Derek Bruff and Stacey Johnson

00:07 I'm Derek, Bruff. I'm 45 years old. Today is November 2nd 2021. I'm here at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Talking with Stacey Johnson who I work with your at Vanderbilt.

00:22 And I am Stacey Johnson. I am assistant director of the center for teaching and I also teach Spanish and related courses here at Vanderbilt. And I don't just work with Derek. He is actually my director. He's in a box.

00:40 So Stacy thinking back to 2020.

00:46 I think about 10 years ago. Yes, March 2020, last about 10 months.

00:55 When did you know that this was not just, I don't know, like a flu outbreak that would be over in a week or two. When did you know this was going to be something really different and really hard. So actually, I have I have two stories that one is when I knew personally that this was going to be a big deal. And one is when I knew professionally that it was going to be a big deal. The end of February thinking we might have a lockdown like just from listening to the news and hearing reports about things are happening in study abroad trips and Italy, I thought we might have a little lockdown if there's an outbreak, so it was the end of winter time. I'm really like a food persons over like fresh farmers market in the summer and stored food in the winter and it's like the end of our winter storage as I went to the store and just like restocked up on some of our

01:50 Your Greens and Beans and things like that, that I thought we might need for a lockdown. And I also it was like, are you pick up the groceries in your car? They load your car for you. And I had ordered to ginormous packs of toilet paper and that order. And when they brought it out, it was not the brand that was on sale. It was a different brand and they said we'll just give it to you for the same price and I said, you know what, I didn't even really want the toilet paper. I just got it cuz it was on sale. Just keep it just take it off my order. And then a few days later, I had to run into the store to get something and there was literally, no. I was like four months, but when I ran in and realize that the paper was the first death.

02:50 Has like milk and bread if there's a snowstorm but toilet paper, you can drink water and you can make bread so that it didn't come to that. Don't worry. I am a compulsive hoarder. Not really like, I could had 24 rolls and I gave him up. And then, you know, toilet paper was a really big thing in the whole summer. People were talking about toilet paper. We were watching this applies to life. I've never spent so much time thinking or talk.

03:34 And then professionally, you know, we were kind of on high alert. I manage the brightspace support team, which is our course, management system, always like some sort of an online component, even when you're teaching face-to-face, but this course management system becomes the whole course. When you teach online, we are immensely face-to-face campus. And so people were just using it's practically for different things and I managed to support for that tool and training faculty, how to use that tool. So, we were sort of on high alert at the end of February also, but in my mind, I kept thinking, we just have to wrap all of this stuff up before and the week after spring break, because I had a big family reunions plan. We were traveling from all over the country to go on a trip together. And so I was thinking, you know, will put two or three weeks into this, really get everything ready to get it. So faculty. I'll be fine and then I'll be gone for 10 days and it'll be fine.

04:34 And the day it was probably March 7th or 8th, or something like that. In the day when we had to cancel a vacation and be like no. No, it's Panic stations all hands on back. No, no one takes a vacation and our vacation got canceled cuz I like them. Anyways, so bright that was when I figured out professionally. We're just going to be managing online teaching and figuring out this remote heatsink thing for the indefinite future.

05:07 Yeah, so we

05:11 There was the talk in February of a, we have some students studying abroad in Italy and they might have to come back and be quarantined for a time. So, how are we going to help them? Keep up with their classes? And so, there was some initial meetings and then lots of meetings over spring break. And I remember the Monday, after spring break. We had a dinner with our Junior faculty teaching fellows and our Center. And that was the last normal dinner because we were, we've finished, and some folks were sticking around. I'm just at the dinner was over. We all started checking your email and the Provost it emailed and said, classes are canceled for the rest of the week. And we're going to send the students home. And I forget exactly which email that was. But it was the one that said it was the big one. We're moving too remote and we were all just kind of in shock. I remember.

06:11 General conversation was normal in fine. I don't even think we talked about the pandemic. We just had a pretty normal conversation with our

06:18 Colleagues. And then we all got the email and we're like, okay, this week is going to look very different this week this week, but then, I remember how much it accelerated from there cuz we had

06:31 I think our first workshop for faculty on how to move their courses online with maybe that Wednesday, right?

