Whitney Clay: Welcome to the West Valley College TEACH Center podcast.
Michelle Francis: TEACH stands for training educators advocating change.
Whitney Clay: I'm Whitney Clay, Instructional designer.
Michelle Francis And I'm Michelle Francis, Professional Development Coordinator and Instructor in Child Studies.
Whitney Clay: At the TEACH Center, we support faculty as they cultivate excellence in teaching and learning and welcome their students with engaging pedagogies.
Michelle Francis: In this podcast, we discuss hot topics in teaching and learning. We interview educators about what they are doing in their fields, and we talk to learners about what inspires them.
Whitney Clay: Welcome to the fourth and final episode in our series of conversations with our guest, motivation and performance researcher Dr. Omid Fotuhi. In this episode, you will learn about the role of technology in the social experience of learning.
Whitney Clay: We've been talking about what higher ed looks like and how it can serve students well. And online classes are taking off. They're here to stay. And so our next question is going to focus a little bit on technology, and, how do we do all these things we've been talking about when technology is the medium that we have to use. So I wanted to throw in a quote from Jesse Stommel and Sean Michael Morris. So they've written a book called An Urgency of Teachers, and this is what they say when they talk about learning mediated through technology. “What is built inside this kind of learning are relationships, meaningful connections between learners. The computer is a mere intermediary, not a tool as much as a vessel, a transport, a ‘carrier’.” So what I wanted to ask you about is, what are the qualities of learning environments, regardless of modality or medium, that foster the kinds of deep learning and meaningful connections that we've been talking about? And for those of us who teach online and work to create meaningful experiences for students that we may never meet in person or even in real time, what advice do you have for us?
Omid Fotuhi: Maybe I'll come back to something we mentioned earlier, which is the nature of learning. And my view is that learning really is much more of a social experience than it is a content mastery experience. And what I mean by that is, as we think about who we are today, we probably have a number of labels of how we identify ourselves. Right? So I'm a manager, I'm a scholar, I'm a parent. Sometimes I put on my running shoes. I think I'm a runner. But all of these identities were developed over a time and through gradual exposures with mentors who are more advanced and more knowledgeable in these domains. So essentially, as we experiment with new social identities, am I a math person? Am I a faculty? Am I a presenter? Am I a parent? We rely on others both to show us how to do that incrementally. But also to give us the validation that we're doing this well and that this is something that we can internalize as one of our own identities. And so as you think about the role of technology, I think there's a temptation, again, to resort too much to that content delivery mechanism that would rob us the opportunity to also support that identity development that is necessarily a social experience. And so I really resonate with this quote in that, to the extent that we're able to see and appreciate technology for something that connects and provides greater access to that social experience, then I think there's really great promise. But to the extent that it's intended to be used as a convenient shortcut to the real meaningful learning that happens, which is interactive, it's social, it's experimental, then they can also see some hazards in the role that technology has. Now the question, that I don't know that I have the answer to, is how can the advent of artificial intelligence, maybe complement, replace, that same role that we as instructors and teachers have had to play? If there is a world in which, just imagine for a moment a world in which AI is so advanced and so attuned to how a student is developing that it could offer those same metrics of progress and that same level of validation to the student. Then maybe there's a world in which technology actually can significantly disrupt the way that we've been thinking about our education and learning models. But that's not something I've seen happen yet. And so I'm skeptical about how quickly that could happen. And I'm also very much attuned to the fact that at the end of the day, we're still, at our core, social creatures that depend on each other to navigate our ever evolving self-concept. So how you marry that aspect of the human to human interaction with technology, I think one is one that we can continue to think about and develop.
Whitney Clay: Yeah. I think that instructors who are teaching online, if they just hold even those two points in mind, that they are helping their students discover or explore an identity in their course, and that learning is social. If they can keep just those two things in the forefront of their mind when they're designing their course, then I think it would change the kind of activities that they design.
Omid Fotuhi: It also is, it adds a level of convenience that we haven't had in the past. Like, for example, you and I are sitting here talking from across the nation possibly, having a thoughtful conversation where we're able to explore ideas and really grapple with some big questions. And I know for me that's helped me sort of evolve in the way that I think about these things. And that, again, is really when you think of the origin of learning, it was conversation based. So the way that technology is able to facilitate that, I think it can also play a pretty powerful role. The questions that I think people are grappling with now is if technology is serving such a powerful role of creating content, how do you measure learning? So I think assessment is a big concern. And then the other is if technology can be used as a way to substitute for that human to human interaction, where is that fine line between deep personalized engagement versus just that content mastery balance that we were talking about?
Whitney Clay: Yeah, that is kind of scary to think about. I can see where it could be useful, maybe in small doses, but you still need the real people in there and the authentic interactions.
Omid Fotuhi: Let's hope we do.
Whitney Clay: Well, I'm going to believe that we do.
Omid Fotuhi: Yeah.
Whitney Clay: Yeah. Otherwise, forget it. I'm going to go live in the woods. All right. Well, I want to thank you for being on our program today. It's been wonderful talking with you, and I hope our listeners have gained some insights. And I'm sure their minds are spinning with new ideas and ways that they can apply what they've learned.
Omid Fotuhi: Whitney, I love every single time we have a chance to chat. I've learned a lot today as well, and I hope to be able to reconnect and continue this conversation in the years to come.
Whitney Clay: Fantastic. Thanks so much.
Omid Fotuhi: You're welcome.