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John Nesbit - 2014-12-11 - SFU Burnaby
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John Nesbit - 2014-12-11 - SFU Burnaby
Simon Fraser University Library
Holly Hendrigan, Interviewer |
SFU Library Oral Histories |
Tech BC Memory Project
Holly Hendrigan, Interviewer |
SFU Library Oral Histories | Tech BC Memory Project
Holly Hendrigan: This is Holly Hendrigan of the TechBC Memory Project. Today is
December 11th, 2014, and I am interviewing Dr John Nesbit, who is a professor in the faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. We are having a face to face conversation in his office on Burnaby Mountain. Hi John.John Nesbit: Hi Holly
Hendrigan: Hi, I’m here to ask you some questions about your experience at the
Technical University of British Columbia, which offered classes in Surrey between 1999 and 2002. So first of all, what year did you begin working at TechBC?John Nesbit: I think I began working at TechBC in 1997, and I was employee
number five, if I recall correctly.Hendrigan: Wow. Employee number five: how many employees were there at the time?
John Nesbit: Well, there might have been more than just four people when I was
there, but they would have been not actually officially hired on to the 1:00university or something but it was a pretty small group. So, who I remember--there was Bernie Sheehan was there, the President, there was Charlotte whose last name escapes me, who was Bernie’s assistant, Charlotte Commodore, was her name. And my boss, who I reported to, Graham Rodwell, and there was also a vice president of the physical plant I think, whose name I’ve forgotten. He was an ex-president of SFU.Hendrigan: Okay. Where had you worked before?
John Nesbit: I’d worked--I’d spent five years in Japan, and I had worked in
two different universities. And I was working as--first of all, a lecturer and then basically an assistant professor. And then I came back to Canada and worked as kind of a post doc, or not really a post doc--but a research associate here 2:00in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. And then this job opening came up that sort of fit my skill set or so I thought, and so I applied.Hendrigan: Right. And so what was your job title when you--
John Nesbit: When I--the job I applied for, and the job that I had, for the
first probably two years I think, was Project Manager. And it was project--maybe Project Manager of Educational Technology and Learning.Hendrigan: Okay. And so that was two years--a full two years before they started
accepting students.John Nesbit: Yes
Hendrigan: That’s right. So what kind of work were you doing during those two years?
John Nesbit: Well the problem that was presented to me was, I remember the first
day I showed up to the interview, was that they wanted to have a university that was very different from any of the existing establishments. They wanted it to be not a fully online university but a university that blended online and face to 3:00face education in a very complimentary and efficient way and one that promoted the student experience. One that would sort of fit with what they imagined at that time, what the 21st century would be like. And so my responsibility was to manage a series of projects that the University saw as important to establishing the infrastructure for that kind of educational technology experienceHendrigan: And was it actually the Government that was kind of directing the
focus of the University? Or, the Board of Directors? Or, when you say, “They wanted a university,” who was “they”?John Nesbit: Yeah, good question. My contacts in the University were of course
my immediate superior Graham Rodwell and then the President, whom he reported to, Bernie Sheehan. So when I first started those were the folks who I took my 4:00marching orders from essentially. And they were the ones who explained to me the mission of the University. I can’t remember the, there probably was some kind of board of directors or board of governors or something set up for the University but I really wasn’t involved with that. And I never was, throughout my time at the University.Hendrigan: Okay. And, which campus locations were you working in back in ‘97?
John Nesbit: Right. I just drove past there not too long ago, where we first
started, and then we were actually in two different locations right at the beginning. I think there was the original spot that was somewhere in central Surrey where SFU Surrey is now, and I think probably Bernie was located there, and Graham. So they hung around together. I would occasionally go there to meet with them. That was kind of where the central scheming occurred and then I was 5:00the first one in a separate location that was further along past 152nd St. I think it was the other tenants in the building were the owners of the building--the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board and we had the upper floor of the building. And it was just a kind of a nondescript two story office building in North Surrey there and we were--I can’t remember how long we were there for, maybe a year or something, while we got that group going. So the idea was that I would be located there, I would be the manager of that office and I would be with Graham hiring people to fill out that educational technology group that would then develop this educational infrastructure for the university.Hendrigan: Okay. What was it like working in those temporary spaces?
John Nesbit: It was, at first I remember pretty much--I was on my own there, in
that location. And quite quickly we hired a couple of others. But it was, at 6:00first I found it a little, slightly isolated the first few weeks. I would meet, fairly often with Graham in particular and so I began to understand more and more about the goals of the university as they understood it, as Bernie and Graham understood it.Hendrigan: Okay. Can you provide a snapshot or description of North Surrey at
that time?John Nesbit: Yeah, well, um. This was well before the large tower was built that
now houses SFU, and other businesses and retail operations. But even at that time there was conceptualization of a structure that would have been built in about that location. I seem to think that--did we already have the sky--yes, of 7:00course the SkyTrain was already up there. I don’t--I haven’t been back to Surrey a lot, especially the area I was working in, so I really don’t think it’s changed that much as far as I can recall.Hendrigan: Right.
