(upbeat music)
Mary Loder- Welcome to Course Stories,
produced by the instructional design
and new media team of EdPlus at Arizona State University.
In this podcast, we tell an array of course design stories,
alongside other ASU online designers and faculty.
On today's course story.
Michael Crow- Human beings are really creatures of learning.
We're even sapien in the phrase homosapien,
seeker of knowledge,
we're a knowledge driven creature,
we're a learning driven creature,
and we've decided to formalize and classify
and make class-based all kinds of things that we're doing.
So here we have this huge tool for democratization,
this huge tool for enhancing equitable
access to learning outcomes.
In fact, you could find a way using YouTube
connected through Crash Course,
connected to colleges and universities, including ASU,
you could find a way to plot your own course
outside of the entire formal education process.
Mary- Hi, I'm Mary Loder,
an instructional designer from ASU Online.
Ricardo Leon- I'm Ricardo Leon.
I'm a media specialist at the same place.
Mary- Yeah, we work together.
Ricardo- Let's get on with the show.
Mary- Okay.
Ricardo- Hey, homies.
Mary- Hey, homies.
(laughing)
We're so hip around here.
Ricardo- I know, I know we are. Mary- We really are.
Ricardo- So it's me, Ricardo. Mary- And me, Mary.
Liz- And me, Liz.
Mary- And it's important you hear our voices
because there's a lot of voices in this episode.
Liz- Not only that, but you're not gonna hear
a lot from us today.
Mary- No, not really.
I mean, I do talk to Meredith at the end.
Liz- That's true. Mary- You'll hear me again.
Ricardo- Who have we heard from already, Ricardo?
Liz- I mean, you were there.
Ricardo- Oh, that's our correspondent
in the field, Dr. Michael Crow.
(laughing)
Liz- I didn't realize that we scored him
as a member of the team.
Mary- He is.
We're sending him an official Course Stories pen.
Liz- That's very special, very special.
Ricardo- Yeah, so that's a conversation from GSV 2023
with Dr. Crow and a few of the people
that were part of a project
that we're gonna be talking about here.
And that project is Study Hall.
Liz- Okay, what is Study Hall?
Tell me more about this right now.
Mary- Okay, I'll help.
So, study hall's a new path
to earning college credit at our university.
So before you even apply, you can be watching videos
and like get into a course
and see if you want to maybe do more work.
And then if you do, you can actually get credit.
Liz- Oh my gosh.
So is it like a little like taste test
of like a real ASU course--
Mary- Yes.
Liz- -before I have to figure out if I want to do it?
Mary- Yes, that's exactly what it is.
Liz- I love that.
I need more of that in my life.
(laughing)
Ricardo- But it's seasoned so amazingly well
because it's a partnership with the Crash Course program,
the production team
that creates the crash course program Complexly.
Yeah.
So this is not only is it just like a taste
of a college education, it's actually like--
Mary- Really well done. Mary- -really well...
Yeah, really well made.
Mary- Well your team helped a lot with the production of this,
and then they have their own production group as well
because there was like...
Well, we'll get into it,
because there's two episodes actually that we're doing.
It's this one that's around the ideation
of what is Study Hall
and like what does that look like
from the student perspective?
But then there's a second episode around the production
and so you'll get to hear all the background stories
of how our teams became kind of one.
Ricardo- Yeah, yeah.
It's been a great relationship.
Mary- It has.
Okay, but that's not the only parts of this conversation.
So we had the GSV and we'll listen to that in a second,
but we're also gonna be hearing from who?
Liz- Yeah.
So as part of this very special episode,
what I like to call From The Vault,
Ricardo's version, ala Taylor Swift.
Ricardo- Yes.
This has been a long time in the making, this episode.
Liz- Yeah.
So there are a couple titles that have changed too--
Mary- Absolutely.
Liz- -which we want to make sure we highlight.
So first we're gonna hear from Matt Robinson,
who is the Associate Director
of the New Media team here at EdPlus
who he's actually interviewing a few people.
We have Lenora Ott, who is now the Director
of Learning Design for Universal Learner Courses
within the ASU Learning Enterprise.
My home girl, Meredith Savvides,
who is now a Principal ID, big deal
for Study Hall specifically.
Finally, we have Wayne Anderson, who's the Senior Director
of Strategic Design and Development at EdPlus.
And my favorite title of his,
which is the Ambassador For The Weird and Unusual.
Mary- Oh, that's so cool.
I didn't even know that existed.
Liz- I saw it in his bio
and I have so many questions I'm gonna ask him--
Mary- He has a cool bio and I love his little image
that he put in there too.
We have to bring both of them into the page.
Liz- Oh, we will.
Ricardo- So the first thing that we're gonna hear
in this humongous episode two-parter
is a conversation that we recorded
at the GSV Conference 2023 in San Diego, between,
who are our participants in this one?
Mary- So the first is our field correspondent,
you know him well, Dr. Michael Crow.
And we're also gonna hear from Hank Green,
who's the CEO of Complexity, which is the production company
that creates educational content for things like Study Hall.
And he's the creator of Crash Course side show.
This guy's done a lot along with his brother John.
We're also gonna be hearing from Katie Kurtz,
who's the Managing Director
and Global Head of Learning of YouTube.
So these are some really big voices
around some very big ideas that are supporting the mission
of not only ASU GSV, the conference that we heard them in,
but specifically the charter of ASU.
Ricardo- Yeah, it's a big partnership between ASU--
Mary- Huge. Ricardo- -and Complexity and YouTube.
Mary- It's huge.
Ricardo- Not like, we don't have videos.
I mean, we have videos on YouTube,
but this is like a partnership
with YouTube, the company.
Mary- Yeah, and when you hear,
you'll understand from Katie's perspective
like how big this really is.
The impact and the potential reach is outstanding.
Ricardo- Let's hear it for these people.
(upbeat music)
Let's hear it from these people.
Let's listen in.
Mary- Let's hear it for the boys.
(laughing)
Michael Crow- Well, good morning, everybody.
We're here to sort of deal with a dilemma of numbers.
So we have a country that
in the relatively short future, short timeframe,
we'll break 350 million people.
We have an educational system
that is educating some of them sometimes
and significantly in inadequate ways as we move along.
So there are technologies that have come along
that have enabled us to reach basically
almost everyone all the time
with ubiquitous information across all dimensions
of learning in every possible way.
And there is, in the formal organized educational arena,
huge resistance to that notion of highly egalitarian,
highly democratic, highly autodidactic empowerment
through new kinds of learning systems.
So obviously Katie's over there
looking at global learning at YouTube.
YouTube has, I don't know,
like billions upon billions upon billions of something.
I know when I watch my son (indistinct).
(laughing)
He mostly is watching all these things
about how things fail.
It's just fail, fail, fail, fail.
(laughing)
And it is kind of sad to watch.
So Katie, why don't we start with
why does YouTube want to make certain
that it's capabilities are useful in terms of helping people
to not only learn, which they certainly do through YouTube,
but to learn in ways that then attach to the more formal
recognized learning processes?
So what's behind YouTube's logic?
Katie Kurtz- So YouTube, as you mentioned, has two billion users.
93% of them say they use the platform
for knowledge and information.
So we were thinking about
how we could help empower those users to think through
how they could maybe break down barriers
to high impact learning experiences.
And Study Hall, this project
that we have all worked on together
is a great example of that.
So just really quickly, what Study Hall is
is it is a new on-ramp to earning college credit
that begins and was built for YouTube.
It's a three part content series
of college foundations courses.
These are some of the most commonly found college courses,
in the US at least.
How To College and Fast Guides to majors and electives.
So that taken together a learner understands
why they are taking certain courses
and the How to College and Fast Guides has demystified
and contextualize the content within those courses,
so it's part of a whole.
And the learnings that are informing this project
are that just increasing accessibility and affordability
do not ensure student success.
And we've learned that inspiration, motivation
have to be pieces of that puzzle.
And I think that's where YouTube comes into play.
Of our two billion users that are working on the platform,
how can we help them take that love of learning,
that motivation to learn on their own?
Because the only thing that unites these two billion users
that are learning all over the world on YouTube
is that they've chosen to be there.
How do we take that love of learning in an informal setting
and create a pathway, a channel
to more external recognition for your learning?
The bridge between--
Michael Crow- Not just more external recognition,
but more ways to project the autodidactic learning
that you have been able to implement yourself.
Katie Kurtz- Absolutely.
We think of it as the bridge
between informal learning to formal education
or curiosity to credits.
But the other insight I think
is that also learning is better when done with a community.
And that's where Crash Course comes into place.
Hank and the Crash Course team in the last 12 years
have built one of the most influential
channels on the platform.
Not just learning channels,
but just channels, period,
with a community of almost 15 million subscribers,
and I have lost count of how many billions of views.
And they are among the very best at thinking through
how to create educational video
and create a strong community of support around that video.
Michael Crow- Yeah, so related to that, Hank,
I mean, you're living up in Missoula, Montana,
you go to college in Florida,
you're floating around working with your brother
and working with other people.
I mean, so what is this Crash Course thing?
How does it work?
Why did you build it?
What does it do?
Hank Green- Yeah.
So my brother and I started out as YouTubers.
Our goal was to get views on YouTube,
because the more views you have--
Michael Crow- Well, there's lots of ways to do that.
Did you use the healthier ways or?
(laughing)
Hank Green- I mean, I'm not gonna show you
every single video I've ever made on YouTube,
just from my own reputation.
Michael Crow- Oh, thank you.
Hank Green- We started from that perspective,
you have more impact, you reach more people.
It starts to be like, now, why are we doing this though?
And we occasionally would make a video
that was sort of more educationally oriented.
Michael Crow- What's an example of more educationally oriented?
Hank Green- I mean, like at one point, we had to make...
So the rules of our show
were we had to make a video every day for the first year.
And at one point you just run out of ideas.
So I was a biochemistry major and I was like,
well, why don't I just like make a video
on a high school biology subject?
So I made a video about the circulatory system.
It was like way more work than the average video,
but it did better than the average video.
And it was using all of the same like tricks
and tools I had learned to keep people's attention
in a very sort of attention demanding environment.
Like, there's a sidebar of videos, there's comments,
there's Reddit on the other tab,
there's your emails are ready to get you as well.
So we're using those techniques,
but also trying to convey ideas.
I've taught a little course on statistics
from the perspective of birth control.
I was like, so if it's like a one in a hundred chance
that a condom will fail,
then does that mean if you have sex 100 times
you're gonna get pregnant?
And like, no.
But that's a thing that a student might think,
and understanding statistics through that lens,
it becomes very important.
(audience laughing)
Take that one with you.
I'm sure that the school systems will love it.
(laughing)
So like sort of thinking how do we do a good?
How do we also seem more credible?
Michael Crow- So Hank, just talk a little bit about
where you see this going, where are things headed.
Hank Green- Well, oh gosh.
Michael Crow- Like why are you working with universities now?
Hank Green- Yeah, so first thing I'll say is in this conversation
that y'all are having right now,
there's this thing that I feel every time somebody says,
you taught me this topic, which is that I don't...
Like teaching is a lot of things
and I'm doing one of them and in that--
Michael Crow- Teaching and learning are not the same thing.
Hank Green- Yeah, and in that situation,
I think like that person's basically saying,
I went to Princeton and ultimately
I taught myself a lot of biology
and I used some of the tools that you created to do that.
And that feels very good to me.
And I think that's the more sort of accurate way of saying--
Michael Crow- So the way we would see that is that
not everyone learns in the same way.
Everyone learns in different ways.
And if they teach biology
at whatever college you go to in a certain way,
you might not be able to learn it in that way,
but you could learn it in another way.
Hank Green- Yeah, there's also a huge amount of value
in figuring out how to teach yourself.
Like, we all do that.
Like every human does that,
but we sort of put it to the side because--
Michael Crow- But given where you started, where are you headed?
Hank Green- So right now, what we did for 10 years on Crash Course
is we made a thing and we left it there.
And that was great.
And I like that strategy.
We say, if this is useful for a student,
if it's useful for a teacher,
if it's useful for a parent, it's there.
Michael Crow- How many people found it in that model?
Hank Green- I mean, probably at least tens of millions,
maybe over 100 million.
And they're everywhere.
Michael Crow- All over the planet.
Hank Green- Our second biggest country is India.
And then when the EDU team at YouTube
first introduced us to ASU,
honestly, like people see Crash Course in it,
like in the ed tech industry, and it makes them drool.
Of course it does.
And we're very nervous about that.
That's like we're very nervous about partnerships,
we're very nervous about these relationships
because people have honestly
not always great motivations in this industry.
Michael Crow- Well, they often have one motivation.
Hank Green- Yeah. Michael Crow- Money.
Hank Green- Yeah.
And it's good to have more than one.
So, you can smell it sometimes.
So we're really nervous about that.
And also institutions, universities
oftentimes do have the best of intentions,
but they're slow and hard to work with.
So when that introduction happened, I was like, eh,
and my dad was like,
I think you should take these guys seriously.
I read about them, it's different,
they're thinking about this differently.
Michael Crow- Thanks to your dad now, I'm really excited.
(laughing)
Hank Green- You should meet him.
You'd like him, he's very cool.
I think you've had some career overlaps, I bet.
And yeah.
It's scary for us to say, okay, how do we actually--
Michael Crow- So what's the scary part?
When you say scary, what do you mean by that?
Hank Green- The scary part is that I understand
what problem I'm solving when I'm making a video on YouTube.
I'm trying to get the YouTube algorithm to say...
Well, I'm trying to get the YouTube algorithm
to get the inputs from people
that are gonna watch the video,
they're gonna comment on the video,
they're gonna share the video,
they're gonna watch another video
after the one they've watched,
all those inputs that are gonna make it more likely
that people are gonna see our content.
And I'm also trying to teach people.
So I'm trying to do both of those things at the same time.
That's easy.
There's a lot of problems that you can solve
if you want to be in the higher education industry,
that's why there are so many different
businesses solving problems.
And we have to figure out what problem we want to solve.
And that was tricky.
If we wanted to make the most money,
I know exactly what problem we'd try to solve.
And that's, how do you help rich kids
like get into a higher status school or whatever.
Like how do you help rich kids?
That's the problem you want to solve.
Michael Crow- Because people will give you money,
lots of money for that, right?
Hank Green- Yeah, because if you have a B to C thing
and you can build that
and somebody will buy it for a lot of money.
If you had a thing like Crash Course,
imagine what you would do with it.
Like, we didn't mean to build this thing that would be...
We just were trying to solve one problem.
But now we have this thing
that a lot of people think could help their business,
like, what do you do with that?
And the first conversations we had
with the people on your team were like,
what you want to do with that
is try and reach the people
who are being let down by the system.
And there are lots of ways.
Michael Crow- The inequities in our system.
Hank Green- Yeah.
And they understood that way better than I did.
And they helped me understand that really quite quickly.
But the stuff they helped me understand
was very complicated.
And from that understanding
is like the different sort of three
big pieces of study hall came from.
Michael Crow- Right.
So Hank, for you, and in Crash Course,
I mean, now you're bringing order to the form
that you've helped build
and you're working in new kinds of ways,
where do you want it to be 20 years from now?
Hank Green- Well, I mean, I think that we
like have to be honest about America,
that there there's a reality to...
That like I don't know if this is...
It's true in a lot of ways that the greatest predictor
of student success is their zip code, which is not like
there's nothing special about your zip code,
but it is a good predictor
of how much money is around.
And that we fund high schools in this country
based on property taxes.
We need to look that straight in the face
and say that's set up for a particular outcome.
But what the future...
Like we can't fix all those problems all at once.
There are things we can do and we should be doing them,
but the thing that we should be
looking forward to in the future
is saying there isn't one way to do this
and this has happened in all...
Like I think of teaching as media,
which I apologize for,
but this has happened in all media
where we get these fractures
to better serve different demographics.
And that fracture is happening now.
There's not one way to educate students.
There are lots of different students
with lots of different kinds of needs.
And we need to be picking that into little pieces
to understand how to best serve those people.
And that market is there, it's hungry, it's ready,
and there are people who want to solve those problems.
Michael Crow- All right.
Well, let's thank the panel and...
(audience laughing) (mellow music)
Liz- I use YouTube for learning all the time
and it's so cool to hear how YouTube,
how Katie, how Hank Green, how all these guys came together
to leverage that and to give me credit for learning online.
Mary- I know, because I'm just
wasting hours on YouTube, honestly.
Liz- I know.
So, now, the second part of this episode,
we actually get to talk to the people
who are behind the scenes in making this happen, right?
Mary- At ASU specifically in this episode.
Ricardo- Okay, so let's get into it, but go ahead, Liz,
can you please remind us who's in this episode?
Liz- Yeah.
So for this next part we're gonna
get to hear from Matt Robinson,
the Associate Director of the New Media team,
Lenora Ott, Director of Learning Design
for Universal Learner Courses
within the ASU Learning Enterprise,
and Wayne Anderson who is the Senior Director
of Strategic Design and Development at EdPlus.
(upbeat music)
Matthew Robinson- Hello, listeners.
My name's Matthew Robinson.
I am the manager of new media here at EdPlus.
And with me today, I've got two wonderful guests.
I'm gonna let them introduce themselves.
Wayne Anderson- Hey, Matt, I'm Wayne Anderson.
I'm Senior Director of Strategic Design in EdPlus.
And what that means is I get the opportunity
to work on transformational type projects
in the digital teaching and learning space.
So a lot of emerging and new ideas often with partners.
I've done a lot of work with Coursera and edX,
partners like Uber and Starbucks
and helped with our Digital Prep Academy in the early days.
So a lot of kind of new and early areas.
So today I think we're gonna be talking about Study Hall,
which I'm excited to talk about.
Lenora Ott- And hello, listeners.
My name is Lenora Ott
and I oversee a team of instructional designers
who build the classes that make this happen.
Matt- Wonderful.
Well, welcome both.
And listener, you're probably wondering,
well, how do these two things connect?
And we will get to that.
But I think we should start first
in talking about Study Hall.
And Wayne, can you kind of walk us through
a little bit about how this came about?
Wayne- Sure.
So it really started with us as a university thinking about
how should we show up on YouTube better,
what should a university do on YouTube?
And you might ask like, well why is that important?
Why should we think about that?
So YouTube, with that lens on
is a two billion user a month video site
that actually, 90% of the people say
they go there to learn something.
So it's really, if you look at it that way,
it's the largest digital learning platform on the planet.
So university should be
that is passionate about digital education and access
should be doing everything we can
to be doing great things in that space.
So that's kind of the why,
like why would this be even something
of interest for the university?
And then looking at what was currently happening,
there's a lot of bulletin board material for universities.
Like, here's our graduation video
and here's a little bit about an athletic event,
or here's like kind of drips,
but not really a consistent educational view of material.
So that's really what we looked at.
Step two is like, well, how do you do that?
And I don't know how much you learn on YouTube
or go to YouTube, so I might just ask this
if we're gonna have a conversation,
like do you use YouTube to learn something
and what do you learn?
So, Lenora.
Lenora- Absolutely.
Most recently I was trying to teach myself knitting
and YouTube was the first place that I went.
Those pandemic hobbies that you might adopt,
I decided to take up knitting
and the first place I looked was YouTube.
Wayne- That's often where you start is like,
I have an immediate need, I'm solving that need
and then I might build this relationship
with somebody that's creating knitting content
or has a great like visual effects channel.
So that's been kind of our evolution
and that YouTube has kind of fostered those people
and given them a platform, given them...
A thing that YouTube has done better than other channels
is a way to actually monetize and make a living at that,
especially in the educational space.
But they have endemic creators that have found a way
to reach audiences on a platform
with quality learning content,
because that's usually maybe the first kind of dart you get
is like, well, it's like Wikipedia,
a lot of junk out there, which is true,
but there's a lot of good stuff too
and a lot of quality stuff.
So that was our, when you say like how did we get here?
Like our first realizations,
we just couldn't take thousands of videos
we do at ASU Online and just say,
let's just dump them on YouTube.
That wouldn't reach people in the same way.