06:38 I don't yet. I don't remember the days of the week anymore. It we get our calendars out to make sure it's all right, but I remember that we were also in transition. So we didn't have like a virtual classroom platform like Zoom or now. We have Zumba. Don't we just had the one that was built into the course management system which didn't do all the things that we would have hoped something in that condition in that situation would have done. But that's all I had to teach people about. And so I went to those workshops, like, okay, let's look at the tools. We actually have maybe tomorrow. We'll have assumed it's hard to say, but this is what we have now University, even a little bit of knowledge about what tools are available even though it wasn't completed at that point.

07:28 And I think we had,

07:30 We had planned a workshop for faculty and we knew there'd be a lot of interest. Cuz again art Professor certainly haven't taught online hadn't taught online before then. And so they we knew they would be interested in learning some tools and figuring out how, how they're going to do this and we plan to work shop in one of the big Law School classrooms.

07:51 Thinking that we might have a hundred more people there and then the next day the Provost said, no, Gatherings of more than 25. And so then we had 25 people in a giant classroom, which kind of work because at that point, social distancing had entered our vocabulary.

08:08 But I just remember, I think by the next day and we ended up having a lot of people kind of been an overflow space for that one.

08:15 And then the next day we had another workshop. And there were twenty-five people in the room at like a hundred faculty on zoom and I was Fielding questions from the faculty in the back of the room and you were at the front of the room leading and neither of us were used to life on them at that point. None of the sort of synchronous. Do what we normally. Do just do it on Zoom by. I'll keep saying that we've been doing since the pandemic and so it was like the number of things to keep up with the very first time. You've ever done anything on zoom and you're doing it in front of a group of 125 of your peers or looking to you for guidance as really stressful. One thing, is that over and over? I would read a question or someone in the room went to a question and then you would turn up right afterwards. Stacy. Would you mind repeating the question for the folks?

09:15 I need to get used to all the facts in the Overflow room. Can only hear if I repeated everything that was said into the microphone and there was one of the workshops. I remember you said, okay, pull up a web browser and type in this address. Did you had a resource page? You wanted them to start on and this older faculty member, put his hand up and I I kind of screwed over and and he didn't know how to do that and I thought we're going to teach online next week.

09:44 I think that's what I had a sense that like our jobs were going to get really challenging helping a thousand, or more faculty figure out how to make that transition a week. And we didn't have to manage the logistics of those workshops. Cuz the faculty Affairs office. Did all of that, which was fantastic. So we could just focus on delivery. It's also that was before we understood the idea of this being airborne. And so, no one wore masks or knew that we needed masks. That was all just like obsessively hand, sanitizer. If you wash your hands for 20 seconds.

10:26 So we're we're doing the best we can for like a week to spend as much information to as many people as possible. But then when everyone actually started teaching on Zoom like a week and a half later, we did have them at that point. The most rapid adoption of a major technology platform in baseball history. I think thank goodness. That is not our usual adoption.

11:00 After that, we started thinking less about how to get people reproducing exactly what they normally do and like finishing out their semester on Zoom instead of face-to-face. And as a center for teaching, we started thinking more about

11:16 Like designing courses that were actually sustainable for faculty and students and took advantage of some of the affordances of animal online teaching. Cuz this was the other part where I, I realized it was like something out of a movie. It was how the the situation was changing from day to day. Right? First, we were going to have a big workshop and then we're going to have to 25 people and then we're to do it on soon. I think by Friday there was maybe when we had 12 people, I think it's a CFT at the time, the center for teaching, and I think by Friday, we had maybe one person who was working in the office, and then that was our last day, we went from

11:58 Fully staffed in person work on Monday to everyone working remotely and I remember you hearing about some of our brightspace team and the choices they were making to try to keep himself safe. And you know, we thought well cycling might want to come by and ask questions and talk with someone and like within 48 hours. No, no one's coming by, we can do our work remotely, we're gone. And then, you know, our office space in the 11 in 4 months. Last day. We were in the office. It was right after the last faculty Affairs, Workshop. That one was over in nursing.

