Season 2, Episode 10: The hybrid learning insanity

Foreign. Hey, Michael.

Hey, Diane. I hope you're doing all right amidst all the madness of the past couple weeks has brought. I can say that as I'm reflecting on the last couple weeks, I'm just personally hoping for a peaceful and calm transition of power this week in Washington, D.C. how about you?

Yeah, thanks, Michael. I am hoping for the exact same thing. I really want to shift energy to solving the many pressing problems we are collectively facing. Facing. And, and in the process of, of solving those problems, work to unite people as opposed to tearing them apart. So I, I am hopeful.

Yeah, no, I'm, I'm, I'm. I hear you on that front loud and clear, and hope we can get to a better place.

Me, too. And, Michael, you know, when we decided to launch Class Disrupted, it was with these ideas in mind, actually, you know, we were hoping that through conversation, we could pause, reflect and, and talk about how we meet the incredible challenges we, we are facing with approaches and ideas that propel us forward. And so it's great to be back in conversation this morning.

Yes, indeed. And I want to shift the conversation away from maybe current, current events like we've been doing over the past few episodes, and go back to sort of our roots in season one and get a little bit wonky and into the science of learning in this podcast. Yeah, I figured you would. And this topic that I want to jump into relates to the practice that a lot of schools around the country have put in, of having teachers attempting to teach students who are in person and students who are learning remotely simultaneously.

Ah, the hybrid learning approach. Yes, we should definitely talk about that. And Michael, those who are listening might know that we prepare for class disrupted by reading a ton of articles, posts, et cetera, about education, sharing them back and forth, teasing out themes and trends. And so I'm with you today. Rather than just doing the hottest of the moment topic, I really want to talk about something that feels a little bit under the radar, but that I'm detecting in a lot of these articles and discussions and conversations. I'm not quite sure of the right way to describe it, but basically it's how feedback drives design and decision. But before we go there, let's, let's start with, with your topic.

All right, sounds good. I mean, I'm curious to hear what's on your mind, though, for sure. So, but on topic one, I guess, Diane, it's around, as you said, this hybrid learning phenomenon, but a particular flavor of it. So districts around the country, as they've gone into hybrid mode, they've Tried to figure out ways to make sure kids were having instruction all five days. So far, so good. But they wanted to make their classrooms less dense so that they could space children out, have that six feet, you know, or at least three feet, but ideally six feet ap between students and many families and students on top of that still don't feel comfortable. Right. Being in person. So. And frankly, understandably, in my view, despite what the experts keep saying, they don't want to go into buildings. So there's a bunch of students, as a result, because of the hybrid arrangement and because of their own preferences, who are remote or virtual, as we often call it. So districts have created these hybrid arrangements where students might attend for, say, two days a week and learn from home three days a week. Just as an example. Not ideal, but I get it, given the current circumstances. Right. And I'm sympathetic to it. But then what? A lot of schools. And this isn't just public districts. It's a lot of private schools. I've even seen this in higher ed. Diane, what they've done is that they've asked the teacher in the classroom to teach both the students who are in the room with them and the students remotely at the exact same time, synchronously, in effect, this. And I know I'm often sort of one to moderate some of my views in these, but this, to me, is literally one of the worst things I can think of, and I'm not going to mince words around it, but before I delve into my thinking, I love your reaction to this arrangement, and maybe check me if I'm totally off base.

