Explode the Box
Josh Kaufman, M.Ed
For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you know how much I care about accessibility across our field. I look forward to using this space as an opportunity not only to give my thoughts on higher ed AV and accessibility but also to hopefully spark a discussion on what direction we, as an industry, will be going as we move forward. I’ve worked in higher ed since I graduated from college in 2010, and it has changed a lot. Gone are the days that the AV team would roll in carts with displays, film projectors, and digital projectors. Gone too are the days when we weren’t an integral part of the university and learning as a whole. Instead, we’ve come to be a critical, if often misunderstood, part of the teaching and learning function of the modern university.
If you had asked me in February what the future of higher ed will be, my answer would have been at the same time simple and complex: technology in the classroom will give us a pathway to increase accessibility for a wide range of students. That still holds. However, as we have first shifted to a purely online mode, sometimes with only a few days’ notice, and then to socially distant on-campus and hybrid learning, some of the recommendations I would have made have come to pass; we’ve begun to record most classes, hybrid learning is now common, and the ability for students to “learn from anywhere” as my alma mater puts it is now embraced. Many of the pieces of advice I would have given are now standard practice.
So, then, what does the future look like? Accessibility through tech is going to be a key part of the classroom of the future and the AV team will play an even more integral role in the classroom and work more closely with IT, the academic leadership of the school, as well as the digital learning staff. So, for me, the classroom of the future looks quite different. Accessibility, in so many forms, needs to take center stage. We can’t put the hybrid learning genie back in its bottle, no matter how we try, so the biggest shift is going to be away from every student in every seat. That means smaller rooms, but potentially bigger classes. We’re going to be increasing the amount of video and audio processing in rooms and interfaces with systems like Zoom, WebEx, and more.
We’re going to see more collaboration tools in the rooms, from distributed monitors and collaboration seating to encouraging faculty to produce materials to be shared on the learning management system, so-called reusable learning objects, so that learning is not disrupted by illness, weather, or other unforeseen events. We will also see greater integration of universally designed accessibility tools, such as Wi-Fi assistive listening units and automatic captioning. With students no longer 100% present, faculty will need to adapt to how assessments are handled, move away from tests and papers as the only methods of assessment. And doing that will allow for AV to have a greater impact on education. One button studios and other student media production spaces will have a greater impact on teaching and learning than ever before as students use AV tools to create content and process information in different ways.
But it really has to go beyond that, we have to not just think outside the box, we have to explode the box. Instead of staying inside the four walls of the classroom, we need to abandon the classroom altogether. AV staff need to claim a seat at the table when it comes to teaching and learning. We need to work directly with faculty on how we can support their teaching goals, and even how we can expand their teaching goals. We need to work with the LMS administrators, the deans, and the provosts of our universities to create a situation where we all work together, with common aims, because right now is our opportunity. We need to hire staff from different backgrounds, people who have advanced degrees in pedagogy and university administration, people who have never considered working in higher ed, and people who’ve never worked a day in their life at a convention center or hotel. Training has to go beyond manufacturer or industry created content, they have to include seminars aimed at improving the understanding of our unique role in academics and how instructors teach.
We’ve never been more visibly essential to our schools, more known to leadership, and more able to point to our successes in a tangible way. If the school rode out the pandemic, we more than likely had a major hand in that.
I realize this went a long way off from what my wishlist would be, so let me close with a bullet-pointed list, quick takeaways in case you don’t want to read my whole spiel.
- Make permanent the technological enhancements we have done in classrooms to meet the challenges presented by COVID-19.
- Increase the use of AV tools to improve accessibility. That means we need to be working now with the faculty and with leadership to craft policies that will allow the gains we’ve made during the pandemic to become permanent.
- Work with faculty to understand their teaching goals and tailor technology to meet those goals. And if our current service model doesn’t meet that need, then we need to look at updating the service model.
- Increase training and support for roles outside of technical specialties
- Increase our interaction with stakeholders, including line level faculty, staff, and even students
- Increase our visibility on our campuses, to make sure that we are not left behind in the changes that will come once the pandemic ends.
Get to Know Josh Kaufman
Josh Kaufman has spent his entire career in higher ed AV, starting as a student employee at Boston University where he worked for seven years and later moving on to Harvard University where he was the assistant director. He is currently the Operations Coordinator and R&D coordinator at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. He holds a masters in instructional design from the University of Massachusetts as well as two graduate certificates in instructional technology and instructional technology design.
Josh has presented at NWMET in 2019 on the application of Universal Design to AV in order to increase accessibility, as well as at HETMA’s virtual conference in June and at EdSpaces 2020 in November. He had been slated to present at Infocomm 2020 prior to its cancelation on the same topic.
In his spare time, Josh enjoys attending NCAA hockey games, exploring the historic sites of New England, traveling, and spending time with family and friends.