0:07

Hello everyone, Welcome back to HigherEdLive. I'm Nicole Lentine from

0:10

PlatformQ joining you from Chicago and this week I will be serving as your

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host. HigherEdLive has offered direct access to the best and brightest minds

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sure to subscribe to our newsletter below and connect

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with us on social media using the hashtag HigherEdLive. For our podcast

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listeners, all this information will be in the episode notes. And today we are

0:54

discussing Omnichannel Education and I'm very lucky and excited to have Dr.

0:59

Dustin York from Maryville University of St. Louis. Here's a bit more about

1:03

Dustin. So Dr. Dustin York is an Associate Professor at Maryville

1:07

University in St. Louis. Dr. York's specialties include digital

1:12

transformation, innovative communication and branding and the

1:15

future of higher education. Beyond his primary passion for teaching, Dr. York

1:20

is a subject matter expert for CNN, entrepreneur.com, Forbes, and a

1:24

contributor for Harvard Business Review. Dr. York was awarded the St. Louis

1:28

Business Journal 30 Under 30 President's Award for Strategic

1:32

Leadership and Transformation Innovation, Focus Teaching and

1:35

Technology Award. University Excellence and Innovation as well as an Apple

1:39

Distinguished Educator. I do not know how you have time for all the things

1:43

you do Dustin but I'm thrilled to talk to you. Super super caffeinated. I

1:48

tell you that's the trick for everything, called caffeine. It's a

1:54

good secret to have. Yeah, Yeah. But truly, I'm thrilled. And you know, you

1:59

actually reached out to us to to pitch this topic and I leapt on it. I feel

2:04

like I elbowed all of my other colleagues who served as host for the

2:08

show and said, I want this one because I am really excited to talk a little

2:12

bit about what you do and the innovative approach you took to

2:17

your education to the classes that you're teaching. And so I guess we

2:22

can jump right into it. I want to talk about when you reached

2:26

out, you shared that in the fall 2021 semester, you've highlighted what you

2:31

called Omnichannel Education. So tell me more about what that looks like and

2:36

and maybe a little bit more about why you coined that term too. Absolutely!

2:40

So, okay, so picture this - during COVID, so you're going to make fun of me

2:45

and your audience is going to make fun of me, during COVID I was just as

2:49

stressed as everyone else. Like this idea at my university students have the

2:53

option right? They could come to the classroom or they could come Zoom and

2:56

there was this, it was very stressful trying to figure out how to work that

3:00

process and something in my head said, this is not going away. This is not a

3:05

band aid that is a one time thing and we're going to go back to the old days,

3:09

right? I just didn't believe that from day one. So the part you're going to make

3:12

fun of me for is during those multiple semesters, picture this, like, I would

3:18

come to class about 30 minutes early because it took me time, like

3:23

technology in all my hands, like a backpack full of stuff and like, I'd

3:27

be hooking up things in the classroom and I'd be testing technology out,

3:31

I'd be testing out all this random stuff and some of it was a huge failure

3:35

and people thought I was probably I.T in these classrooms hooking up this

3:40

technology and tearing it down and they probably thought I was stealing stuff.

3:42

But over this time I was like testing, saying what really worked

3:47

for the on ground students as well as the online students. They both had a

3:52

really good enjoyable experience. So doing that multiple semesters came to

3:58

that fall '21. Fall '21, I said, hey, I want to do this. I think this is the

4:03

future. I believe in this. I believe in a student choice. I believe in making

4:10

education as inclusive as possible. It's not just because students want

4:14

convenience. Sure, some students don't want to wake up at 8:00 o'clock in the morning, so sure

4:19

that convenience is part of it. But part of it, I have students that

4:22

because of family situations, they can't come to class or sickness or work

4:27

or a number of reasons. How do we make it inclusive? So this is what I did. In

4:31

fall semester I convinced, I put on my charming hat, and I pleaded with my

4:37

university and I said, can I offer two classes? The same exact class. It was

4:43

an entry level class. We started, it was a 100 level class in my program.

4:47

One section would be a traditional class, right? The cap was I think 25,

4:52

so 25 students could fit in the classroom, traditional class, just like

4:56

everything else. And this semester was gonna be the first semester back to on

5:00

campus. Like you didn't have a choice anymore to go to Zoom like you had to

5:03

be back, butts in seats kind of thing. So we have one section like that. And

5:07

then I said, okay, let me teach a second section of that same class, same

5:13

topic, but it's going to happen at the same time, the same days of the week as

5:18

the first one. It's just that the second one is going to be Zoom. The Zoom

5:23

students can't ever come to the classroom because there's not enough

5:26

seats and the on ground students can't go to Zoom unless there's like health

5:32

situation, something comes up, right? So it can't be a convenience out sort

5:35

of thing. So it's really two separate classes happening at the same time.

