Episode 19: The Value of Online Learning

[#1]

Ryan Lufkin (00:01.261)
Hello and welcome to this episode of Educast 3000 podcast. I'm your cohost, Ryan Lufkin.

Melissa Loble (00:07.05)
and I'm your co-host, Melissa Loble. And I'm super excited for our special guest on our episode today. As you all know, Ryan and I are really passionate about the future of online learning, particularly as the world of education changes. We think about things like workforce alignment, alternative opportunities to learning, and really more deeply engaging learners. So with us today is Dr. Trey Martindale, Associate Vice Provost of Online Learning at Middle Tennessee State University.

I got to meet Trey recently in a visit to his campus and was incredibly impressed with not only the work that he's doing at Middle Tennessee State, but also all of the work he's done over his career. He's an author of multiple books and his real deep focus on bringing the best opportunities for learners possible as we think about this future of online learning. So welcome, Dr. Trey Martindale.

Trey Martindale (01:01.272)
Thank you so much, Melissa. I'm so pleased to be able to join you all and mostly just to talk about online learning. That's my favorite thing. I guess that's good.

Ryan Lufkin (01:07.129)
We love that, we love that. and Trey, know, Melissa gave a little bit of an overview of your background, but tell us a little bit more so our audience can get to know you.

Trey Martindale (01:18.546)
So I'm in an interesting position at Middle Tennessee State. We're just outside of Nashville, about 30 miles. We're a regional public institution, about 20,000 students. MTSU has a really good reputation for teaching. Really strong institution. It's known for being a great social mobility institution, essentially helping kind of lift all boats, if you will. It's been a really good institution. It has a great reputation in that sense.

Ryan Lufkin (01:43.694)
Yeah.

Trey Martindale (01:48.668)
I came here about four years ago into a new position that was actually created by our president in terms of leading online learning. Because it had such a great reputation, I think for the residential experience, online learning hadn't been as much of a priority. But obviously in these days and times, online is very important. And so our president recognized that and really wanted to ramp up online programs. So I come from a background of...

come from a professor role. My role was as a professor in instructional design and technology. So what we call IDT sometimes. These days it's more often called learning design, learning design and technology, learning architecture, learning engineering, depends on who you talk to. But that's my background. And as part of my research area, I was studying online learning, how it works.

Ryan Lufkin (02:29.795)
Mm-hmm.

Trey Martindale (02:39.816)
issues around faculty workload, student acceptance of online learning, issues that happens with students in terms of retention and success, things like that. So my running joke was I was often teaching online courses about how to teach online courses. So very meta in that sense, know, people create online courses while we're doing it online. So the funny thing about that is you have to model it while you're doing it, right? If you say,

Ryan Lufkin (02:55.791)
huh, huh.

Melissa Loble (03:01.173)
I love that.

Ryan Lufkin (03:04.322)
yeah, yeah.

Melissa Loble (03:04.482)
Mm-hmm.

Trey Martindale (03:05.82)
do this in your online course, well, the students can come back and say, why are we not actually doing this right now? So that's fun. So I've had the, think a really good opportunity where my research interests, my teaching area and my area of service have all kind of lined up around online learning. So that's been a nice experience.

Ryan Lufkin (03:08.887)
Why are you not doing that? Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (03:22.327)
Yeah, not to mention an amazing area of the country. I'm sure you've got lots of musicians being that close to Nashville.

Trey Martindale (03:27.74)
Well, that's right, man. We've got one thing that's interesting about Middle Tennessee State is we have a College of Media and Entertainment. And I think that's the only one in the country that's named that way. And man, I just want to join that college. They do so many neat things. They've got a world renowned program in audio production and the music business industry. They call them the Grammy factory. They always go to

Ryan Lufkin (03:34.461)
wow! Yeah. Yeah.

Hehehehehe

Melissa Loble (03:40.878)
Yes. Yes.

Ryan Lufkin (03:50.153)
wow. Yeah.

Trey Martindale (03:50.61)
to LA every year to go to the Grammy Awards and we've got lots of alumni that are doing really neat things. So I want to go and join that college. There's no cool over there.

Ryan Lufkin (03:56.663)
That's amazing,

Melissa Loble (03:58.668)
I love that. I love that. Well, and we always ask our guests, and this I think will be really great to ask you, a favorite learning moment. And it can be either you as a learner, you as a teacher, you as something you've observed. But we love to sort of ground this in, know, what's a learning moment maybe that's changed or is a favorite or you remember in your life?

Trey Martindale (04:23.048)
You know, I can tell you something that happened kind of recently around the programs that we have at MTSU. And that is we have a partnership with a local television station. It's our CBS affiliate. And they were promoting things that were happening at MTSU, kind of a feel-good afternoon talk show kind of format. And so I got to go and appear on that show. And I was with a student, a recent graduate, who was an EMT, paramedic. And he was probably in his late 40s, early 50s.

and he was talking about how he was able to complete his degree finally, know, one of his long-term career goals, he was able to complete his degree doing this completely online while working as an EMT. And so we got to just hear kind of his testimony, you know, his story of how he's able to do this with a family and career and all that sort of stuff. And the remarkable thing about that, he was kind of joking about working on his online class while he's in the ambulance on the way to go and, you know, pick someone up.