John Nesbit: I do remember, interestingly, there was quite a bit of debate where
the eventual location of TechBC would be. And the competing options I believe were going to be where SFU Surrey is-- was one of them, and another possibility was, on Fraser Highway there, there was some land, generally undeveloped land, that the government would have to make available to us for development. So in that case we would have been more like a traditional campus. We’d have some land to operate within but eventually of course it turned out that we were going to be located near the Central City SkyTrain station there. 8:00Hendrigan: Right. So in terms of the early days and what were you doing, were
you working on the online learning component of their--?John Nesbit: Yeah, that was definitely seen as being what we were all about. But
there was another big part of that. In fact, I believe this was Graham Rodwell’s central idea. Which was, he was looking around at some of the online technologies at that time and there was something called--gee, this was before Second Life. These are virtual worlds. So there are different kinds of virtual world technologies that you could--”Active Worlds” is the one that I think was the most popular at the time. And it was quite primitive at the time but you could go on and choose your avatar, maybe. Select a few features of your avatar, walk around in this 3D space by clicking your mouse. It wasn’t 3D in the sense 9:00that it was immersive 3D but it was a 2D image on a screen that you could walk through. So in other words it was a 3D model of space you were walking through. And the idea--Graham’s idea--which he propounded, in a very convincing way I thought--was that this was going to be the future of the University. That universities are expensive, to build large buildings. We are going to have a physical structure--that is important; we recognize that. But we also have this other virtual component that people would really much rather live in because it’s more flexible; you can go place to place just by clicking; you can restructure it in many different ways. The traditional classroom, for example--we always have this problem. Is it a lecture theatre, or do you have moveable furniture? And neither of those options is necessarily optimal. But with the 3D world, you can customize it easily and you have lots of space. There’s very little limitation on the real estate that you’ve got to work with. 10:00Hendrigan: Sounds very forward thinking.
John Nesbit: It was indeed. It was very forward thinking. I mean I think, as
we’ll talk about in a moment, it didn’t work out, and it basically--there were some practical reasons why it was never going to be something that was going to be foundation for the University. So the idea was--this is the environment students would be in, as they were moving through the University. It wasn’t really the educational technology but it was the setting for the educational technology. And then the educational technology would be layered in, components of it. You might go to a place and then click to enter the educational technology. But also there were communication modes within this environment like audio chats, where you could, conceptually, you could go into a space; you could lower a dome of silence around you and you could have a conference with four or five or twenty people so you could have your class there 11:00in this virtual space. That was the thinking at that time.Hendrigan: Yep. And so, this is your superior who has this vision?
John Nesbit: I think it came from Graham; he was the one who presented it to me.
And he essentially gave me the task of making it happen.Hendrigan: Okay. And how did that go?
John Nesbit: I would say we had mixed success, in the implementation. We
eventually did create a virtual world and it could be used. You could create an avatar; you could move around this virtual world. It was a good looking world in many ways, for the time. I think it was a success in terms of its imagery, its content, and its overall structure. For example, we had a 3D image that surrounded the whole virtual campus that was actually pieced together, stitched 12:00together, from photographs of the Fraser Valley. So you can imagine the mountains of the Fraser Valley were surrounding this virtual campus and so it’s like you were on a platform, an Olympus-type platform somewhere in the middle of the Fraser Valley looking out over the beautiful nature that it has. And then there were these futuristic looking buildings within this campus that you could navigate between. And we did eventually manage to have audio chat; you could navigate--you could fly between places in this virtual world. We created videos that you can find online that show how it worked. That we, our group created. And a lot of that work was done by outsourcing. First of all, we outsourced the 3D virtual world engine to a company that was called at the time Blaxxun. And there were only, maybe two or three companies in the world that 13:00were doing this kind of thing. And they were the only one that really had a business model that fit with what we needed. In other words, they could deliver a 3D virtual world to us that we would then customize to make it our own. So we had two elements to make this happen: we had the contract with Blaxxun to deliver this virtual world--this was just the engines--so they just gave us their product and I can’t remember whether it was a license or flat price. Anyway, we got their engine. And then we hired a specialist in 3D world virtual design to create the buildings, to consult with all of the folks who had an understanding of what would be required for the university so that the 3D world he designed met our specifications. And I was the project manager of that.Hendrigan: So how long was this taking place before the students started showing up?
John Nesbit: Yeah, years. We began this project pretty much when I arrived,
14:00within weeks of me arriving, I think we were onto that idea, and I was pursuing it. And it took quite a while--it probably took a year before we had much progress on it. And then the other element, we realized, as we got closer to the date when we’d have to open the doors for the students was, we realized we needed some kind of course management system. And at the time, course management systems--that’s what they tended to be called those days, now they’re called learning management systems--at the time the most popular one out there was called WebCT; it was developed at UBC and it was bought out by a large company called Blackboard, which is still around today. And so we realized we would need something like that and that was, I would say, another big challenge for our group. And it was another thing that we developed. And through--we had a 15:00project, separate from the 3D world project, to develop basically a custom designed course management system that was actually used with students when we opened our doors in 1999.Hendrigan: I’ve heard good things about that system. Can you talk about some
of the features that that LMS did?John Nesbit: Yeah, it’s become a bit legendary. The thing is, it was--I should
say a little about the people who were involved first. And when I was alone there, in that offices there in North Surrey, my first task was to hire some technical folks who could help us to make this happen. And so we hired two people that I remember quite well. Paul Irvine and Trevor [Bradley]--Trevor’s last name? Anyway, Trevor and Paul worked together on creating this course 16:00management system. And originally what we were thinking--we tried all kinds of different approaches; we knew what we needed and we knew that WebCT didn’t do, didn’t have what we needed. And so we thought about bringing something in, and then customizing it or whatever. Finally, as we were getting desperate--the clock is ticking down, and we knew that we were going to have students coming in, and we thought the quickest and best way to do this is just to develop our own course management system. Which we did from scratch. And I would credit those two folks as being the prime designers and developers of that course management system. And it was really, again, it was technically advanced for its time. Java applets. But it used Java applets in a way to mimic the structures that we now see all around us in web services. So, at the time HTML was very non-dynamic. These are static web pages that you could view. Java came along 17:00where you could have interactive applets that would be running within a web page. So we piggy-backed on that Java applet technology to enable a much more dynamic web experience than was possible at the time, generally. And that was the key to that course management system.Hendrigan: And then how was that tied in with faculty, on what kind of
assignments they were going to be giving online, or courses being taught online?John Nesbit: Right, so that was--there’s another element of innovation I’d
say to this whole TechBC story. I’ve covered two, where I was much more directly involved. There was the 3D world, course management system. And then another element that I was sort of tangentially involved with; I attended meetings but I wasn’t responsible for making happen, was the coordination of faculty and the curriculum that was going to be offered by TechBC. And other can 18:00speak to that much better than I but I worked quite closely with my opposite in that, Tracey Leacock, who was responsible for that. She was the project manager for making that curriculum happen, for getting the faculty together, to develop the courses. And there were a lot of little decisions that had to be made along the way. A lot of it had to be integrated with the course management system so that’s why I was involved in some of those discussions. So for example one of the innovations was to look at the size of the credit unit that would have been desirable, and most courses in say, SFU and many traditional universities might be three credits. So we thought it would be more in keeping with the dynamic world that the web was presenting us, to have a smaller credit unit. And part of the reason was, then we could flexibly mix and match these units and maybe even commercialize their distribution, and some of them might have commercial value, and we might be able to sell that content in some way, where you 19:00couldn’t sell a whole course. Because in the business world, people are expected to; their corporate training experiences tended to be much more compact and modular than a typical university course. So we were going for that kind of compromise between a university course and a corporate training experience. That might be one way to describe it. So, the course management system had to be designed to accommodate these one credit units so the interface had to be able to accommodate that. So all of those design things and the management aspects of pulling the curriculum together had to be integrated together and a lot of that happened in conversations between me and Tracey and other folks.Hendrigan: Right. So did TechBC copy any other institution's pedagogical models?