5:39

That's what I did. And so we can talk about this in this chat, like

5:43

how to set that up because it was a lot of work in the front end of making that

5:47

all work. But Nicole, I'm telling you because I know someone's listening

5:51

saying, man, I would never do that. That was stressful. I'm not going back

5:55

to those days ever again. I'm telling you once it was set up, which was work,

5:59

it was like a new prep, once that was done, it was, I would very liberally

6:05

say it was 5% more effort. Like it wasn't this big task like it was during

6:11

COVID, once I kind of figured out what systems that worked and what didn't it

6:16

worked really well. And the last part, so it kind of finishes up the - so I was

6:21

doing this right? And we were only like two or three weeks away from fall

6:25

semester beginning and I had an idea. So we, at my university pre-COVID, we have

6:31

online classes, right? These are asynchronous, there's no synchronous

6:36

responsibilities. They're all pre-taped videos of your content and activities.

6:40

This has been going on for years. I said, you know, could I just

6:45

offer the Zoom link to those students? So we had two sections of this entry

6:51

level class going on that were asynchronous, right? There are two

6:54

different sections of that class, the same exact class. I was like, I don't

6:57

know, I'll give them the Zoom link, I'll give them a calendar of what

7:01

we're talking about, if they want to come, they can come. Most of them I

7:05

assume just won't ever come because it's not what they signed up for. Right?

7:08

They signed up for an asynchronous class. I'll give them the link and

7:11

Nicole, I'm telling you, I was shocked. It wasn't all of them by any means. It

7:15

was less than half, but they came not to all of them, but they chose which

7:20

topics to come to. They engaged. Some of them were wallflowers and listened, some

7:24

of them engaged. But that was a really cool, low hanging fruit element. So

7:28

this is multiple classes. It was awesome, huge success. That's

7:33

amazing. And to think that you could reach those different populations,

7:38

but essentially, you know, it's not like you were teaching the same thing

7:41

over and over and over again, it was all captured within that one moment.

7:44

And that's, to your point absolutely the technology behind it,

7:48

it's not no lift. There's some components there, but it's

7:54

truly amazing to see how you could spread that reach even with as limited

7:58

number of spaces in the classroom that you were speaking

8:02

of, the physical classrooms so cool. And yeah, I want to talk about the

8:06

actual practicality of making this all happen too. But I'm super curious

8:11

and I feel like in our preparation for this, you may have

8:14

alluded to this, but I don't know if I'm an odd one out in

8:17

this being in my mid thirties, but I am a huge fan of Twitch

8:21

and the way that works and it sounded like that was one of your inspirations,

8:24

am I right? So, tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to take

8:27

this kind of approach. Okay, Absolutely. So when I first started, when I

8:32

was trying to figure out when I was early stage of, you know, thinking this

8:35

isn't a band aid. That was in my head like this idea that it's not a band aid,

8:38

I gotta figure this out somehow. I went online, tried to search

8:42

for an opportunity and I wasn't really able to find, in the

8:46

educational realm, a perfect system. So I went outside of higher ed

8:50

and in education like, okay, well what are companies doing? I don't know

8:53

what's Apple doing, what's, you know, NVIDIA,

8:57

these tech companies. And I looked at Twitch and to tell you the truth, I

9:03

wasn't a big Twitch person, I didn't personally use Twitch beforehand, but I

9:07

got into it through Google searching basically. And I saw, wow they're

9:11

figuring it out because Twitch is able to, and if you're not familiar Twitch is

9:16

known for video games, right, streaming video games. But I tell you

9:22

what Nicole, if you go on Twitch right now, and you probably know this, but

9:27

yeah, always the number one or number two category, the most viewed

9:32

category on Twitch at any given moment is called what's called "just chatting".

9:37

It's not even video games. And that's what like was my lightbulb moment.

9:41

These aren't just, people think of Twitch as video games, it's not, I mean

9:44

people are having talk shows on this, they're having -- so I thought okay

9:48

somehow they're figuring out how to fill a stadium full of live people to

9:54

watch e-sports games and e-sports championships fill like the Dallas

9:58

Cowboys stadium but also engaging people on Zoom. And when I say engaging,

10:04

they're not watching YouTube videos like you know, passively. The

10:08

chat is moving like crazy. The screen is moving with the best comments and

10:13

subscribers and like things are happening on screen. I don't know, I

10:17

grew up on TRL, I don't know if you ever watched TRL. It was like back then you could

10:23

like text in or I think you had to call in and your name could be on the T.V.

