's where these learning sponsors came in um we use that term rather than mentors because we're very interested in the kind of two-way relationship um that they have. And so our students talked quite a bit about uh crying in faculty's offices for example, right? Or getting stressed out with their advisor. Um they also by the way came to us, right? And they said, "Hey, you know a lot about what I've been kind of thinking through. Can you help me think about this challenge?" So we have a a chapter in the book that's really about what we call helping students uh develop networks of opportunity and support. And I think for our students gathering those constructing those con even like seeing what options were available and how to prioritize them was a was a real challenge. um that may be specific to Nor Eastern, but I suspect there's a version of it um that we kind of want our students to have uh and that could happen anywhere, right? Because we want them to be thoughtful about where they're going next, not just what are the required courses I have to take next semester, >> right? Just hand me the list of requirements. Um so there are good there are good struggles. Uh Christie writes about good struggles in the context of AI um in a piece that I really love for the I think that was for the conversation Christie. So I want to plug that. I'm not as good at getting to the chat as other people, but we should find that link. >> Don't worry. Don't worry. That's that's something that that that we can do. Um we have um we have questions that are coming in like crazy and I want to make sure you all get a whack at each of them. Uh, our good friend in Quebec, Mitio Plured, um, asks this one. If the natural pathways students use are always the easiest one, are we doing them a disservice? How do we get them to choose the most valuable learning experience instead of the easiest one? I think we've touched on that a little bit, but I'm wondering if if you could focus on that for a minute. H sorry, three authors. So we're [laughter] >> I know. >> Yeah. Yeah. Uh so I'll say that um that you know one of our chapters uh is really about this idea of kind of co-design and cocreation or you know engaging students as partners. Um and part of like our goal there is uh is to encourage you know faculty, administrators, etc. to kind of find ways to help students become self-directed learners. Um, and I think uh I think you know facilitating um self-directed learning, having students take ownership over the trajectory of their uh of their education is a great way for them to choose the opportunities and experiences that will most facilitate their goals. Right? So, we have to, as Chris was saying earlier, we need these kind of reflective pauses in the the what can be a blur of of the college experience. And we need these reflective pauses for students to think about uh you know what's my what's my mission you know how does that relate to the institution um uh you know what are the classes what are you know the study abroad experiences if those are available the internships what are the experiences I need to put together to get to my goal right so for students to really kind of take ownership um over that and and like we said before I think we can we can do that in you know relatively like low uh not loweffort but you know not very costly ways right like building in these moments for reflection don't have to you know require a huge co-op infrastructure like Nor Eastern has or something like that it can mean you know we have an extra class or um you know I've seen apps and things like that so um so yeah I'll say that like you know you know encouraging that self-directed learning I think is is a big focus of the kind of latter half of the book as well >> it it really is it really is uh and Christie by the way in the chat chat has shared uh an article that uh she posted to the wonderful website the conversation. Um and I pretty sure I've already read this article. So Christie, I'm I'm I'm getting Christy Gertary in all directions right now. So please everyone uh take a look at this. If you don't know the conversation, it's a website uh devoted to getting uh scholars publishing uh material for a broader digital audience. It's uh actually a wonderful resource which I really recommend. Um, and Christie, there's also a question for you about uh about your uh AI center uh in the chat. I'm not sure if we'll get to it, but make sure you see that. Um, our good friend in Scotland, we have several good friends in Scotland, like everyone should. Uh, but Ve asks this one. When learning is distributed across physical and digital space, does the sense of belonging that your research links to forming still form? And is it form in the same way? I think this is really important. We can think about hybrid classes, you know, or high flex classes, uh, where it's formally designed that way. But of course, most physical classrooms are saturated with Wi-Fi and cell phone networks and people bring all kinds of devices. Um, and uh, and actually the physical campus is also similarly saturated in most cases. Um I mean what do what do you think you know to go back to the earlier part of your book now in this context of of of weaving and pathways um what what are the best spaces that are these hybrids of digital and physical I think the first thing we would say is there isn't just one right so we looked at a bunch of research on students attitudes toward various modalities course modalities and of course they vary and they also vary according to what student not just what they wanted to do but what the shapes of their lives were right and whether they could make it to class if they were what we call a non-traditional learner which I know is a misnomer um you know it's often the case that they need as a matter of access to have opportunities for remote participation in courses and so what I would say is you know for most institutions we need a variety of modalities open to students One of the things we pay a lot of attention to in the book is, and this goes back to the beginning of our conversation with spaces, if you're going to have students come to class in the wake of COVID, having had that experience, why why do they come together in a space? What are the affordances of that space? What can they do there that they couldn't do somewhere else? That's a question I think that should be or couldn't do remotely. That's a question that I think should be on everybody's mind. Hybrid classes are the same. So why would we use that modality? What are these special affordances of bringing together people who are both in the space and then who are outside of that space? And it's not just about kind of connecting them all to the same experience. They're not having the same experience, right? But it is about a a sort of convening or a gathering and the construction of a learning environment that should be thought of very very carefully. One of the things I think we learned with COVID is that good remote or online instruction is not just about putting face-to-face courses online, right? Um so no matter what the modality is thinking about what are the affordances what are the limitations of this space what could we do here or in this format that we couldn't do in some other is a great starting place including talking with students about that and talking to students is again a key key theme of this of this book u and know I mean there there's so much going on here and I'm afraid we have seven minutes left. Um, and so I I want to point people to some some passages, some ideas that come up in the in the chat. Um, uh, one is the idea of of, uh, having students