Oh, definitely not. Michael, this is so much fun for me. I love your passion. I am usually the one throwing around the superlatives, so it's. It's good to hear you with some of them. Look, last spring, when the pandemic sort of rapidly unfolded, one of the first decisions we made at Summa was to not do a hybrid model. And I really want to hear you dissect the many reasons why this was one of the easiest decisions we've made during the last year. But let me offer a familiar visual that might help set the context a little. Most people will be at least a little familiar with TV programs that are designed to teach kids online effectively. I'm thinking of everything from, like, Sesame street and Romper Room to Barney to Dora the Explorer and Sid the Science Kid. And there's, you know, a whole host more. But in many of these cases, there are kids who are physically present in the show, learning. If you Think back to some of these while the other kids are, you know, or us at home are learning in our own home space. So in some ways this hybrid idea. Right. I think it's really helpful though to hold these shows in mind as you kind of walk us through these challenges and consider two things. First, the amount of resources, time, money, expertise that go into constructing those learning experiences so that they are effective via the medium of tv. Like, it cannot be underestimated what those shows are spending to really construct an experience that is useful for people at home and engaging in all those things. And then second, how each and every one of those shows uses some really sophisticated strategies to make the child at home feel like they are being seen and talked to and engaged and included and heard and like they're actually like in the learning. And so Michael, you shared an article with me about how hybrid teachers are requesting cameras and microphones that sort of track them walking around the classroom so that their students at home can follow them because I guess they were discovering, oh, there's their camera on their laptop, wasn't following them around. And I mean this, I think this is what you're about to get into. But you know, just having a camera follow around a teacher doing what they're normally doing in a classroom has no relationship to what I just described. And so break it down for us, like, what are the real problems here?

Yeah, so first, I love that analogy of thinking of those intentionally designed TV experiences that are so clever in the way they invite you into the learning moment and give you frequent moments, frankly, to reflect during the entire episode. And I'll get into why in a moment. This is the opposite of that in my view. But, but three big thoughts. One, and you just alluded to it on teachers, this creates so much more work for the teacher that is very unnatural. Right. Teachers are already balancing enough, you know, from the movie Waiting for Superman that we ask our teachers to be superhuman with all of the things that ask them to do. We should be simplifying teachers lives, not further complicating them. They put up with enough. And make no mistake, no matter what technology you use. And I know there's a bunch of stuff out there like swivel and other stuff, and it's very cool, but it's really complex and hard to do it well. And you're effectively asking a teacher to take on, if not two jobs, at least one and a half on top of what's already, frankly, more than one job. So second, for the students who are unable to enroll in person that is, they're fully virtual for any number of reasons. Health concerns, family concerns, whatever it might be. Learning in this way, I think is incredibly insensitive. It basically is shoving in their face, hey, here are all your friends. They're in person, but you're not see what you're missing. And from a social and emotional perspective, I think it's awful. I mean, it's really exclusionary. I'm a little less concerned about this dynamic in the higher ed environment, but in K12, particularly for young learners who might not understand all of the nuance of these reasons, I just think it's incredibly challenging. And it's no wonder, frankly, a lot of students want to shut off their cameras and not be present when this is going on. And then the third piece, and this connects to, you know, that TV analogy that you were saying up front, which is that in practice, these hybrid arrangements create a very passive learning experience, which we know from the research is awful for learning compared to active learning, right? So active learning, where you're participating at least 75 of the time, you're answering questions, you're sitting forward, you're engaging in conversation, maybe you're doing research or projects or things of that nature. The research from tons of meta analyses are very clear that it is a much more effective strategy than passive learning where you're sitting back in your seats. Now, passive learning is one of the criticisms of television, right? It can be very entertaining, but not very learning. And these effectively, often PBS shows that you were talking about that actually do a pretty good job of teaching learning, they create these active learning moments where students are constantly, or, excuse me, kids are constantly sitting forward and being asked, what do you think about this situation? Or how would you put these two letters together? Or things like that?

Well, and you see that when you watch the kids watching those shows, they literally are saying the stuff out loud. They're talking back. They're, you know, totally.

My girls are like, you know, I mean, we were driving up to ski, as you know, last week, and my kids, they have the headphones in and like, like someone asks a question in the show and they're both blabbing away and talking back, and like, they feel like they're in it. And. But that's not what's happening in these environments. In fact, in many cases, they're being asked to be quiet, right? And not sort of engage naturally. And so basically, and. And this is true in higher ed as well. In. In my view, this just treats virtual learning as this synchronous experience where you should just replicate the whole, whole, you know, sort of like a whole classroom based learning. And it fails to take advantage of the unique aspects of virtual learning where you can take advantage of one's outside of classroom environment, the opportunity for more flexible learning, for bigger chunks of time where you don't have to move between periods of the day to engage in projects and use your time efficiently on the building knowledge pieces of the learning environment, like homeschoolers often do. And, and you know, frankly, what I see happening right now just. It looks so much like the early movies, which is that we set up a camera in the back of an auditorium and we film a stage play. And I just don't understand it. But maybe I'm missing something. Diane, please tell me I am.