Ryan Lufkin (04:59.363)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (05:04.066)
Wow. Mm-hmm.

Melissa Loble (05:07.479)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (05:18.969)
Hahaha

Trey Martindale (05:20.934)
So that's multitasking right there. That was just a really neat story about how when you're an adult student, you have all these challenges and time commitments and us trying to knock down those barriers so that people can complete degrees and finish their career goals.

Ryan Lufkin (05:23.061)
yeah, yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (05:34.605)
Yeah, kind of brings that full circle. So you really understand the impact that all of your efforts have on people's lives. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Trey Martindale (05:40.328)
It really was kind of a feel-good moment about, yeah, that's why we're doing this. It's for people like this. So yeah, that was really neat.

Melissa Loble (05:44.632)
Yeah. Yeah, we don't often get to as teachers. I know I've shared before on this podcast, I've taught for a long time online. And we don't often get to see or hear from students once they graduate. We're just so involved in them while they're part of our program or our course. And to then get to see the fruits of that and how excited they are about that's really special. I love that.

Ryan Lufkin (06:06.893)
amazing.

Melissa Loble (06:07.672)
Well, this leads really nicely, and you actually already alluded to in the beginning, you've been in online learning for a long time. You did your research. You did your doctorate in online learning or in instructional design. What drew you to it? What got you excited about this? Why is this your field of interest? And sort of what keeps you connected to wanting to do this work?

Trey Martindale (06:26.152)
Well, that's an interesting question and there's kind of a running joke about that too. When I got into this field, I didn't know it was a field. And I think that's actually fairly common in terms of instructional designers. It has not been a well-known field or a well-known path until recently. It feels like in the last five, six years, instructional design is kind of having its moment. There was a big article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed a few years ago.

Ryan Lufkin (06:47.762)
yeah, yeah.

Trey Martindale (06:55.11)
This is probably about five years ago and it sounded the tone of the article was we've discovered this this new field, you know, called instructional design. And there was lots of pushback against that article saying, look, we've been around since at least World War Two. You know, the field kind of got its start really as part of World War Two. The need to train massive numbers of troops about specific skills in a very short time and a mission critical kind of thing. And so

Melissa Loble (07:03.234)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (07:08.88)
yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (07:20.717)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (07:21.132)
Mm-hmm

Trey Martindale (07:23.992)
many of the founders of the field came out of that movement. And so for me, I always had an interest in teaching and learning. My mother was a teacher, and so I got to watch her teaching. So that was kind of an interest for me. But also an interest in technology. I thought maybe I'll go into engineering or something like that. But I found this field, and I can't remember how I discovered instructional design.

Melissa Loble (07:48.462)
Hmm.

Trey Martindale (07:48.54)
I think I was literally reading through a university catalog at Texas Tech, which is I'm from that area, from Texas. And so they had a program in educational technology and ended up going into that doctoral program. it felt like a eureka moment where I read about, this is kind of combining your interest in effectiveness and efficiency.

Ryan Lufkin (07:53.955)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (07:54.414)
Okay.

Trey Martindale (08:12.52)
Sort of that type A part, a little bit of OCD, a little OCD helps everyone I think, just not too much, you want a little bit, combined with wanting to teach and train and help people learn. So it's kind of a nice fusion there.

Ryan Lufkin (08:15.608)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (08:23.821)
Well, and your timing, you said, is amazing because post COVID, it really did shine a light on that student user experience. And what does it look like when you are navigating different courses and different modalities and different design levels and different adoption levels? Yeah.

Trey Martindale (08:40.422)
And I don't know if we're going to talk more about COVID, but wow, what a, we actually just had, and this might be of interest to you all. We just had a news story about what's happening in online at MTSU. They did a nice kind of a promotional piece about us that kind of summarizes our growth over the last four years, which is really nice. But as part of that, said, you know, COVID was not the, was not the reason that we're doing so much online, but it was as much as it was a catalyst. In other words, this was going to happen for us in an accelerator. That's right.

Ryan Lufkin (08:53.528)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (09:06.967)
Yeah, an accelerator. Yeah.

Trey Martindale (09:10.356)
This was going to happen, but wow, COVID really put the pedal to the metal in that sense. A lot of people were trying to do some things online that they had never tried before. Some willing, some not willing, but it was a real time of experimentation in terms of trying things online.

Ryan Lufkin (09:29.249)
Yeah. So, so as we stay in today, what's your, what's your view on kind of the general state of online learning across education?

Trey Martindale (09:39.803)
So.

It depends on who I'm talking to. If I'm talking to senior leadership, if I'm talking to our president or provost or someone like that, say certainly we need to have an online presence because everybody knows about demographic cliffs, enrollment cliffs, the decreasing number of high school graduates that are choosing to go to college. There's some other headwinds like there's some decreasing faith in higher education.

Ryan Lufkin (09:43.16)
Hehehehe

Ryan Lufkin (10:10.359)
Mm-hmm.

Trey Martindale (10:10.93)
as a sector, as institutions. Of course, we've got rising costs, which are a huge concern. And so every university with a pulse is trying to expand their online learning.