12:36 And even though I know we still did social distancing, their it seem like so many more people. I guess the room is just a lot bigger and the Overflow space was just bigger our biggest one and after that and the brightspace team and I that's

12:56 At the time, it was three people. We went back to the offices. And we realize we were the last ones off the ship as we had had that faculty dinner a few nights. All the leftovers from The Faculty dinner for in the fridge, people's lunches, from the day. They had left the office. We're still in the fridge. So we just emptied out there for Joe's turkey. Maybe we left, Joe's frozen turkey.

13:27 That he later retrieved his employees and we just, you know, my system is coffee, cups is to let them accumulate in my office during the week and then do a clean out. And so, we went through all the offices that we could, you know, look into it. And it was a really weird feeling because even though the right spacing more than anyone else at the center, for teaching, we had experience with working remotely because we often work until 11 p.m. Or on Saturdays or Sundays. And so, some of us had some remote work experience already doing it hundred percent of the time with no face-to-face, meetings not coming to the office at all. It's just not the Vanderbilt way. They do everything remotely.

14:19 And I think our team was pretty split about half of us. Can we do this forever? We love being at home all the time and about half of us, but I can't. I have to come after me. Yeah, and then I went on vacation.

14:35 I did go on vacation. You did go on your vacation. How'd that go? It was I'm glad I did. It was we were going to go skiing with my wife's family and we got all the way to Kansas and checked into the Airbnb, and we're going to be in Colorado, the next day at the mountain to ski and that's when the governor of Colorado closed down. All the words like, well, let's take a left turn to well, Albuquerque to Santa Fe actually, but we went to New Mexico and lots of outdoor activities where we didn't have to be inside. And it was, it was weird because

15:14 I mean, on one hand, everyone. I knew at Vanderbilt was working remotely that week and said the fact that I was not in Nashville was not different than anyone else. And I was I remember taking it on email and it was that first week and I anyway, I felt a little bad, not being fully attentive that week, but it, I don't think it was my family needed it. I think it was, it was a good week with my kids at that point, just in contrast. I was working like 16 18 hour days, but I could have been working 24 hour days if I were capable of it because the level and all of us were working overtime. All of us were working as much as possible. Now. Most of my team is actually hourly employees. So unless I unless overtime was expressly approved approved and I had to just work the hours but there was

16:12 Such an intense need for support. We've handled some real transitions where the support to spikes and we do, you know, came together for it. It was

16:25 Weeks all through the summer really just constant constant brightspace. Support needs.

16:36 Anyway, but you don't have a really.

16:39 Great team. I like things like that. I like that. Like over something happens and work ramps up, and then kind of the oven flow, rather than everything being slow and steady wins the race. I like having the clarity that this is what I need to be working on right now. This is clearly the most important thing and I don't have to worry about my to do list. There's like one item, nothing matters.

17:09 Well, you were going to, I think move it to the next phase actually was going to ask you a question about.

17:19 Organizing the big online course, development Institute because I think that was our, as a center for teaching, that was our major accomplishment. And I haven't actually been a part of something exactly like that before when I run project. So I tend to project manage that myself and imagine all the pieces and other people contribute, but I

17:43 I think all of us, the senior staff in the center for teaching, we all sort of manager on projects, right? And so we're having as much as we could, every minute to get it rolling out new, it maybe is the thing. I'm most proud of from the entire time. I've worked at the center for teaching and that's a great divorce. So she could just talk a little bit about how that happened and how we

18:11 What it actually was right? Well once once we got towards the end of March and our faculty had a couple of weeks experience teaching on, zoom and online. Yeah, you know, I realized it. I think at that point, it has been decided that all of our summer courses would be online, new territory for Vanderbilt and fall was completely up in the air and it would be some combination bright online.

18:43 Initially, it was thinking about the summer and how can we provide something to help our faculty teach? Well this summer online and then later became about me like we need fall semester to work, and Tackle you're going to need a lot of time and support and getting ready to make fall semester work. No matter what it looks like.

