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Sept. 14, 2023

94: Engage to Excel: Unleashing the Power of Engageli in Education with Academic Engagement Specialist, Nisha Abraham

94: Engage to Excel: Unleashing the Power of Engageli in Education with Academic Engagement Specialist, Nisha Abraham

Episode Overview

In this episode of EdUp EdTech Host Holly Owens interviews Nisha Abraham Academic Engagement Specialist at Engageli. We dive into the comprehensive learning environment that Engageli provides through its innovative approach that ensures learning remains captivating and interactive, maximizing the potential of every learner. 

Nisha shares more about how Engageli is working to incorporate AI to improve learner outcomes and efficiency. She believes the future of EdTech lies in automating certain tasks to allow educators to focus more on human connection and meeting all learners’ needs. 

About Nisha Abraham

Nisha Abraham is an Experienced Program Manager and Learning Specialist with a demonstrated history of working in higher education, industry, and entrepreneurship. Skilled in learning theory, teacher training and development, and peer-assisted learning. Nisha has a Master's degree focused in Biology/Biological Sciences from Texas A&M University and a Master's degree in STEM Education from the University of Texas at Austin.  

Connect with Nisha Abraham on LinkedIn and Follow Engageli on Facebook⁠ and ⁠LinkedIn.  

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Connect with the hosts: Holly Owens & Nadia Johnson

EdUp EdTech - We make EdTech Your Business!

Thanks for tuning in!

Thanks for joining us on today’s episode of EdUp EdTech! If you enjoyed today’s episode, please visit our website and leave us a rate and review to help us reach even more fantastic audience members like you. Don’t forget to check out our website, visit us on LinkedIn, or hang out with us on Facebook or Instagram to stay up-to-date on the latest EdTech happenings.


Connect with the hosts: Holly Owens & Nadia Johnson

EdUp EdTech - We make EdTech Your Business!

Thanks for tuning in!

Thanks for joining us on today’s episode of EdUp EdTech! If you enjoyed today’s episode, please visit our website and leave us a rate and review to help us reach even more fantastic audience members like you. Don’t forget to check out our website, visit us on LinkedIn, or hang out with us on Facebook or Instagram to stay up-to-date on the latest EdTech happenings.

Transcript

Holly Owens (00:02):

Hello everyone, and welcome to another amazing episode of Edup Ed Tech. My name is Holly Owens and I'm your host. And today we have an engaging guest with us.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (00:16):

We

Holly Owens (00:16):

Have Nisha Abraham, she's an academic engagement specialist at Engage Lee Nisha, welcome to the show. So

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (00:24):

Sorry, my phone went off. I hope that did not. No,

Holly Owens (00:27):

It's Fine. It's authentic. Let's just go with it because the dog's going to start barking soon. This is what we're going to have for our episode, so it's all good.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (00:35):

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I

Holly Owens (00:40):

Can't wait to talk to you because I've already seen a demo of the product and I got to talk to Gil, but I'm really excited to talk to you and get insights from you all about it. But first we want to tell the audience about you. Tell us about your journey into this space. How did you become an academic engagement specialist with Engage? Engage?

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (00:59):

Oh, amazing. Thank you so much for asking. Yes, so my name is Nisha Abraham. My pronouns are she and her, and I'm so excited to be on the podcast and kind of talking about of course, engage, but certainly my journey as well to kind how I got to engage Lee, what an academic engagement specialist is, all of that kind of stuff. So I started my educational and professional journey actually as a scientist. So as a biology major, I started in science, really thought I wanted to be a professor, an academic. My father is an academic and I watched him teach and be so passionate about teaching. And so I finished my undergraduate degree, went into my first graduate program, and I was very quickly hit by this overwhelming desire to do the teaching side of the academia, but really not as interested in the research capacity of being in the lab.