Or were you guys kind of making it up?John Nesbit: I’d say, it’s not the best phrase but it was probably the
best we could come up with at the time, we were making it up [laughs] as we went 20:00along. And that was strongly encouraged, actually, and this is where Alice Mansell, who was Vice president, Academic, comes into the picture. So ultimately the administrative structure that emerged from all of these initial--you know, when I first came on Alice wasn’t there, nor was Tom Calvert. But eventually we had a senior administrative structure which had Bernie Sheehan at the top as President and the Alice Mansell and Tom Calvert as the two vice presidents. Alice the VP Academic and Tom was the VP, certainly in charge of the--what was Tom’s official position? He was certainly in charge of the technical infrastructure but much more as well because of all his past experience in developing the software development programs, software engineering program here at SFU. So he came in with strong experience in what we saw as being important 21:00curricular component of TechBC. As did Alice, because she came from an arts school environment I believe. So those two, those two Vice Presidents, were important in driving the agenda forward. And Alice in particular was fond of pushing us to do it differently than other institutions. So, you do things differently, you make a lot more mistakes. And so I’d say there was a lot of that happening at TechBC. We tried all kinds of new things. Probably, well many of them didn’t work. Some of them, I think, did work, and we were really innovative. That is the cost of being innovative--you’re going to have to try a bunch of things that were going to have to be thrown away.Hendrigan: Right. So what were some of the things that you did--that TechBC was
doing right?John Nesbit: I think that there were some things that were on the curricular
22:00side that Tracey was involved with, Tracey Leacock, that I don’t really think I’ve ever seen anywhere else. There were challenges to the whole aspect of the operation from the Canadian Association of University Teachers which resulted in us essentially being blacklisted for not adhering to the norms of academic freedom. And there was a kind of a real--I didn’t know what to think of it myself, because I came from an academic background and it seemed like caution was thrown to the wind and we blasted ahead full speed and we weren’t really worrying about that at all, and it might have proven to be not a bad way to go because it freed us to think of things in completely different ways. I’m sure that was Alice’s intent when she was arguing for that. So what it enabled us to do was to get faculty working on curriculum in a more coherent way than you 23:00ever find in a traditional university. So we wanted to be--we wanted to have a quality, a better quality than a traditional university experience. We didn’t want it to be like a traditional university. We wanted to be better. A better teaching environment than a traditional university. But we didn’t want to give up on the quality of research either, we saw ourselves as being a respectable research university eventually, of course that’s the aspiration of many colleges and so whether that would have transpired had the trajectory been moved forward, I don’t know. But there was quite an emphasis on the quality of the student experience and quality of teaching. Much more than you would find in a traditional university.Hendrigan: And what sort of training did TechBC faculty receive in learning how
to deliver the course material?John Nesbit: So they had to be trained--first of all they had to part of
24:00developing the curriculum. Because they were experts in curriculum, whatever their area was, whether it was software development or design, visual design. And so they had to be, past contributing their expertise, their curriculum development, doing it in a collaborative way, which a lot of that happened, which was very unusual. They also had to learn how to do instructional design. Because instructional design was kind of a, I wouldn’t say it’s arcane, but it’s a discipline that is a specialization by itself and it’s something that I studied when I was in graduate school, it was the kind of program I graduated from, and Tracey Leacock also had expertise in instructional design. So we had this need for faculty to not only know what they were going to teach but how to teach it. So we put on a workshop, and I think it was called METL--Mastering Educational Technology and Learning and so the name of our group was Educational 25:00Technology and Learning so we would basically teach them the fundamental aspects of instructional design--you know, what are our learning goals, our objectives, how do you align the assessments and so on, with all the learning activities. And then, also, how do you develop technically, how do you develop content for our course management systems. So they learned basically those two things. How to use our system, and how to do instructional design? Instructional design also included things like ways of promoting collaborative learning and kinds of structures that you could have in collaborative learning, so trying to figure out what’s your instructional goal. If you have that goal, what kind of collaborative learning experience can best serve that goal. And that’s the kind of thing that faculty don’t necessarily think about all the time when they’re designing their classes.Hendrigan: Right. Can you comment on the effectiveness of METL being a
26:00requirement rather than an option? Which kind of seems to be the case with say, TLC programs nowJohn Nesbit: Yeah. So that was--I would say, if I guess I had to pick one thing