10:28

for like voting for, I was a big Britney Spears guy, so like when I

10:32

voted for Britney Spears that was huge. But like now you can do that at scale

10:36

students could feel part of this, that was my idea. What can I learn from

10:40

Twitch? And we can talk about the tech too, but literally even the hardware,

10:44

like the hardware that I used came from that area, like what are streamers

10:49

using to help kind of navigate this water, make people engaged in it and

10:54

not just passive. I tell you that Twitch, that streaming world has

11:01

something that education should be focused on for sure. Oh absolutely.

11:05

Absolutely, yeah. Just the level of engagement is unlike anything I've

11:08

seen to your point of it's true, you know, if you go into some of the more

11:11

popular streamers, it is flying and there's rewards for engagement

11:17

that I think, you know, higher ed, we're talking about badges

11:21

and other, you know, there's a lot of conversation around kind of

11:24

that tangible, I guess question mark because it's digital sometimes, but

11:29

that sense of reward for engagement and there's so much to

11:33

learn from that platform. I completely agree. And so I love

11:37

that you drew so much inspiration over from that and we've been

11:40

alluding to the technology so I want to get into that. Tell me about,

11:43

I think you had even said you kind of have like a

11:46

station that you sort of build. So tell me about the components that went

11:51

into this because I think a lot of folks are going to wonder like, cool, glad

11:54

this worked for you, how in the world do I even start to build this

11:57

myself? Yep, absolutely. So to make this happen, to make this out, it's

12:02

really two things, it's two things both of them are difficult, right? It's just,

12:07

it's all front end work. So this is by no means selling this as a turn the

12:12

light switch on and you know, ask your faculty members to do this in a

12:15

week. The first one is non tech. It's that redesigning your active

12:23

learning. So like I'm not a stage on the stage, I'm against that. I mean

12:27

that's kind of the movement, right? That's not even, I don't think a hot

12:30

take by any means, but getting away from that, just lecture for an hour.

12:33

But even that has to change a little bit because I found that some of

12:39

these activities wouldn't work at both areas. So it was almost a little

12:44

bit like a new prep from the faculty side to say what kind of active

12:49

learning will work for all channels there. I had one activity where

12:56

we would go out of the classroom and we'd do

12:59

this thing off camera and we couldn't do that on Zoom, right? So had to change it and

13:03

what I found was actually some of that new active learning things we came up

13:07

with was better than the old ones but it was time right? Just like any

13:11

faculty knows a new prep takes time. That took time. So that was really on

13:15

the faculty side, that's non tech that's kind of getting back to active

13:19

learning. But then there's the tech side. And there, yes, so if you picture, so

13:26

you know, I wish in a perfect world I could just say you know what, let's

13:30

build a brand new classroom from scratch and give me a million dollars

13:34

and we'll make this awesome Twitch education room. Don't have that, right?

13:39

So they said you know go back to the drawing board York and we'll

13:43

figure something out. So we said okay let me test this. So I worked with our

13:48

I.T. department and our digital side and they said okay what if we built

13:53

this cart? And Nicole, let me tell you if you picture like a very fancy cafeteria

14:00

cart. So like it's nice like it was metal and it was like our

14:07

university color's red so it's like all red, shiny red, kind of branded kind of

14:11

thing. But I mean it's basically a push nice cafeteria cart. So we used that

14:16

and said, okay I can build out this cart, take it to any room and then that'd be

14:21

kind of the 1.0 version of what a classroom could be in the future. This cart, what

14:26

it had, it had one power cable. So there was a multi plug unit

14:35

inside the cart. So I could just go into any classroom, plug it up and

14:37

everything came on, everything worked all at once. What was on that cart,

14:41

there was multiple screens, so dual screens. I use a laptop. So I used

14:47

a very high powered Mac laptop to run it all. I would have multiple screens

14:52

so I could have multiple things up at one time. I had a stream deck, which if

14:58

you're not familiar Amazon, they're cheap I think like $200.

15:02

But that's one again, I stole from Twitch. These Twitch users had a

15:06

stream deck. And if you're not familiar, the stream deck it's basically this

15:09

panel, I think mine had 12 buttons and when you hit a button, something

15:14

happens and you pre-program that. So when I say it was stressful before,

15:19

it's because, yeah, when you were trying to do something with the students

15:22

in the classroom, you'd have to fight with your computer for five

15:26

minutes to get a breakout room going or to get something happening. You just

15:31

program that to a stream deck. So when I was ready for something to

15:34

happen, I just hit one button and then it happened. And then when I wanted the

15:38

people to come out of the breakout room, hit a button and it came back. So

15:41

that's where it became much more streamlined, much easier to get going.