And so when, when, when, when I talk to leaders and they're talking about, well, if we create these programs, that kind of, if you build it, they will come mentality that might've been true 10 or 15 years ago when you were the only option. now everyone is trying to do what we're doing and that is to grow their online programs. And there are a number of reasons for that. Obviously COVID again was a, was a catalyst and accelerant, but just this year growth of technology, you know, broadband internet, you know, you know, wasn't available and, you know, in

Ryan Lufkin (10:34.871)
Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Ryan Lufkin (10:51.277)
Yeah. Yep.

Trey Martindale (10:55.306)
early 90s and before that. So lots of people having access. And then just acceptance of being able to do things online. When people are doing things through their workplace.

you know, Zoom meetings, video conference meetings, things like that, then immediately the question becomes, why can I not do this through my learning modality? And then you also combine things like consumer experiences. If I can buy these things through, let's just say, Amazon, you know, any, I can sort through every kind of option. I can read reviews, get recommendations. Why can't I do this in my learning environment? If I have Netflix and I can choose any

Ryan Lufkin (11:13.719)
Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Loble (11:16.024)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (11:19.904)
yeah.

Trey Martindale (11:34.986)
that I want to watch, watch it anytime I want to, and Netflix, for better or for worse, is going to try to recommend something it thinks I like, which your mileage may vary on that. Why can't I do this in my learning environment? So there's consumer things pushing us too.

Ryan Lufkin (11:42.935)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (11:49.411)
Well, yeah. yeah, I'll tell you, my daughter's a sophomore at the University of Utah and she lives on campus, but she's taking a mix of in-person and online courses just for the flexibility around work and scheduling. And it's that kind of flexibility and choice that students really want right now. you know, online courses used to be for adult learners and now they're really for every learner across the campus. It's amazing.

Melissa Loble (12:02.264)
Mm-hmm.

Trey Martindale (12:14.463)
that's right, that's right. And you touched on two important things there.

because of the fewer high school graduates, the adult and online, well, for a number, not just because of that, for a number of things, the adult and continuing learner is so important to higher education because of those fewer graduates, but also because of the need to learn throughout one's life, that career lifelong learning. mean, what I'd like to push our institution towards is where you subscribe to MTSU. You know what I mean? Instead of you starting in any, you're just an MTSU,

Ryan Lufkin (12:43.832)
Yep, yep.

Melissa Loble (12:44.088)
Ooh, I like that.

Trey Martindale (12:48.654)
of our partners, you know, and we have learning opportunities for you throughout your career and throughout your life cycle. You know, we're working right now towards being an adult. Boy, I'm going to mess up the name of this. There's a designation for being senior adult friendly in terms of your institution. And so we're pursuing that designation right now. It's kind of analogous to being an HSI or an HBCU. You're senior adult friendly. And so we want to have that designation.

Melissa Loble (12:49.72)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (12:55.053)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (13:08.616)
yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (13:12.061)
huh, huh.

Ryan Lufkin (13:16.939)
Interesting,

Melissa Loble (13:18.606)
Yeah, that's really fascinating. And I'm one... go ahead, please. Yeah.

Trey Martindale (13:20.04)
I was gonna say one more thing, a couple of things that you brought up. You talked about students living in their residence halls. We have this, I have a document that I call my quick facts document, which are just quick facts about MTSU online for the president or anybody that needs to talk about us with legislators, with stakeholders, anybody that could influence what's happening here. And one of those facts is we've got 54 %

Ryan Lufkin (13:38.434)
Yeah.

Trey Martindale (13:47.044)
of all of our students at MTSU taking at least one online course. So it's a major enterprise now. And it's just like what you're talking about. Students saying, and for a number of reasons, either, hey, I have to work in the afternoons and I can't take this in-person course or lab or something like that, or I've got childcare responsibilities or parent responsibilities, or frankly, I don't want to take an 8 a.m. class.

Ryan Lufkin (13:51.841)
yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (14:00.697)
Hmm?

Ryan Lufkin (14:09.859)
Yep. I don't want, yeah, I don't want an AM class. That is far too early.

Trey Martindale (14:15.836)
I've got kids that are in college right now. And I just learned recently that we have somewhere around, so we have about 2,800 fully online students. So that's about, it's about 14 % of our total student head count. So pretty significant population. But at the same time, we have about 25 % of all of our credit hours coming from online. So that just lets you know, I mean, it's a quarter of everything that we're doing here. So it's a lot of students taking.

Ryan Lufkin (14:18.393)
huh.

Ryan Lufkin (14:26.691)
Wow, yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (14:31.587)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Melissa Loble (14:40.108)
Okay.

Ryan Lufkin (14:41.027)
Yeah.

Trey Martindale (14:45.384)
those supplemental online courses. And to your point, we have about somewhere around two dozen students that are living in our residence halls and taking only online courses. So about 24, 25, something like that.

Melissa Loble (14:47.576)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (14:55.955)
Interesting. Yeah. Wow.

Melissa Loble (14:59.426)
Yeah, maybe give our listeners a little bit of grounding in. So you have like over 75 programs now. So maybe some of the basics about the online programs that are offered through your part of the organization.

Trey Martindale (15:14.172)
So MTSU does have currently, depending on how you count, we've got, let's say over 70, somewhere around there. and about four years ago, we only had about 20. So there's been a major run up in terms of the number of programs and the courses available. And we do some things to incentivize that in terms of faculty support. We actually pay a stipend for faculty. So in the bigger picture.

