Australia’s R&D sector is afflicted by challenges that will be familiar to UK readers.
The proportion of GDP spent on research is too low. Business adoption and innovation in R&D is too shallow. Collaboration between business and academia is poor. Reliance on international student fees to fund research has rendered the entire system fragile. And the immobility of academics is stymieing the cross-pollination of ideas.
However, the Australian government has a plan.
Back in December the Australian government launched its Strategic Examination of Research and Development. At the time I said the review was about
[…]maximising the value of R&D, improving links between research and the real economy, supporting research mobility, advancing national priorities such as growth, growing research intensity, and doing so with due regard to regional distribution, risk, and international competitiveness.
Bits and pieces
In effect, unlike the innumerable reviews we have seen in the UK the Australian government is taking a look at the entire research ecosystem. A sensible approach for a system where improving R&D, in whatever form, relies on funding, funders, researchers, institutes, incentives, governments, the private sector, universities, and many actors besides all working in harmony.
The Australian government has now launched their discussion paper and the potential for a new R&D system is starting to come into view.
It is interesting that Australia believes the UK as a country to learn from
Other countries, such as the UK, USA, China, Israel and Singapore, have successfully adopted new strategies for leveraging R&D and innovation for social and economic gain.
Most impartial observers would not put the UK’s ability to deploy R&D in the same league as the USA and China, the UK’s GDP investment is well behind Israel’s, while Singapore has rapidly grown its financial and manufacturing base in a way the UK has not. However, where there is a shared ambition is the sense Australia hasn’t quite met its potential.
Tough clear choices
This consultation is written in a way that UK consultations are not. The starting premise of this discussion paper is that economic growth is predicated on research, research should benefit all of society, and therefore society as a whole should have a say in how research is funded and organised. This isn’t a document which talks down but it has a clarity that brings the sometimes turgid prose of the UK government’s commissions into share relief.
The below caps off the executive summary and it is hard to imagine this appearing in the UK
Boosting a focus on R&D will prevent Australia’s slide into mediocrity. It will ensure we will be offered a seat at the international table at which big global decisions are made – because we earn it.
The UK has a greater research capacity than Australia in many ways but to frame the need to grow research as central to the entire future of the country is a bold thing to do. It’s exciting, and it encourages participation.
The discussion paper sets out what the Australian government is seeking to achieve through this intervention. It is trying to create a more productive, sustainable, and resilient economy through improving the conditions through which research is created, adopted, and diffused.
Like their UK counterparts the Australian government cannot resist an extremely complex research diagram with a dizzying array of arrows and pie charts to indicate inter-relationships between government and its partners.
However, the underlying message is clear. Put in place the right set of regulations, policies and funds to allow a variety of research approaches to grow, have clear feedback loops in place with appropriate measurement, and a range of cultural, social, economic, and knowledge benefits can be realised.
Trade off
An important departure from the UK is that the trade-offs between policy choices are made clear. Because UK R&D consultations are often single issue it is too easy to advocate for policies without worrying about the consequences. In one consultation I can ask for the Full Economic Cost of research. In another I can ask for a greater variety of research proposals to be funded. And in another I can ask for an increase in PGR places without reducing money in cost recovery or the funding of programmes. Historically, this has meant that the UK has done some things well but has never looked at everything across the ecosystem all at once.
The Australian review by contrast makes the trade-offs pretty clear. If funding is spread too thinly across the entire country, and if the country cannot rapidly mobilise private investment, there is clearly a choice to be made on whether to concentrate funding or live with this thin spread. There is a clear choice on whether to try to leverage R&D to prop up traditional industries like mining or shift focus into new and emerging technologies. There are clear links between the need for a more diverse workforce and diversity as a means of meeting the skills gaps within R&D. And it is stark in the lack of alternatives to crowding in more private investment to grow Australia’s R&D economy.
In all, it feels like a document that aims toward interested observers without patronising the wider R&D community. Its framing is honest with the university sector and makes the challenges the university sector faces clear. For example, it pulls few punches in explaining that while a system of research dependent on student funding allows for great freedom this isn’t an effective way to organise funding and strategy in a coherent way.
The last bit of the discussion paper is that it tells participants what will happen next. This discussion paper is the start of the analyse stage of the strategy. There will be time to test things out, iterate them, and then decide what will happen. Again, it’s clear, the call to take part is grounded in a shared reality, and the language is clear without being patronising.
Over the past five years of conducting organizational capability assessments of higher education marketing and communications departments, my colleagues and I have interviewed hundreds of internal stakeholders. It’s the most fascinating aspect of the work, hearing directly from campus colleagues both inside and outside the department about their perspectives and experiences related to organizational life and departmental effectiveness.
Through these conversations, valuable insights have emerged thanks to longtime marcomm staff—those team members who have contributed 10 or more years of professional service to their departments. (Note: I use the term “marcomm” to reflect that a blended marketing and communications structure is the typical model in higher education. The nuance and complexity of marketing and communications as distinct but related functions are topics for another post.)
These insights, framed as reflection questions below, are especially relevant for leaders beginning a new senior role, such as a cabinet-level VP, CMCO or an executive director leading the marcomm function for an academic college or school.
Is “restructuring” an end or a means?
When longtime staff members discuss organizational structure changes, their healthy skepticism is palpable. They invariably associate these changes with leadership transitions. A “re-org” happened because there was a new VP (just as strategic plans often coincide with new presidents). The perceived impetus for change is simply having new leadership rather than any larger strategic purpose. We frequently hear some version of, “The structure changes and then eventually changes back with a different VP.”
I’d much rather staff members describe those structural changes as enabling their function to fulfill a more strategic role and more meaningfully advance the institution’s highest priorities. It’s a reminder to leaders that structure should follow strategy, so the task is to ensure that the strategy is clear, reinforced and reflected in decision-making.
Moreover, leaders should move beyond thinking in terms of discrete “restructures” or “re-orgs.” Organizational change isn’t a periodic event; top-performing departments are constantly adapting and evolving to best serve their guiding purpose amidst changing conditions.
What is the real value of institutional knowledge?
We undervalue institutional knowledge. Your longtime staff members possess deep institutional knowledge, which we unfortunately may dismiss as outdated or irrelevant. Instead, think of institutional knowledge as a source for critical context and sense making to help you navigate the road ahead and lead positive change.
In The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, Heifetz, Linsky and Grashow emphasize that “successful adaptive changes build on the past rather than jettison it.” The challenge for leaders lies in “distinguishing what is essential to preserve from their organization’s heritage from what is expendable.” Long-tenured staff members’ insights and institutional knowledge are invaluable in building this understanding.
As the authors note, “Successful adaptations are thus both conservative and progressive. They make the best possible use of previous wisdom and know-how. The most effective leadership anchors change in the values, competencies and strategic orientations that should endure in the organization.” New senior leaders, eager to deliver results or serve as change agents, may overlook this crucial balance.
What does upskilling require of the organization?
The responsibilities of longtime staff members have likely evolved significantly since their initial hiring. New or different types of work are needed as marcomm’s scope expands, audience preferences shift and technologies emerge. Growing these competencies is a shared responsibility requiring genuine organizational commitment. The onus cannot rest solely on individual staff members. Upskilling or reskilling demands adequate time and resources—even when workloads are heavy and budgets are constrained.
Professional development funding is often the first casualty of budget reductions. But if the organizational approach to professional development has been mostly reactive, then we shouldn’t be surprised by the lack of budget prioritization. This ad hoc approach to professional development points to a larger issue: the absence of formalized talent management practices in marketing and communications.
Where can you build more intentionality into your organization’s efforts to recruit, develop, support and retain staff? Look to your central human resources team for guidance and learn from your colleagues in advancement, where larger and more mature advancement operations have dedicated talent management functions. Start small by operationalizing your department’s practices in a specific area such as orientation and onboarding. These focused efforts can create momentum for broader talent management initiatives.
Long-serving staff members serve as both historians and bridges to the future, stewarding institutional values while helping new executives thoughtfully evolve their organizations. When properly engaged and supported, these veteran team members can be catalysts in your efforts to build—or further build—a high-performing department that drives lasting institutional progress. I hope these reflection questions prompt ideas that help your marketing and communications department be people centered and future ready.
Rob Zinkan is vice president for marketing leadership at RHB, a division of Strata Information Group. He joined RHB in 2019 after more than 20 years in higher education administration with senior positions in marketing and advancement. He also teaches graduate courses as an adjunct in strategic communications and higher education leadership.