15:48

That stream deck helped a lot. That was a good, like if I get a life

15:52

hack, that would be one big one. Other than that it would be we had a high

15:56

def camera, we had audio lighting in that case. There's a two point-- so

16:03

that's what we built for fall, we have a 2.0 version. So this is what

16:07

we're doing for this fall. So this is the updated version, I have updated

16:11

information since our last conversation Nicole. So we've got 2.0 version and

16:15

I'd love to tell you about that. So we've got, so I went back and said, hey,

16:20

can I have a million dollars for a classroom? They said same answer as last

16:23

time, but we can do 2.0 right? Which there is a financial

16:28

commitment there. So I mean, I am thankful. But for there we have a motion

16:32

tracking camera that's built into the room. So it's motion tracking. They're

16:36

zooming in zooming out all automated. I don't touch anything whatsoever. It

16:41

works as soon as I log into the room. We've got a confidence monitor that's

16:47

really big. So a confidence monitor is in the back of the classroom and I can

16:51

always see what the virtual students see. So it's like I'm out of frame or

16:56

something lags or if there's just something going on I need to know, I

16:59

see that on the screen. There's also what we've added is Slack. So I'm

17:05

using Slack in the classroom where before it was Zoom Chat. So it

17:09

was just the Zoom Chat that we were using to get that engagement to make a Twitch

17:13

like. Moving to Slack, to build this community, not only in the classroom,

17:19

but a lot of students said, oh, I love some links that were shared in class,

17:23

where are they now? I was like, well I didn't save the Zoom Chat, so

17:27

we're moving into Slack where students have that access all the time. I tested

17:32

Slack this semester and students got into it. They built this community and

17:36

they like DM'd each other about stuff and they asked questions about things.

17:39

They shared resumes on there. Like it was super cool. So there's going to be a

17:43

Slack TV as well. So all that's going to be available in the classroom. So

17:47

the on ground students also see that engagement as well. So that's just some

17:51

of the tech that kind of helps drive this movement. I love that. And I

17:57

love the way that you've built iteration into it. I mean

18:01

I don't know if you'll ever get to the point where they'll

18:03

finally say, yeah, you totally can have that million dollar classroom, but you

18:07

know, seeing how you've seen what worked, what didn't, you know, you've

18:11

seen the challenges that come through and you found these solutions that then

18:15

can just help to improve it more and more and more each semester in each

18:18

year. It's really exciting to hear. How have the students

18:22

responded to this? Yes, super good question. So I think it's really

18:27

multiple groups. Right? So the on ground students, they loved it.

18:33

But really there was no different, right? For the on ground student, it was

18:37

really not much of a difference for them. They didn't notice much of a

18:40

difference. They were aware there were also some online students, but there

18:43

was the engagement was really per cohort. So the on ground students

18:47

engaged with each other, the Zoom engaged with each other. So on ground

18:51

as good as usual, there were no hurdles or distractions. It was kind of

18:55

a traditional class that they were used to, which is great because that's what

18:58

they signed up for. That's what they registered for. The Zoom students

19:02

loved it. So this is what I was amazed by is we have Zoom classes, right, at

19:11

not very many, but my university has a few of these, okay, you can continue

19:15

Zoom if you want, it's only Zoom. And what I heard from students was they

19:20

didn't enjoy that very much because it felt awkward. There was a professor

19:26

looking into the camera, students don't come off mute almost at all if they

19:32

ever do come off mute and it didn't feel lively is what they said, it

19:36

didn't feel as lively, but this felt lively because again, my Zoom students

19:41

never really came off mute very often, they still stayed on mute like usual,

19:46

but they were blowing up the chat, I used a lot of prompts, so put a 1 in

19:50

the chat, if you believe this, if you really believe it, put a bunch of 1s

19:54

put 2, if you don't believe it. So then we had these kind of

19:58

prompts to get that quick key engagement, but what they said was they

20:03

felt the energy of a traditional classroom because I was feeding

20:09

off of the classroom itself, right? The live classroom. So they saw the live

20:13

class, they saw that liveliness, I was still moving around, I was still doing

20:17

what every faculty member enjoys, right? That live, that energy of a classroom,

20:23

that's contagious, Nicole, I'm telling you and the Zoom students felt it. They

20:27

felt that energy level. They were blowing up the chat like crazy.

