It's a long weekend up here in Canada, or it would be if anybody remembered how "days of the week" and "calendars" work. Our provincial health authorities are still encouraging people to avoid traveling from the city to small towns, so our usual plan of wandering off to an island isn't in the cards. If the weather improves, I'm hoping to take the dog for a hike somewhere.
Speaking of the dog, she got a full grooming on Friday. I'm jealous.
More videos, raised hands
Microsoft Teams shipped two features this week that customers have been asking me about every day.
Raise Hands lets a student (or other meeting participant) let the instructor (or speaker) know they'd like to say something without interrupting their flow, just like raising a hand in class.
We've added more video feeds, allowing up to 9 people to be seen at a time in a 3x3 "Brady Bunch" grid. We know everyone is looking for more, but this is a great step.
College life, redefined
The Chronicle of Higher Education has been keeping score of the American college and university plans for the fall term. As of when I wrote this, 64% are planning for a normal in-person term while the remainder are going online-only (7%), considering a hybrid or range of scenarios (16%), or stalling for time (12%).
Scott Galloway, in an article on the future of college that felt like uncomfortable prophecy, suggested bluntly that 18-year-olds should take a gap year:
There’s a recognition that education — the value, the price, the product — has fundamentally shifted. The value of education has been substantially degraded. There’s the education certification and then there’s the experience part of college. The experience part of it is down to zero, and the education part has been dramatically reduced. You get a degree that, over time, will be reduced in value as we realize it’s not the same to be a graduate of a liberal-arts college if you never went to campus. You can see already how students and their parents are responding.
At universities, we’re having constant meetings, and we’ve all adopted this narrative of “This is unprecedented, and we’re in this together,” which is Latin for “We’re not lowering our prices, bitches.” Universities are still in a period of consensual hallucination with each saying, “We’re going to maintain these prices for what has become, overnight, a dramatically less compelling product offering.”
Galloway went into some detail on the math: the top tier of schools have both large endowments to fall back on and waiting lists to fill empty roster spots, but everybody else's budgets are dependent on tuition. Which is, in turn, dependent on students showing up. Without a vaccine, it's hard to imagine campus life being the same.
Not all schools are dependent on campus life, of course. Community colleges and technical schools, those that are primarily thinking about credentialing and employability, are in theory great candidates for hybrid and online learning, because their students generally live off campus and the experience isn't as centered in gathering together in cohorts. In practice this is terribly hard, because the instructors often don't have the training or practice to deliver online pedagogy effectively, and the students often don't have the same access to broadband internet and devices.
In some ways as educational technology providers it's easier to think about classroom experiences because we've been thinking about them for years. Flipped classrooms, where lectures are pre-recorded and the class session is about active learning. Peer-driven discussion and learning. Artifact creation and skills demonstration in place of traditional pen and paper exams. What's harder is thinking about how to enable the social experience, everything from extracurricular activities (hey, remember sports events? concerts?) to campus political and religious life to running into your friends in the coffee shop. It's part of what brings students to colleges and universities, and it's going to take some creativity to bring to virtual campuses this fall.
(An aside: I'm hearing that one of the primary drivers for keeping schools open in the southeast US is the absolute certainty that the world will end if there's no college football season. I get both the economics and culture behind that thinking, but the thought of 100,000 people in a stadium with no COVID-19 vaccine gives me chills. Have you considered fielding some eSports teams?)
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If you're just joining us: I'm Colin Birge, Ph.D. I work in Microsoft's Education Engineering group, mostly talking to customers, mostly in higher education. I live in Vancouver, Canada. Shrewsbury Tech is my weekly-ish newsletter on work, education, and whatever else is on my mind that day. Hello!
Gaming
I'm hearing that everyone has been playing more video games during the coronavirus lockdown. I'm no exception. I've been playing Nier: Automata this week, which I'd like more if I were more comfortable with anime tropes. (No shot at the anime fans; it's just not my favorite cup of tea. Trigun was fun but should have been about half as long. Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the great weird allegories of all time. I'm in awe of Studio Ghibli.)
For a while I was working through the Marvel Spider-Man PS4 game from a couple years ago, partly because I enjoy the character, mostly because it was an easy and COVID-safe way to travel to New York City. It's one of the few open-world games I know where I almost never use the fast-travel features, because webswinging your way through Manhattan is just too much fun.
I had to give up What Remains of Edith Finch because the first-person perspective was giving me vertigo, which was an immense pity as it's not often I find a game set on nearby Orcas Island. Also, I'm now working on some headcanon about the relationship between the Finch family and the star of Neil Gaiman's "The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch."
If you have some Xbox One or PS4 game suggestions, let me know.
Inspiration
In context this sign at Vancouver's Spanish Banks makes sense, but not at high tide.
Onward
I'm trying to remember to move more. I'm starting to develop multiple chronic aches and pains from sitting in front of my laptop too long. Being in the condo most of the time has its limits. Those online yoga sessions are starting to sound like a good idea.
Be safe and healthy. Remember to breathe.