about TechBC that was really, beyond all the glitz and the glamour of 3D worlds, and new course management systems that ultimately get overturned by other course management systems--I think the really innovative push was the unyielding requirement that faculty plan and think about their course, and the learning activities and assessments in a principled, systematic way. And that’s what we were teaching through METL. So I think that that was, the whole institution, I felt was on board with that. We had a lot of support from ET&L for that workshop and even the responses I got from faculty were positive so I see that as being a significant success. So to answer your question, sorry, it’s a bit of a walk around this, beat around the bush on it, but the big difference is, because of 27:00the administrative setup we had, where the VP Academic could require that faculty show up for the workshops and design their courses in a certain way, and meet a certain standard, every faculty member went through this process. And they were all on board with it, in the sense of actually participating in it and engaging in it, and doing it. And if you compare that to what happens in almost any normal university, like SFU, you’d have a very small fraction. And usually that’s counted as a success. So these educational technology support units--they provide, often, very good training and support for educational technology and instructional design and teaching methods. But only small percentage of the faculty make use of that facility and learn from it. Because it’s optional. And sometimes those institutions point to their work and say 28:00how successful it is, and it is, but only in a very limited way. And we had the luxury of having it make a big difference right across the institution.Hendrigan: Right. Is it possible that because the TechBC faculty weren’t
required to do a lot of research in the beginning, or the focus was more teaching as opposed to, right now it’s 40-40-20John Nesbit: Yeah, I can’t remember what they were actually told about that at
the beginning. I suspect it was something like, “Yes, you’re expected to do research; yes, this is an academic organization and we are a university. This is not a technical college. But here’s all the curriculum presentation you have to do.” So they were given detailed instructions for being on deck, for the instructional design and the curriculum development. But of course they were allowed to do their own, whatever research they wanted to do. So life being what it is, people attend to the priority of what they’re being told by their 29:00superior in a more hierarchical and structured environment. And so I suspect that they were required to do research but they probably didn’t get on to much research, or as much research as they were hoping to. I know there was research done, and I think some of it was very good research; I just think in terms of space available in their lives for getting it done I’m sure it was somewhat hindered at the beginning. Later on, I think there was more opportunity.Hendrigan: And were there anything like the biannual evaluations, or at what
point do you think that research would have been part of the requirements for working there?John Nesbit: So just in my experience, I was transitioned first from being a
project manager of ET&L to a manager, probably--that’s the position title--oh, 30:00you’ve actually got my CV there, that’s very helpful!--to Manager, Research and Development, to then an Assistant Prof, so they just basically moved me over to the academic side. So my experience, then, shifted quite a bit. And I now became a consumer of the educational technologies rather than the provider of it. And so your question was--what was your question? Sorry about that.Hendrigan: It was kind of about when was the research component going to be
brought into the job requirements of faculty.John Nesbit: Right, as far as I was concerned, as soon as I was made a faculty
member, the research requirement was there. And I don’t know when that began 31:00or I would have imagined that it would have been there right from the beginning because I know that nobody was willing to give up on this idea that we were an academic research institution.Hendrigan: So TechBC famously, or infamously, didn’t offer faculty tenure. Was
that an issue for you when you were there?John Nesbit: Well, broadly, it was a big issue, I mean it was something like
I’ve already mentioned the dispute with CAUT. And of course, faculty want tenure. It’s something that people thought was important and I’m sure they could have gotten other faculty, from more established research careers, had they been able to offer tenure. But they were able to attract some pretty high quality researchers. Perhaps, I’m not sure how that was done--I was never privy to that, really. The only hiring decisions I was involved with faculty 32:00were on the educational technology side, and in that I was just a member of an appointments committee so I wasn’t involved in any details about salary and that sort of thing because that’s more of a senior administration decision. So, yes it was something that faculty wanted--they knew they didn’t have. And I think they idea was that eventually it was something we would have. Honestly I can’t really remember what the chat was about that.Hendrigan: So you began teaching students then, is that right? In 2000.
John Nesbit: Right, I began teaching sometime in 2001. And that was near the
end, I guess--wasn’t it? About the time I began teaching, I guess what you’d have to do is look back and see when the election was, transition from the BC 33:00NDP to the BC Liberals and the big question, we always had, was the university going to survive? That was the subject of conversation among lots of us--all the staff, and I’m sure it was very important in the thinking of the senior administration at the time. And we thought, and I remember Bernie saying this, is once we get, because he was very experienced as a university senior executive from UBC; he was a VP I think from UBC. Once we got to a certain critical mass with our student numbers, we would be safe. But nobody really knew what that critical mass was, and there was a feeling you know, we opened our doors in 99, and the student numbers began to increase. I think they doubled every year or something like that. Which is quite a rapid, it’s exponential growth! But we’d only been at it a few years, so the numbers were still relatively low. And we kind of thought we were going to make it. I remember thinking, Yeah, it 34:00probably looks like we’ve got enough here that we’re not going to be closed down. But in the end, that’s not what happened.Hendrigan: Yep
John Nesbit: So we were, so the decision was taken to close TechBC and to merge
much of it with Simon Fraser University.Hendrigan: Can we talk about the students you had, when you were teaching there.