20:34

Some of those Zoom students, I find were some of the more introverted

20:37

students in the classroom that I never heard of, I never really heard from in

20:42

the classroom, but man, you would have thought they were like the most extra

20:47

person in the world because they were like living in that moment and chat,

20:50

they were sharing articles and links and answering other

20:54

students questions, it was amazing. The other side which was really cool

21:00

was the asynchronous students, we haven't talked about them very much,

21:03

which was low hanging fruit, it was just a cool thing. Unfortunately I

21:07

never took data on who showed up or whatnot, so just taking a guess, we're

21:13

probably about 30-40% of them attended once a few of them attended quite often

21:20

and they said through end of year feedback, they said they loved it, they

21:24

had a really good time or they said I love the fact that it was offered. I

21:29

couldn't go because I work during that time, but just the fact that this was

21:33

an option made me not feel like a number. They literally said that in the

21:37

comments which I loved. Absolutely loved. And I gotta tell you just one quick

21:41

story. Oh yeah, please go ahead! One story. So I still nerd out about this and like this

21:47

is the moment I said, yeah this is not just a weird thing in my head, like

21:49

this is real. I had this asynchronous student, she signed up, she works full

21:54

time. She works during the day. Normal business hours. Couldn't come

21:59

to the class, the class was I think one o'clock, 1 p.m. and we had

22:05

this activity where they had to make an elevator pitch and they had to pitch to

22:08

what they're working on, right? So if they're talking to an employer or an

22:11

interview or whatnot they had to sell these skills. And for the asynchronous

22:15

students, they had to videotape it and upload it to our, we use Canvas, but our LMS.

22:20

So that was the assignment. But she came to class, the Zoom class, I

22:26

think she was in a different state, and with the breakout rooms and they gave

22:30

elevator pitches to each other and she came and she gave her elevator pitch to

22:34

other students. And this was like week three of me testing this and

22:38

in my head, I said, oh, no, first problem. I thought I was thinking, oh,

22:44

she felt obligated. I thought she felt obligated to come to give her elevator

22:49

pitch because it is an assignment, but maybe she didn't know that it was just

22:53

uploaded on Canvas. She didn't have to-- I was like oh no! So I messaged her, I emailed her

22:57

after class and said, hey, you know, thank you for coming to class. Just so

23:03

you know, you didn't have to, is that, did you know? And I looked and she had

23:06

uploaded a video and this is what she emailed me. She goes, absolutely, I

23:10

hope it was okay if I came because I have an interview next week for another

23:15

job. I wanted practice giving that elevator pitch to people live, not just

23:19

a videotaped thing. So I only chose to come to that one class to get

23:24

that experience. I hope that's okay. I was like, 100%, it's okay, right?

23:29

That's awesome. So I was like, yes, pick what you want to come to, if

23:32

there's one class that you want to come to come to that one right to get that

23:36

experience. So that was so, so cool. So it was a success. There was no

23:41

negative, at least from again, this, there's only one, right? So the one

23:45

example, but it was a success across all cohorts. That was really cool. Yeah,

23:51

and thinking about the difference of like you were

23:54

saying, kind of the traditional, what we, well "traditional", but what a lot of

23:58

folks shifted to during the pandemic of that professor sitting in

24:02

front of the computer doing, like, I don't know if you would have

24:05

had that same experience or it would have been feeling like you were

24:08

pulling teeth out of students trying to get them to engage.

24:11

I feel like it really speaks to how your approach engaged students and

24:17

got them excited about what they were doing and that's really cool. I

24:21

love that story. Let me ask you a question. So is there one

24:27

professor that comes to mind to you that was like life changing? Like, this

24:31

was your one of your favorite professors that you had in college,

24:35

that was like, wow, this made an impact. I mean, yes, but like so many of them

24:42

for different reasons. It's almost hard to nail down.

24:48

Yes, actually it was my professor, my Intro to Sociology professor and I

24:55

loved his approach because it really it forced us to think

25:00

differently, it wasn't just reading the textbook and and applying those things.

25:04

Like we did a project where we had to break a norm and we actually had to

25:09

go out into the world and break a certain norm. And my group, we

25:14

broke the norm of sitting at a table, we went to a McDonald's in downtown

25:18

Burlington, Vermont, it's not there anymore, and if any viewers are watching

25:21

from Burlington, Vermont it was there, and my group, I was the observer,

25:26

so I sat to the side and they sat on the floor and let me tell you

25:30

fascinating, fascinating interactions, fascinating things to have heard from

25:34

people commenting on what they were doing. But I loved it because we were

25:38

encouraged to kind of have these very different experiences that I feel like

25:42

it wasn't that lecturey kind of classroom experience like you were

25:46

talking about earlier. I love that. And even when you're talking about, I can see like as

25:50

soon as you came up with that you thought of that you lit up. So

25:52

like for even the listeners thinking about it, even I'm sure everyone else has

25:57

that one person and this sociology professor or whatever. Like what would

26:01

happen if that sociology professor, their classes were always wait listed.

26:07

They were always full, right, and you could never get into that one

26:10

sociology professor's class. What would happen if you never had that experience?