It’s neither a personal nor an especially novel observation to suggest that both in the UK and across North America and Western Europe, debates about campus climate, culture and freedom of speech were upended on 7 October 2023.
It’s not the purpose of the report, but you can really feel some of the contradictions coming to a head in Josh Freeman’s terrific new HEPI report on the Encampments protesting for Palestine and the response to them, tentatively timed to offer early reflections now that a ceasefire has been secured.
What until October 7 had been a rhetorically wide framing of freedom of speech and a pretty narrow one over protection from harm and harassment was always going to be challenged when speech took the form of pro-Palestine placards rather than the punch and judy of rarified Russell Group debating societies.
And while plenty of people still pretend that there are no “fine lines” and contradictions between, say, expressions of pro-Palestinian solidarity and antisemitism, Freeman’s report lays out the realities and complexities of universities, their students’ unions and students themselves being expected to tread and police those lines.
I was struck, reading the report, by the contradictions between the way in which student “debaters” (the subject of a previous report from Freeman) and student activists of the sort in the encampments are often framed in terms of what they represent – the former is often assumed to be a near-universal experience or at least an ideal, while the latter are painted as an angry mob that often aren’t even students anyway.
Both, in truth, are pretty unrepresentative of the contemporary higher education experience, both can seem like indulgences that many students are unable to afford, but both do have an influence on students’ understanding of the world. The fact that both appear to be largely confined to the Russell Group could easily be a source of shame rather than relief.
Motivations and disruptions
There’s a good methodology to the report that some tend to turn their nose up at when used on other issues – it’s basically a qualitative, case study-based approach, drawing on lived experiences through semi-structured interviews with key players – student protestors, university staff, students’ union officers, and Jewish students – while triangulating these insights with documentary analysis of public statements and social media discourse.
As a result, there are some fascinating insights from Freeman. Fairly early on, he notes that in the student interviews, many were motivated by factors which, at least at face value, went far beyond the situation in Gaza – referring to other factors like islamophobia, tuition fees, staff pay and pensions, mental health or even the freedom to protest:
These issues were rarely mentioned in encampments’ official demands but they appear to have been significant motivators to join the protests.
There’s also a clutch of material on the way in which the encampments themselves operated – laying bare both aspects and incidents of obvious antisemitism, but also anguish about the right (and for some, perceived duty) to object to and highlight the actions of Israel throughout the war, and the way in which those protestors knew that that might be misinterpreted.
Material on “disruption” is interesting too. Freeman identifies both an oft-denied truism – that this kind of “speech” is designed to be disruptive – and a less-understood concern of some protestors that keeping students on side by not excessively disrupting their education was important.
The section on the “institutional response” is particularly helpful, mainly because it draws comparisons in the approach on engagement. The running theme is that where – either by chance or by design – institutional managers and student protesters were caused to meet and discuss as people, some inching away from simplistic demonisation was possible and helpful. By contrast, it looks like a lack of engagement allowed a simplistic framing – of protester as terrorist, and university manager as oppressor – to unhelpfully persist.
Freeman also reflects on the learning made possible by those encounters:
The ultimate goals of discussions should be learning, on the one hand – these examples suggest institutions still have much to learn from their students – and explaining, on the other, why some demands are not feasible.
Another aspect of the diversity in approaches relates to “demands”. The old “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” approach to students can be seen in this quote:
It would create two categories of students … it would give them a carte blanche for any kind of behaviour.
…while others were perceptive enough to recognise that hard and fast rules can look quite silly quite quickly when it’s often context that counts:
It’s a special situation, an emotional issue. It’s okay to call this a one-off. Though some have said we are setting a bad precedent by allowing this behaviour.
That’s true too over a running theme in the narrative amongst protesters – that taking an early and unequivocal stance on Ukraine in the way that most of the sector did was, for them, incompatible with a sudden concern for neutrality over Israel/Palestine.
Frustratingly, Freeman even reports that after accusations of being “hypocrites”, “several” senior staff said that, on reflection, their institutions would avoid political statements entirely in the future – as if carefully crafted regulations will always trump context. They won’t.
I’d also tentatively add that while it was undoubtedly true that:
…In comparison with the Marking and Assessment Boycott, there is tiny traffic from students. To the bulk of our students, it [the conflict] is not on their radar. We have had a few hundred emails on divestment, but they are the same people writing over and over, with the same template.
…one might argue that a huge international conflict, with significant global implications, might cause one to wonder why more students weren’t engaged, particularly in universities where “activism” is more a rarity than a rhythm.
Threats, reputation and officialdom
There are, inevitably, some pointed observations both about government and the Office for Students – which to this day has said almost nothing about so many of the edge cases of freedom v harm involved in Israel/Palestine, despite being in the process of launching two new “sandbags on the see saw” in the form of free speech duties and anti-harassment duties.
Universities – perhaps it was always thus – were neither to be trusted nor offered much in the way of help when being left to resolve the tensions themselves:
They’ve left us to it. That may have been the best thing.
In a week when student activists appear to have brought down a populist Prime Minister in Serbia, I was also especially interested in Freeman’s observations about the relationship between what we might call the “official” voice of students – students’ unions – and the activists in the encampments.
Before I even got to page 35, for example, I knew that words to this effect would appear somewhere:
We engage with the Students’ Union as they are the democratically elected representatives, not with some small group of people, most of whom have nothing to do with the University or its community.
I would note in eyebrow-raising passing that I’ve often come across that view from those who tend, in other contexts, to challenge the representativeness of their students’ union when advancing recommendations or opinions.
But more broadly, I tend to adopt a straightforward principle when an organised group of students decides that the “official” channel of communication isn’t cutting the mustard – they often have a point. That’s partly because, back on that “hard and fast rule” thing, some SUs (and their universities) can take their apoliticism and desire to be seen to be supporting all students too far – overcooking reputational or charity law fears, and undercooking their role as clearing houses for often opposed student opinion.
When Freeman recommends that:
Distinguishing between the collective position of the students’ union on the one hand and the stances of individual elected officers on the other, so elected officers can remain true to their own views and the mandate they were elected on, while allowing the students’ union to remain apolitical, follow charity law and be representative of the wider student body.
…it also seems fairly clear that the “own views” aspect of that doesn’t mean silence in the way that has been imposed for many an SU officer with strong views on the issues.
Mediation and advocacy
What’s helpful in the report is the description of the positive role that many SU officers and staff played in the process as mediators (supporting both encampments and institutions to reach a resolution), as intermediaries (passing “intelligence” between encampments and institutions), and as advocates to make sure the voices of all students are heard roles that many of their staff (outside a handful) are neither routinely funded for nor recognised.
And as Freeman puts it when discussing allegations of illegitimacy:
But rather than undermining the positions of elected officers, it might be more productive to work with the SU to create an effective process for dialogue with all groups of students. When the main mechanism for students to contribute to institutional policy does not function properly, it may explain why many students choose to bypass their unions and channel their frustrations through protest.
I discussed some of the differences between what we might call the “official” student movement and the activists leading the blockades in Serbia in my write up on that issue elsewhere on the site – and I’m struck by the character of the past 18 months’ pro-Palestinian activism when compared to previous intensifications of the Middle East conflict.
For many years, the “voice” of such activism tended to be the Federation of Islamic Student Societies (FOSIS), often setting up an arguably unhelpful and simplistic link between Jewish students, the Union of Jewish Students and a “pro Israel” position on the one hand, and Muslim students, FOSIS and a “pro Palestinian” position on the other.
For all sorts of obvious reasons, the simplicity of those links and resultant “sides” was always problematic – it has never been just Muslim students and Jewish students caught up in debates over the conflict, and there have always been significant differences of opinion on the conflict within those “sides”.
But it’s also true to say that both UJS and FOSIS were able to act in an “official” student representative role in a similar way to that that Freeman frames students’ unions as inhabiting – able to speak to power, their own members, and through NUS, each other. In recent years, FOSIS has fallen away in prominence – the channel for much of the anger and activism now represented by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and related offshoots – while UJS has tended to focus its efforts on persuading power to exert authority over antisemitism.
That is not to suggest that either is wrong, or illegitimate, or especially problematic – but it has meant that in this phase of the Middle East crisis, one “side” has looked very official, while the “other” has looked like the opposite. In a climate where words like “oppressor” get attached to one side and “terrorist” to the other, those types of perhaps accidental perceptions are likely to have clouded wider students’ engagement in and understanding of what has been happening.
Partnership and power
Bringing both Serbia and the HEPI paper together, in quieter moments this week I’ve been caused to re-read this terrific paper from Simon Varwell on citizen participation in an era of emergency decision-making.
Varwell is a former staffer from Sparqs – the little known (outside of Scotland) student participation “agency” originally set up to give a boost to class rep training north of the border. It rarely gets the credit it deserves from Scottish ministers or Principals, but it’s much more than its roots as a train the trainer scheme for reps these days – producing acres of intelligent and helpful material that has helped to engender partnership between students and universities in Scotland more generally.
His paper – written in the teeth of the Covid crisis – makes a compelling argument that what Sherry Arnstein described in the late 60s as a “ladder” of participation pretty much turned into a circle during the pandemic – where the very highest and lowest levels of student engagement overlapped in a zone of anger and conflict.
I think that argument matters – not especially from a tactical point of view, but because it’s clear that in some universities, notions of “partnership” melt away quickly when something more “serious” or “risky” is on the table – whether that’s making cuts to provision, handling Covid, or dealing with ministerial and press interest in a protest or “woke” initiative on campus.
Partnership can mean all sorts of things to all sorts of people. But fundamentally it’s about sharing power, both between groups of students and between students and their university.
Few would argue that partnerships of the latter should be “equal”. But when what is sold as a safe environment doesn’t feel like it, and when what is promoted as way of having your voice heard or your interests met feels like being ignored or marginalised, “senior” partners should always be mindful that universities aren’t schools, authority tends to depend on consent, and whatever the weight of expectation on the “grown ups” to crack down and control, conflict almost always requires both mediation and mutual respect.
We recently wrapped up our AI Learning Design Assistant (ALDA) project. It was a marathon. Multiple universities and sponsors participated in a seven-month intensive workshop series to learn how AI can assist in learning design. The ALDA software, which we tested together as my team and I built it, was an experimental apparatus designed to help us learn various lessons about AI in education.
And learn we did. As I speak with project participants about how they want to see the work continue under ALDA’s new owner (and my new employer), 1EdTech, I’ll use this post to reflect on some lessons learned so far. I’ll finish by reflecting on possible futures for ALDA.
(If you want a deeper dive from a month before the last session, listen to Jeff Young’s podcast interview with me on EdSurge. I love talking with Jeff. Shame on me for not letting you know about this conversation sooner.)
AI is a solution that needs our problems
The most fundamental question I wanted to explore with the ALDA workshop participants was, “What would you use AI for?” The question was somewhat complicated by AI’s state when I started development work about nine months ago. Back then, ChatGPT and its competitors struggled to follow the complex directions required for serious learning design work. While I knew this shortcoming would resolve itself through AI progress—likely by the time the workshop series was completed—I had to invest some of the ALDA software development effort into scaffolding the AI to boost its instruction-following capabilities at the time. I needed something vaguely like today’s AI capabilities back then to explore the questions we were trying to answer. Such as what we could be using AI for a year from then.
Once ALDA could provide that performance boost, we came to the hard part. The human part. When we got down to the nitty-gritty of the question—What would you use this for?—many participants had to wrestle with it for a while. Even the learning designers working at big, centralized, organized shops struggled to break down their processes into smaller steps with documents the AI could help them produce. Their human-centric rules relied heavily on the humans to interpret the organizational rules as they worked organically through large chunks of design work. Faculty designing their own courses had a similar struggle. How is their work segmented? What are the pieces? Which pieces would they have an assistant work on if they had an assistant?
The answers weren’t obvious. Participants had to discover them by experimenting throughout the workshop series. ALDA was designed to make that discovery process easier.
A prompt engineering technique for educators: Chain of Inquiry
Along with the starting question, ALDA had a starting hypothesis: AI can function as a junior learning designer.
How does a junior learning designer function? It turns out that their primary tool is a basic approach that makes sense in an educator’s context and translates nicely into prompt engineering for AI.
Learning designers ask their teaching experts questions. They start with general ones. Who are your students? What is your course about? What are the learning goals? What’s your teaching style?
These questions get progressively more specific. What are the learning objectives for this lesson? How do you know when students have achieved those objectives? What are some common misconceptions they have?
Eventually, the learning designer has built a clear enough mental model that they can draft a useful design document of some form or other.
Notice the similarities and differences between this approach and scaffolding a student’s learning. Like scaffolding, Chain of Inquiry moves from the foundational to the complex. It’s not about helping the person being scaffolded with their learning, but it is intended to help them with their thinking. Specifically, the interview progression helps the educator being interviewed think more clearly about hard design problems by bringing relevant context into focus. This process of prompting the interviewee to recall salient facts relevant to thinking through challenging, detailed problems is very much like the AI prompt engineering strategy called Chain of Thought.
In the interview between the learning designer and the subject-matter expert, the chain of thought they spin together is helpful to both parties for different reasons. It helps the learning designer learn while helping the subject-matter expert recall relevant details that help with thinking. The same is true in ALDA. The AI is learning from the interview, while the same process helps both parties focus on helpful context. I call this AI interview prompt style Chain of Inquiry. I hadn’t seen it used when I first thought of ALDA and haven’t seen it used much since then, either.
In any case, it worked. Participants seem to grasp it immediately. Meanwhile, a well-crafted Chain of Inquiry prompt in ALDA produced much better documents after it elicited good information through interviews with its human partners.
Improving mental models helps
AI is often presented, sold, and designed to be used as a magic talking machine. It’s hard to imagine what you would and wouldn’t use a tool for if you don’t know what it does. We went at this problem through a combination of teaching, user interface design, and guided experimentation.
On the teaching side, I emphasized that a generative AI model is a sophisticated pattern-matching and completion machine. If you say “Knock knock” to it, it will answer “Who’s there?” because it knows what usually comes after “Knock knock.” I spent some time building up this basic idea, showing the AI matching and completing more and more sophisticated patterns. Some participants initially reacted to this lesson as “not useful” or “irrelevant.” But it paid off over time as participants experienced that understanding helped them think more clearly about what to expect from the AI, with some additional help from ALDA’s design.
ALDA’s basic structure is simple:
Prompt Templates are re-usable documents that define the Chain of Inquiry interview process (although they are generic enough to support traditional Chain of Thought as well).
Chats are where those interviews take place. This part of ALDA is similar to a typical ChatGPT-like experience, except that the AI asks questions first and provides answers later based on the instructions it receives from the Prompt Template.
Lesson Drafts are where users can save the last step of a chat, which hopefully will be the draft of some learning design artifact they want to use. These drafts can be downloaded as Word or PDF documents and worked on further by the human.
A lot of the magic of ALDA is in the prompt template page design. It breaks down the prompts into three user-editable parts:
General Instructions provide the identity of the chatbot that guides its behavior, e.g., “I am ALDA, your AI Learning Design Assistant. My role is to work with you as a thoughtful, curious junior instructional designer with extensive training in effective learning practices. Together, we will create a comprehensive first draft of curricular materials for an online lesson. I’ll assist you in refining ideas and adapting to your unique context and style.
“Important: I will maintain an internal draft throughout our collaboration. I will not display the complete draft at the end of each step unless you request it. However, I will remind you periodically that you can ask to see the full draft if you wish.
“Important Instruction: If at any point additional steps or detailed outlines are needed, I will suggest them and seek your input before proceeding. I will not deviate from the outlined steps without your approval.
“
Output template provides an outline of the document that the AI is instructed to produce at the end of the interview.
Steps provide the step-by-step process for the Chain of Inquiry.
The UI reinforces the idea of pattern matching and completion. The Output Template gives the AI the structure of the document it is trying to complete by the end of the chat. The General Instructions and Steps work together to define the interview pattern the system should imitate as it tries to complete the document.
Armed with the lesson and scaffolded by the template, participants got better over time at understanding how to think about asking the AI to do what they wanted it to do.
Using AI to improve AI
One of the biggest breakthroughs came with the release of a feature near the very end of the workshop series. It’s the “Improve” button at the bottom of the Template page.
When the user clicks on that button, it sends whatever is in the template to ChatGPT. It also sends any notes the user enters, along with some behind-the-scenes information about how ALDA templates are structured.
Template creators can start with a simple sentence or two in the General Instructions. Think of it as a starting prompt, e.g., “A learning design interview template for designing and drafting a project-based learning exercise.” The user can then tell “Improve” to create a full template based on that prompt. Because ALDA tells ChatGPT what a complete template looks like, the AI returns a full draft of all the fields ALDA needs to create a template. The user can then test that template and go back to the Improve window to ask for the AI to improve the template’s behavior or extend its functionality.
Building this cycle into the process created a massive jump in usage and creativity among the participants who used it. I started seeing more and more varied templates pop up quickly. User satisfaction also improved significantly.
So…what is it good for?
The usage patterns turned out to be very interesting. Keep in mind that this is a highly unscientific review; while I would have liked to conduct a study or even a well-designed survey, the realities of building this on the fly as a solo operator managing outsourced developers limited me to anecdata for this round.
The observations from the learning designers from large, well-orchestrated teams seem to line up with my theory that the big task will be to break down our design processes into chunks that are friendly to AI support. I don’t see a short-term scenario in which we can outsource all learning design—or replace it—with AI. (By the way, “air gapping” the AI, by which I mean conducting an experiment in which nothing the AI produced would reach students without human review, substantially reduced anxieties about AI and improved educators’ willingness to experiment and explore the boundaries.)
For the individual instructors, particularly in institutions with few or no learning designers, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how useful ALDA proved to be in the middle of the term and afterward. We tend to think about learning design as a pre-flight activity. The reality is that educators are constantly adjusting their courses on the fly and spending time at the end to tweak aspects that didn’t work the way they liked. I also noticed that educators seemed interested in using AI to make it safer for them to try newer, more challenging pedagogical experiments like project-based learning or AI-enabled teaching exercises if they had ALDA as a thought partner that could both accelerate the planning and bring in some additional expertise. I don’t know how much of this can be attributed to the pure speed of the AI-enabled template improvement loop and how much the holistic experience helped them feel they understood and had control over ALDA in a way that other tools may not offer them.
Possible futures for ALDA under 1EdTech
As for what comes next, nothing has been decided yet. I haven’t been blogging much lately because I’ve been intensely focused on helping the 1EdTech team think more holistically about the many things the organization does and many more that we could do. ALDA is a piece of that puzzle. We’re still putting the pieces in place to determine where ALDA fits in.
I’ll make a general remark about 1EdTech before exploring specific possible futures for ALDA. Historically, 1EdTech has solved problems that many of you don’t (and shouldn’t) know you could have. When your students magically appear in your LMS and you don’t have to think about how your roster got there, that was because of us. When you switch LMSs, and your students still magically appear, that’s 1EdTech. When you add one of the million billion learning applications to your LMS, that was us too. Most of those applications probably wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t made it easy for them to integrate with any LMS. In fact, the EdTech ecosystem as we know it wouldn’t exist. However much you may justifiably complain about the challenges of EdTech apps that don’t work well with each other, without 1EdTech, they mostly wouldn’t work with each other at all. A lot of EdTech apps simply wouldn’t exist for that reason.
Still. That’s not nearly enough. Getting tech out of your way is good. But it’s not good enough. We need to identify real, direct educational problems and help to make them easier and more affordable to solve. We must make it possible for educators to keep up with changing technology in a changing world. ALDA could play several roles in that work.
First, it could continue to function as a literacy teaching tool for educators. The ALDA workshops covered important aspects of understanding AI that I’ve not seen other efforts cover. We can’t know how we want AI to work in education without educators who understand and are experimenting with AI. I will be exploring with ALDA participants, 1EdTech members, and others whether there is the interest and funding we need to continue this aspect of the work. We could wrap some more structured analysis around future workshops to find out what the educators are learning and what we can learn from them.
Speaking of which, ALDA can continue to function as an experimental apparatus. Learning design is a process that is largely dark to us. It happens in interviews and word processor documents on individual hard drives. If we don’t know where people need the help—and if they don’t know either—then we’re stuck. Product developers and innovators can’t design AI-enabled products to solve problems they don’t understand.
Finally, we can learn the aspects of learning design—and teaching—that need to be taught to AI because the knowledge it needs isn’t written down in a form that’s accessible to it. As educators, we learn a lot of structure in the course of teaching that often isn’t written down and certainly isn’t formalized in most EdTech product data structures. How and when to probe for a misconception. What to do if we find one. How to give a hint or feedback if we want to get the student on track without giving away the answer. Whether you want your AI to be helping the educator or working directly with the student—which is not really an either/or question—we need AI to better understand how we teach and learn if we want it to get better at helping us with those tasks. Some of the learning design structures we need are related to deep aspects of how human brains work. Other structures evolve much more quickly, such as moving to skills-based learning. Many of these structures should be wired deep into our EdTech so you don’t have to think or worry about them. EdTech products should support them automatically. Something like ALDA could be an ongoing laboratory in which we test how educators design learning interventions, how those processes co-evolve with AI over time, and where feeding the AI evidence-based learning design structure could make it more helpful.
The first incarnation ALDA was meant to be an experiment in the entrepreneurial sense. I wanted to find out what people would find useful. It’s ready to become something else. And it’s now at a home where it can evolve. The most important question about ALDA hasn’t changed all that much:
I drew much inspiration from this morning’s listen to Derrick Bruff’s interview with Jane Southworth about AI across the curriculum. Derrick Bruff’s podcast, Intentional Teaching, gives us bountiful opportunities to learn from the experiences of educators who are transforming educational experiences for students across a wide variety of disciplines and contexts. While the episode did focus on what is obvious from the title, AI Across the Curriculum, I drew a lot of inspiration well beyond just that topic of AI. There are many layers of what they talked about that go well beyond the broad topic of artificial intelligence. Other aspects of leading and teaching within a university context are shared well beyond the particular initiative they discuss.
Jane talks about the difficulty of making such a massive change across a complex institution. She made a few jokes about the difficulties, although she said it was such lightheartedness that I felt such kindness toward her in what must have been such challenging endeavors. Consider what it takes to make something like this happen, and all the committee work that it takes, all the different people that are need to be talked to, all the perspectives to consider. The intricacies, not just to make something work, but to make the fruit of that work visible to students such that they enroll in the program and pursue the educational aims beyond the requirements for their majors. Jane shares examples of them starting an AI certificate program within their curriculum. The mammoth effort that it was to make that technically possible from an operations standpoint, such that someone could take the right classes and that they would go through all the curriculum committees and get that to work within their policies and procedures is one thing. But another layer I found quite fascinating was how do you then make that visible to students such that they’re even aware that this certificate exists and that they find it of interest and worthwhile to pursue further learning.
As Sam Cooke sang years ago, I also “don’t know much about geography.” There’s no doubt in my mind that I have subscribed to some of the myths that Jane described about her discipline of geography. Jane described how in the United Kingdom, when she was in college, that it was the third or fourth most popular degree. Geography graduates found themselves receiving among the highest earnings as they left school, as well as being surprised when they discovered just how much more the field is than studying rocks, like they had initially believed.
What can we learn from watching reality tv? Well, quite a bit. Today I’m going to talk about 7 things you can learn from The Circle, a reality television show about social media on Netflix.
Hi there, I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I help professors feel confident when showing up online. I empower them to build an online presence so they can help more people with their research and teaching. Welcome to The Social Academic, my podcast about your digital footprint as a professor in Higher Education.
Now, if you’re on my mailing list you may have seen my email about my application to be on The Circle Netflix. If you’re watching the new season, you already know that I did not make the cut. But I love this show, and learn so much from watching it. So, I’m excited to talk with you about The Circle today. I still have my fingers crossed that I’ll appear on a future season. Seriously, my goal is to be on a Netflix show in my lifetime.
What is your online presence? It’s what people can find about you when searching your name online. It’s what people can discover about your research and the work you most care about. I’d love to help you have the online presence you deserve in 2024. Let’s talk about working together on your website, social media, or bio writing.
First, let me tell you a little bit about The Circle because I know some of you may not have watched this show before. By the end of this episode of The Social Academic podcast, you’re going to go and watch The Circle. This is one of my favorite shows, and I hope you love it too.
The Circle Netflix is a competition reality show where strangers move into an apartment building where they can only communicate with each other through a closed social media network called The Circle. Each person gets their own Circle profile where they can share a bio and a profile photo. Here’s the thing, if you’re in The Circle there’s no way to tell if the other contestants you see there are real, or if they’re catfish. Some people enter The Circle as themselves. Other people enter The Circle with a fake profile they think will advance them further in the game. The winner of The Circle gets a cash prize and bragging rights.
I love reality television. I especially enjoy watching The Circle because contestants build real relationships through chat, interactive games, and virtual parties. Because contestants interact with The Circle by speaking their messages out loud (it’s a voice-activated social media network), we get to see their reaction to the Circle Chat when a new post is shared. They also verbalize their thinking before sharing their own messages in the chat.
This will be a fun episode of The Social Academic, so pop some popcorn, take a seat, and listen up. We’re about to dive into 7 things you can learn about social media and building relationships from watching The Circle on Netflix.
1. People don’t know anything about you when they come across your profile for the 1st time. Have photos on your profile that show your personality.
When you enter The Circle you don’t know anything about the other contestants. If you’re coming on the show, you’re aware that there are other people in the same apartment building you are. But, each of you walk into your own uniquely designed apartment. You get a few minutes to explore before The Circle sends you an Alert.
The 1st Alert invites contestants to set up their profile on The Circle. That way, other contestants in the building can learn a little bit about them when they engage in conversations in the Circle Chat.
Choosing what to include on your profile is so important. The people who are visiting your profile don’t know anything about you. The first thing that you can learn from watching The Circle on Netflix is that having photos on your profile that show your personality makes a big difference. Your photo is the first thing that people see about you on social media.
I love getting to hear contestants talk about which profile photo they’re choosing. When you’re looking at your photos trying to decide which one to use as your profile photo, think about which shows your personality best. What are you trying to communicate with your profile? Think about the outfit that you’re wearing, what kind of expression is on your face, and what’s in the background.
When you have a profile photo that shares your personality, people learn a little bit more about you instantly. Your profile photo leaves a lasting impression on social media.
For academics, sharing a photo of yourself on social media helps people recognize you. If you’re headed to a conference and tweet about your talk, you want your fellow conference attendees to be able to learn a bit about you. And it’s great if they can see a photo of your smiling face.
2. Remember things about the people you talk with to help you have deeper conversations.
The Circle on Netflix is a closed social media platform. You might compare it to Slack or MightyNetworks. You can only engage in conversations with people through the general Circle Chat and through direct messages, messages which can be with one or more people.
Having conversations with people in The Circle is the only way to build your relationships. And yes, this does advance you in the game. But it also deepens your relationships in real life. Whether these people, the other contestants in The Circle, are catfish or not, the conversations you have with them are real.
The only way that you can learn about the people in The Circle is by having conversations with them. My second tip is that remembering things about the people you talk with helps you have deeper conversations. What do I mean by deeper? Well, more meaningful, lasting, and relationship-building conversations.
For the competition in The Circle on Netflix, this makes a lot of sense. When people give you more information, they might slip up and let you know that they’re a catfish. They might let you know about who their friends are and who they are most loyal to. They also might share a story that you can relate to, something that tells you about who they are, what they care about, and why they are here. What you share with people in The Circle, can help the influencers each week decide if you should stay or be voted out of The Circle.
Whether you’re on a closed social media platform like Slack, or a public network like LinkedIn, Remembering the conversations you have will help you have deeper, more meaningful relationships. Networking is all in the details.
Academics, you have so much to remember, I get it. I’m not saying memorize what people tell you. One way to help you remember the details about the people you meet is to see if you can find 1 way you connect with them. One thing you have in common. Maybe it’s a shared research interest. Maybe you both like dogs. You’re more likely to remember something you share, something you have in common, so that’s my tip for you!
3. People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
I realize I just mentioned catfish in The Circle and I didn’t quite explain what that is. A catfish is someone on social media who is pretending to be not themselves. Someone is “catfishing” when they have a profile on social media that does not reflect who they are in real life.
This is different from an anonymous account, where a person chooses not to share their real name. “Catfishing” is intentionally appearing as a different person. The term grew in popularity after the MTV show Catfish Began in 2008. The show is now on its 8th season where the show’s hosts uncover fake profiles of people in romantic relationships where one person is catfishing the other online. One thing I find notable about the show Catfish, is that many of the people who have fake profiles have real feelings. Even though the person is fake, oftentimes the relationship is based in real emotion.
On The Circle Netflix, being a catfish might help you make a lot of money if you make it to the end of the game. However, it can also hurt you to be a catfish. This is because of tip number 3. People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
And yeah, okay, in real life this is a little bit easier now that we have video chat. But in The Circle on Netflix, you don’t have this option. You can’t see if someone’s real. You can’t even hear their voice. You can only go by what they share with you in the chat and on their profile.
At some point on every season of The Circle, some contestants hunt catfish. They’re looking for fake profiles. It’s an easy reason to vote someone off of the game. And may help you determine if you can trust someone to be loyal to you (or not). So if you are thinking about applying to be on The Circle you can totally be a catfish. You’ll probably have a fun time playing. Just know that it’s hard to convince people you’re someone you’re not. Authenticity shines through. People want to see you. And they get suspicious if they can’t tell who you are.
One of my professor clients wanted to know if they should have an anonymous account on social media. When I asked why, she said, “I’m not sure if I’m allowed to have a social media account. But I don’t want to miss out.” It’s not the 1st time I’ve heard this from an academic, so I said, “That’s probably not the case, but since you’re worried, let’s figure out who to ask.” Luckily her university had a great social media manager who had contact information accessible on the university website. When they got back to the professor, she learned that the university would love for her to be on social media. I was delighted! Of course I wanted her to be on social media. But I don’t recommend anonymous social media profiles if you can help it because people just aren’t sure who you are. They want you to be yourself.
4. Nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about yourself.
What really sets the good catfish apart from the catfish who get caught on The Circle is how they open up about themselves. Tip number 4 is that nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about who you are and what you care about.
The season finale aired today. Yes! I watched it before recording this episode. I won’t tell you who won. At the end of the show everyone from the season, including eliminated players, return to meet in person in a luxurious lounge with host of The Circle, Michelle Buteau. Two of the players take a quick moment for an aside. Tom Haughton, a British comedian, thanks his fellow player, Chaz Lawry, a Los Angeles entrepreneur, by saying: “You were the 1st person to show me that being open is key to forming relationships.”
People get pretty deep on The Circle on Netflix. People have conversations about life defining moments, loss, trauma, family, and the values that matter most to them. The friendships that you make in The Circle determine how well you do in the game. The deeper your friendships are, the more likely you are to stay in the game.
When academics open up about their research, they can only help more people. When you share your story, you invite people to engage deeper. You invite people to care.
When you open up about yourself, and tell your friends and colleagues about yourself, it makes a big difference for your real life. This is because people will better know what you care about, how to help you, and how you can help others.
5. Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you.
That loyalty brings us to tip number 5. Your friends will stick up for you. They’ll go to bat to protect you. The deeper your relationship is with your friend, the more likely they are to protect you with everything they can. Spoiler alert.
On The Circle Netflix, contestants build alliances with each other to help their friends stay in the game. Sometimes, the game forces you to do something you might not otherwise. For instance on this season an O.G. player, Shubham Goel, AKA “Shooby,” who was a fan favorite from season 1, returned. Pretending to be a sexy young woman named Sasha, Shooby made the mistake of trying to start a “rebellion” of the newer players in The Circle.
His reasoning was that the players on The Circle who arrived on day one, had more opportunity to build loyalty with each other, over the newer players. So, the new players should bad together to ensure their spot at the final table.
Why did this backfire? When Shooby was first on The Circle, he was loved by all the players. He was so nice, open, and thoughtful, that people loved who he was. Even though he didn’t win his season of The Circle, Shooby is one of the most well-known personalities because of his authenticity. When Shooby asked to return to The Circle this season, the producers said yes, but he had to be a catfish. Not being able to be his authentic self hurt Shooby in the game. He didn’t have the social capital it takes, the loyalty needed for a rebellion.
You see, other people in the Rebellion Chat had already built up loyalty with their other friends in The Circle. People they met before Shooby’s fake profile, “Sasha” entered the game. This meant that by the time Shooby approached them for the rebellion these Circle contestants were no longer interested in turning on their friends.
Shooby thought that his Rebellion would create new loyalties based on shared goals to do everything it takes to win. But doing what would have worked best for these players in the game, joining the Rebellion of new players, didn’t happen because people felt loyal to their original alliances. Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you when given the opportunity.
This is true in real life too. You may have seen on Twitter that one of my tweets at the end of 2022 went viral. Let me tell you, people had a lot of opinions. And they shared their opinions with me. Many of their feelings were negative. People didn’t like what I had to say.
There’s a cute coffee mug from Social Media Tea that reads,” you can’t handle going viral, I promise.” That’s me. I couldn’t handle going viral. At least, I felt that way at the time. I was getting dozens of notifications every minute with people angry at me for speaking the truth. For sharing something that was important to me because of equity, which I value highly.
Here’s the thing, I could handle going viral. I could handle it because of my friends. I got more messages of support from people who care about me, from friends, from people who read The Social Academic, and clients whose lives I’ve transformed. In 2 days, I got more messages of support than I’ve ever gotten in my life. Even from strangers who saw my viral tweet and felt empowered to ask for equity in pay for their speaking engagements for the 1st time. The outpouring of love and support made going viral bearable. And, people were open that they were reporting some of the disgusting, racist tweets people said to me. Friends told me that what I do matters. That I’m helping the world. I could handle going viral, because of them. The support of people you care about means so much more than the anger of people you don’t know. At least, that’s how it was for me.
In the weeks following my viral tweet, I saw not one but five friends and former clients, people I truly admire, go viral in a negative way for something they shared. If this happens to you mute that conversation. Take care of yourself. And, ask your friends for help. People can only help if you open up to them.
On The Circle Netflix, your friends want to stick up for you and help however they can. If you ask for help, they’ll be better aware and will help if they are able.
For academics, making friends can help your career. For many of my featured interview guests here on The Social Academic, the people they’ve met through social media and having an online presence has quite literally been life changing.
6. Seeing what you create is fun (even when it’s not very good) – Think “Nailed it!”
There are fun games on The Circle. Some games are meant to help you learn more about your contestants, so you can make more informed decisions when ranking your fellow players. You see, the ranking determines who is an influencer that week. And it’s the influencers who decide who goes home.
I love that on The Circle one of the activities they get to do is crafting! In past years, contestants have decorated a cake and drawn portraits of each other. This year they got to design their own outfit on a mannequin. Their outfit was meant to express their personality. The judge for this design activity was Tan France from Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. And people had fun with it! During the judging the contestants had big smiles, thinking about the friends they’ve grown close to wearing some of the over-the-top outfits that fit their personalities to a T.
What you share about yourself doesn’t have to be a text-only post on social media. When you add a photo or video of something that you’re up to, especially something you create, people get really engaged.
People love seeing what you make, even if it’s not very good. You might have heard of another popular Netflix show called Nailed It! where contestants try and fail in incredibly hilarious ways to make impossible desert creations from Jacque Torres.
Seeing what you create is fun, especially when it’s not very good. I want you to apply this thought to social media. Stop trying to get the perfect selfie. Your video is never going to be perfect. People want to see your messy desk, your haphazard office bookshelf, not a picture perfect ‘magazine’ shot of your space. They want to see your struggles and failures if you’re willing to share them. They’ll relate to any post that is authentically you.
7. More people know about you / care about you than you might think.
On this new season of The Circle Netflix, Shooby returned as a catfish. And after the rebellion, it was no surprise that Shooby was voted out of The Circle. The influencers saw through him and felt that he didn’t make a convincing woman teacher named Sasha. They thought he was a catfish. And they were right.
When you’re eliminated from The Circle on Netflix, you get the opportunity to visit one other contestant in The Circle. You get to see the person behind the profile and have a candid conversation about the competition. Shooby thought hard about who he should visit before leaving The Circle. He chose to visit another player called Jennifer.
I’m telling you about this episode because I thought it was really cute. Shooby expected Jennifer to be a middle-aged blonde woman. Much to his surprise, Jennifer turned out to be not one, but two players staying in the same apartment and sharing the Jennifer profile. Shooby discovered that the two players pretending to be Jennifer had been the first to be eliminated from this season of The Circle, on Day 1. They were subject of a double elimination, and given the opportunity from The Circle to come back as a catfish, named Jennifer. Their real names behind the Jennifer profile are Brett and Xanthi.
You might know Brett Robinson if you’re a fan of the reality competition show, Big Brother. Earlier in this season of The Circle, Brett was talking with Xanthi about Shooby. He said, “Shooby can’t possibly be as nice as he seems in real life.”
If you haven’t watched Season 1 of The Circle, Shooby comes across as the sweetest person. He doesn’t like social media. If you look at his Instagram profile, he shares low resolution selfies and photos of his family. Even though he came in last in the rankings on Day 1, he made it to the end of the game being himself. So this season when Brett said, “Shooby can’t possibly be as nice as he seems,” it was because Shooby seemed SO NICE. Maybe even too nice. Like it was maybe too good to be true?
Well, they came face to face when Shooby chose to visit Jennifer before his exit from season 5 of The Circle. It was an interaction full of excitement and open admiration. Brett and Xanthi got super excited to see a player they were fans of. They enthusiastically shared their own journey in The Circle with Shooby.
Tip number 7 is that more people know about you and care about you than you think. When Shooby entered the apartment to meet Jennifer, he recognized the man standing in front of him and said, “Brett! I’m a fan.”
Brett’s face when he realized Shooby knew who he was – it was adorable! The recognition and admiration was real between the two. And when Shooby finally made his departure from The Circle, Brett jumped up and down and said, “He knew who I was! Shooby knew who I was, did you see that?” Brett and Shooby were reality stars on separate shows. And, they were fans of each other without knowing it.
More people know who you are than you might think. More people care about you, and your research, and what you share on social media than you know.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to the people you admire most. Tell them why you care about them. Tell them how they touched your life. Nothing bad can come from telling someone they matter to you.
One of my clients, an amazing professor, was catching up with me on Zoom. He said he’d just come home from an academic conference and more than one person introduced themselves to him. And they had read his bio, explored his website, and even read his research. He was literally recruited for a job at the conference because someone was able to learn about him and his research. They were excited to meet him. Your online presence invites more people to know about you, and to care about your research.
I could talk about The Circle all day. It was hard to narrow my list down to just 7 tips to share with you. I’m going to run through the full list for of tips for you now:
People don’t know anything about you when they come across your profile for the 1st time. Have photos on your profile that show your personality.
Remember things about the people you talk with to help you have deeper conversations.
People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
Nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about yourself.
Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you.
Seeing what you create is fun (even when it’s not very good) – Think “Nailed it!”
More people know about you / care about you than you might think.
The conversations you have online build real relationships with real people, people that can impact your life. People that can help you, people who you can help. The Circle is just a reality show on Netflix, but it can teach us so many things about creating deeper relationships on social media. And, in real life.
I hope that you watch an episode of The Circle. Or, binge watch the whole series! If you do, let me know. Maybe you’re a super fan like me! If you’ve watched The Circle before, but you didn’t pay close attention, go back and watch an episode to see what people say about the posts they read. I love seeing their reactions to what they see in the Circle Chat, and hearing what they think about what they’ll say in the chat, before they say it. What I noticed each season is that you can’t control what other people think about what you say. You can control what you say, when you say it, and how open you are with what you share.
I hope you love The Circle as much as me. Thanks for listening to this episode. If you’re ready to take control of your social media life, I would love to talk with you. My online presence services for professors are here to help you make greater impact with your research and teaching in efficient ways that fit into your busy life. I want you to feel confident when talking about yourself online. I want you to feel your authentic self is enough, that you are who people want to see.
I have so many amazing Ideas to share with you on The Social Academic podcast this year. So, please subscribe to the podcast, blog, or YouTube channel. If what I’m sharing resonates with you, please share it with a friend. And do reach out to me! I would love to hear from you. You can find me on social media @HigherEdPR.
What can we learn from watching reality tv? Well, quite a bit. Today I’m going to talk about 7 things you can learn from The Circle, a reality television show about social media on Netflix.
Hi there, I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I help professors feel confident when showing up online. I empower them to build an online presence so they can help more people with their research and teaching. Welcome to The Social Academic, my podcast about your digital footprint as a professor in Higher Education.
Now, if you’re on my mailing list you may have seen my email about my application to be on The Circle Netflix. If you’re watching the new season, you already know that I did not make the cut. But I love this show, and learn so much from watching it. So, I’m excited to talk with you about The Circle today. I still have my fingers crossed that I’ll appear on a future season. Seriously, my goal is to be on a Netflix show in my lifetime.
What is your online presence? It’s what people can find about you when searching your name online. It’s what people can discover about your research and the work you most care about. I’d love to help you have the online presence you deserve in 2024. Let’s talk about working together on your website, social media, or bio writing.
First, let me tell you a little bit about The Circle because I know some of you may not have watched this show before. By the end of this episode of The Social Academic podcast, you’re going to go and watch The Circle. This is one of my favorite shows, and I hope you love it too.
The Circle Netflix is a competition reality show where strangers move into an apartment building where they can only communicate with each other through a closed social media network called The Circle. Each person gets their own Circle profile where they can share a bio and a profile photo. Here’s the thing, if you’re in The Circle there’s no way to tell if the other contestants you see there are real, or if they’re catfish. Some people enter The Circle as themselves. Other people enter The Circle with a fake profile they think will advance them further in the game. The winner of The Circle gets a cash prize and bragging rights.
I love reality television. I especially enjoy watching The Circle because contestants build real relationships through chat, interactive games, and virtual parties. Because contestants interact with The Circle by speaking their messages out loud (it’s a voice-activated social media network), we get to see their reaction to the Circle Chat when a new post is shared. They also verbalize their thinking before sharing their own messages in the chat.
This will be a fun episode of The Social Academic, so pop some popcorn, take a seat, and listen up. We’re about to dive into 7 things you can learn about social media and building relationships from watching The Circle on Netflix.
1. People don’t know anything about you when they come across your profile for the 1st time. Have photos on your profile that show your personality.
When you enter The Circle you don’t know anything about the other contestants. If you’re coming on the show, you’re aware that there are other people in the same apartment building you are. But, each of you walk into your own uniquely designed apartment. You get a few minutes to explore before The Circle sends you an Alert.
The 1st Alert invites contestants to set up their profile on The Circle. That way, other contestants in the building can learn a little bit about them when they engage in conversations in the Circle Chat.
Choosing what to include on your profile is so important. The people who are visiting your profile don’t know anything about you. The first thing that you can learn from watching The Circle on Netflix is that having photos on your profile that show your personality makes a big difference. Your photo is the first thing that people see about you on social media.
I love getting to hear contestants talk about which profile photo they’re choosing. When you’re looking at your photos trying to decide which one to use as your profile photo, think about which shows your personality best. What are you trying to communicate with your profile? Think about the outfit that you’re wearing, what kind of expression is on your face, and what’s in the background.
When you have a profile photo that shares your personality, people learn a little bit more about you instantly. Your profile photo leaves a lasting impression on social media.
For academics, sharing a photo of yourself on social media helps people recognize you. If you’re headed to a conference and tweet about your talk, you want your fellow conference attendees to be able to learn a bit about you. And it’s great if they can see a photo of your smiling face.
2. Remember things about the people you talk with to help you have deeper conversations.
The Circle on Netflix is a closed social media platform. You might compare it to Slack or MightyNetworks. You can only engage in conversations with people through the general Circle Chat and through direct messages, messages which can be with one or more people.
Having conversations with people in The Circle is the only way to build your relationships. And yes, this does advance you in the game. But it also deepens your relationships in real life. Whether these people, the other contestants in The Circle, are catfish or not, the conversations you have with them are real.
The only way that you can learn about the people in The Circle is by having conversations with them. My second tip is that remembering things about the people you talk with helps you have deeper conversations. What do I mean by deeper? Well, more meaningful, lasting, and relationship-building conversations.
For the competition in The Circle on Netflix, this makes a lot of sense. When people give you more information, they might slip up and let you know that they’re a catfish. They might let you know about who their friends are and who they are most loyal to. They also might share a story that you can relate to, something that tells you about who they are, what they care about, and why they are here. What you share with people in The Circle, can help the influencers each week decide if you should stay or be voted out of The Circle.
Whether you’re on a closed social media platform like Slack, or a public network like LinkedIn, Remembering the conversations you have will help you have deeper, more meaningful relationships. Networking is all in the details.
Academics, you have so much to remember, I get it. I’m not saying memorize what people tell you. One way to help you remember the details about the people you meet is to see if you can find 1 way you connect with them. One thing you have in common. Maybe it’s a shared research interest. Maybe you both like dogs. You’re more likely to remember something you share, something you have in common, so that’s my tip for you!
3. People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
I realize I just mentioned catfish in The Circle and I didn’t quite explain what that is. A catfish is someone on social media who is pretending to be not themselves. Someone is “catfishing” when they have a profile on social media that does not reflect who they are in real life.
This is different from an anonymous account, where a person chooses not to share their real name. “Catfishing” is intentionally appearing as a different person. The term grew in popularity after the MTV show Catfish Began in 2008. The show is now on its 8th season where the show’s hosts uncover fake profiles of people in romantic relationships where one person is catfishing the other online. One thing I find notable about the show Catfish, is that many of the people who have fake profiles have real feelings. Even though the person is fake, oftentimes the relationship is based in real emotion.
On The Circle Netflix, being a catfish might help you make a lot of money if you make it to the end of the game. However, it can also hurt you to be a catfish. This is because of tip number 3. People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
And yeah, okay, in real life this is a little bit easier now that we have video chat. But in The Circle on Netflix, you don’t have this option. You can’t see if someone’s real. You can’t even hear their voice. You can only go by what they share with you in the chat and on their profile.
At some point on every season of The Circle, some contestants hunt catfish. They’re looking for fake profiles. It’s an easy reason to vote someone off of the game. And may help you determine if you can trust someone to be loyal to you (or not). So if you are thinking about applying to be on The Circle you can totally be a catfish. You’ll probably have a fun time playing. Just know that it’s hard to convince people you’re someone you’re not. Authenticity shines through. People want to see you. And they get suspicious if they can’t tell who you are.
One of my professor clients wanted to know if they should have an anonymous account on social media. When I asked why, she said, “I’m not sure if I’m allowed to have a social media account. But I don’t want to miss out.” It’s not the 1st time I’ve heard this from an academic, so I said, “That’s probably not the case, but since you’re worried, let’s figure out who to ask.” Luckily her university had a great social media manager who had contact information accessible on the university website. When they got back to the professor, she learned that the university would love for her to be on social media. I was delighted! Of course I wanted her to be on social media. But I don’t recommend anonymous social media profiles if you can help it because people just aren’t sure who you are. They want you to be yourself.
4. Nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about yourself.
What really sets the good catfish apart from the catfish who get caught on The Circle is how they open up about themselves. Tip number 4 is that nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about who you are and what you care about.
The season finale aired today. Yes! I watched it before recording this episode. I won’t tell you who won. At the end of the show everyone from the season, including eliminated players, return to meet in person in a luxurious lounge with host of The Circle, Michelle Buteau. Two of the players take a quick moment for an aside. Tom Haughton, a British comedian, thanks his fellow player, Chaz Lawry, a Los Angeles entrepreneur, by saying: “You were the 1st person to show me that being open is key to forming relationships.”
People get pretty deep on The Circle on Netflix. People have conversations about life defining moments, loss, trauma, family, and the values that matter most to them. The friendships that you make in The Circle determine how well you do in the game. The deeper your friendships are, the more likely you are to stay in the game.
When academics open up about their research, they can only help more people. When you share your story, you invite people to engage deeper. You invite people to care.
When you open up about yourself, and tell your friends and colleagues about yourself, it makes a big difference for your real life. This is because people will better know what you care about, how to help you, and how you can help others.
5. Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you.
That loyalty brings us to tip number 5. Your friends will stick up for you. They’ll go to bat to protect you. The deeper your relationship is with your friend, the more likely they are to protect you with everything they can. Spoiler alert.
On The Circle Netflix, contestants build alliances with each other to help their friends stay in the game. Sometimes, the game forces you to do something you might not otherwise. For instance on this season an O.G. player, Shubham Goel, AKA “Shooby,” who was a fan favorite from season 1, returned. Pretending to be a sexy young woman named Sasha, Shooby made the mistake of trying to start a “rebellion” of the newer players in The Circle.
His reasoning was that the players on The Circle who arrived on day one, had more opportunity to build loyalty with each other, over the newer players. So, the new players should bad together to ensure their spot at the final table.
Why did this backfire? When Shooby was first on The Circle, he was loved by all the players. He was so nice, open, and thoughtful, that people loved who he was. Even though he didn’t win his season of The Circle, Shooby is one of the most well-known personalities because of his authenticity. When Shooby asked to return to The Circle this season, the producers said yes, but he had to be a catfish. Not being able to be his authentic self hurt Shooby in the game. He didn’t have the social capital it takes, the loyalty needed for a rebellion.
You see, other people in the Rebellion Chat had already built up loyalty with their other friends in The Circle. People they met before Shooby’s fake profile, “Sasha” entered the game. This meant that by the time Shooby approached them for the rebellion these Circle contestants were no longer interested in turning on their friends.
Shooby thought that his Rebellion would create new loyalties based on shared goals to do everything it takes to win. But doing what would have worked best for these players in the game, joining the Rebellion of new players, didn’t happen because people felt loyal to their original alliances. Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you when given the opportunity.
This is true in real life too. You may have seen on Twitter that one of my tweets at the end of 2022 went viral. Let me tell you, people had a lot of opinions. And they shared their opinions with me. Many of their feelings were negative. People didn’t like what I had to say.
There’s a cute coffee mug from Social Media Tea that reads,” you can’t handle going viral, I promise.” That’s me. I couldn’t handle going viral. At least, I felt that way at the time. I was getting dozens of notifications every minute with people angry at me for speaking the truth. For sharing something that was important to me because of equity, which I value highly.
Here’s the thing, I could handle going viral. I could handle it because of my friends. I got more messages of support from people who care about me, from friends, from people who read The Social Academic, and clients whose lives I’ve transformed. In 2 days, I got more messages of support than I’ve ever gotten in my life. Even from strangers who saw my viral tweet and felt empowered to ask for equity in pay for their speaking engagements for the 1st time. The outpouring of love and support made going viral bearable. And, people were open that they were reporting some of the disgusting, racist tweets people said to me. Friends told me that what I do matters. That I’m helping the world. I could handle going viral, because of them. The support of people you care about means so much more than the anger of people you don’t know. At least, that’s how it was for me.
In the weeks following my viral tweet, I saw not one but five friends and former clients, people I truly admire, go viral in a negative way for something they shared. If this happens to you mute that conversation. Take care of yourself. And, ask your friends for help. People can only help if you open up to them.
On The Circle Netflix, your friends want to stick up for you and help however they can. If you ask for help, they’ll be better aware and will help if they are able.
For academics, making friends can help your career. For many of my featured interview guests here on The Social Academic, the people they’ve met through social media and having an online presence has quite literally been life changing.
6. Seeing what you create is fun (even when it’s not very good) – Think “Nailed it!”
There are fun games on The Circle. Some games are meant to help you learn more about your contestants, so you can make more informed decisions when ranking your fellow players. You see, the ranking determines who is an influencer that week. And it’s the influencers who decide who goes home.
I love that on The Circle one of the activities they get to do is crafting! In past years, contestants have decorated a cake and drawn portraits of each other. This year they got to design their own outfit on a mannequin. Their outfit was meant to express their personality. The judge for this design activity was Tan France from Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. And people had fun with it! During the judging the contestants had big smiles, thinking about the friends they’ve grown close to wearing some of the over-the-top outfits that fit their personalities to a T.
What you share about yourself doesn’t have to be a text-only post on social media. When you add a photo or video of something that you’re up to, especially something you create, people get really engaged.
People love seeing what you make, even if it’s not very good. You might have heard of another popular Netflix show called Nailed It! where contestants try and fail in incredibly hilarious ways to make impossible desert creations from Jacque Torres.
Seeing what you create is fun, especially when it’s not very good. I want you to apply this thought to social media. Stop trying to get the perfect selfie. Your video is never going to be perfect. People want to see your messy desk, your haphazard office bookshelf, not a picture perfect ‘magazine’ shot of your space. They want to see your struggles and failures if you’re willing to share them. They’ll relate to any post that is authentically you.
7. More people know about you / care about you than you might think.
On this new season of The Circle Netflix, Shooby returned as a catfish. And after the rebellion, it was no surprise that Shooby was voted out of The Circle. The influencers saw through him and felt that he didn’t make a convincing woman teacher named Sasha. They thought he was a catfish. And they were right.
When you’re eliminated from The Circle on Netflix, you get the opportunity to visit one other contestant in The Circle. You get to see the person behind the profile and have a candid conversation about the competition. Shooby thought hard about who he should visit before leaving The Circle. He chose to visit another player called Jennifer.
I’m telling you about this episode because I thought it was really cute. Shooby expected Jennifer to be a middle-aged blonde woman. Much to his surprise, Jennifer turned out to be not one, but two players staying in the same apartment and sharing the Jennifer profile. Shooby discovered that the two players pretending to be Jennifer had been the first to be eliminated from this season of The Circle, on Day 1. They were subject of a double elimination, and given the opportunity from The Circle to come back as a catfish, named Jennifer. Their real names behind the Jennifer profile are Brett and Xanthi.
You might know Brett Robinson if you’re a fan of the reality competition show, Big Brother. Earlier in this season of The Circle, Brett was talking with Xanthi about Shooby. He said, “Shooby can’t possibly be as nice as he seems in real life.”
If you haven’t watched Season 1 of The Circle, Shooby comes across as the sweetest person. He doesn’t like social media. If you look at his Instagram profile, he shares low resolution selfies and photos of his family. Even though he came in last in the rankings on Day 1, he made it to the end of the game being himself. So this season when Brett said, “Shooby can’t possibly be as nice as he seems,” it was because Shooby seemed SO NICE. Maybe even too nice. Like it was maybe too good to be true?
Well, they came face to face when Shooby chose to visit Jennifer before his exit from season 5 of The Circle. It was an interaction full of excitement and open admiration. Brett and Xanthi got super excited to see a player they were fans of. They enthusiastically shared their own journey in The Circle with Shooby.
Tip number 7 is that more people know about you and care about you than you think. When Shooby entered the apartment to meet Jennifer, he recognized the man standing in front of him and said, “Brett! I’m a fan.”
Brett’s face when he realized Shooby knew who he was – it was adorable! The recognition and admiration was real between the two. And when Shooby finally made his departure from The Circle, Brett jumped up and down and said, “He knew who I was! Shooby knew who I was, did you see that?” Brett and Shooby were reality stars on separate shows. And, they were fans of each other without knowing it.
More people know who you are than you might think. More people care about you, and your research, and what you share on social media than you know.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to the people you admire most. Tell them why you care about them. Tell them how they touched your life. Nothing bad can come from telling someone they matter to you.
One of my clients, an amazing professor, was catching up with me on Zoom. He said he’d just come home from an academic conference and more than one person introduced themselves to him. And they had read his bio, explored his website, and even read his research. He was literally recruited for a job at the conference because someone was able to learn about him and his research. They were excited to meet him. Your online presence invites more people to know about you, and to care about your research.
Wrap up
I could talk about The Circle all day. It was hard to narrow my list down to just 7 tips to share with you. I’m going to run through the full list for of tips for you now:
People don’t know anything about you when they come across your profile for the 1st time. Have photos on your profile that show your personality.
Remember things about the people you talk with to help you have deeper conversations.
People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
Nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about yourself.
Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you.
Seeing what you create is fun (even when it’s not very good) – Think “Nailed it!”
More people know about you / care about you than you might think.
The conversations you have online build real relationships with real people, people that can impact your life. People that can help you, people who you can help. The Circle is just a reality show on Netflix, but it can teach us so many things about creating deeper relationships on social media. And, in real life.
I hope that you watch an episode of The Circle. Or, binge watch the whole series! If you do, let me know. Maybe you’re a super fan like me! If you’ve watched The Circle before, but you didn’t pay close attention, go back and watch an episode to see what people say about the posts they read. I love seeing their reactions to what they see in the Circle Chat, and hearing what they think about what they’ll say in the chat, before they say it. What I noticed each season is that you can’t control what other people think about what you say. You can control what you say, when you say it, and how open you are with what you share.
I hope you love The Circle as much as me. Thanks for listening to this episode. If you’re ready to take control of your social media life, I would love to talk with you. My online presence services for professors are here to help you make greater impact with your research and teaching in efficient ways that fit into your busy life. I want you to feel confident when talking about yourself online. I want you to feel your authentic self is enough, that you are who people want to see.
I have so many amazing Ideas to share with you on The Social Academic podcast this year. So, please subscribe to the podcast, blog, or YouTube channel. If what I’m sharing resonates with you, please share it with a friend. And do reach out to me! I would love to hear from you. You can find me on social media @HigherEdPR.