Melissa Loble (15:20.749)
Okay.

Ryan Lufkin (15:25.238)
geez.

Ryan Lufkin (15:29.166)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (15:39.534)
Okay.

Trey Martindale (15:41.422)
MTSU online is not a separate institution from MTSU. We're the same institution. We don't have separate faculty either. It's the same faculty, the same departments. So that's different than that you might see. Yeah, that you might see at some other places, know, Penn State Global, CSU Global, where they actually are a separate institution. Literally, we're not. We're the same institution. So the department chair for biology is the same department chair, whether it's online or in person. So that just sets some context there.

Ryan Lufkin (15:52.995)
That's an important distinction, yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (16:06.797)
Yeah. Yeah.

Trey Martindale (16:10.888)
But we have four instructional designers, and I've got a total staff of about eight people. So we're a pretty small operation for as many credit hours as we have. Yeah, I mean, and we may be growing in terms of people, too. We're trying to figure out what our next steps are. But we incentivize faculty. We pay currently a $4,000 stipend to enter into this essentially, I hate to call it a contract. It is a contract. It's an agreement.

Ryan Lufkin (16:19.225)
For that kind of growth too.

Melissa Loble (16:21.505)
Yeah.

Trey Martindale (16:39.9)
with the faculty person that you'll do this, we'll do this to support you, and then that course will be approved to go into, you know, to scheduling as an online course. And so we try to do some things to encourage the faculty to work with us, to work with an instructional designer, and that may be a whole other topic that we talk about, about what it's like to work with an ID and how you get people to do that. So we do those sorts of things to try to help our faculty because it is very time intensive.

And you all coming from the LMS perspective, you know that that's one of the things that can trip faculty up sometimes. And it really depends on their, you know, when we say faculty, there are all kinds of faculty members. There's a wide spectrum of interest in hardware and software versus complete unfamiliarity. Same way with the LMS. yes, I can make the LMS sing and dance or I know nothing about it. And so we actually take on, we're all things to all people for online.

Melissa Loble (17:17.517)
yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (17:21.784)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (17:22.818)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (17:26.905)
Hmm.

Melissa Loble (17:29.297)
yeah.

Melissa Loble (17:34.478)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (17:37.965)
Mm-hmm.

Trey Martindale (17:38.278)
Say, look, you want us to build the course out for you, we'll do that. You want to do some of this yourself, and that's just kind of help and give suggestions, we can do that too.

Ryan Lufkin (17:46.755)
Amazing.

Melissa Loble (17:47.4)
Love it. I love it. And you have programs across all disciplines, as I understand, that are online.

Trey Martindale (17:53.628)
We do. have, so our College of Business has been a real pioneer. And you see this, I'm sure you all have heard this, you see this across the country. Every school, I keep saying who has a pulse, every school with a pulse, they've got their business programs online, they've got their nursing program online, they've got their education programs online. Those are often the big hitters that have a significant enrollment. They're kind of the easy lift, if you will.

Ryan Lufkin (18:08.441)
Ha

Melissa Loble (18:11.422)
Yep, that's right.

Ryan Lufkin (18:11.641)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (18:21.762)
Yeah.

Trey Martindale (18:21.948)
It gets a little more complicated when you get into other programs that do more hands-on kinds of things with smaller populations of students. But those are kind of the easy wins. If the three of us started an online institution this afternoon, we'd say, well, let's get business, nursing, and education. And then we can feed our families based on what we get from that. But we do have programs beyond that. We have an entire college called University College.

Melissa Loble (18:29.153)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (18:36.867)
Hehehehe, huh.

Melissa Loble (18:36.942)
That's right. That's right.

Ryan Lufkin (18:41.719)
Yeah, yeah.

Melissa Loble (18:41.856)
Yep.

Trey Martindale (18:49.788)
which is kind of a continuing education general studies program, but it allows students to have, to get prior learning credit for experiences that they have and training that they have and helps them kind of build their own degree. It's kind of tailor your own degree according to your career interests within some pathways. So they've been a real leader in online too. lots of interest in online across the university.

Ryan Lufkin (18:58.361)
Ryan Lufkin (19:11.811)
That's all.

Melissa Loble (19:12.418)
Good. And I think that's incredible that you are offering credit for prior learning. I think some institutions are still hesitant a little bit in figuring out how to do that in a meaningful way, but that's the future in a lot of ways. And we're going to get to talking about the future in a minute, but I think that's a part of the future, especially as you talk about sort of a subscription approach, like be our partner for life. That's part of it. So good for you for doing that and pulling that into your approach.

Ryan Lufkin (19:22.947)
Yeah, yep.

Melissa Loble (19:43.106)
I would love to dig into. I believe your book, the Handbook for Research in Online Education, that published this year, correct? Am I right on that? Yep. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. You can flash it. Well, we're going to make sure we link to it in the show notes. So for all our listeners, you'll be able to learn more about it. But tell us a little bit about what it covers. And is it some of these insights you're talking about? So we can learn a little bit more about what's in it.

Trey Martindale (19:51.432)
That's right, actually just about a month ago. Yeah, very recently. I should have a copy of it so I can hand it to you. Yeah, I may have a copy of it.

Ryan Lufkin (19:53.677)
Nice!

Ryan Lufkin (20:01.057)
Absolutely, yep.

Trey Martindale (20:11.922)
So this book, this really is a research handbook. it's not as practical as some other projects that we actually have in the pipeline right now. This one is really about the state of research in specific areas. And so this was an edited book and I have three other co-authors, Tony Pena, Lawrence Fuentes, Tanya Amanquadia, all leaders in online learning. And maybe we can have links to them too that really

Melissa Loble (20:41.218)
Yeah, for sure.

Trey Martindale (20:41.66)
great colleagues and great leaders at institutions in terms of online learning. And so we put out this call, the book is through Brill Publishers, and we put out this call for chapters about, not about practice in online learning, but really about research in online learning. Who understands what research is being done and how we can make learning claims based on that research. And so we ended up with 27 chapters in this book and about

75 contributors overall, so several chapters had co-authors. And so it's not really light reading. It's not one that you're I made a joke when I posted the news about it. said, hey, it makes a great stocking stuff for a kid, so be sure to read this book. Yeah, it's more of a research handbook, so it really is for scholars. Now, having said that, we're probably going to begin working on a book that is for people working in this space.

Ryan Lufkin (21:15.289)
Mm.

Hahaha

Trey Martindale (21:39.836)
that are doing the hands-on kinds of work. One book about, frankly, like how to do the kind of job that I'm in, how to lead an online learning unit at an institution. And then potentially another book about what senior leaders need to know about online learning. In other words, if you're a president, you're a provost, you're a member of a board of trustees for an institution, what do you need to know about online learning? Because as you all, I'm sure you know, as you're doing these podcasts and you think about what's happening in this space, there are a lot of misconceptions.

Melissa Loble (21:45.442)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (21:46.435)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (21:54.167)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (22:09.049)
Mm-hmm.

Trey Martindale (22:09.138)
There are lot of urban myths about online learning, one being, again, if you build it, they will come. If you just have an online program, you'll get students. Or that this is going to be a big moneymaker for us. That it's going to be a big revenue play, revenue grab, which is certainly not necessarily the case.

Melissa Loble (22:09.288)
yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (22:15.127)
Yeah. We for... Yeah.

Melissa Loble (22:15.608)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (22:21.145)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (22:21.452)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (22:27.821)
Yeah, well I think that in communicating the value of your programs, communicating the value of what you're doing upwards within an organization, whether it's what we do on the vendor side or whether it's within a university, it's so important. think a lot of times we think, our work will speak for itself. But based off of their own visibility, they may or not actually understand exactly the value of your organization.

Melissa Loble (22:27.928)
Yeah.

Trey Martindale (22:52.488)
So Melissa, the book is 643 pages, and it's written to professors. It's written to people that are, and to grad students, people that are thinking about, want to advance the field in what's known about online instruction and how it operates. And so that's really the audience for that, are people that are working in that area.

Ryan Lufkin (22:57.209)
You

Ryan Lufkin (23:01.325)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (23:14.67)
So that though, and our listeners will know this too, that actually really very much interests me, which is why I wanted to raise this. Because I do think, know, Ryan and I have been talking to large collections of institutions that are doing online learning. And we often ask, especially at sort of the instructional design, director of instructional design level, what kind of research are you doing on the efficacy of your courses? And how are you taking that research and then implementing it back into your design?

Ryan Lufkin (23:21.778)
huh.

Melissa Loble (23:44.012)
And typically the answer is none, which is concerning, right? Because we are evolving. We're evolving brain science. We're learning more and more about how we learn as humans. We're evolving in how you do these programs and what needs are and the whole new world of workforce alignment and all that. There's so much evolution. And I feel like we're still relying on the awareness of old research or a lack of research in some areas. So having a survey of current research, what's being done, what have we learned?

Ryan Lufkin (23:45.88)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (23:54.498)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Loble (24:10.594)
I think is really valuable. We need to have both the practitioner approach and the research approach, in my opinion.

Trey Martindale (24:15.304)
I agree with that completely and I agree that in the ideal world the people that are doing the practice are also doing the research. You you're able to do both of these. And I would also challenge many of my colleagues, and I can say this because I was a professor for 20 years, many professors can't write to normal people. And that's, I'm just saying it like it is. When I think about our...

Melissa Loble (24:24.302)
Yes. Yes.

Ryan Lufkin (24:36.259)
Yeah.

Trey Martindale (24:40.016)
know, our scholarly work, some of the things that I've written in the past and things that I read from others, I work as a reviewer for some journals. And I just want to say to people, would you please put down some of the jargon and write to people? But then, and I don't mean dumb it down, but I mean for some, there's a real need for white papers that will take, you know,

Ryan Lufkin (24:52.142)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (24:53.741)
Yeah.

Trey Martindale (25:03.268)
scholarly work and translate it to the general public. Like what you see on the website, The Conversation. If you know about the the conversation.com, it's taking research-based findings and writing for a popular audience. And that's something like their tagline. So I really appreciate that kind of model where you're, because you don't, we're doing all this work and you want your work to be understood and read, but it has to be accessible.

Melissa Loble (25:05.954)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (25:09.389)
Yeah, yeah.

Melissa Loble (25:09.406)
yes, yes.