26:15

Right? That would I assume even by your facial expressions, that would have

26:18

been a loss. Right? Oh yeah, big time. So the question is and, again, this isn't

26:23

a perfected system. I think it's going in that direction though of like how

26:27

can we make sure that doesn't happen? How can we scale the best faculty

26:32

members, those individuals where she is great at making active learning

26:36

and he's great at doing these activities and she just, you know,

26:40

opens up my head and whatnot, how can we say, we're not limited by who can sit

26:46

butts in seats, were not limited by that anymore. We can open this up. We

26:50

can scale those best faculty members and educators and thought

26:54

leaders. Man, I think that could be a game changer. That could be an absolute

26:58

game changer. Absolutely. Well and especially in this era where we're

27:02

moving to like as an adult who I don't yet

27:07

have a Master's degree and I've explored like do I even have the time

27:10

the bandwidth the finances, to be able to dedicate towards that.

27:14

And I love that we're moving in the direction of certifications

27:18

and learning experiences and things. And I feel like that opens up those

27:21

opportunities that much more to make it still an incredibly

27:24

engaging experience. Learning from someone who is a powerful educator

27:29

but not having to physically be in St. Louis and being able to be in

27:34

your classroom it's game changing. What about those

27:38

students that have hurdles that other students may not have, right?

27:42

Whether that be family situations, they have to work to support their brothers

27:46

and sisters or their children or medical situations that come up,

27:51

how we can't get in this situation of excluding an individual of education,

27:57

right? If we say we have these faculty members that are the best, but you have

28:01

to be here in this state, in this city at 1 p.m. on Tuesdays and

28:05

Thursdays, I mean that's excluding, in my opinion. And how can we open that up

28:11

to absolutely every, as many people as we possibly can? Man, I tell you what,

28:16

I'm passionate about it. And just by your face again, I can tell you're

28:20

picking it up too. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean we're

28:23

talking about the future of education in so many ways and it's

28:27

thrilling and it's, on one hand, it's, I feel like you can say

28:31

that a little bit easier now that I'm not at an institution, but some

28:34

institutions are slow to change and slow to move and it's

28:38

frustrating because I think we can get so bogged down in the traditional way

28:42

that we have approached things and change a new, trying

28:47

something new can be incredibly scary and there's always

28:51

the possibility of failing at something, right? And I'm sure that you

28:55

had your pitfalls along the way of trying this, but look at the flip side

28:59

of trying something and learning from it and applying it moving forward and

29:03

seeing just how far reaching this can be. It's just, it's so

29:08

exciting. And I'm hopeful for higher education to continue embracing

29:12

things like this, because it truly, we need to be thinking differently about

29:17

how we're approaching education to continue to be sustainable

29:21

and serve the needs of today's students, whether that be

29:25

traditional students, adult students, anybody in between. Yeah, I love

29:30

this. We could we could talk for hours easily Dustin about all of this.

29:35

I tell you what I know we've talked about this right before we

29:41

jumped on, and the timing, I think everyone listening, if you're not going

29:46

to change now, you're not going to change ever. If you say, well, I'll do

29:50

that, like, this is the best time I mean, me and you are a force, so if you're thinking

29:54

like, the riskiest thing you can do right now is to play it safe in my

29:57

opinion. Like you have to test things, not everything's going to win. I carried a

30:02

lot of technology in the room that were not wins, right? So to

30:08

be safe is to test those things out just on your point. For sure.

30:11

Absolutely. Absolutely. I feel like we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about

30:15

the, maybe things that didn't work so well. Hopefully folks can,

30:20

if they're inspired to, try this themselves, they can learn from it.

30:23

So what didn't work? I'm super curious. Absolutely. And that's why I

30:28

love that, I think there's, we have great leadership in higher

30:32

education and got a lot of thought leaders and like innovation etcetera.

30:36

You have to work with faculty though, like they're going to be great ideas in

30:39

theory, but until you actually use it in the classroom, you

30:43

don't know what's going to happen. Like the great philosopher, of that's a

30:47

joke, but if Mike Tyson once said everyone has a good plan until you get

30:51

punched in the mouth, right? And then you don't have a good plan anymore. So

30:54

yeah, so a lot of things did not work. That's why I am just, I'm a faculty

30:59

member that just tests these out. So for example, one thing that was a failure

31:02

audio was a failure beginning, figuring out cameras was a failure at

31:07

the beginning, figuring out how to automate a lot of this stuff that was

31:11

failure, but here's one failure that I haven't figured out yet. So I'll give

31:15

you this to just prove that I'm humble and I don't have the answers to all

31:19

this. One I haven't figured out yet that I'm testing for next year is O.B.S.

