The Immersive Lens Podcast

Paul Engin | Dave Ghidiu | Jeff Kidd

Episode 25: Online Learning

Cover art for podcast episode.

 

The landscape of online education is undergoing a radical transformation, fueled by the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and immersive technologies. In this episode, we explore the central idea that distance learning must evolve far beyond the traditional "correspondence course" model of simply uploading documents to a digital portal. With groundbreaking tools like Snap's new AR Spectacles offering shared collaborative environments and powerful AI models like Anthropic's Fable 5 rewriting the rules of cybersecurity, the digital classroom is poised to become more interactive, accessible, and immersive than ever before.

Hosts Paul and Dave bring their signature tech-forward perspectives to the table, weighing the thrilling collaborative potential of spatial computing against the very real national security concerns surrounding AI jailbreaks and cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Joined by Jeff Dugan, Assistant Director of Online Learning at FLCC, the conversation ultimately lands on a powerful verdict: while emerging tech provides the necessary infrastructure, the true future of online learning relies on intentional instructional design and universal accessibility to foster genuine human connection and community.




Key Topics

The Cybersecurity Realities of Fable 5: Anthropic’s highly anticipated AI model, Fable 5, faced immediate cybersecurity hurdles, prompting the US government to restrict foreign access due to jailbreaking vulnerabilities. This development highlights the ongoing tension between releasing incredibly powerful coding tools and maintaining the necessary guardrails to protect national security.

Shared Realities in the Digital Workspace: The newly announced Snap Spectacles represent a massive leap for remote collaboration by allowing multiple users to interact with the same 3D digital objects in real-time. This spatial computing technology could finally bridge the isolation gap in distance learning, turning solitary assignments into shared, hands-on experiences regardless of physical location.

Redefining the Digital Classroom: Online learning can no longer be a passive exercise in reading documents and submitting assignments into a void. By integrating Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, educators can identify and remove invisible barriers, effectively building digital "curb cuts" that create a more inclusive and humanizing environment for all students.

Bringing STEM and Community Online: Breaking down the stigma that hands-on subjects cannot be taught remotely, the conversation proves that complex disciplines like chemistry and physics are successfully migrating to digital platforms. Building a comprehensive digital campus ensures that remote students receive the exact same level of community, support, and engagement as their in-person counterparts.





Transcript

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Paul Engin 
Jeff, the monitor went out and we were very... I know, I got up out of my seat, I was scared. 

Dave Ghidiu 
We didn't want to be called out again! 

Jeff Dugan 
We're gonna find a good cup place, I gotta stop talking! 

Paul Engin 
Welcome to the Immersive Lens, the podcast exploring the technologies reshaping how we live, work, and learn. 

Dave Ghidiu 
From AI and virtual reality to creative media and design we are diving into the tools and ideas shaping our connected world 

Paul Engin 
My name is Paul Engin. Join us as we uncover the people and ideas driving the next wave of interactive experiences. And I'm Dave Ghidiu. 

Dave Ghidiu 
This is the Immersive Lens. 

Paul Engin 
So Dave, we have a special guest today. Another guest. Who is it? Who is it? I've never seen this gentleman. 

Dave Ghidiu 
before in my life. 

Paul Engin 
It's Jeff Dugan, assistant director of online learning at Finger Lakes Community College. Welcome, Josh. 

Jeff Dugan 
Oh yes, I'm so happy to be here. I've spent the last two weeks binge listening to this.

It's cramming. I was cramming, but I had to do it. I tapped Paul on the shoulder, right, I was like, look, I'm really getting into this. Can I come join you guys? He was like, I guess, just leave me alone, please. 

Dave Ghidiu 
That's a great get, by the way. 

Paul Engin 
what, when he said he's wearing a Hawaiian shirt, then you got your Hawaiian shirt and then you gave me another, now I'm like, yeah, so 

Dave Ghidiu 
for everyone, like all you chumps who are just listening. You gotta go to the YouTube channel and check it out. And Jeff, can you just describe what's going on in that show? 

Jeff Dugan 
Summer Energy is here. The campus is very quiet.

I am wearing a Mandalorian. That's Mando. Mando, it is. I got Baby Grogu hanging out here, one of the best marketing decisions LucasArts has made in the past five years. And just not Jar Jar Binks. 

Paul Engin 
for the, uh, non- 

Dave Ghidiu 
nerds out there in listening world the baby Yoda that you may have seen us 

Paul Engin 
Yes, the baby Yoda. So I'm going to give it a shout out to Jeff Kidd on one of the hot takes today.

He shared with Dave and I the new Snap Spectacles. Yes. Did you get to see that video? I did. Have you seen a little bit about this or? I would love to learn more. I'm learning a lot. It'll be in the show notes. So Snap, the app that many people use, they had. It used to be Snapchat, right? Snapchat, yep. They used to have something called specs or what? I forgot what the old. Yeah, they were like spectacles or something. 

Dave Ghidiu 
It was something, but it was a... 

Paul Engin 
it was a glass that just had cameras yes so you can record 

Dave Ghidiu 
and then you could post fragments of your day. 

Paul Engin 
Yes. It wasn't like they were selling them to general public from what I remember. It was little releases here and there.

They just upgraded and they are going to be releasing something called Spectacles, which is going to be more of a Vision Pro or the Galaxy XR type VR experience, but it'll be in a glass form. It'll be augmented reality and it'll have all the same level of immersive experiences, but just in a glasses form. It's going to be thicker based on the images I'm seeing. It's like a little thicker than a regular glass, but I think it's really pretty impressive because in the demos, the thing that impressed me the most is that they have shared experiences. Usually with these VR or AR, it's maybe your viewing of the real world with a digital overlay, but now you're sharing it. 

Dave Ghidiu 
So if all three of us had the goggles on and other glasses, I don't know what to call them. But if we had the glasses on and you were painting something in 3D, like molding fake clay like it, so anyone who doesn't have the glasses couldn't see it, but both Jeff and I could see it exactly where it is in your hands, no matter where we were in the room.

And we could collaborate with it, yeah. 

Paul Engin 
It's really cheap. Yes, I think it says $21. 

Dave Ghidiu 
Sing a few zeroes. Oh, $2,100. Now, I will say this. So we'll have a link to this in the show notes.

It does look like a combination of those old Viewmasters from the 80s plus the 3D glasses you get at the movie theaters plus, and probably informed most by, in some of the Marvel movies, 20-star had Jarvis in some glasses. So it is certainly a bold look that I could not pull off. I can barely pull off this Hawaiian shirt. So I don't know how I could pull this off, but I do like the technology behind it. The one thing I am concerned about, and this is the same thing with the meta, is I do not want to create an account with Snap. And if that is a limiting factor for this, then I'm out. 

Jeff Dugan 
That puts you on a list. You don't want to be on that.

I mean, like Jeff Goldblum would wear these is what it looks like. It is like Jeff Goldblum, right? And he's like, we can't see it, but he's playing with the whole world in his head. It's fantastic. 

Paul Engin 
Well, I think the pretty cool thing that they did, though, is they developed a whole framework for developers. So they have software that they release. Yeah. So you can actually build apps easier. That's how you get the traction.

