The future is hybrid. We have no other option than to rise to that very present reality.

Virtual and hybrid workspaces work. These practices have long worked pre-pandemic and have only seen vast improvement since 2020.

I was on staff at the New York City Council in the Office of the Speaker throughout the pandemic. As it became clear that hybrid and online events would become our reality for the next short while, I drafted a paper with recommendations to help influence how we strategize and produce authentic, high-level engagements in the virtual space. Throughout writing that proposal, it became apparent to me that it was less about changing the location from a physical space to a virtual one and more about expanding the opportunity for more people to be meaningfully engaged. Since stepping into teaching and taking on leadership roles in academia, I have been reflecting on how I could help be a small part of the movement championing inclusive and accessible environments on- and off-campus for staff and students alike.

If global security organizations, the White House, and other government executives, Fortune 500 corporations, and global advisory boards can function remotely, so can academia. Swaths of administrative and professional staff divisions already operate near-wholly online across organizations anyway.

Student inductions, academic conferences, staff training sessions, research interviews, mentorship sessions, and peer-to-peer group assignments already occur face-to-face (F2F)  online. Throughout COVID-19, instruction was moved online to models that adopted self-paced video content and F2F lectures. It’s important to note that cohorts of ‘Covid learners’ have successfully graduated and moved into the working world, proving the effectiveness of online learning.

And, yet, we still hear the old story: online engagement is not effective in academia; ‘Students don’t engage online,’ ‘Staff don’t show up to online events,’ and ‘in-person events are so much better.’

Respectfully, I disagree with those popular arguments and I’m here to convince you otherwise.

1. ‘Students don’t engage online.’ I don’t blame students for not engaging in online environments. As bell hooks would say, it is the responsibility of educators to inspire and encourage their students. A modern educator is a facilitator with high confidence in their digital savviness, is keen to listen as much as they speak, and is a role model whose lived experience and passion flagrantly translate through the screen. This demands radical and fearless innovation centered on compassion and empathy. Of course, there will be learners with poor internet connection and limited access to devices, but educators and their institutions can remedy this for those who need it. In New York City and other municipalities, Chromebooks and other devices were deployed to families en masse throughout the pandemic; accessibility features and user training sessions were aplenty and reflected a potential model for public-private partnership.
2. ‘Staff don’t show up to online events.’ Most staff are overworked and underpaid. Trade unions and institutional partners are working quickly to address this fundamental gap. In the meantime, learners and their families pay an exorbitant amount of money – higher education is commercialized, and it seems unlikely that that will change anytime soon. Online events save staff and students from costly transportation and personal expenses and contribute to a smaller carbon footprint. In reality, some will spend more time sitting in traffic or riding public transit than at in-person instruction or a meeting on campus. Remote or hybrid staff sessions allow staff with other jobs, caring responsibilities, or commitments outside the institution’s geolocation to remain engaged and connected. Robust and progressive corporate communications can help support engagement as well. It is incumbent upon senior staff and academic leaders to identify the most engaging and user-friendly software they can find to meet their communities’ needs – sometimes that’s Microsoft Teams, Google Hangout, or Zoom, but that depends entirely on budget and effort. Institutions are as responsible for motivating and empowering their staff as educators are for encouraging and empowering their learners.
3. ‘In-person events are so much better.’ It is ableist and selfish to dismiss hybrid or remote engagements altogether because one finds in-person events better. It’s also worth noting that ‘better’ is subjective, but that’s another argument. Some people will be more comfortable sharing a physical space with other individuals; in fact, they will find that they are more confident in these spaces. Sometimes, an individual’s savviness, access to a strong internet connection, or reliable hardware help justify their disdain or discomfort with remote or hybrid engagements. Their fears and technical confidence can be addressed in a supportive and compassionate way. Universities offer staff free in-person and online technical training workshops, as well as more informal activities and support to ensure that no one is wilfully left behind. Well-strategized and well-produced hybrid and virtual engagements can be even more engaging than strictly in-person events; virtual spaces enable new opportunities for meaningful sponsorship opportunities, too. If well-executed and budget allows, gift packs can be delivered to attendees and speakers beforehand to enable branded content and bring people together with similar items on the screen. 