So TechBC used the term “learners” rather than “students.” Can you speak to using this term?John Nesbit: Yes, sure. This might be a case of egocentrism, but my feeling
about that was: I’m an educational psychologist by training. And when we’re talking about research and theories in educational psychology, we tend to talk about learners because we don’t want only to be talking about the formal learning process and students in classrooms. We’re talking about learning in general, because the learning process are the same, no matter where you are and all this, in the same brain. So I might have used this language in conversations with Graham or something but I kind of got the feeling that it got picked up. Or 35:00maybe it was somebody else’s idea, I don’t know. Picked up this idea of talking about learners that way, rather than students. Maybe just because it was different. That was one of the things; that was an example of how sometimes Alice would think about things. “It is different. So let’s use it. Let’s use anything that separates us and distinguishes us from other institutions because that could be a plus, on how we presented ourselves.” So that was just--I’m not sure the use of that term had any particular substance to it but at the end of the day they were just students like any other students were. Their experience was very different than it would have been in a larger more established university.Hendrigan: Right. What was unique about the 400-odd TechBC students that were there?
John Nesbit: Well the first thing it was, we were quite insistent--I think I
mentioned collaborative learning before, and this is something that Alice really 36:00picked up on and pushed as a hallmark of TechBC. So what we wanted to do is to provide a collaborative learning for students in most of their learning situations. So one of the innovative things is we developed five what we called “delivery models,” and that’s something we taught through these METL-Mastering Educational Technology Learning Workshops. And so faculty could choose one of these models so the student experience ultimately was one of these delivery models. And so, one of the models was kind of like a lecture plus collaborative learning experience with less lecture and more collaboration that you might otherwise get. Another one was like a studio--arts studio--where you would do your work and then the class would critique it. And there were other models that were like that; some were more like seminars and so on. And each of them had a certain package of technology--a toolkit of technology that would support those models but that was our function, that was our idea in ET & L. And 37:00so the student experience was heavily dependent on this course management system that we developed and these student models we developed. Not always to positive effect, I’d have to say. The first year, I think was very difficult for students. I felt sorry for them--I felt guilty, actually. It was, for me personally, a very stressful time because I was kind of on the hook for these technologies being delivered to the satisfaction of the faculty and the students, and often they were working. These were, basically, almost like beta systems that we were providing them with. And sometimes they would break. Sometimes there were aspects of the model that we hadn’t fully considered because it was a totally different kind of thing that was being done. Here’s an example. This always sticks out in my mind--where we didn’t have enough foresight, and I’m hard pressed to think how we could have had enough 38:00foresight, but we were pushing these collaborative models. That meant we had grouping structures and these were supported by technologies. You could push a button in the course management system and it would automatically create groups of students and no other course management system would do that for you at the time--they didn’t have then; they have now. And even to the extent where that group could be characterized by diversity, so you could push a button with the diversity check on it and you would have people from different specializations in the student groups. These student groups were formed for each class, okay? And then now those student groups were responsible for assignments. So they have to do the assignment as a group. Eventually there’s a way of extracting an individual grade out of it; that’s not really the big problem. The big problem was, that to get the assignment done they had to do lots of collaboration. Not a bad thing, and that’s the intent of it. But the collaborative requirements we were putting on them were far greater than we had really calculated. Because you 39:00imagine a typical course load: five courses. Each course might have a few assignments or projects in it. Each course is a different grouping structure. So they’re involved in many different groups. They have to participate in those groups to get a grade. They have to do these offline, outside of their classes, often. They didn’t have enough time in the evening to do the planning that was required that we were expecting them to do. It’s sort of a typical classic case of not thinking through the full experience of the student. If there was one thing I would do, to do that job better, that I feel guilty about not having done it, is I would have walked through the day of a TechBC [student] from the morning to the evening, accounting for all the hours, all the things that they were being asked to do. Because that was the flaw of what we did. Separately, in each of the courses I think, were designed reasonably well, and it was the student experience where it all came together, where there was kind of a crash. 40:00Hendrigan: Right. Yeah, my previous interviewee said it was a 24 hour--students
were often spending 24 hours there and he hadn’t seen that before.John Nesbit: Yeah, yeah I think it was too much for the students. And they were,
some of the technologies were sometimes breaking down, too, they weren’t doing what they were supposed to be doing occasionally, and that would exacerbate the problem I just mentioned.Hendrigan: Yep. The other thing that’s come up with some of the students was
the requirement in their online courses for participation in the online forums. And they say that that doesn’t happen in modern online courses. So can you speak to how that thinking--John Nesbit: Yes and to develop those delivery models I was talking about, some
of them had asynchronous threaded discussion groups--they were the core technology that we were using for their online technologies. That was the going technology of the late nineties. So think back to some of the original web based 41:00experiences of the Well in San Francisco and there were some online experiences in universities when we got going so we did have some predecessors so we weren’t the first to do online education. But we saw ourselves as being the first to really take it on and scale it up. That’s how we saw ourselves as being different, because we wanted to be the first university that was designed with online learning mind. And so we tried to come up with models that would make all this happen. So for example, if the student is going to be required to participate online, there has to be some kind of assessment of their online interaction, and a grade is going to have to result from it. So, how do you do that? Well, we actually got to the point where through these METL workshops, through our design of the delivery model, there would be assessment templates, for assessing students’ online experience. And it was a similar kind of problem that I just talked about, with the student experience--the instructor 42:00experience also wasn’t also walked through fully. So it was a rational assessment model that we gave them, a template--that was based on existing research, because we’d scoured the so if there was some research on online learning, all of what we provided was very much based on that research and theory. But it was missing a bit of a bridging piece to make it pragmatic, to fit into the lives of instructors. So they were being asked to score students’ online experience in a much more detailed way than they actually had time to do. And so it really--that didn’t work. I mean, in the end, there’s probably no course that fully implemented it because it just would have taken too much of the instructor’s time to do. And I believe that problem is still there. That essential problem is still there, today, in that asynchronous, the way asynchronous learning is done in higher education. How do you assess the learner’s contribution. So, there’s still a challenge there. 43:00Hendrigan: Yeah, and MOOCs aren’t solving it!