Yeah. But I think for an immersive experience, and we're going to actually get into this in some of our questions for you later. So we'll piggyback into this. But I think in an education setting to immerse people, my point of view, if you've listened to the podcasts in the past is that I think that AR and VR is an area that can really be grown in education and in other areas. But all right. Any hot takes from, we'll go with, let's go with Josh. 

Jeff Dugan 
So again, this is just me coming in as in person fan mail because I still don't think I was able to set up an email for this. So I had to come to Lindsay 

Dave Ghidiu 
It's a new patron program where I see your lens here, but it's just slowly. 

Jeff Dugan 
I'm filling up a lens to buy one of these. Yeah, well, while you get like. 

Dave Ghidiu 
BOCO, you know, bonus content. Of course BOCO. Right now, you can see something. So you are our first Lindsay to come into the studio. 

Jeff Dugan 
to be the, the, the, the champion Lindsey here. Um, no, I, uh, I, like I said, I've been listening for all, but I've been keeping up with the AI stuff as, as, you know, conversations have been happening on campus led by Dave and, and, and the AI think tank. And it's changed my entire working life, um, from, from, you know, day to day, you know, optimizations to generally strategic planning.

And honestly, uh, fable five drops. Uh, so anthropic Claude, uh, this is, this is my favorite. Um, I, I love, you know, I think it's a favorite of the, the, the view all as well. And there has been this kind of like, it almost seemed like the story you tell in the playground about mythos. Yeah, like a fable, like a fable. 

Paul Engin 
Hey, wait a minute. 

Jeff Dugan 
And, uh, and, uh, there was this idea of this mythos, uh, uh, model that was going to be, you know, I think of like, this is it, this is, this is the, uh, moment where we finally tip over to something that, you know, is going to be the absolute, we will not live in a world. We'll live in a world pre and post mythos.

So we didn't think we're knowing, you know, was the, we didn't think we're going to have access to it, but they did give us a version fable five came out. And that's like, oh, so mythos was like the most powerful. So right. We go up from sonnet haiku to sonnet to opus to, uh, fable and mythos are there. They're kind of that naming convention. I'm a huge English guy, so I love that style that they've chosen for the model. Um, but yeah, so fable, uh, was this version that had guardrails on it, uh, because if it didn't, and Dave, you can talk a little more about the cyber security piece of why they had to put guardrails on, uh, but this, this platform was two X what opus was for like credit for credits and also experience. I mean, you are talking about, this is one prompt generation of full applications, one drop, one prompt generation of, uh, so many like rich artifacts, um, for me, when I got access to it, I use it to help, uh, just like talk through, uh, you know, personal knowledge management I was working on. Right. Uh, and so I got to get into my project. And, and I was loving the output. It was, it really did feel like I was talking to a genie. It's like, cause you've been through wishes and that's it for your credit limit hits. Uh, so I want to think of it like that. And then one night or Saturday night, I come back up Sunday morning to start working again, and it's gone, which I think is fascinating. And I didn't know what to think. I started looking it up. I didn't know what to ask. Opus, I don't want to go to opus. I don't want to jump down, but no, you know, I want to find out that the, uh, the United States government had asked entropic to take down the service for, um, internationals. There were about four nationals, uh, getting access to, um, tools that could threaten our national security. And again, uh, uh, entropic being just the good guys that they are, uh, said, no, we're taking it down for everybody. You know, we're not going to try to pick and choose here. And I thought that was another great move by them, but yeah, that was, that's huge. And I, and again, it's kind of lost in the scuttle, but we're still waiting. We were only going to get fable until the 22nd of June. Anyway, it was like at a short window release. 

Dave Ghidiu 
Yeah, because then it's like the teaser, then you have to buy it. 

Jeff Dugan 
Exactly. Then it's going to really cost you.

But yeah, so I am eager to learn more and hopefully we get it back and we get an extension on that due date, that end date. I'm sure we will when it comes back. But yeah, it is a big question of cybersecurity because that's what the concern with mythos was and glassing, right Dave? 

Dave Ghidiu 
Yeah. So Project Glasswing, so the anthropic originally developed mythos first and they deemed it too powerful to release to us mere mortals.

So they, under the Project Glasswing, which is their code name for it, they gave it to companies like Microsoft, Google, like all these other companies to fix our code. And out of that came, so Firefox, Mozilla Firefox fixed 271 bugs in Firefox. And mythos had discovered bugs for, that had been around for like almost 30 years in some other operating systems. Like they found vulnerabilities in every operating system. So then they paired it down to Fable 5, gave us guardrails, but people could conceivably jailbreak those guardrails, which might be actually, there might not be such thing as AI systems that can't be jailbroken. So at any rate, Glasswing was given to all these companies and what we started to see, other than this Mozilla one and my hot take for the week is that Patch Tuesday, which is I think the second Tuesday of every month, Microsoft will update their software. And usually it's like in the, it used to be in the double digits. Now they'd be have like a hundred to maybe 150 tops, 200 bugs, some like small, some big bugs. But the, the most recent one in June of 26 had 566 bugs, including 55 high vulnerability, remote code executions. So, and that's like huge. So I think that we're starting to see Glasswing and AI start to really bulletproof and harden our software a little bit more. 

Paul Engin 
This is really crazy. Can I read you? I'll just read you the first two paragraphs of what the government or what anthropic said.

The US government, citing national security, uh, authorities has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to fable five and mythos five by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national anthropic employees. Yeah. Like, uh, so even their own employees who are working on this wouldn't be able to work on this. So the net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable fable five and mythos five for all underlined and bolded our customers to ensure compliance access to all other anthropic models won't be affected. But then it's interesting cause then it says we received a directive from the government today at five 21 when you messaged me, I was on cloud when it happened. So it like, I had this pop-up window that,

Dave Ghidiu 
It just absolutely- So they like popped up and like, sorry. 

Paul Engin 
Yeah, it just popped up and I got it's it's really verbatim like this, but it was not a link. It was just like in your face. You open it up and it was in your face. And then it says this letter did not provide any specific details of national security concerns.

And this is so this is interesting. Our understanding is that the government believes that it has become aware of a method to bypass or jailbreak Fable five. So I think what happened is mythos doesn't have the guardrails that Fable five has. And so when when we talk about jailbreaking, do you want to explain that? 

Dave Ghidiu 
Jailbreaking is when, at least in the domain of AI, is when you can convince it to do things that is programmed not to do. 

Paul Engin 
Right. So it's basically removing those guardrails and allowing Fable 5 to almost be mythos. 

Dave Ghidiu 
Yeah. And so two observations. One is the jailbreaking demos that had been kind of revealed. They are no different than using Kodak's, which is the chat GPT. So it was clearly not a national security threat for open AI, but the same thing was in a national security threat for Claude.

But the other thing is they released one of the jail prompts and it was the jailbreaking prompts. It was fix this code. It was three words. So it was programmed to not reverse engineer software, but if you paste it in code and you were like fix this code, it would then do it. So interesting. Yeah. 

Jeff Dugan 
He wants to help, that's all. 