(01:53):

I really liked being around people. I really liked engaging and teaching. And also what it exposed to me was some of the gaps that I experienced in my undergraduate experience, some of the courses that I took, some of the difficulties that I experienced and I think that a lot of undergraduates experienced of course in this country, but everywhere in science programs and in all different types of programs. And so I really discovered a passion for improving teaching effectiveness in higher ed. And so that really led me, so I went to the University of Texas at Austin for my undergrad and I kind of went back there and worked at the learning. I love Your story so far and I have so much to

Holly Owens (02:31):

Share with you. I'm loving it. Just keep going, but it's awesome. I Know I've told this story before. I actually did a podcast at UT Austin, so I worked at the learning Center. We did academic support for students,

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (02:44):

And so I learned a lot about what effective teaching is and was able to share that. And when I did the podcast there, that was for student support. And I can't tell you how many adults I meet that A, when I talk about working at a learning center or when I talk about this sort of windy, windy path I took, they have this sense of relief because students feel that way. Even adults who are in their second or third career paths are like, oh my gosh, it's not just me. I didn't make a mistake. We all have that. A lot of us have a different journey that we end up on. So I certainly shifted gears and then I shifted gears again. So when I was at the learning center, I was there when the pandemic hit and there was just so much going on.

(03:26):

We had to transform all of our programs into virtual programs. I worked with a lot of faculty and there was just so much overwhelm of how do I convert my course to zoom or to whatever platform we're using. And so I spent a lot of time really learning the tech so that I could more effectively help folks really convert their teaching to a virtual platform. And also in my research, what I found was so interesting is there are people out there who have been doing virtual learning for decades way, way before the pandemic. And those people were way ahead of the curve and they really were like, oh, this is all old hat. And so what I really found interesting in my journey, again at the kind of tail end of my career at UT was kind of helping people shift from this concept of emergency teaching, which is like I just got to get in that Zoom meeting and make sure people have access versus how can I actually effectively teach when I'm not in the same physical room as my students or they're all over the world and in a way that engages them in a way that actually assesses them well, that gives them maybe a little bit more of a human connection.

(04:36):

That was really, I think one of the biggest things that we grieved as a entire field. The teaching field was like, I just don't have that connection with my students and it feels super isolating.

(04:48):

So spent a lot of time doing that, and at the end of 2021, I got this opportunity at gly and it is a startup. And so came in again, they were really expanding into higher ed and they were looking for somebody who was going to be able to help scale folks learning how to use gly. And I know one of your next questions is what is Engage? But Yes, but we're going to talk a little bit about EdTech first. I mean, you've talked about it quite a bit, but yes. Yeah, so that's kind my windy, windy path. I like to always talk about it because I think it gives people a sense of where I came from, but also hopefully sets that stage of, I've had, I mean, several different pivots. I've worked in business incubators, I've worked in biotech, I've worked in industry, academia, higher ed now in ed tech. There's a lot of fields and I've only benefited from doing all of those different things. I think I've only gained as opposed to feeling like, oh, there was a loss there. Yeah,

Holly Owens (05:49):

I feel like from every position, no matter how long you're there, you take something with you from those positions. And we have a lot of similarities in our past. I was initially a bio major, I couldn't do the organic chemistry.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (06:05):

It's a tough class. It's a real weeded out class, and that's another reason why I was frustrated was do we need something that's a weeded out class? How do we better serve as opposed to finding ways to call students, let's support them. Let's get them through those courses so that we have a more diverse student body who's making it through those bio programs. Right?

Holly Owens (06:26):

Absolutely. It's so demeaning sometimes when you get in those situations and you kind of know what's happening,

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (06:32):

But it was like, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that had to shift majors and things like that, so we could definitely get into conversations about that for sure. But

Holly Owens (06:42):

Yeah, you take something with you. I feel like from every position that you've learned, you take the good things and the strengths that you gain

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (06:48):

And you apply that to the other position. It's like you're just building each

Holly Owens (06:51):

Time, which is

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (06:52):

Amazing, your

Holly Owens (06:53):

Career,

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (06:54):

A

Holly Owens (06:54):

Lot of different spaces.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (06:56):