31:23

So it's Online Broadcast Services. So if you just Google search

31:27

O. B. S. it's a free program. 100% free program. It's also used by streamers.

31:32

It's a common tool used by, you're familiar with this, I've only

31:36

heard the acronym, I never actually knew what it was. So thank you. So

31:41

O.B.S it connects with Zoom so you can run your Zoom meetings O.B.S and so you

31:45

know what O.B.S. is. O.B.S makes live streams interactive. And the

31:52

things that you see on the Zoom will be animated and pop ups will happen and

31:57

you can have like lower thirds on people's screens and you could have

32:01

animations happen and giphs happen. And say use like comment of the day

32:06

and have a student's name appear on the screen and things like that. It's

32:09

animation, sound effects, you can do all kinds of stuff. You could have

32:12

tables appear and interact with tables, that's what O. B. S. is. It's free. I

32:18

suggest anyone can play around with it. But the issue I ran it with

32:22

was again, if you remember I just I ran all of this on my laptop. So I bring a

32:27

laptop into the room and it was just my laptop couldn't support it. It was

32:31

just such, I mean you would think a fighter jet was taking off from my

32:36

laptop. It was like that worrying sound. It was just, it bogged down, it was

32:42

too much of a program to run live and shoot out to all these Zoom rooms. But

32:47

you know, I haven't figured out the answer for that. We're trying to test

32:51

what we can do for fall semester. But into that 3.0 version, if

32:55

there was a dedicated computer for this like this isn't something you can just

32:59

show up with in your 2017 laptop and do some of these things. Like technology

33:06

has to be a focal point and maybe that's an Alienware or one of these

33:11

like you know gaming computers that can run some of the software that faculty

33:15

don't need to understand how to use it right? I'm in no way

33:19

trying to pitch that every faculty member of chemistry and sociology and

33:23

stats have to learn what Alienware is and O. B. S. but the institution, how

33:28

can they do? There's a lot of learning designers and text support in

33:32

the classroom, can they be testing these things out, finding faculty

33:37

members that are sort of the tip of the spear to test out, hey, can we find two

33:41

or three people to try that are always like interested in this stuff, test

33:46

with them first, see what's working and then when you figure out how to

33:49

effectively use O. B. S., you LinkedIn message me and tell me what you learned.

33:54

I definitely will, yeah, you get the gears turning and I mean clearly I

33:59

didn't know what the term actually stood for until you shared it with me.

34:02

But yeah, that's an interesting question and an interesting thing for

34:06

folks to ponder and once when, you know, maybe some viewers out there

34:10

that are listening, they might have some some insights to share,

34:14

who knows? So and share, share with Nicole and I immediately. Yeah exactly yeah.

34:18

Find us on LinkedIn and send them our way because clearly we're

34:21

still trying to work through that ourselves. That's great.

34:25

This is awesome. And I didn't prepare you for this question ahead

34:30

of time, I'm super curious because I come from the world of admissions

34:34

before joining PlatformQ and I'm curious, there's

34:39

certain limitations there, right? You know, that you can't perfectly mimic an

34:43

open house in a perfectly virtual environment, right?

34:47

And we learned a lot. We supported our clients to try

34:51

to figure out how to do that. But you know, we learned a lot from, you can't

34:54

just put a six hour event online and hope for the best. So I know

34:59

that you're coming from the faculty side of things, but has this inspired

35:03

you to share anything with your admissions colleagues or have you had

35:05

conversations with your admissions colleagues about any

35:08

applicability of this to the work that they do? Yeah, I think the

35:13

applicability is definitely there. I think we gotta think, so think of your,

35:18

it depends on what demographic, but especially your traditional

35:24

age, 17 year old looking at an on ground like a traditional on ground

35:30

student. They grew up with this, right? So they're used to this, when they

35:36

pull up their phone and the apps that they're using already uses this

35:40

technology it's just that in higher ed we're kind of slow, right? We're kind

35:44

of in the ivory tower, we're kind of used to our way of doing things. We

35:48

have to think, how are they consuming media? Like they are

35:52

consuming news. It just doesn't look like the same news you're consuming.

35:56

They are watching entertainment, but they're not watching the Big Bang

35:59

Theory like you watched, right? They were watching different times. They're

36:02

engaging with their entertainment. So I think leaning into that side and

36:08

specifically looking at some of these things. What is Twitch using for that's

36:12

working really well for them? Bring in some of the faculty that

36:18

are interested in this, right? Because that's what the students are

36:21

paying for. They're paying for a number of things. I would say the number one is

36:25

the socialization, right? Even I'm a faculty member and I would even say

36:29

that that's one of the things that they are paying for. So how can you build

36:32

in that engagement? Have students on campus engage in this interactive

36:37

element and ask them, what are you doing on Roblox? What are you doing

36:40

on Fortnite that's really cool? If Travis Scott has the most attended

36:45

concert of all time and it happened on Fortnite like you should know that as

36:49

admissions, you have to know that's happening. So what can we do in the

36:53

Metaverse and Web3 and with these kind of things to have that same exact

36:56

engagement cause they're used to it on Fortnite. So why can't your university?