Paul Engin 
We'll get more into that in a future episode.

I wanted to also bring up that SpaceX, I think as of yesterday or today, also purchased a cursor for $60 billion, which is a development tool in AI that allowed you to... To vibrate. 

Dave Ghidiu 
code to vibe code. And so like, I think in that purchase is the vibe coding apparatus was part of the immersive lens. So we're part of that 60 billion. Oh, excellent. They're acquiring just our vibe coding business, not our podcasting. But yeah, that's interesting.

So SpaceX has actually had like, they've kind of pivoted to being I don't think rock is the act, the traction that they wanted. So but now they have like all these like colossal classes, like data centers. And so now they're leasing that out to say, Claude. So now they're and now they're looking at space storage. So SpaceX is really becoming it has an awful lot of verticals for AI. But now there are they might not be an LLM as much as they are like a hardware company for that. 

Paul Engin 
Interesting. Yeah. And then on a fun note, what's being released on Friday? Yeah. Tell us about it. Story 5. Story 5. 

Jeff Dugan 
And, and, uh, I mentioned this earlier, I am canonically the same age as Andy, uh, which I found out, uh, after viewing of Toy Story 3, when we both graduated together. Um, so, uh, congratulations on one of your youngest viewers coming here to listen to you on.

Can I get that? 

Dave Ghidiu 
So, thank you for binging our shows instead of binging like Toy Stories 1 through 4 to catch up on the line. No. 

Jeff Dugan 
I feel like I did my children disservice not doing that, getting ready, but what's wild is, yeah, I'm gonna go see the fifth movie on Father's Day with my two daughters. Oh, that's awesome, how crazy.

So I went to Full Circle and they wanna, I 3D printed them a Buzz Lightyear and a Woody, because that's the kind of dad I am. Oh, that's awesome. Don't buy my plastic, but I can make it myself. 

Dave Ghidiu 
And the premise like the conceit of this installment is about AI toys, right? It is. Okay, you'll have to report back screen. 

Jeff Dugan 
Yeah, it's just it is just a screen. There's this little tablet that can talk to them. Yeah 

Dave Ghidiu 
As a lens, you know that we release secret episodes and we've been doing the play by play for Peaky Blinders. I thought I was ready, I was going to go with the ass.

After this, we're going to start texting Dave about Peaky Blinders. 

Jeff Dugan 
extra content of getting so I think after 

Dave Ghidiu 
we finish Peaky Blinders, we're going to do Toy Story. So we maybe we'll have you back on to the Boco. George, be a Lindsay everyone. $99 a month. 

Paul Engin 
All right, so let's get into our deep dive here. Sure. Do you mind walking us through your journey and how does someone become a director or assistant director of online learning and kind of what drew you to this space in general? 

Jeff Dugan 
I'm making sure this is not an interview for my current job, right? Like I've still got to, if I don't do well here, I don't mind.

So online learning, so my journey to online learning, um, started with, uh, failing to understand how I learn. Honestly. Um, I was an 18 year old out of high school, uh, and undiagnosed ADHD. Um, that is the poster child for do not take an online class. Um, and yet, uh, I found myself in a section of either English or history over the summer between, uh, high school and college, and failed with spectacularly in that course. And this is a study, this is well known, documented that, that, that age range, that gender, uh, do not do well. Um, but I, I, you know, I learned a lot in the failure and I moved through, um, here, I graduated here in 2012. So I did pass eventually, you know, my associate's degree, um, uh, coming back to face a lot of my instructors again, which was a lot of fun.

I want to keep to work here, but I moved here. I went to a buff state, uh, and I graduated with my, um, my bachelor's, my master's there. 

Dave Ghidiu 
And your master's just for everyone out there. 

Jeff Dugan 
My master's is in adult education. And if you want to be real fancy, if you ever want to talk about adult education, you can say Andragaghi, which means the art of teaching adults. So pedagogy, the art of teaching children, art and craft. So yeah, absolutely.

Use that every day in the job and actually got that while working here. So I left Buff State with a degree in actually public relations, public communications and marketing. So I did SEO for a while. Search engine optimization back when we had a search engine that actually needed to be optimized too. And I helped dentists get to the front page of Google. That was my job for a while.

And I really love that work. And what I learned in that, and just before that, I was working at Apple where I had to take and not Apple. Like I was not out in California. I was in Rochester, New York and Buffalo, New York to working at the Apple store. I was the guy who was a little too loud walking into when you walked into the store. I would like an iPad. That was me. I was actually an ad at the time when I was working there. I remember if you guys remember this, when they're in the shot on a plane and this guy's freaking out about his iPad and they go, is there an Apple genius on board? And the person who stands up and goes, I'm an Apple genius looked exactly like me.

So they're like, we gotta get this guy in here. He looks like the guy in the ad. So I've taken the Apple juice intravenously. That's what they make you do through a little Apple tattoo. That's not even the pills. That's no, it's intravenous. Yeah. That's the onboarding process. Just kidding. We're getting Dave into it too. I can see the line coming from the Neo. It's fantastic. The citrus is citrus color. Citrus. Yeah, that's perfect. So between that, between going through Apple and then in the work I did being basically the nerd on board with SEO, where I help people understand what a website was, what a head section was, and those kinds of things that matter to the search engines when they come to look for your website. I learned that my job that I really enjoy that the purpose of my work is confidence building and helping people translate between technology that seems still daunting and scary and a reality that a goal they're trying to achieve and translating the, what does that mean to get from A to B? 

Dave Ghidiu 
And so, yeah, so let me just ask a follow-up softball question what what translates from seo in structured information to instructional design 

Jeff Dugan 
getting there. So yes, no, it really was looking at opportunities outside of the corporate world. I really didn't want to help a salesman get to third houses anymore. Like, you know, that they were, it was just, you know, I think that I think SEO is a great business for individuals to engage with, I think our students could really do well to leave this institution and go help, you know, and as entrepreneurs and individuals kind of helping specialists. But when you're in a corporate setting, it's a little soulless work, you kind of just kind of grind through on the other side.

So I wanted to go help more and Finger Lakes was calling back to me. There was an opening here for an instructional designer. And I said, Oh, okay, so there's a, that's a tech related role. But no, it's, it's, it's a teaching assistant role. It's a, it's a translation role. It's a confidence building role. And, you know, at the time, I was just looking for that opportunity. And I applied. And I brought to my first interview, the idea of digital credentials, because they wanted to find something that was of the time. And we've still been working through that through credibly. And so I took the innovative spirit that we had an SEO, and I took the wanting to translate and help and I turned that into a job that I've just as fulfilling. Now, so I started here as instructional designer, which is a role that is about making our learning management system, a classroom. It's about, you know, when you talk about learning online, and you guys are talking in previous episodes about the ADA and curb cuts, right? Yeah, universal design, universal design for learning hoorah. So the idea with my job is to make that invisible curbs visible, right, part of the job, right, and find the curb cuts, find the solutions that benefit the entire learning environment. And the invisible work in instructional designers is not just helping the faculty be better in being present in the course. It's also looking at the digital room and saying, What is making this inaccessible? What doors locked? What whiteboard is just half hanging on there, right? If you walked into a classroom right now, and you you'd be able to see pretty clearly, because we have that perspective perspective of things were off my job at the point at that time when I was coming in here, was about bringing that to light, showing people what can be done to make things better. 