Yeah, and again, I think one of the biggest things I think I always took away, I remember I interviewed with, I was working, like I said, at a business incubator, and it was a part-time role. I think it was 25, 30 hours. And the person interviewing me was like, I'm really surprised. Maybe most of the folks that worked in that role were in master's programs. And so they were doing that on top of an actual academic program, but I was working several different jobs trying to cobble things together, and she said, I really admire your risk taking. And I was like, I hadn't thought of it that way. But then after the fact I was like, you're right. That was kind of risky to take this opportunity that I knew. I mean, remember being, I was without health insurance. I mean, this was in my late twenties, and I was like, I'm still going to do this because Scary stuff. And I will just, the big caveat here is I experienced a lot of privilege in this world. I was in my early late twenties and I was in relatively good health, and I think I was able to take that risk and I had some cushion, some safety nets in place, but not everybody has that option. But if you can pivot and you have the opportunity to take a risk, I always say try it out. You can't know

(08:16):

What's going to come out of that experience. I mean, I got some really amazing experiences through some of the most kind of random jobs that I've had in my career. So yeah, You're

Holly Owens (08:26):

Definitely going to motivate people to take the risk because just by what you're saying and all the different experiences you've had, I'm like, oh, this looks like fun to get into. Yes, we definitely want to talk about Engage Lee and what it does, but I want to know from you of your vast array of experience, how do you define educational technology?

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (08:46):

That's such a good question. And Lola is barking and she wants to know that everybody on the show that she's here and she's engaging as well. We are so excited to have her. I'm so excited to have her. I'll just say I'm a huge animal person. I don't have any pets right now. My cat passed away last year, and so I haven't had any pets, but so

Holly Owens (09:06):

Sorry. No, I know.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (09:08):

It's okay. But I mean, what I love about it is anytime I'm in even a Zoom meeting or in any kind of meeting and someone's dog is barking, I can't imagine anybody gets mad, but I'm just more like, will you show me your dog or show me your cat, or anything like that. So happy that she's here to join with us. But yeah, it's interesting. Edtech is such a, I mean, I'll be honest, I got these questions ahead of time. I was kind of thinking about it myself. I even did a quick Google search. I also really like to admit this is, I've been in a lot of fields. I think there's this concept of people should know everything about a field. I don't really believe in that. I think doing research and looking out in the field and thinking about what other people are saying about a field that you're in, there's nothing wrong with that. So I'll just admit, I did a quick Google search that I was like, what do other people say? Ed tech is

(10:00):

Huge field, huge arena. I think for me, I think I'm an educator foremost. So that ED part is really important to me. And so I remember when I was interviewing for Engage Lee, one of the things that I remember going and looking up was something called the triple E framework, which I'm not sure how familiar you are with that, but it's super helpful to assess educational technology. And that's really where I think I come from is the pedagogy and what you are trying to accomplish, the goals that you're looking to accomplish should always be the first thing that you're thinking about. And then it's what tool is right for that thing. And so I think too often we probably get wowed and amazed and we're so excited about all this sparkly Shiny things, Sparkly shiny things. And I mean, we're in a timeframe just to the elephant in the room, which is ai.

(10:56):

We're in a timeframe where there's so much happening that it's very easy to think, I have to use this tool, or I should use this tool, or somebody sent me this tool and I have to use it. And I think for me, I always try to come back to what is the pedagogical need here and then try to find the right tool. And that might not be even anything that complex. I remember again, I worked with this faculty member in biology and she used Mouse Trap, very old game that probably some people, if you're in the category that I'm in, you'll remember now. I know It. I know it. And she used that as a tool to teach people about cellular respiration and photosynthesis. And I think about that as EdTech. Technically, it is a piece of technology that you're using to help people visualize something, help people understand the concept.

