By Pieter Brueghel the Elder – 1. Web Gallery of Art2. The Bridgeman Art Library, Object 3675, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11974918

More thoughts on Tom’s Long Goodbye-Biology post.

A substantial part of what Tom narrates either began or flourished while I was a vice provost and leading what became ALT-Lab, the Academic Learning Transformation Lab. Much of the work I helped to initiate or encourage or fund or somehow influence at VCU continued after I was stepped down. I was of course glad to see that work continue and grow–delighted–and continue to be very happy I could help with the first part of it … but it’s not like being there, and would never again be like that. So reading about the work, especially the parts I was there for, has been bittersweet. All of that said, Tom’s posts have also been bracing and wonderful reminders of just how much ground we covered in those early years, just how idealistic our aims truly were, despite some pretty withering opposition from time to time.

There’s a lot I could have done differently, and better, to answer criticisms and modulate (not moderate, necessarily) the tempo and reach of our initiatives. It takes time to assess the political landscape. The trick is always to assess that landscape but not to lose one’s ambition for substantial change where that’s warranted and where change can be fairly and openly worked on. I wasn’t successful, ultimately, but many successes came out of the work and endure today. I take great comfort in that, and I am grateful to Tom for writing about the projects. It was always about the projects.

Several things struck me in particular in Tom’s post on his biology and environmental science projects. I want to cite them here and offer a few words of commentary from my perspective.

Tom writes,

Field Botany

This site was good. It could have been world changing in the way I’d hoped back in 2014. It ran for a semester or three but then another strange political thing happened and the course didn’t run any longer. At least one student reported getting a graduate school job based on the work they did as part of this class. I got to go out in the field and learn all kinds of things about field botany. One of our interns did the art work for this parallel site and then ended up getting his drawing of a fern leaf tattooed on his arm.³

I remember well when this project emerged and the site came online. It was a very exciting time. We talked a lot about this project in our weekly meetings. I was convinced that the site pointed the way toward a genuinely innovative model of online learning, one that was closely aligned with VCU’s emphasis on experiential learning (the 1.0 version of which is the slogan “Make It Real”). The site combined crowdsourcing via mobile technologies with open learning with citizen science–you get the picture.

We all did in fact think that this project could be world changing. That first year, 2013-2014, we had embarked on several such projects, including the first iteration of our Digital Dreamers research-writing sections of UNIV 200: “Thought Vectors in Concept Space.” (Not much to see there anymore.) That spring Molly Ransone joined us to head up our video production department, and we experienced yet another enormous increase in creative reach and opportunities. We really did believe that these projects were fully aligned with what my leadership title stipulated: “Learning Innovation and Student Success.” I saw these two things as connectable and mutually reinforcing. I still think we were right about the potential. What I didn’t understand is that the emphasis on genuine learning innovation via the Internet and the Web would not last beyond the first eighteen months and my first two bosses. I was not fully aware, or couldn’t fathom, that the “learning innovation” was primarily envisioned at the top to be a robust set of revenue enhancements from a suite of online graduate programs. There were signs, but I didn’t see enough of them in time or understand what I was seeing. Do I wish I had? Yes and no. Yes, because I think I could have maintained some innovative approaches even as the momentum bled into the online revenue engines (assuming we could actually have managed the latter). No, because I honestly don’t believe it would have helped, or that I could have worked as a broker for some online course platform provider, which was the direction we were headed when I arrived. (I recall a lot of talk about Deltak, which is something else now of course.)

I don’t know what the strange political thing is that Tom mentions above, and he may not either. There were strange political things all over, as there always are. VCU’s may or may not be more diverse and strange than other institutions. Difficult to say.

Back to Tom:

The field botany site continues to have all sorts of interesting comments and questions from the community. They are identifying unidentified plants. Asking about plants they’ve seen. But those questions sit there unpublished. Maintaining sites like this takes time and energy. It’s also a tricky thing about giving the site away. It’s not my place to go in an approve comments or respond unless we make that part of the deal and do I really know enough about the topic to play that role? I don’t and have to let it go but is sad to see it come so close to being absolutely amazing.

I felt very strongly that VCU was poised to lead the way toward something far beyond SME-ID course templating. It makes me hyperventilate to explain what “SME-ID” means, so I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader. The kind of leadership I envisioned and hired toward, however, was just too far away from what I hadn’t quite ever been told was the real assignment I had more-or-less unwittingly accepted.

It is worth looking at the online experience site. It was made for the VCU board of visitors as something to try to get a flavor for how we were conceptualizing online. It didn’t seem to go over well. There might be lots of reasons for that. It tried to explain the choices and show examples. It tried to blend real-world data gathering and make interactive components that got you outside. I think what they wanted was a slightly polished Blackboard shell. It was pushing an audience too far. They didn’t want a thing different from what was. It would have taken a real investment of time and energy from a lot of people to make this work and we didn’t have that much political backing. Still, we swung for the fences and I remain glad we did.

Once again Tom reminds me that there is no need to regret our ambition. So I will regret something else on my part, something I feel is worth regretting. I am naturally a fairly expansive and exuberant person. At the same time, like anyone else I have my insecurities. Maybe more than some, though I’m told we’re all carrying similar burdens in that respect unless we’re completely covered by the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Yet I do regret that my own fears and insecurities kept me from pounding the pavement more effectively with faculty, with staff, with senior leadership, with alumni, with the entire audience. Too often I sought shelter with allies instead of working to build connections with people who were skeptical or resistant or downright hostile. I can try to forgive myself for this, but my regrets teach me that bravery does not mean not being afraid.

I once asked a wonderful leader how I could grow a thicker skin. He simply looked at me and replied, “Never, ever lose your passion.” I understand the wisdom in the response. This blog and these posts indicate that I have not lost that passion entirely. But I would be perfectly okay with a thicker skin, too.

I’ll let Stanley Kubrick have the last word on this one.