Dave Ghidiu 
Yeah, you were like translating between, you know, someone walks into a classroom, they can visibly see what the obstructions are. Oh, the front of the classroom is too busy.

And now you're doing the digital analog of that. 

Jeff Dugan 
Correct. And that's, that's what instructional designer does. In my, in my opinion, that is not someone who goes into a learning environment and goes, I know what I'm doing. Get out of my way. I'll put everything up for you and make it all pretty. And then you can go and do your thing. Cool. That's not my job.

Um, and still isn't. So, uh, what happened after that? Oh, pandemic hit. And we changed LMSs within the year of it, of, of those things happening together. And when you go through those trenches, they say, maybe we'll make you an assistant director. Um, and no, and so now, uh, at this, now at this stage, I'm leading a team. Uh, I'm building that confidence. Like I said, I build confidence, not just with my faculty, which was always my job, which I love doing. Um, actually, uh, best time of my job is I'm sitting one on one with a faculty member. We're talking through something on their course, not just fixing a grade book, but really talking about the design of the course. Um, but now I also support my students that are learning online through the faculty, but also directly in their experiences on, on finger licks. We have 54% of our enrollment is fully online. They never touch campus. 

Dave Ghidiu 
So 54% of people enrolled are taking an online course, one or more. 

Jeff Dugan 
Yeah. And most of them will never touch campus.

So the idea then is, how do we welcome them to Finger Lakes? This may be an experience where we are right now talking to some of our students that have never. Is your budget big enough to buy? 

Dave Ghidiu 
of those $2,100 glasses for every single virtual. I am still not interested with the budget line yet. I don't know. 

Jeff Dugan 
what that is. Maybe it's the Hawaiian shirts. I don't know, but I will eventually, hopefully have access to that.

And I don't, and, and really, um, my goal is to make various something very similar that they have at MCC, which is a digital campus. I would love for online learning to be a digital, have a digital campus and not just a digital space where we can all meet, but just the, the, the same level of support that we do our campus centers, because we have enrollment that is combined more than all of the campus centers. Right. Um, so, you know, that, that becomes the third part of my job, really, which is building confidence in online learning for the institution. We already have it. It's about expressing and showing it to people that need to hear it. Excellent. Yeah. Excellent. 

Paul Engin 
Um, so what does a typical week look like for you? Like, do you, are you in meetings? Like what's behind the scenes? How's the sausage made here for the, like, how's this all run? 

Jeff Dugan 
That analogy is tough for me because I used to say I was a mere pig farmer and then I learned, right, and then I learned how the sausage was made and now I just want to go back to farming pigs. No, I think the day to day looks, there's a lot of meetings. There's a lot of people looking for our attention. We have built a model here that we're working away from a little bit, but that was the anytime, anywhere, learning means anywhere, anytime support. That's a recipe for burnout now for me.

So what we've done is we relied more on SUNY, the network, the system that we're a part of with all the other 64 campuses to offer support in ways that look more like that midnight problem that students and faculty have. They have a resource that isn't us that they can call at the SUNY help desk. They do a great job there, by the way. They do. We are so fortunate to have them. 

Paul Engin 
telling me if an assignment is due at midnight, a student's trying to submit something at 1159 and there's an issue. There's a person... 

Jeff Dugan 
I can call. 

Paul Engin 
Our students wouldn't do that. No, no, no, no. 

Jeff Dugan 
No, no, it's 1205. They would go. No, it's, it's, it's, it's, that's the kind of, you know, support that I help make sure stays in lines and stays, um, available. Um, you know, I'm meeting a lot with, with other SUNY campuses. I do a lot of liaising to SUNY and to, um, to the, the team at SUNY online. Uh, it's part of, uh, the kind of larger network there and I do, uh, institutional readiness for, for campuses. So I've gone to a couple campuses where I go, okay, so you don't really have the support you need right now, uh, to grow or at least maintain the online population you have. What do you need? What can we help you find and get? So I love that advocacy work.

Um, and really, I know the majority of my time, and this is, you know, what I've learned to love to do very much so in this role is support my amazing team. This is the, this is the opportunity I, you know, that I've really got to enjoy. I have two instructional designers, um, Alexa and Sarah, they split STEM and non-STEM, uh, um, uh, areas. And then, uh, I've got, uh, Brooke, uh, uh, Tunison, who does our student support, one person for all those students, uh, which we're, we're working on. 

Dave Ghidiu 
super delightful so I imagine that's a great she's a great resource yeah 

Jeff Dugan 
she's a great resource. Um, and then tangentially in my office, she's not directly reporting to people.

We have Amy white, who is this dark horse, UDL specialist, not many people. In fact, I have very few institutions that I'm aware of have a UDL specialist. 

Paul Engin 
UDL specialists. UDLs. 

Jeff Dugan 
universal design for learning. So that whole episode you did.

I'm going to go back and listen. You are a specialist, according to your son, I believe. But that is that is something where, again, we stand out as leaders to have this person in a role that is devoted to. 

Dave Ghidiu 
She's fantastic. Talking about it. 

Jeff Dugan 
Now we've, we've regulated her a little bit to just fixing PDFs because we were in panic mode, but now we're not. And so I'm really looking forward to getting her out there more and pushing her into places like this space where she can talk about, what does it mean to reach for more than compliance?

Cause that's what UDL is. It's reaching above the compliance line and beating us somewhere beyond that. Um, which I'm really excited about. She also decided to get rid of your PDFs, but that's, that's,

Paul Engin 
get rid of the PDFs, but actually I heard something about PDFs take up more tokens, but I don't know if that's accurate. Maybe there's a lot. 

Dave Ghidiu 
layers and yeah because it takes additional screenshots they need to 

Paul Engin 
run Python too. Yeah, with the PDFs. 

Jeff Dugan 
images, Paul, that's just easy as pie. As easy as that PDFs for images and the images are notoriously bad. 

Dave Ghidiu 
for everyone out there, instead of creating PDFs, create HTML documents. Correct. That's what I'm saying. Use AI to do that. 

Jeff Dugan 
HTML is definitely a better way of going. 

Dave Ghidiu 
So, as instance director, you're often the bridge between administration, faculty, and students. What is the most common... So, this is a three-part question.

The most common misconception faculty have about online learning, learners have, and the public. 

Jeff Dugan 
I'll start with the public because I want to take a look at it from a market standpoint. Online learning, maybe you've heard this before, online learning can be perceived as a diploma farm. You've heard this maybe, and you can thank the private market for doing that. That's not saying that they are in theory putting out bad product, but the outcome is a degree, and that is a mass market model of what's happened.

Now, where it loses people is that, or where people lose the threat on that, for me, is when you look at getting a degree and going through that path, it is very much not about the paper at the end. The paper is an indication of the relationships built through that whole process. 

Dave Ghidiu 
Oh, that's an interesting characterization. 