John Nesbit: That’s right. MOOCs are a classic case of one solution that
really doesn’t do what we need.Hendrigan: Yep. Can you describe the TechBC culture?
John Nesbit: Yeah, sure, I think a lot of it was driven by this idea that we
were trying to do things different. It got to the point where: “If this is the way that a normal university does it, then it must be wrong.” So that tends to push you to think of doing a lot of different things because as I mentioned before, there’s a lot of missteps that go along with that. You learn what doesn’t work and it might take you a long time to learn that. That was part of the culture. In the faculty culture, it was much more collaborative--there was much more interaction. And that was required, it was part of the job. We had these--there was this fusion of a design ethic that pervaded the whole 44:00university. And again, I would put that down to both Tom and Alice. Tom from a software design side and Alice from her art and design, visual design backgrounds. The design ethos was a big part of TechBC. So they had these fancy chairs that all the designers go ga-ga about, that are very expensive and you mention the name of this company--it was some kind of a German design companyHendrigan: Herman Miller
John Nesbit: Herman Miller, there you are--you say that word to these designers
and they go, they melt. This is all new to me, it’s a chair, Okay! We got fancy chairs, that was part of the culture. Whether it made any substantive difference I don’t know, but some people really liked it. We had wacky looking 45:00cubicles. So the idea was, “These people are going to be in cubicles but we got to make sure they don’t look like cubicles!” And so one of the neat things about that was the building, later, when we finally got going, and we moved into the quarters where we were delivering the educational experience to students from, it was in the mall, basically. Surrey Central Mall. And we took over what was formerly the Zellers. I remember we were in, we were allocated to the space that was formerly women’s lingerie. But we had our “non cubicles”--our “non cubicle cubicles” in that area, and because we had all this decorative features around the cubicles like weird dividers that would raise up above the desks and so on, that made us all look like we were larvae 46:00emerging from chrysalis or something like that. The space was deemed suitable for movies, because there’s a big movie scene-- we’re Hollywood North, and that building was seen as attractive by some movie makers and some movies were made there. And once they got some of the other parts of the building going, I think for example, Catwoman was filmed there. And I remember seeing my cubicle in Catwoman--that was a real thrill. So there was a bit of a different feel to it than your average university.Hendrigan: And before I move on to the transition, what happened with the work
you were doing in the early days, with the 3D--?John Nesbit: Right. Well, the problem with the 3D world, we came to realize--and
this wasn’t, this wasn’t like we had a big meeting and we sat down, and when I say “we,” I wasn’t involved with that end of it, but I think people 47:00realized, Yes, we got what we ordered. But what we ordered, isn’t really going to do it. And the reason why, is, the thinking was that students would be moving through this 3D world like they move through a campus. And it would replace the serendipitous experiences that you have on campus--meeting friends when you’re walking to the coffee shop. So that’s what this 3D world would do for us. It would replace the social side that was missing in just a typical course management system. That was really the big idea, that was Graham’s idea. The problem was, that nobody really wants to walk from classroom to classroom when you can just click. And also, walking in a 3D environment, even today, like in Second Life, I mean the last time I looked, anyway--you’re sitting there clicking away on a mouse, or you’re clicking away on a spacebar or something, and you’re moving forward a metre in the virtual world. And it’s a bit dull 48:00and it’s very clumsy. I mean, we’re pretty good at walking with our normal bodies [knock knock] [but, oh excuse me, can we terminate this?] So the problem essentially was that it was inconvenient. And you could learn to fly. But it was a skill to learn how to fly and a few of us mastered it. And so we began to appreciate non-virtual worlds in the online environment. The ability just to click, to go to a place, rather than to have to move your avatar. And we began to realize that students weren’t really going to accept this or use this environment. That’s why it was never used by students.Hendrigan: Okay.
John Nesbit: The course management system, however, had a long life. And so it
was used for the courses at TechBC and because the content of those courses were renamed, those courses themselves--many of them were transitioned into SFU, the course management system was used to deliver those courses at Simon Fraser 49:00University. And it lasted a few years; I can’t remember exactly how long before it was phased out so that SFU could use its standard course management system. Web CT, as it turned out, I think.Hendrigan: So we’ll talk about the transition. You had mentioned that there
had been rumours by the time you were teaching that you weren’t sure if you were going to be Okay. But how did it eventually get communicated to faculty that your days as a standalone institution were--John Nesbit: Yeah, so I can’t remember all of the details of it but I remember
there were some assemblies called where faculty were pulled together en masse to hear speeches on things. So we were kept appraised, essentially what the picture was like. And at some point, the presentations to us ceased to be our own TechBC senior executives and became “others.” Like I think we did have a visit 50:00from--at one point we had a visit from the Minister of Advanced Education, while we were still TechBC, before the axe fell on the institution, and she made a speech. But I’m sure she was careful in her speech not to make any promises about TechBC. I remember a meeting, quite well, actually, when the decision had been made, we were going to be merged into SFU, and then we had a presentation by some, probably a VP Academic at SFU, about what the new regime was going to be like, how the transition was going to manifest. And I can remember that was the point where people had sort of bad feelings. They felt like the rug had been pulled out from under them, they had been working on this dream for years. You know, even committing your life to developing something very different. And before, when we looked at SFU, we saw it, by people at SFU thinking that they 51:00have a very innovative, forward thinking university, we saw that as just being a legacy of the 1960s--they’re not really forward thinking any more. We have the banner now, we have the torch now, we’re going to carry it forward. So to be merged into SFU was a bit of a blow, for most people I think. And I know I felt that. That’s certainly how I felt at the time, that it was a bit of a loss, and I was sure that if we had been allowed to continue then we would have been able to put on a very interesting, very innovative university experience, that would have been cost effective.Hendrigan: Right. So, you stayed on at TechBC then, and eventually became a