(11:46):

So I think about that even that's something that, I don't want to call it rudimentary in a bad way, but something like that could technically be tech. So it's for me, yeah, ed tech, its purpose is to serve an educational purpose, of course. And so it's a huge vast field. But also I think the other thing that I really love about educational technology, when I was looking up the sort of definition, what I also loved about it was the concept that it's also any kind of technology you can use to assess educational situations or experiences, which I think often can get lost in the mix. We think of, I'm using a cool collaboration board, or I'm using something like ai. And again, do we have the right tool to assess whether that's necessary, whether that's working, is it providing any kind of benefit in terms of learning outcomes? I think all of that to me, All Encompasses. Yeah,

Holly Owens (12:42):

Absolutely. And I agree with you. A lot of the time people when they answer this question, they're like, oh, bringing in the technology piece of it, but technology, what is really what technology? Is it a device? Yes. Is it something like you could build something, whether that's physical or digital, all those different things encompasses. So I really like your definition, and

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (13:08):

It's so cool to hear that you crowdsourced some of the definitions and figure it out. I love it. I do the same thing. I chat G P T a lot of different things just to see

Holly Owens (13:17):

What Yeah, what Is out there. Yeah, what's out there and what people are saying about it. Some of these things are constantly changing, so the definition is constantly updating itself.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (13:28):

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think about someone in the time of Dewey would have said something really different about what EdTech is versus what we're saying today. So yeah, if you're kind of not keeping up with it and you're not, yeah, like you said, crowdsourcing, you might be missing something really interesting about ed tech and maybe being open to it. I think a lot of people are feeling, I would say, I think people across fields, but certainly in higher ed, I can see there's a lot of both anticipation and anxiety about ai. But I think if people give it a chance and try it out and understand a little bit more about what it can do, then maybe some of that anxiety will be alleviated. But yeah, that's just my personal thing is I

Holly Owens (14:10):

Like it.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (14:11):

I really just like to take away all the stigma of let's just talk to each other, try to understand this subject, this concept of expertise in a vacuum is really strange to me, and I don't really, I think it only limits us as a field. So

Holly Owens (14:26):

Absolutely. That's why this podcast exists to tell these stories and collaborate. Yeah,

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (14:32):

It's

Holly Owens (14:32):

Definitely one of the big reasons why, and I learned so much. We learned so much the audience too. Well, let's get into it because I can see myself going into often a tangent questions. I'm not going to do it because the audience and myself want to know more about engagement to tell us about the product, the services that you offer, how help educational institutions and beyond.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (14:54):

Absolutely. So gly is a comprehensive learning environment, and what I think is really interesting about it is that it is purpose built for teaching and learning. And one of the reasons I was very excited to join gly is so I sit as the academic engagement specialist. I can talk a little bit more about what I do specifically, but I sit on the learning and teaching team. And it's not always true that certain technology ed tech companies have a learning and teaching team. They might have a product team and things like that, but we kind of sit between product and business and we hold a lot of learning expertise, learning science. My boss, Andrea, Tracy Bloom, she has a PhD from Stanford, and she was a former Coursera person. And so we have a lot of expertise in our department, and that's really how Engage was built with this concept of teaching and learning in mind as opposed to a meeting or a web conferencing platform.

(15:54):

So it's really unique in that way. It is built to enable improving learner outcomes. And we have a plethora of different kind of pieces or parts of the product, so we can serve people who are wanting to do synchronous things, asynchronous things, virtual hybrid. We have kind of a lot of different pieces of it. And we build, most of our tools are native, so our engineering team is really small but mighty. They have designed these native tools to really drive engagement through active learning, through peer-to-peer learning, fostering community. And then the other big piece that I'll say about engagement is we're really data focused. So we have this plethora of both real time data as well as post session data that can really provide people teaching or people facilitating in the corporate space, real insight into what is going on during your sessions, learner behavior, participation engagement, and so that you can really iterate and improve what you're doing Right now. I feel like a lot of people are just sort of unclear of are things working? Are people getting what they need out of their sessions? So the way that Engage Lee works, I really like to use an in-person

Holly Owens (17:11):

Synonym or I like to use

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (17:12):

Analogies of in-person. So if you want to imagine engage, it is as if you are in a one classroom, and we have tables inside of that classroom. So if you imagine if you've ever been to an in-person conference or seminar and you're kind of in this big hall and you've got these little tables, you go sit with some people. And so that's really what Engage Lee offers is these little tables that you can have up to 10 people per table. And what we use is the audio to really switch between having an all group experience to then having small groups. So you can create these little cones of silence around every table, and that allows that table to just speak to and talk to each other, work on things together. So you can have table based artifacts like Google Docs or you can have whiteboards or lots of different features there.

(18:01):

We have all the same features that probably other tools have chat q and a, et cetera. And then one of my other favorite things is when you're in that table mode, you can speak to and be heard by the people at your table, but you're still always connected to the facilitator, so you still always see them. You're always able to raise your hand and kind of come to the front kind of again, that in-person experience, you kind of come up to the podium and say, Hey, I have a question, or I have a takeaway, or I want to share something, and everybody in the room can essentially hear you. So it kind of removes the, yeah, it Can be

Holly Owens (18:31):

Spotlighted on the stage or remember on the stage piece.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (18:35):

On the stage. Yes, absolutely. So that concept of shoving people into separate isolated rooms and you're like, I forgot the instructions. What was I supposed to do? Or you have maybe a group of folks who have all their cameras off and they're not talking. Instead of having that experience, you're still always connected to everybody else in the room. You can kind of see all the other folks and you can see the facilitator and your facilitator dictator can see, oh, I noticed table two. Holly's the only one who's unmuted. She's talking, but no one else is engaging with her. And I can jump in as a facilitator and say, Hey, it sounds like are folks confused? Can I clarify anything? Can I help manage this or provide some just in time intervention there? So I mean, it was one of the first things that I was blown away by when I was interviewing at Engage.

(19:25):

I just thought how much this could have served us in the pandemic. I know, right? Really needed this tool. And that's really again, where Danida, who's the founder, that's the original story of Engage. He had two daughters who are in college and high school at the time, and he just was absolutely disgruntled with their experience going through these learning experiences where I think he said one of his daughters was watching movies and the other one was playing video games while taking classes. So he just found it, why are people not engaging my children? And it's really hard to do in tools that are not built for that. And so that's really where Engage came from. And I can talk more about the roadmap. We do have a really amazing interactive recording experience. So if you record your sessions and folks can't attend the live session or even you want to create a completely asynchronous experience, people can go into something called a playback room and they can take part in almost everything that happened in the live session.

(20:30):

So for example, any polls that you ran, they can take part in it. Any Google docs, any whiteboards you use, that all appears and is able to be manipulated and edited in the playback room. And the big, big, big differentiator to me as a peer-to-peer person, peer-to-peer learning person, collaborative learning person, active learning person is that you can go into a playback room with up to 10 people. So rather than go in and watch passively a really passive recording and you click through some buttons and so on and so forth, you can go in there with a team of people. Let's say you have your team, you go in and you watch this really interactive recording, you can pause, you can chat, you can kind of solutionize together. It's a bunch of Cool

Holly Owens (21:15):

Stuff.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (21:16):

It's amazing. I mean, that was one of the biggest things for me as well, because again, I remember this in higher ed, kind of having faculty talk about, yeah, I'm creating these recordings and what's the data that I can get from this? I can get how much of the recording did they watch? And that was really the only metric that people had that students are taking part in classes. And it was like, that's the best we can do. There's so much more that people could be doing here. And so engagement has a really amazing kind of interactive reporting piece, and we're building so much more. It's coming up in the roadmap. Yes.

Holly Owens (21:51):

Let's talk about that because you're already doing a lot.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (21:55):

The

Holly Owens (21:55):

Tool already does a lot. So do you want to tell us kind of what's coming up in the upcoming six to 12 months, that way we can have you back to tell us what's been going on and get up more updates?

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (22:05):

Of course. So absolutely. As like I mentioned earlier, the elephant in the room that this concept of ai, and again, we don't want to just incorporate AI for the sake of it. We really want it to actually provide, we want to be intentional, we want to save time for instructors. We want to make it more efficient for learners to actually do their learning. And so we recently added AI summaries. So that is at the end of a class session, an instructor can get kind of an AI based summary of what happened over the course of the session, what was happening with learners, what instructors are doing. We actually have a really amazing note taking function, which is anything that is being shared on the screen. Learners can take notes and can kind of download them and contribute to them over the course of however long their courses.

(22:55):

And we have, again, like I said, a really mighty engineering team working on generating polls in real time. We're also working on a hybrid solution. You probably know the future of work is really, folks are going to be doing hybrid work these days. So in the corporate space, we have a lot of partners who are saying, I might even want to run my meetings on Engage Lee. I want to be able to do collaborative meetings because we know how many times have you heard, oh my God, this meeting could have been an email. I just needed to, There's meetings and there's shirts and all kinds of things and say that now, Isn't it always that there's a little thread of truth there? So I think we have groups who say, oh, engagement could be so beneficial so that we could actually have effective meetings. We could solutionize, we could brainstorm, we can do active things in our meetings together.

(23:50):

But as you know, we have folks, engage is a great example itself. We are a totally global company, and so often how do we get folks who are in different time zones to be in the same room together? We might not be able to use our async product or we might need to use our hybrid product where we have a team of engineers who are in Israel, for example, and they might need to be in a physical room and be able to be in a virtual meeting with the rest of us. So we're building out some of these products like the hybrid, the asynchronous, things like that. And then of course, AI is certainly something that we're excited to take to the next level. Oh, did we lose your audio?

Holly Owens (24:37):

No, my mic just wasn't on. That's what I can edit that out. The pause. I was like, what's happening? What's happening? No,

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (24:44):

No worries.

Holly Owens (24:46):

I'm really looking forward to that AI stuff. That's really cool. And I can't wait to, I just want to, after the demo, I just really wanted to get in my class and use it, but I was towards the end of the term, so I wasn't going to introduce something new. But in the spring I'm ready, and I know the audience is probably ready to try some things, so thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Well, I'll just say also something that's coming out is our free trial. So we will have a free trial

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (25:13):

Option. Great to ask. Great. So that is coming down the pike probably closer to the end of the year. And so that's an exciting thing. If you are teaching in the spring, at the end of fall, get in touch with us. We would love to give you access to a free trial classroom. You can test it out with your learners even if you do a class, just trying it out and seeing what it's like. And so to go back to what I do, a big part of my role is helping people learn how to use gly. So I create a lot of resources in terms of things like self-paced modules or ways that people can kind of guide themselves through gly. But I also do a lot of one-on-one training as well as group training. So if you and a group of instructors or faculty or again facilitators, if you're in a corporate space, you're like, I'm kind of interested in this, I want to check it out, please reach out. We'd love to. Absolutely. And we're going to put

Holly Owens (26:05):

Everything in the show notes where to go,

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (26:07):

Love it, and

Holly Owens (26:08):

What kind of support you need. If you need support, you want to demo, it's like I requested to chat and it was almost within a couple of days the chat was happening. So it was really awesome.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (26:21):

Oh yeah, absolutely. We are very excited to get, because again, part of this is also we want to get that people inside the platform to try it out and see what kind of use cases do people have. I remember we had this faculty member who was really excited. He said, I do this yearly debate with all my students and we do it virtually now, and we said, we have a panel function, so that'll work perfectly for you. And he was like, really? You have an actual panel function? And we're like, yes. And so it was like those kinds of things where it wasn't even part of his course that he's teaching, but just something, it's sort of a separate kind of afterschool program. And he was so excited to try it and we were so excited to have 'em test it out and try it out and see how it worked. So those are the kinds of things we're always looking for folks to test it out and also just give us new ideas of what people are looking for. Some of this is uncharted, right? There's so much more to expand. And so we really are looking to expand that.

Holly Owens (27:16):

Yeah. Oh my goodness. We could talk for a lot longer. I know that.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (27:21):

So we're going to come back and

Holly Owens (27:23):

We're going to talk. We're definitely going to talk more, but we're wrapping up here and I want to know, I have two final questions for you. I want to know if we miss anything. I don't feel like we did, but if we did, what did we miss and tell us about it. And then the final question is I want you to tell us what the future of EdTech looks like. You being an expert in this space and all your vast array of experience, tell us what the future is. Did we miss anything and what's the future?

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (27:48):

So I don't think you miss anything. I mean, like you said, I think I could probably talk for hours and hours about Engage League and just EdTech in general and where this field is going. But I think in a nutshell, engage is really trying to transform the virtual teaching and learning space. And that can be both corporate, that can be higher ed. That's really in whatever field you're in. If you have had an experience where you thought, I just didn't engage the folks that I was trying to engage with and I don't really know how to do that, or I really want to or have these ideas, reach out to us. If you just go to engage.com, that's really, and again, you're putting It all in the show notes too, Put it all in the show notes, but we're so excited to keep building this platform out and really serve the needs of people who we know were underserved in the past couple of years.

(28:41):

So that's really the only, that's my last kind of caveat, but what I'll say about the future of EdTech, in my opinion, and I think this is just true, this has been true probably for decades, and it's something that I think I like to say because I think it helps us kind of try to hold onto this concept, which is rather than being afraid of technology or where it's going, and of course I do think guardrails need to be put up and we need to make sure that we understand the technology and where it could go. But what I think an important place to focus is the concept that if we put some of the onus on the technology, we can put our attention towards the thing that is often missing, which is human connection. So I've said this so many times before in I've said in other podcasts, I've said it in trainings, I've said in other things is often that orchestration load that you are experiencing when you are teaching a class, when you are running, facilitating a session is this piece of technology where you're like, where is the share button and how do I,

Holly Owens (29:43):

There's all this stuff. What do I do? It's craziness. There's so much stuff.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (29:48):

And what we are trying to not just at Engage, but I think in EdTech is we're trying to build systems that kind of automate some of that to try to take off that load. And when you are able to use that technology really effectively and take that load off, think about how can I then build human connection? So that's what I would really challenge

(30:09):

Educators and facilitators and people who are in this field, is that's what has been missing in the past few years is not feeling that connection with people because maybe you felt like you were able to do that in an in-person situation and now we're doing all this virtual stuff, but it's totally possible. And there's some really amazing experts out there who really specialize in this. And so take some time to think about, if I were to able to offload some of this, literally the cognitive load of, oh, I got to press the buttons and remember where the thing is and whatever,

(30:43):

And you were able to use tools that automate all that, that really only leaves you with this great option of how do I connect now? How do I build community? How do I use things like U D L to really ensure that your sessions are meeting all of your learners' needs, not just neurotypical folks or whatever it is. So building accessibility, thinking about all learners, all folks, all your employees, whoever it is, and really meeting their needs there and that to meet that first place as human connection. So that's kind of what I would say. I think the future holds if we can all just remember that some of the point of this is to put the load on the technology. So that's what I'll say about that.

Holly Owens (31:25):

Absolutely. Oh, I love that. And just a streamlining of the workflows and things are just happening automatically. It just makes me feel better and opens up the creativity space and as you say, the human connection. Well, Nisha, I can't thank you enough for coming on and

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (31:44):

Talking about

Holly Owens (31:45):

All things. We could definitely talk about this longer. I'm going to have you back because I want to hear about what happens with the AI, and we want to hear about updates and definitely getting the free trial, everything out to our listening audience. And I really can't thank you enough for your time and just coming on the show and sharing all this with us.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (32:04):

No, I'm so happy that you invited us and we're happy to. Yeah, like I said, I'll share all of the information and would love to come back. We'd love to be able to update you all on all the progress we're making.

Holly Owens (32:16):

Awesome. Well, we'll definitely talk soon.

Nisha Abraham (she, her) (32:19):

Awesome.

 

Nisha AbrahamProfile Photo

Nisha Abraham

Academic Engagement Specialist

Nisha Abraham (she, her) has over fifteen years of combined industry, research and higher education experience, and before joining Engageli, worked as the Assistant Director of the Sanger Learning Center at The University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in instructional design, training and facilitation, and has served as an adjunct faculty member at South University. She received her B.S. in Cell and Molecular Biology from The University of Texas at Austin in 2007, her M.S. in Biology from Texas A&M University in 2012 and an M.A. in STEM Education from The University of Texas at Austin in 2019.