37:00

So socialization I think real big and then faculty. Can you bring them

37:05

something that they can use immediately? You know this from admission side,

37:08

students nowadays are seeing higher ed and I'm just saying what they're

37:13

looking at is it's transactional, right? I want this and I want to leave with

37:17

this, right? What can I learn and engage with that I can use immediately

37:22

that I can use right now. We're growing up in the YouTube world, right?

37:25

If I need to fix my dryer, I go to YouTube. So I know how to try and fix

37:28

my dryer. How can we get a snippet, right? You have to take the full class to

37:35

fully understand how critical thinking skills and the whole underlying of

37:39

learning. But how can we get a snippet of what that feels like? It doesn't

37:45

feel like someone talking for an hour in front of a classroom. It feels

37:49

engaging. You can do that right in this hybrid omnichannel approach come to

37:54

campus you want, If you can't come to campus, we've got you covered, have

37:57

that interaction I think is essential and get people that's,

38:03

force them to make friends. I'll give this one last story.

38:08

Google has a really low or really high retention rate of employees. Like even

38:12

during the Great Resignation Google has always

38:16

had a really good job of keeping employees. And when asked, what is their,

38:20

what number one thing they do to keep employees and get employees to come

38:24

there is what they call it, they say is their dining room, their cafeteria is

38:29

their number one way. And I was like why is that? And they said because we

38:33

offer free food and whatnot. But we force people to come to a central place,

38:37

have engagement with one another and make friends, make work friends and

38:41

you're less likely to leave or you're more likely to come here if you have a

38:45

friend. So in admissions, we can do that digitally, we can do that in

38:49

person, we can do that through technology, people are making friends

38:52

on Tinder, they're making friends on Hinge and you know, on Instagram and

38:57

TikTok and social media, how can we have that same engagement and force

39:01

them to have this social interaction and learn? I think that would be a big

39:06

innovation and digital transformation of admissions. That's fantastic. Love

39:11

that advice. Yeah. Awesome. Well I mean like we said Dustin, I can talk to

39:16

you for hours on end, but you know, in the interest of leaving something short,

39:22

fairly short and digestible for folks, I want to see is there

39:26

any last bit of advice or inspiration if somebody's watching this

39:31

and going, oh my gosh, I need to try this myself. You know what is

39:34

like the biggest piece of advice that you want to leave them with? Yeah, I

39:38

think the one piece of advice wouldn't even be a tactical thing, I'm really

39:41

big in tactics, but I think if I just gave one piece, it would be

39:44

stop waiting for the perfect opportunity. There's not going to

39:48

be a perfect ever. There's never going to be a perfect opportunity. You just

39:50

move in a direction and it may be a failure, but just keep moving and that

39:55

failure may turn into a win that you didn't even think about, right? Like I

40:00

tried some of this stuff and it was a failure but it spurred a new direction

40:03

that was a huge win so I think if it was one takeaway it would be just move,

40:08

don't wait for the perfect thing and oh, we gotta wait for the perfect

40:12

technology, let's research the perfect camera until we figure it out a

40:17

month from now. No, figure out the best camera you can figure out right now,

40:20

that's affordable and in budget and whatnot and just move. Like, let's test

40:24

something immediately. I think that's a skill for sure. Awesome. Thank you.

40:29

Well, I have no doubt that people are going to have questions

40:33

after they watch. So thank you for your time today,

40:38

where can people find you? Yeah, absolutely. So first Nicole, I want to,

40:42

I want to thank you for having me on. This is a great conversation. I tell

40:45

you what, you would need an award for podcast hosting, like you're so easy to

40:50

talk to and engage with. So thank you for having awesome, awesome medium here.

40:55

I'm easy to get to so LinkedIn, just Dr. Dustin York, I'll probably come up for

40:58

Dr. Dustin York on LinkedIn. Connect with me, DM me on there. If

41:02

you've got ideas, I'd love to go back and forth and DM you if you're

41:06

interested in brainstorming or looking at, especially digital

41:10

transformation that's kind of where my area is in digital transformation of

41:13

communication and branding and kind of this Web3 and the where we're

41:18

moving from here, there's also DrDustinYork.com for more of that

41:22

information as well. But yeah, I'm a big nerd, so if if you've got thoughts,

41:26

if you just want to connect and share stuff on LinkedIn, so I'd love to see

41:29

you virtually. Awesome, awesome. Thank you. Yeah, it's it's been an absolute

41:33

pleasure getting to talk to you so I appreciate your time today and

41:37

thank you to the viewers for joining us today and we look forward to seeing you