Jeff Dugan 
Every step along the way, you met with a person, an expert, or a trained teacher that validated a step in that learning process. And when you try to systematize them out, or systematize that human-centric approach, you turn into a farm.

And online learning has a bad reputation of looking like systematizing out the human connection, which the opposite can also be true, very much so. So then from the public perspective, we're always fighting against the Phoenix University of the world and the for-profit models. They do a wonderful job of putting people through a pipeline. You want to talk about sausage being made? That is definitely a reassembly line of learning. But it's- And there's been legislation. 

Dave Ghidiu 
that kind of emerged because of that. 

Jeff Dugan 
So regular, regular and substantive interaction RSI, RSI, I'm going to try to lead with all the words and regular substantive interaction tells, um, it actually is legislation, it's actually legislation against, uh, correspondence courses or what's known as what I refer to as robo-courses. Sure. Um, this idea that there is, it is just a back and forth, um, with, with, uh, kind of preset content and the instructor has set it up at one point, let it run. That's why I mean like a robo-course, right? The RSI, what's required in the, the, the, the legal sense is actually just required for, you know, to get, for the courses to count for a financial aid, but you don't financial aid your own courses, uh, is that there has to be high touch level of faculty engagement and regular it's consistent and it's meaningful.

So, you know, this AI conversation becomes really interesting in this situation when you can just prompt, right? Is that feedback substantive? I mean, it looks substantive, but what's the faculty role there? That's a larger conversation, but regardless, this is pushing against the idea that we can just press play on a, on a course that has loaded up even with, and this is something in our world, right? If it's loaded up with, um, publisher content, you know, uh, there are people on campus that would call this, it's a shell jockey where they turn on that course and let it run. Yeah, it's a good one. Um, you know, and, and that is, um, that is something where, again, the reason why I care so much about this modality, this, this way of teaching is because where there's opportunity to do that, there's opportunity to negate that by both of you have shown this in your classes, but there's so many faculty at this institution who go above and beyond in those remote spaces to ensure that they are there and that students don't know that they're alone because isolation is also the big problem there too. 

Paul Engin 
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. I think building, you know, it's funny, I think it's one of those most, one of the issues that I think seniors when they become freshmen in college, like, you know, what's the best thing you can do? It's like, try to get integrated into a group of some kind, if it's a club, if it's a whatever it is, so you can have a group around you. And I feel like your point sometimes online might feel like they're isolated and they don't have anyone. That's why a lot of times those open discussions at the beginning creates some level of connection.

Because I know in some of those, I see those icebreakers have discussions of like, oh, I'm in Brooklyn too. Or you know what I mean? And then there's a connection there. So there's a level of group that you want to try to feel. It's belonging. That's what it is. 

Jeff Dugan 
It's a creating a sense of belonging community in that classroom where it can be taken away from, right? And we have tools that I've, you know, push that, that aren't tools for tools. Like their, their purpose is to build community and build a recognition in the classroom you're saying. 

Dave Ghidiu 
And I, we're very fortunate enough to have, uh, Jenny Earl Krampen, who is the director for the center of student involvement and leadership and is doing fantastic stuff for online learners, online students at this institution outside of the classroom as well. So there's kind of this bifurcated approach to the belonging. 

Jeff Dugan 
Yeah, that's what's nice about, you know, being seen as because we are leaders at SUNY and online learning, we've kind of we've held a we've kind of held a nice position there for a long time. And it's the effort of the people at the institution, honestly, from my perspective.

But all the rising tide has raised a lot of boats. And I think you're right. Our student engagement is going up with that. I still I see a model, though, where we can make that more coalesced under one campus, right, that we are focusing more on that. But yes, I think Jenny is we actually had a student director of online engagement from that department. Awesome. That's a great job. Yeah. 

Paul Engin 
So, um, there's stats that say from Miramar university that, um, that's where Top Gun is. 

Jeff Dugan 
Go ahead, Maverick. 

Paul Engin 
Online learning has exploded. There's approximately 73.8 million online learners globally, nearly 900% increase since 2000.

An e-learning market is projected to hit like a 400 billion by 2026. Does that growth feel real where we're sitting at a community college? And does that reflect what's happening as a trend here at FLCC, you think? 

Jeff Dugan 
It does. I mean, yes. And I think that opportunity changes the way our classroom structure looks. That does not mean everything's going to change overnight.

What that means is slowly over time, we have to recognize that the people that we're talking to are not in the room, kind of like what we're doing here, right? Our students are going to be at their own time, at their own place. And that's really important to reach. Now, that monumental of a growth, I don't know if it's going to be those levels of growth. And I still think there is value to sharing air with people and being in the same space. I do think the flexibility is a double edged sword where students will, yes, they'll be able to engage in their own time, but they'll need this kind of want or onus to have be in that community. Right now, it's given to them when they come into a classroom. This is going to be something where we need to focus more on developing, especially because we are not just serving. I mean, we are serving out into Brooklyn, right? There's no doubt in our mind, right? We have a big downstate population, shout out to marketing, right? They did great work. And we have advantage there, but that is something that we need to honor and respect. And when we have it remotely and we have it at a distance, finding real points of connection is going to be the important part for me. 

Paul Engin 
Yeah. And I think just to add to that, I think that as a community college, our focus needs to be in person as well. And so I think that we just have to, if we have an in-person, I feel like there should be an equivalent online for people who need that. So we can accommodate all aspects of the community and the people that are interested in taking our courses. 

Dave Ghidiu 
Do we have an awful lot of like STEM classes? Cause you mentioned we have an instruction designer just for STEM. So can I just talk about the STEM movement? 

Jeff Dugan 
So we are again, this is where, again, we have this leadership point, which again is so great because this, this, our, our innovation and our leadership held us through the pandemic too. Right. So that helped us quite a bit, but where the, where specifically in STEM you're talking about is all of our entry-level science courses are online. That is unheard of.

All of them, all of them, bio, chemistry, physics, and even up to, uh, microbiome, uh, anatomy and physiology are all online. We have an online offering for all of them. So what we see over the summer, especially in these mids, like what we're taking right now, I have eight, 12 sections. I don't, we have Trevor Siegelman Johnson has our physics professor, 12 sections of physics right now from RIT students from U of R students. They're looking to come here because the credit is more affordable and the quality is there that he's fantastic. Incredible.

His model, he's got that figured out and we're trying to replicate his model, which is he was the kind of main subject matter expert and designer and then spreads it out to all those courses and shares like a common model that he presents at a lot of conferences. He does. Yeah. 

Dave Ghidiu 
Appreciate working with him. Yeah. 

Paul Engin 
Yeah. So can I ask you something related to me?

I think AR and VR could be the next frontier in immersive online learning. Have you experimented with any of that and does it still feel sci-fi for most institutions? And where do you think the reluctance is to adopt this type of stuff in an institution, faculty, staff, or is it with students? 

Jeff Dugan 
It's all 3D TVs, man. We're going to come through. No, it's not. It's OK.