faculty member at SFU?John Nesbit: Yeah, that’s right. So, what happened was, SFU--there was a
transition process where holus bolus SFU probably took on all of the faculty on 52:00limited term contracts. Probably different length contracts for different people. And then, as time went on there was a sorting process as SFU figured out which programs we want to keep, which ones we don’t want to keep. And some of those contracts were just allowed to expire; others were rehired and got other contracts. And I was rehired, I think at one point, on an SFU contract, and what eventually happened was, a division of a school developed called SIAT--School of Interactive Arts and Technology--and that school was originally, sort of a microcosm of TechBC. But part of TechBC of course was the educational technology side--the e-learning component and that was eventually dropped out of SIAT I believe. And so when that happened, and the faculty members who were in 53:00e-learning at TechBC, really no longer had a place. But by the time that eventually happened I had already applied for a position in the Faculty of Education here, a tenure line position in Education, so I was able to transition out of Surrey and and into this position I’m in now, essentially.Hendrigan: Yep. And can you describe, briefly, how different the two teaching
jobs were?John Nesbit: I was pretty familiar with how it would be like in a traditional
academic institution, at SFU. I’d been at SFU in a different capacity, mind you, so I understood what this position would be like very well; I knew the institution reasonably well. So there were really no surprises, what it was like transitioning back. It was very different. The faculty--a traditional faculty position has much more freedom than faculty members did at TechBC, that’s my 54:00impression. There are fewer requirements about how they teach, even what they teach. So it was just a very--the requirements for technology were all laid out at TechBC and faculty had less choice. They had input--it was a collaborative experience, it was part of it. Part of the restraint/constraint of TechBC was not that the senior executive had told us to do something, but we had collaboratively decided that we were going to do something; therefore we individually were constrained. So there were a number of constraints in how you operated at TechBC that you don’t have in a place like SFU or a traditional university. So, in my opinion, that’s--this is the problem of the modern university. It’s the problem that the VP Academic has in a place like SFU, is, how do you improve the quality of the student experience if you can’t tell the 55:00faculty how to do their job. It’s the classic herding cats problem. And so these are the plusses and the minuses of a modern research institution.Hendrigan: Right. Did TechBC have any kind of positive impact on you when you
came back to SFU?John Nesbit: It had a big impact--it was a very--I would just sum up by saying
it was probably the most exciting time of my life. And the most stressful time of my life. And it developed--so of course, it played a major role in my personality development. I learned some management techniques, I learned to interact and collaborate with people to a greater degree than I was able to do when I first started the job. I probably developed greater self confidence in working with other people. So yeah, it had a significant impact on me and 56:00therefore on how I’m currently playing in my role here.Hendrigan: And has anybody, in the Education world, tried to replicate what
TechBC did?John Nesbit: Not to my knowledge. Some of the ideas you do see around. Like the
idea of microcredits. Somebody was talking about this at a conference and this of course is being presented as a new idea, but for me it felt like ten years old. But it was brought up in the context of MOOCs. So I would have to say No, and I’m not saying it hasn’t happened but I’m saying I didn’t follow up on it; it wasn’t in my interest set to see what happened to the idea after I was no longer part of the idea.Hendrigan: Do you have any final thoughts or parting words on TechBC’s legacy?
John Nesbit: I think probably the greatest legacy for TechBC was the current
School for Interactive Arts and Technology that we have now at SFU. Which I’m currently not involved with. I do collaborate in research, maybe in some other 57:00ways, with some of the folks there but I not very familiar with how everything operates there. So I think the greatest legacy was what it brought to the students and to the faculty and to the administrators there that were involved.Hendrigan: Is there anything you’d like to say about TechBC that hasn’t come
out yet?John Nesbit: Well I don’t really know what’s come out and what hasn’t! I
do know that we were able to present some of the things that we were working on, like the 3D virtual campus, and some things about the course management system and delivery models. We presented that at academic conferences. I did, with some of the other folks that I was working with, people like Karen Belfour and Stephanie Chu. And also Graham, I remember presenting with him at a conference. And it was very well received--people were very interested in what we were doing. So maybe it did have some consequences afterwards. But who really knows! 58:00Hendrigan: Well I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to speak with me.
This piece of TechBC was really fascinating. So thank you John.John Nesbit: Thanks Holly. It’s been a good experience.
0:00 - Introduction / Employment Experience and new job title / TechBC work environment in 1997: working in isolation
Direct segment link:
Partial Transcript: So first of all, what year did you begin working at TechBC?
Segment Synopsis: Nesbit was hired in 1997, TechBC’s 5th employee. He was hired as a project manager for educational technology projects, since the school wanted to be innovative on that front from the outset. He worked in offices in North Surrey; his perception is that Surrey has not changed much since then.
Keywords: Blended Learning; Educational Technology; Employment Experience; Experimental Universities; School Location; University Planning
Subjects:
8:05 - Creating an online virtual university: ideas and implementation
Direct segment link:
Partial Transcript: So in terms of the early days and what were you doing, were you working on the online learning component of their…
Segment Synopsis: Describes initial ideas regarding information technology at TechBC, including the development of virtual, 3D spaces in which students could interact, which included maps of the physical campus and photographs of the Lower Mainland landscape. His focus shifted to managing the Course Management System (CMS), a system built from scratch which used Java applets rathern than static HTML pages.
Keywords: Computer Mediated Communication; Computer Simulation; Virtual Classrooms
Subjects:
13:55 - Developing TechBC’s course management system using java applet technology
Direct segment link:
Partial Transcript: So how long was this taking place before the student started showing up?