So finding somebody that understood the balance
of entertainment and engagement
and I'd maybe swap out that word
entertainment with engagement, engage attainment.
I don't know if anybody's ever used that.
Lenora- Captivating.
Wayne- It's something that,
because you're competing then
like you think of a course, like a university course,
you're kind of locked in like I'm I paid,
I'm here, I'm gonna either push through it
or I'm gonna drop out or do something in between,
but on YouTube it's like I have my attention
for a couple seconds and then I could watch Mr. Beast
or I could watch like something totally different
that is like pulling my attention.
So those educational creators that have found a way
to resonate, have that audience come back,
there are a few of those,
but trying to align with them was our goal.
But how we found the partner was a little bit fortuitous
that YouTube invited us
to like a small event 2019, I think, called EDUCON,
where they bring in those top educational creators.
Usually people that have like
over a million subscribers on their channel.
Some maybe emerging
that are in the hundreds of thousands range.
A few of us from ASU went.
I randomly ran into John Green
and learned a little bit more about what they were doing,
talked a little bit more about ASU and the mission
and found a way that we had similar philosophical alignment,
what we were trying to accomplish as organizations
and for them companies,
and then with some support from YouTube
we're able to formalize our first work,
which was on our ASU channel around Study Hall
and launched a series of four
supplemental videos at that time.
Matt- Now, you mentioned that as you search out there on YouTube
and you see all of these different contents,
one of the things that was unique about Complexly, right,
is they kind of formed this brand
but it was also trusted that the content
was of a certain level.
Can you speak a little bit to like
then what does the value add
of like having a university, like ASU
kind of also have content out there on YouTube
that people can then trust the quality of the content
because of a university backing?
Wayne- Yeah, no, you're right.
I think the university brand is one thing.
And honestly, like being frank,
at first, this wasn't a crash course and Complexly like,
we want to work with universities.
Like they actually turned away many universities
because we're very difficult to work with
and the pace of work and like the ability to pivot
and change often isn't the case.
So there was some work there just to get the right alignment
and then the working alignment together.
But why a university?
One for us, it was that we have great faculty,
the knowledge core,
as we talk about it internally in ASU and externally,
but the idea that a research university like ASU
is creating this foundation of
new knowledge and information and teaching at scales
that many other universities aren't,
and to be able to take some of those insights
and then expand it in this way
is why we thought it was valuable.
Matt- So that establishes the formation of this partnership
of the Study Hall Project.
Where are we now currently?
Because it's definitely changed, right,
since 2019 when that first conversation happened.
Wayne- Yeah, a lot has happened.
The pandemic was a big part
in the middle there that changed.
We actually launched March, 2020,
so right as the pandemic was hitting.
So I think timely in the sense you could not predict
but valuable to people that were new at a distance.
We had a lot of early comments on that.
So our first work was in just proving that out.
Could we work with a partner
that created educational content on YouTube
and have a good alignment with our faculty,
with our brand and create something
that we both were proud of?
We were happy about that.
We grew our YouTube channel.
I didn't mention that.
So part of our metric at the beginning was,
could we grow the ASU YouTube channel?
So we are tracking against
the top other university channels around,
we grew our channel about 150% faster than those,
we were over 100,000 subscribers.
We started about 18,000 when we first launched it.
So we were doing the good things
about growing a YouTube channel.
One thing I didn't mention at the beginning,
and this gets back to a creator and why
and this two billion number.
One other metric that I like to share is,
and this goes back to like how universities show up,
so if you took like the top 100 ranked universities,
I think we looked at this domestically,
so think of all the the big schools you would think of
that would be prominent,
take their YouTube channels, add them all up,
look at the kind of key metrics of views and subscribers.
If you did that, those top 100 schools,
and even adding into like MIT has OpenCourseWare,
which is a big channel,
Yale has courses, which is a big channel,
so add those ones in there.
Crash Course alone is twice as many subscribers
as all of those and three times as many views.
So they're reaching more learners
than the top 100 universities in the US.
So that's part of the why.
Like we need to as a university,
reach people where they are better.
So that got us to like, what is this next phase?
So what we're doing now,
and Lenora can speak to learning enterprise in this,
because it's really, as study has evolved,
the university has evolved into kind of
our three enterprise areas of knowledge enterprise,
academic enterprise and now the learning enterprise,
which is really focused on learners that are,
and I will give my description and you can add to it,
but learners that are not in credit and academic courses
but the 60 year curriculum, the K to Gray,
all the different methods that learners need
to get connected to universities
and then the different kind of credentials
or experiences they might need
to support them on their pathways.
Lenora Ott- Yeah, I think that's a really nice description of it.
I would say that the learning enterprise goal
is to provide education across the entire lifespan.
So there is that like kindergarten, high school,
mid-career, post-retirement.
There are different pieces of the learning enterprise
that help with these areas.
We have a lot of experience working with learners
and getting them interested from the general public area.
Somebody who maybe isn't sure
that college is right for them at this time
or that they don't have the right skillset
and these are the same learners.
There's an overlap here with the learners
who would kind of seek things on YouTube
and maybe they're interested in them.
And I think Wayne said this.
When you typically take a college class,
you pay up front, there's this big initial investment,
there's tuition and then you either make it through the end
and you do really well or maybe you do really poorly
and you decide college isn't for you.
We want to prove that to them upfront.
So we are creating the space for them to find interest
to see like, oh, I really like this,
I didn't know that I was interested in English
or I didn't know that I was
interested in this aspect of history,
this is super captivating to me,
to prove to them that that's interesting
and that then they can operate
and produce work at that level at a college level.
That's what the classes that we design, build,
and I would say for me,
that's the heart of what I'm hoping we achieve
and continue to expand on in Study Hall.
That's why I'm so excited about this partnership.
Matt Robinson - Lenora, I imagine with such a wide potential audience,
when you think about universal learner
meeting learners wherever they are in their life,
YouTube's sort of lack of a barrier to access,
it has to be somewhat advantageous
or is a potential asset here.
Lenora Ott- Absolutely.
I think one of the things that I really like about it
is that because it's authentic, right,
learners are already seeking out something
that they're interested in or maybe they become comfortable
with the Study Hall brand
and they continue to find more and more information there,
I feel like what's nice about that is it gives us an avenue
to convince people that higher education
and college education is value added
on top of that YouTube experience.
So when you're in YouTube
and you're watching a series of videos that you really like,
you may not even consider
that there is something worthwhile at the higher education
at the college level in watching these videos
and testing your knowledge on them.
I think that that's a big difference between
somebody seeking out opportunities for college courses
by maybe entering into an internet search browser,
college courses that are low cost or that I can test.
We're actually meeting them at their interest point
and then helping them find like where that serves them
rather than them looking for a college provider
and happening to like stumble upon us.
So we're hoping to meet them at their interests first
and then say, hey, you could go to college
and learn all about this
rather than hope that we show up
at the top of their search engine
when they're looking for college opportunities.
Wayne Anderson- The second phase that we've outlined for Study Hall
is really, we're really strategic about
the three areas we thought we could help
impact college going rates.
And a couple of those are
and just what is college, is it for me?
We have a series.
We actually launched this on Crash Course
as a way to introduce the new Study Hall channel.
So one big shift in the phase two is moving away
from the ASU main channel
and launching a dedicated Study Hall channel,
which is a big effort growing
a new audience on a new channel.
And that's the work that we're currently doing a lot of.
So How To College is a 15 episode series that does that
that really tries to help people navigate in through
and then out of and to be successful in universities.
The second is making a decision
on what you want to be when you grow up, kind of,
or what to study, kind of fields of study.
We called them Fast Guides.
We're kind of tweaking the thumbnails and names,
which is a thing that we'll do a lot of
to try to grow that channel.
But really focusing on not a specific...
We have some specific majors,
but really like broad fields ideally
as we're trying to introduce people to
what you might need to be interested in
to be successful or like that.
So, do you need to like math
to maybe be successful in these fields?
What can you do with it when you graduate?
So trying to really set up that employability
or make decisions around employability
and then where you might pivot if you can't,
like if I get into nursing and I decide,
yeah, nursing isn't for me,
here are some options you could pivot out
and not lose a lot of progress.
And then the third and the biggest one
is trying to take that framework of universal learner
and continue to broaden the access of that.
So if we can combine high quality kind of video spine
with a pathway from a video
and kind of build videos together into a formal experience,
that's the big test that we're interested in
and we're working closely.
So our partners in this are
Complexly Crash Course and YouTube Proper.
So YouTube is helping and we're working with teams
around what learning looks like on YouTube
and trying to find ways that we can move from,
I had an immediate need and a question about one thing
and now I've kind of progressed to like,
I want to go from learning a few things
to actually getting credit.
So the third part of that is like the solving of
can I make progress towards an undergraduate degree
in an alternative way that de-risks it?
So somewhat financial, somewhat in just experience.
Can I try a college level class that proves to me
that I can be successful, I can build some credits
that are actually gonna be useful somewhere?
Lenora Ott- We do anticipate that at some point
if our learners are captivated by what we've created
in the Study Hall Project,
they want to get college credit and at that point
we want to invite them into an online learning experience
that does result in that college credit.
And the design of that entire experience
has been guided with the faculty who often in many cases
advised on the scripts, helped us outline them.
So they've been integrated throughout the whole lifeline,
whole timeline of the course.
So although the videos
that are being generated by Study Hall
serve as the backbone,
the initial content, the introduction,
it isn't where the learning ends.
So when they enter the classroom,
what they learned from YouTube,
they'll be able to figure out what do I remember
from this episode?
What was the most important,
what were the learning objectives?
And they'll be able to take that learning
and then dig deeper with provided readings
from open education resource providers,
maybe additional lectures here and there
that help them kind of understand nuance.
So so much more learning will happen
beyond that initial invitation on YouTube,
and then that is also where learners will get to do things
that we traditionally associate with assessment.
So they might engage in discussion,
they might submit some type of a portfolio,
they might write an essay response.
There'll be all types of...
I would say there are really a wide variety
in the designs that I've been seeing
of the kinds of things that learners will get to do
once they actually make the leap from YouTube
into one of our courses
and then try their hand at getting college credit.
And I think that that part's really exciting
and the faculty have been so intertwined
with building this experience,
and I do have to give them extreme credit for trusting us
because so often the role has been
that they wear all of the hats.
So they're really trusting us a lot
with building the course experience
that allows for such a large number of learners
to experience it, make things that matter,
really create meaningful learning experiences,
use what we know about
needing to engage learners from diverse audiences
and provide that equity to change maybe
how due dates are structured
or what a communication policy looks like
or second attempts like things that help learners
who may not otherwise succeed in college
learn how to do college better.
So that way then when they join
the full length programs at ASU
that they are ready to take on that role.
Maybe they weren't previously, but now they are.
So I think that's one of the really exciting parts
about like after they have that
initial interaction on YouTube
coming into the full length courses
and getting that opportunity
to just learn more and prove what they know.
Matt Robinson- One of the things I find so incredible about this project
is the way that it truly embodies ASU's charter,
which is, our charter says that we're measured by
not who we exclude, but who we include in that.
This project in particular seems to try to include
such a wide breadth of learners
at so many different ranges of where they are,
not only in just their college career and thinking,
but just in life and how they view learning.
So it really impresses me just the effort
and involvement of this entire project
from the faculty level that you just mentioned
to the production team that I manage
and all of the different things
that are going into this to try to reach
such a wide audience for it.
So I'm super impressed by all of that.
Lenora Ott- Thank you.
It's very, very exciting.
Wayne Anderson- Yeah, you're right, it does take (indistinct).
I can't think of another university
that we would be doing anything like this at.
Like it's been an institutional buy-in level,
so up to President. Crow that is committed.
People like Maria leading the learning enterprise
and Phil, the Dean of EdPlus to see the potential
and give the teams a chance
to take the risk support externally.
All the deans that have kind of bought in
and either helped identify faculty to work on it,
identify people to be on camera,
that level of university support,
but it's been around the university charter admission
I think elicits that kind of reaction
to these kind of things.
Matt Robinson- It's not like there's like a blueprint for this, right?
It's not been done.
I mean, I think about when the pandemic hit, right?
And it was production initially, right,
was over in Missoula, Montana, right,
with the Complexly studios, then the pandemic hit
and it was suddenly like, oh, we have our hosts
and faculty locally here in the ASU Phoenix area
and how are we gonna not just
be completely halted on this project?
That's where the new media team that I managed
were able to step in and sort of take on production,
which was a welcomed challenge
to try to validate ourselves and our level of work
against something like Complexly.
Our videos get like I think 4.9 million views
by a lot of learners here,
but it's in that insulated class structure,
online class structure,
Complexly is making stuff out for the world, right?
On YouTube, on such a public platform.
So for us to get to sort of step up
and take over that production
and now for the majority of the production
for this second phase happening in our studio
has been just a wonderful experience for my team.
I think we've all felt really close to this project
and it comes back, I think to just
the general charge of this project is something
so appealing and worthwhile
that I think we're just really excited to be a part of it.
Wayne Anderson- Yeah, no, I definitely want to thank you.
Ricardo might be on this or not.
I don't know if you're behind the scenes
or not on the podcast.
- (indistinct). (laughing)
Wayne Anderson- But no, just the team.
You're right.
That kind of stepping in when we had to
take over the studios was huge.
And then also I think to me,
part of like good partnerships like this one,
I feel is a strong partnership
is where we have a common goal
and we are trying to advance towards that
and then solve the problems as they arise,
because we don't really know how to get there.
And John, our YouTube colleague and contact,
his analogy is he's a hiker.
So he's like, we're not on a trail, like we don't know
this is where we're going, we're wayfinding.
Like we know where we want to go,
but we're gonna have to stop and pause and reevaluate
and look at like, oh, we should go left here
around this rock and then we'll look at the next rock
and say, that's a cliff, we need to either get a rope
or we need to go around the other way.
So it's like we're wayfinding together as partners
and I think your team has been great
at like helping with that.
I'd say the second part of that,
which I think is really valuable,
and hopefully it's happening,
is some knowledge transfer, right,
that we're picking up things that Complexly might be doing
and often budget and time are in decay,
but there's probably some other things of like
how could this impact other things we're doing
that is within our ability?
And hopefully that that's happening too
that this has kind of the tertiary impact
that might not be directly to Study Hall,
but helps other things that ASU
wants to do in the educational space,
because honestly, I think Study Hall
is like a big first step
and we have the resource to do it on Study Hall
or on YouTube.
But I think there's a lot of other things
that we need to be advancing around a strategy for YouTube
that's beyond this like How To College
and get started in undergraduate,
I think there's a lot more that can be done,
hopefully some of your teams could help with in the future.
Matt Robinson- Yeah, absolutely.
We've learned a ton through this process.
Things that we are able to apply
to the content that we're creating
for our ASU online courses,
but also just the entire approach
has been such a unique thing to see.
We don't generally deal with like the writing process,
the scripting process, the performance process, right?
We mostly are helping faculty take the content
that they need to deliver for their online courses
and make that as professional and high quality as possible,
but there is a whole other element at play with Study Hall.
I don't know if we've really detailed
or if there's anything, Lenore, to add about
kind of that writing process,
that working with faculty development,
because that's certainly something that was very new to us.
Lenora Ott- I would say it's been super interesting
for our design team too.
Typically in a similar role to you all,
we've really helped them prepare
for those professional moments
where the faculty then themselves are on camera
with slides that they've prepared.
I think we've learned a lot throughout this process
of conceptualizing the videos,
what they're gonna turn out to be,
and then how they are embedded in part of this course.
I think one of the really cool things,
one of the things that we've gotten to at this point now
is having the instructional designers, having Complexly,
having EdPlus like in the room together at the beginning
of thinking about what a course is going to look like,
what it's going to be, and we're doing all of that.
Maybe it seems a little chaotic,
but we're doing it all at the beginning, right?
So right when the faculty member says,
what learners need to do when they leave this course
is they need to be able to do these things,
immediately the instructional designers are like,
how do we get them to that place?
And then Complexly's there for like,
how do we make that captivating and how do we build episodes
and a radio framework around it?
So there's all of these really cool voices
and perspectives in the room
and the products that are being created,
the way that we are setting up the outline of episodes,
which then turn into outlines where the faculty say like,
these are what my content points would be,
and then we pass it off to Complexly
and we have their professional script writing teams say,
this is how we think we'd turn this into a captivating story
while still expressing the content,
and then the faculty look back at it
and say, you'll want to adjust this here,
include this example here, include these learners here.
This is a nice help, this is a nice example.
We have this really wonderful
feedback loop that's developing
so that way when the video is actually in the studio
and being filmed, we already know
that the video product being created
supports the other readings, assessment
and items in the course that the learners will engage with.
I think it's really, really cool
and I do think it's going to influence
how we approach building classes,
for sure, new classes in the ULC portfolio,
but I can definitely see
this influencing other builds as well.
Matt Robinson- I think it would be helpful to hear,
if I'm someone who out of college,
wherever I am in my college and learning journey,
I come across the video in Study Hall,
where can I go with that?
I'm interested, I'm engaged with the content.
What are the sort of next steps
that you kind of envision with this project?
Lenora Ott- I think one of the things that is really, really cool
is what we envision happening is that the videos
will always have the invitation to dive into
what a full length course experience looks like.
But they also will have the invitation
to connect to each other.
So you might watch an intro to video
and then it might be followed by principles of field video,
and then at each one of these points
you might see something that's like,
hey, how about a college class on this?
If you're really interested, how about this?
But you might watch several videos before you say,
you know what?
I am like 15 videos deep into investing in this topic.
What does the rest of this college class look like?
And at that point we're figuring out what we're calling it,
but I think Wayne can speak to more of a lobby experience
for learners when they're ready to make this leap.
Wayne Anderson- We've called it a lobby for now,
for lack of a better word,
but just the space that you can go from video watching
to actually applying something
and as authentic as a way as we possibly can get
for that learning need or that context,
and then that's like more real time.
So these courses will run
on a semester basis, as we mentioned.
Ideally we can maybe get to an on-demand state.
But until then it's like, how do I go beyond a set of videos
and do something more and then maybe do a little bit more
before I take that full commitment?
You'll notice it's not called like ASU Study Hall.
We're pretty intentional.
It's developed by ASU faculty and ASU is represented there,
but our goal is to expand this to other universities
and colleges in some way.
Lenora Ott- It's an expansion of the ASU charter.
So it's inviting other people
to help others serve more people.
I think it's just increasing the invitation
for access to higher ed.
It doesn't have to be with ASU.
Like we are including more people at the table
of what it means to go to college
and to be a learner in higher education.
So I think as we partner with other universities
and as we do that, it's still mission driven,
it's still charter driven for us to be a part of that ask.
Lenora Ott- I think it's really important to be clear of that.
Some people might say,
oh, how are you gonna deliver a college course on YouTube?
People are just gonna watch a playlist,
and then you're like, congratulations, it's college credit.
And I was like, no, of course not.
But some people are concerned
that that might be what happens.
It is so much more than just a multiple choice quiz
at the end of watching some videos.
The invitation to then enter into a learning experience.
Like those learning experiences
are equivalent to what the learners would do here on campus
or at ASU online.
Like they are challenged in the same way, to the same rigor.
We're just building the ladder with little steps in between.
So that way when they get there,
they've gained those skills on the way.
So I think that's really important
that it's not just a video, quiz,
you get a degree type experience.
Like there are some critical skills that are taught
that (indistinct) specifically have a mission
of like workforce competency type skills
and critical thinking skills.
So these are integrated and infused
into those expanded designs
when learners enter into the full length learning experience
beyond what they will initially address in video.
Matt Robinson- Well, Wayne and Lenora,
this has been a fantastic conversation about a project
that I care very deeply about.
I think we've learned so much about
the vision of this project,
where it started, where it's going.
I think it just beautifully aligns with
not only the success that ASU online has had,
but also with the EdPlus charter
and just with a real thoughtfulness about learners
and where to meet them and where to advance learning.
I love that it's not just - that we're breaking out
so far from a traditional thought of
18 to 22, you're in college,
this project's really unique for that.
So thank you so much for talking with me today.
I appreciate it.
Wayne Anderson- I think I'm just gonna say do the YouTube things of
go to Study Hall, YouTube slash Study Hall,
subscribe, like, like every video, comment a bunch.
Love the comments.
Comments are great.
That's like my favorite part.
The quality of comments on Study Hall is amazing.
So please add some comments.
And then the courses in that experience
will be at gostudyhall.com.
So love to share that as well.
Matt Robinson- Excellent.
Thank you both.
Lenora Ott- Thank you. (upbeat music)
Mary Loder- So what was really cool to me was to hear
that not only from the GSV conference
where Hank Green's like,
we were kind of apprehensive to work with anybody
because of the consideration of like,
what's really your intent here to then hear from Wayne,
like yeah, we chatted on the floor,
so like that's when it happened, right?
So like they're having these conversations,
building trust in these environments like the ASU GSV,
and then these big projects take place.
So it's interesting to see like
from the ideation perspective,
but the next conversation we're gonna have,
I happened to talk to Meredith Savvides
who's one of the instructional designers
that supported this early on in the project
and then became a principal instructional designer,
which is amazing.
And she really talks about how they did it,
what systems they used,
and what that first experience was like.
(upbeat music)
I am joined by Meredith Savvides
who is one of the talented instructional designers
that assisted in the Study Hall Project
and also happens to be facilitating our first cohort
through these Study Hall classes at ASU.
And Meredith, I have some questions.
How did you become included in this?
Mary Loder- True EdPlus Style, somebody asked you to do something
and then you did more than you thought you were gonna do.
Meredith Savvides- Hey, hey. (laughing)
Mary Loder- Sound familiar?
Meredith Savvides- No, somebody reached out and said...
No, this is actually kind of funny.
Somebody reached out and said,
hey, is there anyone who can help out
Wayne's team with some badging?
And I said, yeah, I can help with badging.
And then it wasn't badging.
(laughing)
It was building a course in Google Classroom.
Mary Loder- That eventually would get badged.
Meredith Savvides- Yeah.
Mary Loder- It wasn't a total lie.
It was just like--
Meredith Savvides- No, badging's still on the horizon.
(laughing)
But we do have a course in...
We do have four courses in Google Classroom.
So my participation in this,
things morph all the time and they grow
and that's totally fine.
When I heard about the project
just like my other colleagues at EdPlus,
I feel like we are always drawn toward these
sorts of projects that speak to our charter.
Mary Loder- Totally.
Meredith Savvides- This was the principles of this project
speak to reducing barriers,
reducing friction, thinking about
how we can provide learners
who are not necessarily on the path to college or higher ed
who don't even know that they're learners yet,
who don't feel like I'm a student,
to give them the opportunity to take great courses
taught by ASU professors
and have great content, our study hall videos,
and feel what it's like to go to college
and then go through the course
and potentially if they would like to, get college credit.
Mary Loder- That's amazing.
So really serving the community.
Meredith Savvides- Absolutely.
And it was such an easy...
For students to be able to apply for this,
they don't have to go through any of the general--
Mary Loder- Like submit all your information to us,
get an ASU, right?
Meredith Savvides- Do your FAFSA, meet with your counselor,
all of the things that can be barriers
that can cause some stress for students
who are trying to get into the higher ed space.
So it was a very simple, go to this website, sign up,
pay your $25, you're in the course.
Mary Loder- Amazing.
Now, I'm familiar with Google Classroom
because our kids use Google Classroom
in a lot of the elementary schools and junior highs
around Arizona, Mesa Public Schools.
Meredith Savvides- Arizona and the world, Mary.
Mary Loder- Okay, so there you go.
Meredith Savvides- If you've been in K12 in the past four years,
you've been in Google Classroom.
Mary Loder- And you have experience in the K through 12 world.
Meredith Savvides- Yeah.
Mary Loder- So you knew Google Classroom going into this?
Meredith Savvides- Yeah, I exited just before the pandemic.
So we had used it,
but we hadn't tested it
as much as we had done for this project.
So lots of new learning, lots of exploration.
And this is like Google Classroom on steroids.
Mary Loder- Amazing.
Meredith Savvides- Because we don't have...
Typically with Google Classroom
you don't have opportunities to,
for like LTI connections and we have them in here.
So we have tools that we've included links to.
Mary Loder- So what is LTI?
Meredith Savvides- LTI stands for Learning Tools Interoperability.
Basically it means that it's a way
for two things to talk to each other.
So we have Google Classroom
and we have in one of the courses...
Well, in three of the courses we have Harmonize,
which is our third party tool.
So it's a way that they can link and talk to each other.
Mary Loder- I like Harmonize.
It's a good discussion platform.
Meredith Savvides- Yeah.
Students have liked it so far.
Mary Loder- Nice.
What have been some of the takeaways from your experience
around the discussion boards that you've seen so far?
Meredith Savvides- So it's pretty early,
but we have had a discussion going in three of the courses,
just to introduce yourself
and nothing can validate the work that we all put in
as much as reading intros from students,
seeing why they're there
and the appreciation for a course
like this existing, it's awesome.
We have people from all walks of life.
We have young and not as young.
Yeah, we have all learning backgrounds,
we have all different walks of life.
People from all over the globe joining us.
A very diverse group,
which makes for such an amazing learning community.
Mary Loder- Very cool.
An opportunity to connect
with people you would never connect with
had this not existed.
Meredith Savvides- Yeah, in a space where you almost never knew
that you could be.
Mary Loder- That's cool.
The real deal.
This is it.
This is what college is like.
Meredith Savvides- Yeah. Mary Loder- Oh, that's awesome.
So tell me about these introduction posts
that you've been reading.
Meredith Savvides- So I'm gonna try to summarize, okay?
Mary Loder- Yeah.
Meredith Savvides- A couple that stuck out for me.
Some people like graduated high school just before Covid hit
and so that sort of--
Mary Loder- Takes the wind right out of your sails, doesn't it?
Meredith Savvides- Yeah. Mary Loder- Man.
Meredith Savvides- And going to college or universities
was not necessarily in the best interest.
So, a year turns into three or four for students
and then taking that initial step back into the college
experience can be very difficult.
So this was just a great opportunity for them.
And we see that not just with students
who just graduated high school,
but we have people who have told us that
they've had children and their children are all grown up
and they've had two careers
and they're kind of at this place in their life
where they're like, okay, now what?
Should I pursue something else?
So that's always cool to see.
And then stories about kind of hardships
and how this fits into those hardships
because this was easy and flexible,
people taking care of loved ones
and just having this opportunity
that could fit into a very tricky situation in their lives.
And then lots of like, I think I can do it this time.
Like passionate learners here who are like,
I'm ready to try again.
So we want to be as responsive as possible to those students
and encourage them, support them, be there,
all hands on deck because this could be
their kind of make or break opportunity.
A lot of hands in this, which was awesome.
I'm here to talk about it, but I think it was just
because everyone else is busy.
(laughing)
There were so many people working in this project and--
Mary Loder- It takes a village.
Meredith Savvides- It does take a village
to raise a child and make a Google classroom.
Like when I say that people were
over and above ready to help, I mean it's just amazing.
People on other teams, I reached out for
all sorts of random things.
Hey, can anyone update this transcript file?
And people from open scale supported
and then the UX team and our team,
it was just not surprising also
when you're at EdPlus, right?
Does this happen all the time?
Mary Loder- ASU in general, right?
Meredith Savvides- True.
Mary Loder- I mean, truly we hire great people
who are dedicated to the charter.
And this is a really good representation of that.
Meredith Savvides- So appreciations to everyone
who just went above and beyond to make it happen.
Mary Loder- What are the differences between the facilitation methods
that you can use and does it really change
the student experience?
What do you think about that
as far as like your course development went?
Like did the student experience really change that much
and how did you overcome that?
Meredith Savvides- Yeah, in terms of the experience, we wanted it to mirror
as much as possible the canvas experience.
And when I say mirror, we have the same outcomes,
the same level of rigor.
We need students to leave this course
being able to do the same thing.
One thing we needed to consider was that our audience,
again, doesn't necessarily consider themselves students yet.
So a little bit more information
provided about what students do.
For example, in a syllabus, we would typically just say,
here's how the grades are broken down.
In the syllabus in our Google Classroom,
we say in college they use this certain grading scale.
We wanted to be sure that we weren't making any assumptions
about anybody about their experience.
So really thinking through,
filling in any gaps with anything, you know?
I don't know how to do something
or I'm unsure of myself, I need more support.
So same assignments, same outcomes,
same learning objectives, but really honing in on--
Mary Loder- The vocabulary of a learner.
Meredith Savvides- Yeah.
And like obsessed with them succeeding.
Mary Loder- Not that we aren't obsessed with
all ASU students succeeding.
There's just an expectation level in classrooms.
Like really good example with the syllabus.
We just tell you what's expected
and you're expected to do it.
(laughing)
That's not very like soft, right?
It's not very inclusive or warm.
Meredith Savvides- And we do have, ULC have has done a great job of this
with even explaining why you would read a syllabus
and why it matters.
So lots of those pieces we did pull
because they were essential to tell students,
here's why you do what you do.
And we always preach to any of the faculty we work with,
this is a best practice.
Tell students why they're doing what they do.
Mary Loder- Sure. Meredith Savvides- But these courses,
because we're really focused on the platform agnostic,
it doesn't matter where we host this material
and this learning, we had to make sure
that the material stood on it's own,
assignments were relevant
and that they understood why they were doing everything.
Mary Loder- Very tailored, very curated experience for the students
who don't know they're students yet.
Meredith Savvides- You are.
Mary Loder- We all are. Meredith Savvides- We all are students.
Mary Loder- Well, Meredith, this has been just delightful.
Thank you so much for expressing your experience
in supporting these courses, not only in Google Classroom,
but through the community
and helping learning enterprise
with this very large project of Study Hall.
It's so impactful what you're doing.
Meredith Savvides- Yeah.
Well, thank you for having me again
and we'll give you an update.
We're gathering student feedback
as much as possible throughout the course and at the end.
So we are just dying to know their experience
and then pivot when things--
Mary- How can you improve, yeah.
Meredith Savvides- How can we get things better for everybody.
So we did acknowledge to all the students,
you are the first cohort,
we're so excited that you're here.
(upbeat music)
Please let us know if there's anything we can help you with.
So hopefully they do and we can make updates
and support the next group.
Mary Loder- As I'm sure you will because you always do.
We appreciate you, Meredith.
Meredith Savvides- Oh, thank you.
Liz - What an incredible episode.
Ricardo- And it's not over yet.
Liz- No, there's a part two.
Ricardo- There's a part two.
Liz- How cool, I'm loving that.
So listening to all of this though,
I can't help but to think about my own experiences
as a YouTube user and how I use it.
Ricardo- YouTube learner.
Liz- Yeah, I think it's an official title now
after this episode, right?
Mary - We'll talk to Katie. (laughing)
Ricardo- We'll get some T-shirts.
Liz- We'll make it happen, we know people.
But I think about how I use it all the time to like,
I'm such a visual learner,
especially when it comes to like some of my creative crafts
where like I need to see
how to do this particular stitch.
And having that visual connection does so much for me.
It also had me thinking, if I, as a YouTube learner,
if I could get a degree from YouTube, what would it be?
And I think at this point
it has to be something about sewing,
maybe a doctorate in sewing
and certainly a doctorate plus plus in Disneyland
from all the Disney videos I watch.
What about you guys?
Mary- I mean, generally I would get a degree in meditation
because I use it a lot for like guided meditations.
I love it for that.
But then also fixing cars
because I am not a mechanic in any way, shape or form,
but my kids have car issues
and I seem like such a knowledgeable person
and so empowered when I can go to YouTube
and teach them how to do something on their car.
Liz- Do you tell them that YouTube told you how to do it?
Mary- Absolutely, and I send them the link,
hoping they'll watch it and do it themselves,
but let's be real, sometimes they need a guiding agent,
which is what Study Hall generally is
because you get access to a more guided environment
than just watching videos on your own.
Ricardo- Right.
Liz- I would probably lie
and tell them that I just knew it inherently.
(laughing)
Mary- They would call me out on that so fast.
What about you?
Ricardo- I love crash course.
I'd get a degree in crash course and--
Mary- You probably already have a bunch of credits
if they were to look back at your history.
Ricardo- Oh, sure, sure, sure.
Not as many Study Hall stuff
because we've been working on it, but also monsters,
it's gonna be exciting,
because the next episode
we have Emily Zaka, the host of Monstrous,
and also one of the hosts of Study Hall as well,
one of the instructors.
So we're gonna be here in that next episode
with a bunch of Complexly people
and we'll get into more of the production
of how things came to be.
So a lot of people from the team talking
with a lot of people from the Complexly team.
Mary- A little more behind the scenes on this next one.
So definitely tune in for the next episode.
Ricardo- So what can people do if they have any questions
or anything like that?
Mary- They can email us, coursestories@asu.edu.
We're also on Instagram and on X, Twitter.
I feel like there's still an identity crisis there,
but we're there.
So feel free to connect with us in those spaces.
Liz- We'll see you there.
Ricardo- Bye bye. Liz- Bye.
Mary- Bye.
Ricardo- Course Stories is available
wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can reach us at coursestories@asu.edu.
Course Stories is produced by
the instructional design and new media team
at EdPlus at Arizona State University.
If you're an instructor at ASU online,
tell us your course story
and we may feature it in a future episode.
Thanks for listening.