No, no, not at all. Sadly, not a thing. I mean, bottom line, Michael, the hybrid is a bad idea. But it's a really nice segue to my next topic.

I'll take it.

So thanks for, for bringing that one. And let's be constructive here and figure out, well, how could we approach this differently? And so Michael, you literally wrote the book about innovation in education, for better or worse. And one of the things that I think for better, one of the things Summit's known for is our innovation journey. What's interesting about that is we both kind of shy away from the term innovation for a variety of reasons, but I think including that we sort of think it's been overused, at least the conversations about silver bullets and like there's going to be some magical invention. Neither of us believe in that or think that exists. And so that's sort of been our aversion to it. But that said, there are elements of innovation that I think are worth unpacking in this current context. And in particular, good innovators engage in good design processes. I mean, that is really what innovation is. It's like good design in many ways, as I know these processes and have experienced them. Good design is rooted in what we call user feedback. And user is kind of a yucky word. I get it. But the idea here is that people who will be using what you are designing should be at the heart of the design. And you know, that was a bit of a lengthy introduction to get to the topic I really want to raise, which is about my observation that there's an extraordinary amount of, quote, design happening in education right now. People are designing hybrid models, online programs, school reentry platforms, curriculum, like all kinds of design that's happening. It's not clear to me how intentionally, but you Know when people are making decisions to do all these things new and differently, that you're, you're designing stuff, you know, but as best I can tell, they aren't using really sound design processes. And most importantly, they aren't asking for listening to or properly interpreting the actual user feedback. So, like, that was a lot. But what, what do you think? Am I, am I missing something? Am I picking up something here? What do you, what are your thoughts?

No, I think it's a great point, Diane, and I'm glad you brought it up because I hadn't framed it. You just did before. But that's exactly what's happening, right? It's thousands and thousands of experiments effectively around the country right now in how to educate students when there are constraints, right. We can't do it the way we used to do, which, you know, we can just sit there bemoaning how terrible it is, and it is awful. But we can also say, okay, so let's, it is what it is. Let's now treat it as an opportunity and say, what can we learn from this that would change how we might educate students when we get our full arsenal back, so to speak? Because we know the existing system wasn't working particularly well for a lot of kids either. I'd argue all kids, but. Right, the but. So from my perspective, I think you hit upon the first thing, which is intentionality, which is seeing everything we're doing as some sort of experiment is almost the wrong word. But I would call it like discovery driven planning or this test and learn idea where we're, we're putting something out there and we have a clear way to get an answer to this question we're asking when we put a design out there. Right. And so underneath, say, the hybrid learning thing that I cited earlier, there's a set of assumptions that kids will be better off even if they're virtual, maybe engaging with their other peers who are in the classroom, for example. That's an assumption that is implicitly or explicitly being made. And what I would do is, as you start to do the hybrid model test, is that a good assumption or not? And look at, for the actual. Now, I think the key here, and what you also alluded to, is you have to listen to everyone in this and not get stuck in just looking at, on average, this seems to be working for some kids, you know, and that means look for the anomalies, look for the people who aren't behaving like everyone else and be intentional about it. You know, my mentor, Clay Christiansen, he had a sign outside his door when he was living at Harvard that said anomalies wanted. And he basically wanted people to come to him and say, hey, your theory doesn't explain this. And he was like, what a cool opportunity. Someone just pointed out. And that's not a criticism of me. It's a way for me to get better. And I thought it was such a. It's such a powerful idea. And I think it's the same here, like, for which students is it not working? Which allows us to ask why? What's different about their circumstance or, you know, their background or something like that that allow us to design something different so that that's how to not get stuck in the averages. And then the last thing I would say is we often rely a lot on what people say they want in these environments rather than asking, what are they doing? So when the kids aren't showing up to the virtual experience, that is powerful data that is very powerful to tell us that something is not working for them. And it could be something we're doing, it could be something that they're experiencing, but we've got to dig deeper and ask five whys to figure out what is going there. And that to me, is sort of the missed opportunity of treating all these like, hey, parents, community, we're all in this together. We're all trying to figure out a better situation for the kids, for your work lives, for the teachers. We don't have all the answers. Let's work to the together in this prototyping, get the data and then improve as we figure out the progress and the priorities and the circumstances everyone's in.