Melissa Loble (25:19.278)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (25:27.052)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (25:29.527)
Yeah, I think to that point too, there's been a lot written recently, and this goes back to what you said a little bit earlier about the diverse types of educators that we're seeing currently in college universities. And there's been a lot written about the rise in adjunct faculty, the uberization of education, I think it was referred to. But how do you align that diverse set of educators with instructional designers and make sure that they have the tools they need to be successful in the classroom?

Melissa Loble (25:29.56)
Yep, absolutely.

Trey Martindale (25:58.472)
Well, that's a really good question. And I will say, I actually have a case in point from my email this morning, where just as an example of the growth of the number of adjunct instructors and the challenges that that brings. So for example, in one of our programs,

Ryan Lufkin (26:00.899)
Hehehehe

Ryan Lufkin (26:16.375)
Yeah.

Trey Martindale (26:18.804)
Just this week we had a last minute resignation from someone that I'm not sure, think they were taking a different position and it came at very last minute. And so this person was slated to teach online courses for us, actually in-person courses for us in the spring and now it's not going to be able to. And so you're the department chair and it's, you know.

Ryan Lufkin (26:22.423)
Wow.

Melissa Loble (26:35.182)
Mm.

Ryan Lufkin (26:35.617)
Wow.

Trey Martindale (26:38.618)
late December and you're trying to figure out what to do and it's a very technical kind of course. And so finding those adjunct instructors, the university having flexible enough policies to say yes you can hire this person essentially last minute and also it's okay if they live in Los Angeles, you know.

Ryan Lufkin (26:56.398)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (26:56.514)
Mm-hmm

Trey Martindale (26:57.16)
that kind of thing. Our policies haven't necessarily kept pace with the realities that chairs and deans need to have that kind of flexibility. But one of the challenges for us and online is, mean, literally with this one, it's how can I, how soon can I meet this person that you're going to hire, you know, that has not, you know, is just now signing their paperwork to get started with the university. And how soon can we help them with the core shell that we're going to be handing to them from the LMS

Melissa Loble (27:25.9)
Yes.

Trey Martindale (27:26.954)
to help them operate and understand what's going to be happening in the course. And do they have any experience in online instruction? Maybe, maybe not. know, sometimes these emergency hires might be someone that doesn't have any experience teaching online. Now, I will say that's less common these days.

Melissa Loble (27:33.88)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (27:42.264)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (27:42.562)
That's good.

Trey Martindale (27:42.704)
In fact, to any aspiring person in grad school that wants to be a professor, would say make sure you can say, I've taught online. My previous job was a department chair. And so when I was looking at hiring papers and resumes and VEDAs and things like that, we all looked for experienced teaching online. so that's.

Ryan Lufkin (27:49.943)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (28:02.553)
Do you have like a mini boot camp or what do you do in that instance?

Trey Martindale (28:05.67)
That's a good question. I refer to our instructional designers. When I'm talking to faculty and about how we're trying to support them and help them, because the Olympics were not too long ago, I use this analogy. I say, look, you all, you faculty members, you're like elite athletes. You've trained, you've studied, you know so much about your area. You are the

Ryan Lufkin (28:18.584)
Yeah.

Trey Martindale (28:34.406)
the peak of the peak in political science, whatever it might be, that I say, let's look at the Olympics that just happened. Even the ultimate athletes still have coaches. Even those Olympic athletes, they have coaches. They have a coach that comes along and encourages them, informs them, maybe tells them about the competition, maybe say, you know, have you thought about trying this technique, following through this way? I notice when I watch your performance, I see this and this.

Ryan Lufkin (28:35.448)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (28:38.444)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (28:45.901)
Yeah, that's a great way to look at it. Yeah.

Melissa Loble (28:46.958)
It's so true.

Ryan Lufkin (28:54.743)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (29:00.099)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (29:00.77)
Mm-hmm.

Trey Martindale (29:03.794)
tips for that kind of person. And I think they tend to resonate with that. First of all, who doesn't want to be called an elite athlete? Like, yes, yes, yes. So that's the way we position them. So it'll be the same kind of thing with a new person coming in. How soon can we get one of our instructional designers with them just to orient them, kind of like a boot camp, like what you were saying.

Ryan Lufkin (29:07.577)
yeah, yeah. Exactly, right? You're already being called out for your expertise.

Melissa Loble (29:10.298)
yeah.

Melissa Loble (29:13.987)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (29:25.902)
Yeah. Well, I want to build on that and take a little bit look to the future. as you think about the future of online learning, where are you taking the programs next? And what challenges do you think you sort of run into? And how might you overcome them? You've alluded to some of them, right? And really sort of helping everyone understand the value of online learning. But where do you want to go next with the programs? Where do you see online learning going next? And what are some of the challenges maybe that we might be facing?

Trey Martindale (29:55.72)
It's like you're reading my email. I just had a meeting this morning talking about these kinds of things. And so one immediate challenge is we've got some, we have some fantastic science programs at MTSU, really, really strong programs.

Melissa Loble (30:00.408)
love it.

Trey Martindale (30:11.74)
But if we want to try to do online versions of these, we have to think about the labs and how we can, and not just the hands-on lab part, although that's big part of it. How do you do chemistry labs, biology labs, things like that? And I know there are vendors out there that would be glad to, I won't mention their names, but they'd be glad to help us with that.

Melissa Loble (30:28.046)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (30:29.399)
Yeah.