That's a deep track. Calling back to the failure episode. It's OK. The homework is all it was. No, you're right. Unbelievable. No, no, no, no. Get out of here. It's fine. It's good. Switch to Jeff. Switch to Jeff. Do the wrong Jeff in here. You're a lensy bitch. 

Dave Ghidiu 
Yeah, it's been revoked. That's okay. 

Jeff Dugan 
I can save that money, I think. No, I, yes, yes.

And we've seen this at our institution where we have been able to, in workforce, for example, been able to do welding work through VR and AR. That's not necessarily online, but that's a cool use of the technology.

When I think about online though, again, I think about that idea of presence and community building, right? Even looking at the specs earlier, which I still think Ben Franklin would have a kick over that they're calling Spectacles and what these are, right? The original mentor of Glasses, of bifocals. But that shared experience is so important.

I will never forget going into Christy Parker's class for the first time and helping her run that technology. 

Dave Ghidiu 
That's the, yeah, that's where they have like the virtual bodies and you can. 

Jeff Dugan 
Yeah. So this was the learning experience I got to watch. It's always fun because as a designer and that third party in the room sometimes you get to see the relationship happen. It's very exciting.

I watched a woman, a student, a learner who was looking at a heart and she saw the aorta in front of her and she goes, oh, that's what ruptured in my grandmother and had this deep emotional learning moment where it all kind of clicked and you would not have had that in any other space. You would have need to see that, right? Heard about it, heard about it, heard about it, never really pictured it. Then they had that moment. This kind of thing can't happen without the technology assistance and that deep immersion, which sometimes fails in a lecture environment. When you can't bring a heart in front of you to talk about it, it's different, right? That's a totally different experience. And I could tell because there were in this, that learning environment, they were getting down on their knees and really getting into it because they could, that physicalization again, you probably see it in the studios, right? When they're hands on, it's a totally different environment. And then we have this with the anatomage table as well. This is the ability to explain what the anatomage table is. The anatomage table is this really interesting. It's very similar actually when I think about your EKG app. 

Dave Ghidiu 
Oh, the, yep, the simulator. 

Jeff Dugan 
Um, the, the thing that you're going to take off on and Shark Tank, uh, out of here, that was part of the $60 billion acquisition. I think that's why they bought more and more positive spin on it anyway.

Um, no, it was, so the NMR table allows people to view, um, well, it's instructor run a table that allows, uh, the instructor to focus on different levels of the body, um, and the anatomy. And it's not just for the people in the room, uh, but also for anyone, uh, outside looking, uh, coming in via, um, a synchronous session and it's recorded. 

Dave Ghidiu 
It's basically like touch, giant touch screens. Giant touch screens. So it could be multi-user touch screens. Multi-user touch screens, yes.

So it's like a gross anatomy lab, but that's all digital. Exactly. It's not that gross of an anatomy lab. It's not that gross. 

Jeff Dugan 
us. It's very cool. And so, you know, these technologies, again, we're looking at ways it's the best of these technologies. And then what happens is the reason I'm getting starting in person moving online, because it's all about bringing a collective experience together. And that's what makes the difference.

And when you can make these environments in three dimensions, and make it real for people that are not in your space, that's what that's what makes synchronous asynchronous learning feel more like that, quote unquote, true education, right? You can only learn this if you're with me in the room. Well, we can still have an experience. Gotcha. Yeah. 

Dave Ghidiu 
So there there's something in SUNY called Oscar and a fair disclosure like I was part of the early like years and years ago I was the original grouch. Yes, I was Just talk to us like explain to us what Oscar is what it is now and why it's important if it is important

Jeff Dugan 
It is, it is important. So, you know, this is, so it's all about, Oscar is the open SUNY course quality review system, a rubric, however, it is a process that courses go through, online courses go through to ensure quality. It's based off of a tool, a measurement tool from EDUCAUSE called Quality Matters. And it is a way to set a standard in online learning and online education that is based around best practices and research.

So SUNY, and with Dave's help and with the team at SUNY, instructional designers and other- Mostly the team, I was just there. It was just you. You're just being grouchy in the corner. I was just, yeah, the mascot. You were the, but you are, you are a mascot, I think still in it, but regardless, it is the way that SUNY adopted Quality Matters in a way that met the needs of the SUNY student. So we looked at the needs across our 64 campuses and it was developed to meet those needs and to make something that's coherent enough that the entire system could follow through. It was then taken up by a couple, OLC online learning consortium down in Florida to be verified as like a true quality review rubric, which is really is huge for it. And they got published that way and we still use it today and it's been adopted and adapted. I worked myself at the SUNY level on getting it up to, I think it was 4.0 we worked on, which is RSI is what I worked on specifically, which is if you remember regular and substantive interaction. Thank you. So I was able to help there. And so I'm really kind of deeply involved in it at the SUNY level, but we're bringing it here under a course quality initiative where we are trying to, we're very good, like I said, leading the way and putting new things online. Now we need to, especially post pandemic, which is hard to keep talking about, but it really does have ripple effects to today and online learning, create a floor of quality that we meet because we've got our ceiling well-defined. We keep pushing that up and up, but a floor would be also very good to set up like Trevor has a standard common core shell that we know it holds the quality. It has accessibility interests in mind. It has good instructional design in mind, has good presence in mind. And it's just so that every room has a functioning door and a working lights and all those things. That's the point, right? Now it is hard because it is a huge initiative. We have over 240 classes online. These are... 

Dave Ghidiu 
Questions or classes? Classes. That's right. There's 240 classes. Correct. 

Jeff Dugan 
That's not sections. So sections is what every every faculty member will teach if there's multiple sections in the in a semester via three or four 

Dave Ghidiu 
four of those sections, you're, you're looking at maybe close to a thousand. Correct. Every semester. 

Jeff Dugan 
every time that that course gets put out into a section, that's a different iteration of that course. We're just trying to create a common core shell that starts clean. And that would be a huge lift. It still is a huge lift. It's a five year plan my team has to do this. And it's why I'm so grateful for them because they are boots on the ground doing that work.

And it is, from my perspective, a faculty initiative. It is, and it's a opportunity. We used to have a kind of a culture here of jumping the desk. And it was a thing that we did. It was actually an event where people got to go and sit on the other side of the classroom from their peers and learn about what they're doing in their class. This is that shared collaborative environment that I'm trying to help build in our online department and all the online offerings we have because we do such good work.

So yeah, so Oscar's incredibly important. It's setting the floor. It helps us move past the pandemic of good enough. Proceed on. Sure, good enough proceeding on a get-up. So we don't need that mentality anymore. We need to be stewards now of our content and stewards of these courses because it's what really matters. 

Paul Engin 
So is Oskar a rubric that kind of is a fix-all for online course quality or is it just a starting line? 

Jeff Dugan 
Yeah, it is. It is just making sure the door opens and that the classroom is set up. I would never, and I would tell my instructional designers, your job is to not tell the teacher how to do their job. We are, this is the analogy I use for our whole process. It is your car inspection, not a driver's test. We are going through the process of inspecting the car, making sure it's good in good shape. It can move on the road and then you should feel more confident as a driver knowing it's been inspected, but we're not going to sit in the backseat while you try to make a K-turn. That's not our job.