write, uh, and edit Wikipedia articles. Um, which is a fascinating idea and there's a good thread there. Uh, Philip Troutman uh, started that up. So, I want to make sure that we, uh, everyone gets to see that for writing. I think that's a fantastic exercise. Elizabeth um I believe it's Schlala I'm sorry or Shila sorry Elizabeth I'm I'm trying to read this and I I don't want to completely destroy your last name she asks a good question uh reflection is being invoked in higher red circles but it means different things to different people what do the authors mean when you use the word reflection so this is one of the define your terms questions that we have to address >> yeah so I think in writing studies we talk about reflection as metacognition a lot But if I bring that to like what does that actually look like in my classroom? Um, you know, students don't come to us as blank slates. And so thinking about what does the work you're doing connect to things you've done before, how might it connect to things you want to do in the future. And so that could be um within one writing assignment, that could be thinking forward um in the curriculum or in job opportunities. So I I really like students to kind of connect what they're doing now with what they've done and what they could see themselves doing. So that's just kind of like one example of how we might do that in a writing classroom. >> Nice. Nice. Would that connect to uh e portfolios then? >> Yeah, that's always >> I mean it certainly could connect to e portfolios if you do them well. you're asking students to select from their work, to reflect on that work, and then to present that work uh to audiences again many cases outside of classroom context. So they could pull together a lot of the threads of this conversation. >> Um they really can um uh we have time for one question from me and this is a question as the moderator I get to take that privilege. Uh and this is actually a question um aimed at the end of your book. Um most of the time when we have guests who have an idea or a plan or a strategy for the future of higher education, I ask them to imagine what a given university or college might look like say in 10 years of implementing it. But the end of your book actually does that. um it the book changes register to something more like science fiction or design fiction and you imagine a whole swarm of students um in different possible universities and colleges and so I'm just wondering for the benefit of everybody who hasn't had the chance to read the end of your book yet. Can you can you distill that? What would a Christy Chris kevinedu university look like if it centers student learning right away? I I think the first thing to say about that is that we were thinking about different kinds of institutions doing different kinds of work within partnerships. So we are really straightforward about not wanting to say this is what the university of the future looks like. Right? We may have some institutions that focus more on research, some more on learning uh in in various kinds of spacees. And so what we imagine there are we actually don't take it from the point of view of what would the institution look like. We look at what would the experience look like for four very different students, right? Um who have very different learning needs, desires and backgrounds. And so what we tried to imagine is are the ways in which if we had the right kinds of partnerships across institutions. I think David Scobby said he had to leave but he has this nice notion ofworked collaboration across institutions is sort of the key to the future of higher education. It's not what any one individual institution is going to do. How do you work with your community partners? How do you work with other academic institutions? How do you work with governmental agencies? None of this is easy. And we talk a lot about, you know, what some of the caveats we need to make to go into these kinds of partnerships. But to me, the crucial one is that we offer a kind of paniply of opportunities for students to match their learning needs to learning experiences that are tailorable. Well, they can enter into projects and partnerships in a way that meets their need. while the institutions are working together on these large challenges that we're facing society um as well as sort of pushing forward the boundaries of research as we always have and for us research and teaching can and should be connected. I know there's always a big conversation about that, but we imagine projectbased collaborative educational models that incorporate the expertise of faculty and student research. Beautifully said. Beautiful. >> There's so much more to say, Brian, but I know we're short on. >> Christie, Kevin, would you like to add to that? >> I think that's a great uh way to end. Uh Chris, thank you for that um that overview. But yeah, I think that um a big thing we're interested in in imagining that is is how can we uh you know uh reimagine the kind of social compact with um between universities and and the world, right? Um, and so I think, you know, part of the work of the afterward is is to imagine this kind of um this this kind of recommmitment to um universities and colleges for for the common good. >> Yeah. >> Christie, please. Yeah, I would just add um you know if you want to I I think this kind of speculative imaginative work is really interesting. Um but if you want to do this in a learning grounded way um each of our book chapters ends with a set of questions that you can use as a model to kind of guide um what does kind of learning look like for your institution, your context. So, I think to me that's one of my favorite parts of the book and it's only a few pages of of questions to help you get started to have listen to your own students, have your own conversations and I think that we our team would be really interested in kind of what that looks like if you want to reach out to us as well. >> Well, that actually is a perfect transition because the last question I get to ask all of you is how can we keep up with your work? What what are the best ways? Where where do we find you? I know all three of you are LinkedIn. Um, is is that the best way or are there other channels for you all? >> LinkedIn for me. Chrissy, you might have more. >> LinkedIn is good. >> Okay. And Chris, yourself. >> Same here. >> Okay. So, this is the LinkedIn trio, but better yet, known as the trio who have written a fantastic book that I recommend to all of you. Uh, professors Gallagher, Smith, and Gertary, thank you so much for a splendid hour. Uh it's been an absolute delight uh learning from you um reading your book which I recommend to everybody now. I ordered you all to buy it in the chat and there's a visual aid from from Kevin right now. Um thank you all for this work uh and all of your projects for the next year. Please carry on. We need to see all of them and I look forward to following up with each of you. And for everybody else, thank you uh all everyone in the forum today for your wonderful questions, your wonderful thoughts. As always, it's terrific thinking together with you. Uh but before you go, just remember if you go to the forum website, forum.futureofeducation. us, we have sessions scheduled out for weeks and weeks on a variety of topics. Uh so please head there uh to see what you'd like to register for. In the meantime, fall semester is rushing up really quickly. I hope everybody is safe and sound in preparing for it. Uh if you're in the northern hemisphere where it's getting hot, please stay cool. Um and everybody else, take care of yourselves. Be well, and we'll see you next time online. Bye-bye.