Trey Martindale (30:29.64)
glad to partner with us. But we want our faculty to also feel very confident about what's happening in the courses and what's happening in those labs. And so that's challenge for us in terms of just having those. We have a lot of new undergraduate online programs and making sure we have enough general education courses that are online, especially in the sciences, that are available to students to make sure that they can complete their degree in a timely manner. So that's one immediate challenge.

Melissa Loble (30:57.302)
That's great. Yeah.

Trey Martindale (31:00.204)
and another just slipped my mind. I was going to mention something else. Just thinking about, I know what it is.

We've had this big run up in the number of online programs and we've got a big run up of credit hours generated online and then full time students online. And the question is, okay, and we've won some awards about the quality of our courses. We've been recognized for some of our degrees, so that's very positive. We want to make sure that, and we do a great job with faculty support, where our faculty are happy with us. They feel supported, they can turn to us for inspiration,

Melissa Loble (31:12.002)
Mm-hmm.

Trey Martindale (31:37.626)
instructional design help, things like webinars, workshops, all those kinds of things. Now we really need to focus on student services and that student experience because MTSU has been very well known for student success for students that are on the campus. We need to make sure that we're doing as well or even better in the online world. And part of that means

Melissa Loble (31:45.342)
yeah.

Trey Martindale (32:00.454)
just access. you think about, you know, there's a reason back in the medieval days that we created campuses, a place for people to come together for the minds to meet. So if you're not doing that physically, how can you do that in the virtual world? Or people get that full university experience of the networking, the building that social capital, of making friends for life, making network colleagues for life.

Ryan Lufkin (32:10.52)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (32:15.949)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Loble (32:16.439)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (32:23.939)
Yeah. Yep.

Trey Martindale (32:30.664)
how to build out the kind of virtual student union, if you will, where it's a place to meet, to make sure students get access to clubs and student organizations. And even all the great events we do, we have a great music department and drama and theater where they do all these wonderful events. How do our online students get to participate in those and what legal challenges and copyright and things like that are issues for those.

Ryan Lufkin (32:34.36)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (32:50.349)
Yeah, yeah. It's so interesting that, you know, my son who's 14, I think there's a lot of cues that the industry can take from video games. You know, that seems odd, but you know, he plays video games where they're having virtual concerts by really well-known artists and they can, they log in, you know, my son will go play. Yeah, watch somebody perform, right?

Trey Martindale (33:08.668)
Yes, yes. Let's get together online and watch and watch somebody play a video game or watch a concert. Yeah.

Melissa Loble (33:14.84)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (33:15.641)
Yeah. And, you know, my son goes and plays basketball and then he comes home and he jumps online with the same kids that are playing basketball to play video games. Like there's that, that blurring of the digital world and the physical world that I think video games have been pushing the boundaries on that, that I think universities really can learn from. But less than our listeners think we could get through an entire episode and not mention AI. I've got to ask you, you know, it comes up, it's obviously the hot topic, but, how do you see.

Trey Martindale (33:29.394)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (33:44.737)
generative AI impacting what you're doing, you know, in online learning and what does the future hold there? Yeah. It's, it has not gone away yet. Probably something about AI. Yes.

Trey Martindale (33:49.825)
is that a thing? Is AI important? I'm just kidding.

Melissa Loble (33:51.854)
Probably also in your email this morning is some question about AA.

Trey Martindale (33:59.804)
I would jokingly say, it's a fad. It'll pass. Is that a thing? Yes. That's funny. That's what I say to people too. Was the internet a fad? that just come and go? It's funny, of on the, if you were on the more cynical side, you might say, okay, there's been the printing press, there's been the calculator, there's been the internet, and...

Ryan Lufkin (34:03.041)
Yeah, I always say, you know, the Homer Simpson quote, the internet is that thing still around, right?

Ryan Lufkin (34:11.989)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (34:22.349)
the calculator, the internet, yeah, Wikipedia, yeah.

Trey Martindale (34:26.724)
And yes, and frankly, higher education has kind of absorbed these innovations and just moved on almost business as usual. Things have changed some, but not dramatically. If I was from the 1600s and I walked into one of our classrooms, I could have a general idea of what was going on on our campus. So, you know, I don't want to tend towards the cynical side, but I will say this, is different. It's different. It's a different, it's an existential challenge.

Ryan Lufkin (34:36.44)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (34:36.962)
Good way to put that.

Ryan Lufkin (34:44.833)
Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to look at it actually, yeah.

Melissa Loble (34:45.656)
Yeah.

Trey Martindale (34:56.014)
And so and opportunity. I do think higher education is going to change significantly. I don't want to make any any bold predictions because I might come back in three years and watch this and go, wow, why did I say that? But but it is is a big, deal. In fact, I was just reading some headlines this morning, reading a story from a friend who published some commentary. A scholar, a couple of AI scholars recently

Ryan Lufkin (35:09.239)
Wow, well that's so naive.

Trey Martindale (35:25.188)
created over 280 financial scholarly articles, essentially out of thin air.

and published and know, sent them out for publication. And so the whole realm of scholarly publications is going to be turned on its head and we're not ready for that. We're just not ready. Our peer review, our journals, we're not ready for that kind of thing. Where you can literally create virtual participants, your virtual population, your virtual samples, and they behave as if you had talked with real people.