Unless we need help. Well, unless you need help, and then you call us and then we show up in the backseat. It's just a hard turn. You've got to really want it. But what's hard is, we've got faculty members who, to extend the analogy probably a little too far, is they built these courses from scratch. They are very tied to their car. They don't see a difference between themselves and their car. They've spent 60 hours making lecture material that is beautiful. I do have to remind them that, yes, that's a four-hour lecture, but Lord of the Rings had a budget. That's important that we think about how the learners are ingesting this information. There is some of that. There is going to be that because we are encroaching on agency. We've never taken over, but we're encroaching on. 

Dave Ghidiu 
That's a great philosophy to adopt. For all those listeners out there, the future lensies, what is the lowest hanging fruit an online instructor can do today to improve their course, like three or four things that people can do? 

Jeff Dugan 
turn on your webcam and say hello to your students. Even if you've done it already, I call it my proof of instructor videos. That's good. And I like, if I have to, I will hold up a newspaper, if I can find one and say, I'm here, I'm here, I hear you.

Here's an email I got recently. Here's something that happened in the new, and that's not to just to be flip it about presence, but it's inserting yourself in the learning experience because that's our job, right? And AI is not taking that away either. And that's a, maybe I wanna come back and talk about Toy Story. I'd love to talk about how I think AI fits in all of this as well. But that is the job. Go in, say hi, be present. Don't just, and even in the spaces where you're not in front of the whole class, you can have presence in your feedback too. There's a record button in Brightspace Feedback or most LMSs where you can put yourself out there and say hi. I really liked this about your assignment. I really didn't like this. That matters more. And they don't even get that face-to-face most of the time. 

Dave Ghidiu 
I like that the proof of proof of instructor of instructor. 

Paul Engin 
P.O.I. So we might have to bring you back.

We still have a lot more questions, but we're running out of time and I want to do this little fun segment. Um, if you're game, every other, every other one, yeah, we'll do every other one. So what we'd like to do is, um, we'd like to put through, uh, scenarios and we'd like you to give an answer. If you think it would be better online or in person, um, and then kind of give us a quick justification. Why? Okay. Let's do it. 

Dave Ghidiu 
All right, you're gonna start with that's the hardest one the first one I'm gonna start Paul and I have the list but Jeff does not have the list and I would not want to be Jeff 

Paul Engin 
All right, let's go. So you started the learning to. 

Jeff Dugan 
Well, that is to be in person to start, but for refreshers and for other kind of safety concerns or re-skilling or re-learning it, I think you could do that online with some high technology. 

Dave Ghidiu 
And I do want to shout out to Patrick in workforce. We do have the learning to weld the virtual welding program, which is cool. You just need a $30,000 piece of equipment to do it. 

Jeff Dugan 
If I would not be careful barking, right? Like he's just got to still follow the compliance and then the concerns there. But I think it's a great rescaler, great tool. So in person. 

Paul Engin 
All right, intro to philosophy. 

Jeff Dugan 
Oh no, if Mark Whorl's listening, I gotta be careful. 

Paul Engin 
Mark, we need you to stop the podcast. No, no, no, she's fantastic. 

Jeff Dugan 
and he would agree with me. That is best online, is that what the question is? 

Paul Engin 
uh if you had a choice if i did the choice if i was taking the right person 

Jeff Dugan 
I would take it online and the rationality is, uh, that I would want to, um, make sure that we have the ability to take your time to write and think through those responses and actually a secret discussion or the way I've helped Mark, it was our philosophy instructor here, uh, use voice thread and have that conversation. Now in dialogue can happen asynchronously, but there's that thought process that really matters.

Okay. All right. A cooking class. In person and Jamie Rodder, I'd want a space between them, but no, uh, no, yeah, it's in person and that's just because you can't smell burning garlic right online yet. Uh, so that is, uh, something where you'd want them learning that now, again, speaking of Jamie Rodders, one of our culinary instructors, he's working with Christie Parker to do a butchering class for, you know, augmented reality. So that's, you know, there's opportunity, but no, that's an in-person. 

Paul Engin 
Okay. All right. Grief counseling. 

Jeff Dugan 
Uh, it's tricky. Um, I think there definitely needs to be an in-person start to all of this. This is, this is, there's a high level skill. Like we're talking with AI high level skill that needs to be done. Now there is still training that I think can be done and presence that can be done online once those fundamentals are in place.

And you know, there have been points in my life where I've needed someone at three o'clock in the morning and AI was there. Right. So there's that kind of thing where that really matters, access matters. And so how do you engage with that? This is, you know, we were, one of our first programs we put online and I'll be quick about this, uh, was public speaking. Uh-huh. Oh boy. I don't even know. Right. Um, you know, the, my previous boss was an excellent salesperson. They were very good. No, it was, but look how much important that is now to have a presence on a camera. Yeah. That's all that matters sometimes to some jobs. Right. So no, it, there is a level of abstraction that matters to these roles, even though there are highly personable roles. 

Paul Engin 
It's interesting with that one, I could see that being AI personas being developed and then you as a griefing counselor would have to try to respond and you could be, I don't know, there's a lot. 

Dave Ghidiu 
Yeah. And I think nursing is doing kind of the same thing, um, with say like patient diagnostics and things like that. So, uh, learning to. 

Jeff Dugan 
We still offer those classes as vibe coding is, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

No, no, no, no, no, because, because, you know, having an instructor there is, it is, it is that relationship that you build. So I do think that that's online because the, you know, you know, you have your, you can have a coding environment, but having someone in that loop with you, helping you through those processes, we're watching that now in real time, right?

There's no more prosumers. There's code servers now that are working through this kind of concept that I don't know how to do this. I need a person to tell me. And that's, I think that there needs to be a person there. 

Paul Engin 
I will say for the coding classes, I find it interesting. There's some people that are actually really fine with doing it online. And then there's some people that try it online and then they say, Paul, I just would rather be there and while I'm coding and I see you, I can say, hey, Paul, why is this happening? Or you know what I mean? And it's like, and they perform much better in person. So sometimes I think it's just the person and how they like to learn.

And sometimes it is a sense of community. Cause even if I'm, I could be asynchronous, but I could be working with you. And there's a, it's a similar to being in a classroom and then, you know, having that sense of. 

Dave Ghidiu 
I always wonder though, and I agree, like I've definitely had that experience, but there's a syndrome, I call it the math is hard syndrome, where people grow up and they're like math is hard and then they ask their parents for help and the parents, if they're not mathematicians, like, oh, geez, it's been a while since. And I think computer science is kind of the same thing because almost anyone who's in our programming classes has never seen programming before. So unlike if you're in an English class or a science class where you spent 12 years in it. So I think that I almost wonder if there's this, the fear of the unknown and like, I know nothing in this class versus I have like a history of it.

So as we're going through this list, I'm always thinking of like, oh, I think like a cooking class might be fun online. Cause I took like an online baking, like cookie one. It was fun. There was community cause we were all there at the same time, like in our kitchens, like making a mess. And so like, I'm always thinking of the, what is the online analog to this? And so I think there are these anecdotes and I know you and I have talked about this, like every class can be put online. You just have to be like creative and figure out how to do that. 

Jeff Dugan 
Yeah, and what I think is super important with any of these is that the learner experience, the end result, is that they are able to, and this is very instructional design thinking, but there's learning outcomes, can they be met? What does that mean? And yes, that's the creativity. If their job is to learn how to saute garlic, I mean, I'm sorry, Jamie, if that's incorrect. I think it's a thing. You don't saute garlic. How dare you? That's the problem with the ideas, we also pretend to know a lot of things about other things. But no, then there has to be a way to assess that and it has to be a way for the instructor to assert that yes, this was met. You meet them, you met that goal.

Yeah, no, it's really interesting. There is a lot of really interesting problems to solve in this world. Sure. 

Paul Engin 
Yeah, two more. All right. 

Dave Ghidiu 
Uh, I did the last one. 

Paul Engin 
College orientation for freshmen. 

Jeff Dugan 
Belonging is the big question there, right? Belonging. So we didn't count. 

Dave Ghidiu 
I like solve that problem. 

Jeff Dugan 
We can solve that problem. I mean, that if you can, and this is the idea, can you create a synchronous environment that feels like the full gym? Sure. Right. That's the whole question because it's not about getting all that information. They're going to forget it by the end of that session. Right? Because that just becomes compliance training, right? That's not what we're doing. We want them to see, oh no, I'm here with a group of people that are also doing this. And so how do you do that online? That's the question.

How do you make it an environment where, you know, you feel that energy and, and I think, you know, games is a way to do that. There's a lot of ways to create that social engagement. There's no doubt. 

Dave Ghidiu 
out. Cool. Last one. Yep. Ethics. 

Jeff Dugan 
ethics ethics is a it is a online class we have right now and it requires a strong instructor that knows how to lead difficult conversations asynchronously and it requires an instructor or a class that's willing to play the game of being vulnerable in the space where they're going to ask you a few questions. 

Dave Ghidiu 
So like in all your answers, what I hear is like the same exact thing of an in-person class is out, is a, is a online. It's just a different skill set.

So like, if you can figure out how to do that, because you could put me in front of an in-person ethics class and I have like, I've had no idea what I'm doing. Right. Um, but I feel like I, because I'm a subject matter expert and because I've been teaching online, like for learning a code, I could probably do both, but it is like such a different skill set. And I think one of the biggest problems in online learning is a lot of people are like, I've been teaching computer programming for 30 years. I can do it online. Correct. And that is not the far from the truth. 

Jeff Dugan 
this is the hard line I have between pedagogy and andragogy, children and adults, online learning skews to adult learners. What that means is that you have to respect the learner differently than you would in a classroom. Not saying you don't, but there's a different relationship.

When I think about that difference in metaphor, because my brain gets stuck in the metaphors, is the idea of what's the difference between being led up a mountain by a sherpa or a guide or going to base camp together and making it to the next camp. Those are the difference between you being this leader that everyone follows and has to be right behind. He knows what we're doing, follow that person or she knows that person is the person we're following versus I've been up this mountain before, but we're going together and whatever you bring to this is right. You know, that's the question. And all this to me speaks to one very specific point and that is online learning and in-person learning are no longer this competing force of each other. They are two pillars standing next to each other. We can no longer pigeonhole othering online learning. They are two of the same. And we have to support both co-equally is the challenge.

Our high flux and flexible modalities that we're getting into, that's the fringe. That's the interesting stuff that I get and love to talk about later. 

Paul Engin 
All right, so we're running out of time, so we have one more question, and then we'll close this whole thing out. If you could change one thing about how our institution approaches online learning right now, policy, technology, culture, anything, what would it be? 

Jeff Dugan 
Uh, give me a budget. No, no, the change, the change is, yeah, I hit it right there in the spectacles, uh, the, the change is, is simply online learning is not othered from, from face-to-face learning. It is something else. It is not something else. It is the same. It requires a different skillset and we need to appreciate that.

But at the end of the day, learning outcomes need to be met. Faculty need to be present and students will respond to both of those things. So, you know, I was telling the provost the other day, um, dr. Laura Ortiz, we were talking about, you know, some issues we're having with, with the beginning of the semester and students being not able to access their class, I said, you know, dr. Ortiz, if you walk down the hallway and see someone locked out of a classroom, you would probably try to help them immediately. Yeah. Right. That would be a, I need to go fix this up and urgently. There was not an urgency to this issue that there should be. So it's, it's respecting that modality and understanding that just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not real. So back to the invisible curve cuts, those kinds of things, but that would be my big pitch. Um, and, uh, yeah, no, thank you guys so much for the time. This is so cool. Appreciate you coming in and doing. 

Paul Engin 
us and thanks for the Hawaiian shirt suggestion. Absolutely. This is summer mode, guys. You gotta do it. 

Jeff Dugan 
You gotta go for it. 

Dave Ghidiu 
Wardrobe Department of the immersive lens 

Paul Engin 
So that's all the time we have today. I'm Paul Engin. 

Dave Ghidiu 
I'm Dave Ghidiu. If you enjoyed today's conversation, be sure to smash that like, subscribe, love, subscribe again button so you never miss an episode. Let's be careful out there. 

Paul Engin 
Thank you so much for coming in again. Share it with a friend or colleague. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected, and thanks for looking through the Immersive Lens with us. 

Dave Ghidiu 
This episode was engineered by Jeff Kidd and a special shout out to Jeff Kidd for just being awesome and like diagnosing all these like tech issues that we're having in here. So Jeff, thank you very much.

And if you didn't see the video recording of the episode with Jen Karnia, I highly recommend it. If you want to see Jeff's. 

Paul Engin 
You know a little Adobe character anime with some lip syncing steps up when we step down Thanks Recorded this podcast was recorded at Finger Lakes Community College Podcast Studios located in beautiful candidate when New York in the heart of Finger Lakes region offering more than 55 degrees certificates micro credentials including vibes

Dave Ghidiu 
coding in our AI integration specialist starting fall of 2026 completed online. You can do in one semester, no pre-wax. 

Paul Engin 
they're all right uh and workforce training programs 

Dave Ghidiu 
Thank you to Public Relations and Communications Marketing and the EFLX AI Hub. 

Paul Engin 
Eager to delve into passion, discover exciting and immersive opportunities at W. The script just says W. It just says W. Where do we go? I don't know. W. W. Because I already said 1.FLCC.ED. 

Dave Ghidiu 
Oh geez, welcome to recovery. He throws me off! He does throw stuff! 

Jeff Dugan 
go to a website though because you spelled it out for them. That's my curiosity. 

Dave Ghidiu 
As part of our mission at FLCC, we are committed to making education accessible, innovative, and aligned with the needs of both learners and employers. 

Paul Engin 
The views expressed in this podcast are those of the host guests and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Finger Lakes Community College. 

Dave Ghidiu 
Music by den from pixabay. This is the immersive lens and Jeff. I just want to say You've got a friend in me. Oh 

Paul Engin 
Wow 

Jeff Dugan 
That's amazing. All right.




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