In this episode, I give my take on the recent ASU+Summit in San Diego. I talk about who was at the Summit, but more importantly, Rant about who was not at the Summit.
In this episode, I give my take on the recent ASU+Summit in San Diego. I talk about who was at the Summit, but more importantly, Rant about who was not at the Summit.
Eloy:
Hi, this is Eloy Ortiz Oakley, and welcome back to the Rant. The podcast where we pull back the curtain and break down the people, the policies, and the politics of our higher education system. In this episode, I give you my take on my time at the April A S U G S V summit, and on the conversations I had with some really interesting innovators and people in the higher education space that I ran into while I was there. First, let me give a big thanks to my recent guest, Manny Smith of Advisory Lee, who are doing great work to illuminate the path from a community college to a four year university for transfer students. Pierre Dubuque of Open Classrooms was bringing his team skill and expertise to create better apprenticeship pathways here in the United States. Christine Cruz Vargara from Handshake. They're doing amazing work to better connect learners and recent grads to their next opportunity and Debra Wazo of GSV Ventures. Each of these guests shared their amazing insights and experiences. They talked about their work and their passion and how they experienced the ASU G S V Summit. For me, the ASU G S V summit. It is always a great time. It's entertaining and I get to run into people I haven't seen for a while. It's also an interesting parade. Of innovation and innovators, entrepreneurs, people hoping to understand what's going on in education, technology, and educators that are truly committed to extending the promise of a post-secondary education to more people of all backgrounds through the leveraging of technology and of course, There's always a handful of brash peacocks who are strutting around the ASU G S V summit and who want the audience to think that they have all the answers. I think my guest, Christine Cruzar put it best when she said that Ed tech needs to be a healthy combination of people who really understand education and those who really understand the technology. I run into too many ed tech founders who have never managed in a classroom and who suddenly have become experts in how to solve the decades long challenges that we face in education and of course, of educating people of hugely diverse backgrounds through their novel technologies or so they say. The fact is that these individuals really have no clue yet, and they're just learning on the go. It's only when the worlds of ed tech. Pedagogy, professional educators and innovative post-secondary leaders come together that we see true examples of how great innovation solutions can scale and better serve learners. In my conversation with Deborah Quavo, the co-founder of A S U G S V, she put it clearly when she said that the purpose of the summit has always been about mashing together. All of these worlds bringing together talents and perspectives to get the best of technology and education innovation, and get it to work together to support greater access to learning. And speaking of mashing it up, my hat's off to under Secretary James Qua from the Department of Education, along with his team who came out to the summit and sat down with education, technology entrepreneurs and founders, venture capitalists, and talked about. The federal regulation they're proposing. I'm sure it wasn't always a comfortable experience for the undersecretary and his team, but this is the necessary part of bringing together a marketplace. The Department of Education and other federal regulators are part of that marketplace, and things only work best when we have all voices at the table. Some very hopeful that this experience helped James and his team better under understand the education technology world and. The education technology folks better understand the importance of consumer protection. Now for my ran while this summit is an amazing experience and it opens your eyes to a lot of different innovations, and you get to see the players that are really focusing and investing in technology. The fact of the matter is most traditional educators in higher education are not there. I run into the same folks year after year. The folks who are continuously investing in innovation and the use of technology and education delivery. We're talking about Arizona State University, of course, and places like Western Governors University and Southern New Hampshire University, university of Maryland global campus. They always have cadres of folks there who are learning and participating in the conversation. But what's missing is you're more traditional educators, faculty and leaders from community colleges, four year regional universities, and even research one universities. They're just not there in the numbers. We need to see'em there. And although these in individuals may have an aversion to talking about the use of technology and education, the fact of the matter remains. That students, learners are demanding more technology and more flexibility in their education and are. Leaders in these institutions need to be present to learn more about what's happening because this is a marketplace. A marketplace that is responding to the demands of learners. So while every solution and every technology is not gonna work in the way that it is assumed that it'll work, this is a place where educators can learn about what students are demanding, what technologies are interesting. To learners, what technologies are help helping to be more engaged and then being able to translate that back on their campuses because Technologies moving forward, particularly post pandemic learners, are demanding more and more hybrid opportunities, more and more personalized opportunities, and this march toward personalization is going to continue. Technology is not going to slow down, our educators, need to find ways to better engage with what's happening in education technology, even if they walk away with one or two ideas on how to better engage their learners. That will make a world of difference in their classrooms. So next year, 2024, I know my guest, Deborah Quavo talked about having an expo that will invite more educators to come in and just see the technology that's being created. I hope. Faculty, staff and leaders from across these institutions take advantage, and I'll especially point out my community college colleagues. You need to be at some of these education technology forums. You need to see how we can better engage our learners, particularly our working learners, who need the support of technology in order for them to have the kind of access. And success that we want them to have. So that's my rank for today. Thank you for joining us on the podcast. If you liked this podcast, continue to follow us on your favorite podcast platform. If you went to the summit, leave me your comments, let me know what you thought about the summit or what you'd like to hear more about. If you're following us on this YouTube channel, hit subscribe. We need you to hit subscribe so we can continue to deliver more content, and I look forward to seeing you again soon. We'll have some great guests coming up. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you soon