19:01 And I realize that, you know, we have like 1000 faculty teaching this fall and

19:06 Like, I'm not sure that that people outside of

19:12 Teaching as a profession. And like college teaching specifically understand the amount of ramp-up that there is to a course. Yes, you don't just like pick a text. So after class years developing courses and we teach them multiple times before we feel like we got them, right? Instead of all of a sudden have a completely new modality. Nothing we've ever done before, woodwork, historically the most institutions. If you're going to teach a course online, for the first time, like you take an entire semester of not teaching a course, so you can get ready for the one that is coming on that and we didn't have that luxury. Yeah. It's a ton of lifting and that's assuming that you kind of know what you're doing that. You've done it before. And so we as a senior staff, to the Center, for teaching spent all of April, putting our heads together, and we had some existing stuff. We had a course design Institute we had other resources, but we had never offered a course. It's an Institute specifically about teaching online.

20:12 And at that point, most of us had actually not brought online. That's why we had not offered anything like that. And I seen that sometimes with our senior staff before we're, we're all working on the same project and it's some of my favorite moments of the work because we do each brings so much to the table. And we have very different opinions and perspectives and expertise. And when we can all point in generally the same direction, we can create something pretty amazing. And that's what we did that your pool, and then we launched it in May with a two-week experience for faculty 3 or 4 hours a day, a mix of a synchronous work and then synchronous sessions on Zoom, many of whom are at home with students, who were doing remote, K12 school, right? Or taking care of family members, who work for one reason or another. I weren't able to be where they normally worse at The Faculty. Giving us three or four hours a day. We're also

21:12 Like doing a heavy left under run incredible, circumstances cleaning and

21:19 Wheat. We launched it in May and we ran it every two weeks, All Summer Long.

21:26 With about 60 to 70 faculty in, at each offering we ended up having 500 faculty and other instructors. Go through those two week course, design Institute by August. And you've heard me say this before, but it's like 10 years of Center for teaching work packed into 4 months. It really was. And I am really proud of it. I mean, I'm proud of how we collaborated, as a staff to pull that off. Put it together to launch it to revise it to change it, to make it better. Every two weeks, how much time and effort. It took just a run it like once it was in pretty good shape. It was still a ton of effort to run it again and again, and again, into work with so many faculty cuz we were meeting with them. Generally in groups of five or six small group. It wasn't just like a self-paced online course, it was an intensive cohort experience facilitated, you know, by someone who knew what they were doing.

22:24 And I'm thankful for the faculty who came back and helped to facilitate.

22:36 I didn't get nervous. I'm going to have all these memories as sitting on my back porch.

22:43 Working on this course or leaving the gym session or Were Somehow I mean this was this was most of what we did that summer and it was that Clarity of knowing. This is what I need to be doing like none of the other priorities really matter at this point. This is what I need to be doing with all of my work time and I like that Clarity. I'm also really grateful. We had a mild summer like the weather was nice. Pretty much all summer, and I could do a lot of work outside.

23:14 Right. I don't have outside space and I also discovered what we started doing stuff over. Zoom like the online course. Development Institute that I don't have good Lighting in my house over there and everyone is snapping up some lights and I'm like ya'll are just going to get used to seeing my face in the dark outline and it was a little bit of like in hindsight. It was a little bit of rebellion against the idea that like, I really show up to work without putting a lot of thought into what I look like, I just am who I am enjoy this Zoom. It felt like there was such a heightened expectation for appearance and I

24:01 Having not taught synchronous online classes before my online teaching with all asynchronous and focus. On course design. I felt like this is not a part of the online teaching experience that I want to embrace. And so at this point to have fire ring light though.

24:24 So, I have another question. What do you miss most about life at Vanderbilt before the pandemic? Is there any? I know we have a Blog series called like never going back that we embraced during the pandemic that we're not going to change that really work right now and we're going to keep doing these new good things. But what do you miss about life before?

24:48 Or work before work before the pandemic. That is a good question.

24:57 I do. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is having reasons to walk all over campus. I'm much more sedentary. Now, even now that I'm back in the office full-time. Most of my meetings on zoom and wants to see you face-to-face, even if you are in your office and so, you know, honestly, working from home, I could sometimes schedule in or take advantage of time and take the dogs for a walk, and get a little bit of fresh air and exercise. And I find that I'm actually walking last now that I'm back on campus, and the old days, I would have meetings. I would like to record Calhoun. I'd, I have to walk across campus and, you know, run into people. And I'm, I'm not the most outgoing person, I think of you as my own. But that just, you know, crossing paths with people that I now almost never see anymore.