More critically: the future of public speaking is audience engagement. Less ‘talk to me’ and more ‘chat with me’ – online spaces enable that dynamic to thrive but more equitably and with greater accessibility. This applies to academia as well.  The advent of AR and VR will only improve the emotional connection users feel in these shared spaces, opening up a world of possibilities. The five-day-long academic conference 3,500 miles away for three plenary sessions, two panels, and a handful of dinners can be as effective as a well-executed hybrid or online F2F engagement at a fraction of the cost and presents a greater opportunity to include those who might not usually be able to attend or to whom a physical trip presents too great of a challenge. It is also worth noting that there are a number of disabled speakers and organizers who would see greater opportunity to engage in virtual academic conferences than in-person sessions, so ensuring that we are intentional about ensuring there is space to hear from all – regardless of one’s abilities or geolocation – is essential in fostering an inclusive mindset.

It is important to recognize that presenter styles vary, and an in-person presenter is not necessarily trained to present or host an online or hybrid session. These skill sets require ongoing training to possess high confidence in virtual ecosystems. Academia has become so commercialized and rightfully scrutinized by those across the political spectrum for its inaccessible nature; partly because it fails to bring people in, academics are notoriously bad at communicating societal impact outside of extremes (see: climate change, ‘cancer-free pills’, internet privacy, et al.), and academia treats delivery as second to substance (when, in fact, the delivery and communication of scholarship is as important as the content itself). 

Tl;dr: academics must learn to be better presenters and learn how to become confident and competent in virtual engagement innovation

Accessibility & Inclusion:

• Accommodations for all
  • Captions, digital emoticons, transparent chat boxes, collaborative-style presentations, adjustable audio, visual cues, and the integration of accessibility tools create a more equitable and social environment.
    • Ex. Persona: An individual with visual or hearing impairments; an individual with caring responsibilities; a neurodivergent individual or an individual who faces difficulties understanding social cues; an individual with a neurological disability or special education needs, who may require additional time to process information; an individual with a mental health condition; an ESL learner
• Safety & Security
  • Our community and learning spaces often cannot accommodate those with physical disabilities or limited movement and restrictions. The physical location of engagements presents a substantial opportunity for growth while simultaneously potentially promoting significant challenges for our peers. It is as important to consider the location of engagements as the content and its delivery to your attendees and participants. It is ableist to exclude individuals from engagements and opportunities for social growth, networking, and community in any professional development or working space, especially academia
    • Ex. Persona: A student or a staff member who uses a wheelchair; a student with fibromyalgia, who may often face discomfort or anxiety walking up stairs in spaces that do not include lifts or escalators; a staff member with severe arthritis
• Preventing marginalization
  • In-person engagements see the ongoing perpetuation of heteronormative, misogynistic, antiblack, and elitist tropes that govern communication and exchange. Academics of color still report that those in academia who are racialized as white continue to minimize and trivialize the perspectives and scholarships of their peers of color while often dismissing their lived experiences altogether. A recent rise in the public discourse of ‘diversity hires’ and academia’s failure to confront or challenge this head-on while removing or watering down inclusion policies and teams presents a sobering reminder: academia remains a very unsafe space for staff and learners of color. Online engagements help address a number of issues that are difficult, if not impossible, to confront with traditional in-person engagements:
    • Everyone is seen.
      • In well-organized hybrid and virtual spaces, ignoring those traditionally excluded or ignored becomes more difficult. You cannot ignore the individual who raises their virtual hand on Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
      • The virtual ‘barrier’ instead becomes an aid tool for all. Those new to academic spaces find solace in seeing more diversity and those who look like them or share in their experiences front-and-center.
      • Individuals separated by time zones and geography find greater opportunities to connect and exchange regardless of where they may be physically located. Many students live many miles away from campus; extending an option for them to equitably contribute remotely is good practice. In reality, in practice, there are some students who pay to commute two to three hours for less than three hours of instruction, only to return to their home to contribute digitally in VLE spaces and digital tools.
      • In wholly virtual spaces, opportunities to network and get ‘face time’ are equally offered to all. Timers and meeting controls better facilitate engagements where women and people of color have more equitable face-time to contribute to conversations.

Looking ahead to the future of academia, it is unacceptable for institutions to permit wilful ignorance. The world of work demands not only tech-savvy, future-ready graduates but also digital innovators. It is paramount that families and educators in K-12 – and all those who work with under-18s – challenge learners (and themselves) to adopt an innovative mindset. These highly commercialized environments – for which some learners will spend half a million dollars in their lifetime – must rise to the 21st Century. 

Students complete only a few hours of in-person instruction and development while they are expected to dedicate even more time to self-study and digital innovation. In most instances, learners’ first and most critical engagements with their educators and future employers will occur in digital spaces; we cannot afford to treat digital spaces as supplementary any longer. A learner’s ability to persist in the digital ecosystem is equally important, if not more important, than their ability to function in physical learning spaces.

Looking ahead, it is incumbent upon students, educators, and leaders to recognize that the future of higher education will be determined by how quickly we work to innovate and integrate learning, development, and community in hybrid and virtual spaces. Institutions talk about their commitments to equality, diversity, and inclusion, but the infrastructure they present to their students and staff alike needs to rise to meet the physical and social demands that that commitment promises.

Radical and empathetic intervention can expedite this. Mandatory training programs in line with remuneration and recognition. State funding that mandates technological programming and standardized training for educators and the students they serve. Reporting and benchmarking of secondary and tertiary education adoption of digital innovation, tied to accessibility and inclusion. These ambitious objectives can be imposed with great empathy and pragmatism through reasonable phase-in periods that foster inclusion and accessibility.

Ultimately, it’s about creating a more robust and community-driven environment. In The Nowhere Office, Julia Hobsbawm, an author on the future of work, writes about how remote work fostered greater inclusion in the workplace. In a section titled, “Diversity Dividend,” Hobsbawm bridges the gap between equality, diversity, and tech, writing, “People who felt underrepresented and unheard in the physical office benefited from the equality of everyone being the same size on screen, with none of the rigid hierarchies of the conference room table.” Though recognizing the power of virtual spaces, Hobsbawm notes that in-person sessions can aid in resolving conflict or identifying when people are struggling, and most certainly when the emphasis is social over work. I partially disagree. I think that the next generation will expect: a primary identity outside and independent of their work, thereby reducing much expectation for in-person social activity; less or at least shortened hierarchical ladders, making it easier to recognize trouble and to implement interventions; greater opportunity to contribute from wherever they please; and, shorter working hours, governed by streamlined and differently strategized team meetings (i.e., 15-minute progress meetings vs. 1.5-hour all-hands meetings).

Of course, there will be components of blended/hybrid learning that will be best served with in-person instruction. However, as long as accessibility, inclusion, and a progressive presenting style are adopted to engage consumers (learners), significant progress has already been made. Academic conferences, student tutorials and instruction, networking, and other opportunities to grow and develop can all be well-facilitated in online ecosystems. I implore all in academia who seek to bring people together to consider the accessibility and the inclusion of their proposed engagement. Exercise radical inclusion. Push the needle. Be comfortable being uncomfortable in your design. Remember the hidden disabilities and obstacles (economic, social, cultural, physical) your speakers and attendees may encounter, and adjust accordingly.

You can receive a download link for my recommendations for hosting virtual engagements by contacting me via email or my website.

Thank you for reading!