Melissa Loble (35:40.716)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (35:42.413)
Wow, yeah, yeah.

Melissa Loble (35:46.712)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (35:54.936)
Yeah.

Trey Martindale (35:59.068)
you know, and then you draw conclusions based on those virtual samples. That sounds interesting. What if you didn't even do that part? What if you just can type into a generative AI tool, I'd like a study on this and there it is. You know, and by the way, here's some parameters about who I think you ought to cite to make it look a little more credible and off we go. And we're not far away from that right now. So when you think about, and another interesting thing my colleague shared was a few Python scripts about

Melissa Loble (36:11.63)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (36:20.377)
Jesus.

Trey Martindale (36:29.82)
Being a virtual student and completing my course in Canvas, actually this example was in Canvas, completing my course in Canvas without me ever doing anything. Essentially reading the questions about what I'm supposed to do in discussion boards, responding in kind, being able to follow up, and then completing the assignments as described within the LMS. So essentially a completely autonomous LMS course completer. It's hard to do right now, but it won't be next year. It won't be hard to do.

Melissa Loble (36:34.296)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Loble (36:39.79)
Fascinating.

Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (36:52.441)
Wow. Yeah.

Melissa Loble (36:56.482)
Yeah. Yeah. No.

Trey Martindale (36:58.504)
We're not ready for that.

Ryan Lufkin (36:59.853)
Yeah. And that's why that assessment we talk a lot about, you know, it's one of Melissa's pet focuses really is that, that evolution of assessment to really be able to avoid those outcomes, right.

Melissa Loble (37:07.906)
Mm-hmm.

Trey Martindale (37:10.31)
Yeah, and where are going to go with this? Are we going back to oral exams completely in person? I mean, as I'm looking at Melissa on the video right now, is that really her? Or is this her AI avatar that's pleasant and smiling and asking good questions? So yeah, it's going to be interesting times.

Melissa Loble (37:10.413)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (37:16.59)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (37:21.518)
It's true.

Melissa Loble (37:26.86)
Yeah. Well, speaking of interesting times, maybe as a last question, we have a number of different audiences that listen to this. we've got, you know, we've got instructional designers, chief online learning officers, we get vendors that listen to it to really understand the space. Any advice for navigating this future? We've talked about the challenges that, you've some of the challenges you've highlighted, some of the learnings that you're going through with your work right now. Any advice for any of or all of those audiences on

to be thinking differently about online learning and how to have the kind of success that you all have had at Middle Tennessee and you have had in your career.

Trey Martindale (38:07.282)
That's, yeah, I think what I would say to that is, that's a really good prompt. I think what I would say to that is, I've benefited the most from my professional network.

in terms of professional organizations and I'll name some names here, the Online Learning Consortium, AECT, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. That was my original and sort of home organization for people in instructional design. Networks and colleagues that I've made there through UPSIA.

Melissa Loble (38:24.046)
Please.

Melissa Loble (38:39.438)
Mm-hmm.

Trey Martindale (38:39.88)
Just wonderful organizations where people that are trying to do what we're doing gather to meet and then their online forums and and you know networks like that that's that's been a huge benefit to me in terms of making those those connections with people and And trying to draw from their experience and then also being willing to share especially failures

Ryan Lufkin (38:45.336)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (39:02.062)
great.

Trey Martindale (39:05.574)
No, you know, when you go to LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever, it's your greatest hits, right? It's the most wonderful things that ever happened to you. We really need a social network for failure to say, look, this is what went wrong. Let's launch it today, right? Failure.com. Where things went wrong.

Melissa Loble (39:10.808)
So true.

Melissa Loble (39:15.799)
Yes.

Ryan Lufkin (39:16.724)
Normalizing failure, that's a big deal. Yeah, yeah.

Trey Martindale (39:24.39)
because that's when we learn something. That's when we learn, okay, I won't try that again. I wonder who else has done this and they experienced this. So really just trying to learn from failure and be willing to share that. And that's a humbling kind of thing. Sometimes that's hard to do, but that's really the most useful. So that's where the combination of the professional organization and network comes in because you build trust with people and then they can pull you aside and say, yeah, we tried that and that failed. Here's how that went. So you need that trust built up.

Ryan Lufkin (39:28.44)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (39:50.146)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Melissa Loble (39:50.476)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's such an incredible place to sort of wrap this up. Thank you so much for your time today and so many good pieces of advice and nuggets in this conversation, I think, that can help a lot of different folks really trying to get advanced online learning. Thank you for your time so much and...

Ryan Lufkin (39:53.409)
Yeah, that's amazing.

Ryan Lufkin (39:59.468)
so much.

Melissa Loble (40:14.828)
would love to have you come back, especially with those future books in play. Would love to have you come back. And we'll link to those. We'll link to your colleagues with your current book that was just released. And we'll also link to those organizations for all those folks listening so that you've got some of these great resources at your fingertips. But thank you, Trey, so much for your time.

Ryan Lufkin (40:17.985)
Yes and yep. Mm-hmm.

Trey Martindale (40:32.358)
Well, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure talking with you and talking about this kind of stuff. This gets me excited. So this will help the rest of my day.

Melissa Loble (40:39.531)
Love it.

Ryan Lufkin (40:39.565)
Thanks, Trey.