25:52 I kind of miss that.

25:54 What do you miss? Do you count your steps?

25:59 My phone doesn't but I rarely look. So, before the pandemic. I mean, I've resonated with your answer a lot before the pandemic, it was rare for me to get home at the end of the day and have less than 10,000 steps. Because our campus is a little sprawling and also to go to a meeting. He just had to walk and you didn't have to put any effort into 10,000 steps. It was just part of the job and they were most days during the pandemic or I would look at my phone at the end of the day. It was like 900. I am trying to rectify that. Now that we know I'm reintegrating myself into life outside my home and it's actually turning out to be really challenging. I'm at about six thousand a day regularly now without a lot of effort but to get back up to pre-pandemic that way. So it's going to take work.

26:56 Sorry, so you said something? What are the things you miss about?

27:03 I don't know that it's something that I miss but I do at a personal level. I do feel like I lost family time. Like I know we were all stuck together in the house and it was really intense time together and we did a lot of things in those moments that I cherish that would not give up. But at the same time

27:25 Yeah, my kids had to give up sports for a year. We had to give up vacations multiple times, like the things that we did that were like memory making activities. I feel like we just sort of work.

27:39 Stasis for a year-and-a-half. And I feel a little bit like I kind of miss them and my kids childhood, but I didn't miss any work. I was always at work, but somehow I family life is weird cuz we were at home. How did I miss family? But the things that you do intentionally, I remember

28:07 We, you know, Emily and I were just figuring out homeschooling by the district, didn't provide much to do and so we we we had science day and I I thought what can I do for science, while we can put some Mentos breath mints and some Diet Coke and watch watch the explosion and, you know, my step daughter still talks about that. That's something. I also think the nature of our work, and how we interact with our colleagues here at Vanderbilt has has changed, and I don't know if it will ever revert back. But we do a lot of not just meetings, but we'll do workshops and conversations and panels opportunities for faculty to get together and talk about their teaching and this semester right now and fall 2021. When we try to do that in person people don't show up. The zoom workshops are working fine, and I I miss having

29:05 25 people in a room to talk about teaching together in person and, you know, like it's not the most important thing, but I do miss that type of community, you know, when there's pros and cons because the online panels that we do, now, we can record that make them publicly available put captions on them. Like, they're so much more accessible to more people now than they used to be. But also we are not taking people's hands anymore. We're not having that experience is like staring quiet spaces. Everything really structured on Zoom.

29:44 It's different, but I'm sure things will be different again in the future. I'm sure this isn't the last different roll across, so don't get too attached to the new normal.

29:58 Derek, I had a really good time chatting with you and reminiscing about the most intense work year of my entire life. And I mean, oh, I one of the things I've told people about how we were able to pull off an online course, design Institute for 500 faculty in one summer. We as a senior staff at the CFT have been together for. I don't know, for 5 years, at least, we knew each other. We did bring a lot of different perspectives and expertise to the table. For definitely moments April, where we were working together on this thing and design and building. And if we had not had some history together, it would have been really

30:40 There would have been harsh words spoken. I mean, anytime people are working closely together under such intense circumstances. There's going to be tension and I think genuinely liking each other to start with such a firm foundation for navigating that tension cuz I could be like I do not like you right now, but I have a sense that I like you most of the time. And I will get us through this Mission and helped us something pretty amazing. Yeah. I'm super proud of what we did in the ways that we helped. So many faculty in so many students.

31:23 I'm glad we got to be together. I don't think I have ever experienced anything quite like, that in my work life. And I don't think we'll be in a position to do anything quite like that again, and that's something I'm also pretty proud of because the work that we did fundamentally change the interactions that people have with technology at Vanderbilt. So that something like the course design Institute, actually wouldn't be necessary again, which is amazing. Like this. What a cool thing to add to the old CV, change the culture around technology. My pleasure.