I love that. I love the you surfacing that activity of the five whys, because I think what you're pointing out is there are some very pretty, simple and straightforward tools that we have at our disposal that help us do exactly what we're talking about that I think we're dismissing. And, you know, I actually wrote about the five whys in my book Prepare Parents, because we think it's a tool that not only schools can use, but parents can use. And it's so simple and so effective. And so I appreciate that this isn't overly complicated and difficult, and there are things we can start doing immediately. I appreciate you helping me clarify my thinking on this. And I've got. I think I've just got three kind of big points here that I'd like to make on this. The first is we cannot think that the media has in any way captured the experiences, sentiments, and feedback of Students and families. I think a lot of people are making the mistake of thinking that they can read some articles, and we read all those articles too. But you can read those articles and substitute that from actual feedback from your family. That's not the job of the journalists, it's not the job of the media. It's not going to do the work we need it to do in a design process. And so in some ways, you actually need to set aside those ideas because they're potentially biasing you towards what you might hear from your families and really engage directly. So that's the first one, I think the second one is, and you alluded to this, we can't let a small handful of the loudest voices speak for or seek to represent everyone. And I will tell you, as someone who's running a school system right now, there are handfuls of really loud voices with very extreme positions. And I totally get it. It's hard. It's emotional and whatnot. But they seek to advance their position by saying that it's what everyone thinks and, and feels, and that's just not accurate or true. But it's really hard to sort of withstand that. And so, you know, I think we've got to find ways to let everyone speak for themselves and, you know, good design processes and, you know, my organization's really engaged in good liberatory design processes that are really seeking to be anti bias and anti racist in their nature. They do this. They let everyone speak for themselves and they don't ask people to speak for other people. So that's my second. And then the third is to embrace nuance, you know, and by this, I mean, we need to push past the oversimplification of what we're designing for. I mean, your hybrid example is a really interesting one. Like, it seems like the design and the decisions are all rooted in this basic, like, oh, kids are at home or in the classroom, and it just seems to miss the huge opportunity. How do we deliver instruction to them when what we really need to be thinking about is what does every child need in this moment in time to be able to intend, engage, learn, and grow? And then we should be designing from there as opposed to this kind of oversimplified, binary place based. It kind of reminds me, you remember when we first started redesigning, we played around a lot with furniture and like building design and open spaces, and people would come and look at it and they would think that literally that was it. That was the magic. You got, you know, special cool furniture, and then that would. And that's just, we're really missing the point there, I think.

Yeah, no, it's a good point. And, and we could certainly, you know, speak for hours on this, but I think let's, let's wrap it there. Those are two meaty conversations we got to wonk out a little bit, which is fun and frankly, a nice escape in these times. And on that topic, I'm curious, as we conclude, what are you thinking about? What are you reading right now?

Well, I'm also always curious for yours, too. So, Michael, we're having this conversation on the day where we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And each year, one of my rituals for celebrating this day is to read reread the Letter from a Birmingham City Jail, of course, authored by Dr. King. And so that is, that is something that I am reading today like I do each year, and I really appreciate it. I actually invite Dr. King each year to remind me to the call to action, to not be a white moderate and to really think about all of my actions. And so that is what I'm reading today. How about you?

That's a good one to read. And I think I'm going to take you up on it and do it this evening as well. Just finished over the weekend a book called Fidelis, A Memoir. It's by one of my wife's high school friends, actually, who had served in Iraq as a Marine. And it's just, it's very raw, it's very real. As my wife was saying to her parents before they thought about picking up, it's very R rated. But it just reminds me, I think it's this theme of empathy and understanding and trying to not assume, you know, what someone went through in their shoes on multiple levels. As I finished it up, and it definitely has me thinking quite a bit as I, as I wrapped it up. So.

As all good readings do, right?

As all good readings do. And this definitely transports you. So, Diane, but as always, appreciate being with you. For those listening a couple days after Martin Luther King Day, which always kicks off the festivities of Inaugural Inauguration Week when there's a change in the presidency. Hope you are safe and well. And thanks as always for joining us on class disrupted.