Segment Synopsis: Describes rationale for building TechBC’s unique Course Management System to accommodate TechBC’s modules and blended learning curriculum
Keywords: Integrated Learning Systems; Programming
Subjects:
17:22 - The application of technology to curriculum development at TechBC / Experimental approach led to more failures and tension with CAUT
Direct segment link:
Partial Transcript: And then how was that tied in with faculty, on what kind of assignments they were going to be giving online, or courses being taught online?
Segment Synopsis: Describes the third piece of TechBC innovation: coordinating curriculum between faculty members and programs within the educational technology framework. One-credit modules were developed to attract Industry for professional development opportunities. Some innovations succeeded; others failed. CAUT was concerned about TechBC faculty’s lack of academic freedom. Focus of the institution was initially to be focused on the student experience rather than research.
Keywords: Academic Freedom; Curriculum Development; Educational Innovation; Failure; Integrated Learning Systems; Minicourses (modules); Student Centred Learning; University Administration
Subjects:
23:47 - TechBC faculty trained in curriculum development and instructional design
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Partial Transcript: And what sort of training did TechBC faculty receive in learning how to deliver the course material?
Segment Synopsis: Describes how faculty were put through a course called METL: Mastering Educational Training and Learning, a required course in instructional design in the online and blended learning environment. The course was mandatory, which contributed to the success of teaching and learning at TechBC; traditional universities provide optional professional development, with less uptake.
Keywords: Inservice Teacher Education; Instructional Design; Mandatory Continuing Education
Subjects:
28:13 - Curriculum development hindered research at TechBC / Lack of tenure
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Partial Transcript: Is it possible that because the TechBC faculty weren’t required to do a lot of research in the beginning, or the focus was more teaching as opposed to, right now it’s 40-40-20
Segment Synopsis: Speaks about TechBC’s requirement for faculty to conduct research, though initially, the focus was on curriculum development, which was very time consuming. The lack of tenure was an issue; nevertheless, TechBC attracted very high quality faculty. It was perceived that tenure would be implemented in the future.
Keywords: Curriculum Development; Research Universities; Tenure.
Subjects:
32:37 - Speculation about the survival of TechBC after 2001 election
Direct segment link:
Partial Transcript: So you began teaching students then, is that right? In 2000
Segment Synopsis: Mentions the 2001 election and speculation regarding the school’s future, despite the exponential growth in student numbers since it began.
Keywords: Elections; Enrollment; Institutional Survival
Subjects:
34:22 - Origin and meaning of the term “learner” / Collaborative learning placed heavy workload on students and teachers
Direct segment link:
Partial Transcript: Can we talk about the students you had, when you were teaching there. So TechBC used the term “learners” rather than “students.” Can you speak to using this term?
Segment Synopsis: Discussed rationale for using the term “learners” and the different course delivery model options faculty used, all of which involved collaborative learning. The amount of group work, for every course, put unreasonable time pressure on students; also, assessment of online work (eg marks for participation in discussion groups) was problematic for faculty. Assessment in online learning has not been resolved to this day.
Keywords: Asynchronous Communication; Cooperative Learning; Curriculum Design; Educational Assessment; Employees--Workload; Failure; Integrated Learning Systems; Learners; Time Factors (Learning)
Subjects:
43:14 - Experimental culture of TechBC
Direct segment link:
Partial Transcript: Can you describe the TechBC culture?
Segment Synopsis: Describes how TechBC’s tried to do everything differently than traditional universities, which involved both successes and failures. Extended to interior design and furnishings (futuristic, thus appealing to film crews.) More collaborative, team-based approach for staff, faculty, and students.
Keywords: Cooperative Planning; Design; Educational Facilities; Experimental Universities; Failure; Interior Design; Shopping Malls
Subjects:
46:44 - Reasons why the virtual university was not adopted / Success of the content management system
Direct segment link:
Partial Transcript: Before I move on to the transition, what happened with the work you were doing in the early days, with the 3D?
Segment Synopsis: Describes why, ultimately, the 3D world developed in the early days was not implemented: clicking was more efficient than moving one’s avatar. However, the CMS was very successful, but it did not last long after SFU came in.
Keywords:
Subjects:
49:16 - Rumours of TechBC’s closure / Emotional impact of SFU take-over of TechBC/ transition to SFU
Direct segment link:
Partial Transcript: So we’ll talk about the transition. You had mentioned that there had been rumours by the time you were teaching that you weren’t sure if you were going to be OK. But how did it eventually get communicated to faculty that your days as a standalone institution were…
Segment Synopsis: Remembers communications during transition time, including meetings with the Advanced Education Minister and later, with SFU, after announcement. “Bad feelings” of TechBC staff who had worked hard to build it, and who believed that SFU was less innovative. Faculty retained their positions during process of integration; he left for a faculty position in the Department of Education shortly thereafter. Main difference between two institutions was the autonomy of faculty at SFU, contrasted to the collaborative approach between TechBC staff, faculty, and administration.
Keywords: Blended Learning; Communications; Cooperative Planning; Experimental Universities; Government School Relationship; Grief; Organizational Change; Research Universities; Universities
Subjects:
55:15 - Reflections on time at TechBC / Conclusions
Direct segment link:
Partial Transcript: Did TechBC have any kind of positive impact on you when you came back to SFU?
Segment Synopsis: TechBC left a big impact on Nesbit personally and professionally, leading to more cooperative approaches in future roles. The school’s legacy is the School for Interactive Arts as well as the personal impact it had on those who worked and learned there. Notes that innovative approaches suggested today (eg microcredits) were used at TechBC.
Keywords: Group Experience; Job Satisfaction; Minicourses
Subjects: