Category Archives: CCCWrite

That conference feeling…

I’ve attended mostly EdTech conferences, which tend to focus on mechanics rather than pedagogy. But the best moment from those trips would have to be an impromptu discussion started with somebody while we both rested in chairs halfway up a long staircase.

She was enthused about how well virtual reality was working with her students, so we started off there, but quickly we’d gathered a group of other attendees until there was around a dozen of us half-blocking the conference center stairway. Topics ranged all over the place, and if memory serves we ended up missing a keynote (but it was a corporate keynote, so not too important) because the discussion felt so rich.

Looking back at that across a span of years, I really don’t recall WHAT was said. But I certainly recall how I felt, and that I left that group feeling energized and… not alone. And that sort of gathering is only going to take place at a physical conference, with total strangers.

The technical stuff I learned that year, the “coming soon” that the company announced, certainly augmented the next couple of semesters of my professional development workshops. But that all faded away quickly, while the glow from that single discussion remained.

In July of 2016 I attended InstructureCon in Keystone, Colorado, and during the opening keynote the speaker suggested that attendees blow off the sessions, and instead go out and enjoy the resort area – ride bikes, hike trails, explore the lake in paddle boats. And, as startling as it was hearing that from the conference organizer, I see that he was absolutely right. The best benefit of conferences is really being herded into close proximity with others, in an environment where we will produce our own value.

If only I’d known then…

I’ve been working in the Academic Technology field for the last twenty years, aiding faculty through significant changes in technologies to deliver content and philosophies on what even should be delivered. And I’ve just finished shepherding my institution from nineteen-and-a-half years of using Blackboard’s course management system (from way back when it was called “CourseInfo” – version 2, to be exact) to now using Instructure’s Canvas system. This most recent leg of my career contains an important point that I wish I could send back to the me of two decades ago:

Train them in the abstract concepts, not the product.

Perhaps I could never have achieved this, since the product used in many (sometimes subtle) ways does influence what content is delivered and in what ways. But after helping hundreds (possibly over a thousand) faculty to construct courses using one particular system, and then seeing the process hundreds just went through in trying to transfer over to using a new system, I feel I’ve done them a disservice.

Of course that’s the advice I’d give past me on behalf of my faculty. The suggestion to myself on behalf of older me is a bit more blunt:

If you aren’t be paid for it, don’t provide it.

Over the years I worked shifts easier measured in days than hours, just to get the systems back up and running. One year, on my anniversary, my wife napped out in the car while I fixed a problem with the course management system servers from before dusk until after one in the morning… and yet somehow I’m still married to the woman. I sometimes share this lesson with others, though I struggle to follow it even to this day: There is no such thing as an academic emergency.

If I’d known then what I know now, I suspect my faculty would be better prepared for the years to come, and I know my health and work/life balance would be better.