I got yer optimized workflow . . . right here.

Management systems and collaboration platforms are a pain in the ass, not a panacea.

After a recent departure from the corporate world, I made a (partial/part-time) return to academia and thought I was mercifully free of project management zealotry. Ubiquitous within organizations of every size and stripe, these platforms (e.g. Asana, Figma, Trello) are breathlessly championed by adherents for their ability to automate, streamline, facilitate or any other dazzling modifier that essentially means, “eliminate that pesky need for human interaction.”

Solution is the queasy descriptor sugar-coating sales pitches for the several systems I’ve had to learn. “It’s more than software. It’s a solution!” gushes some moon-eyed evangelist, brushing away questions about what actual problems are being solved. I didn’t know that methodical, meticulous execution by individual experts through each stage of a project was a problem, and that implementing a technological shortcut that homogenizes input and neuters preferred methodology for the sake of more momentum is the answer.

The sales pitches paid that critique no mind, promising streamlined processes and accelerated project turnaround that managers and creatives didn’t realize they didn’t need. Accompanying online training, always impossibly frustrating to navigate, ensured execs that using these solutions to get the work done meant teams would have more bandwidth to [ahem] get even more work done. “It’s simple! Just upload Alpha iterations to the centralized Workflow Corral. After inviting and approving stakeholder input you can consolidate feedback through a single touchpoint that ensures cross-vertical buy-in and sign-off. And don’t forget to download the app so you can be bombarded by alerts, prompts, and reminders at all hours!” Something like that, anyway.

Writing that boardroom bingo bullshit raises a thin channel of bile in my throat. Calling these things solutions speaks to a level of arrogance that’s been plasma-bonded to technological innovation, the presumption being that pushing creation, collaboration, review, and approval to a shared digital realm will unlock hours of unrealized productivity. Multi-layered menus, color-coded task lists, meters showing phases in real time (Wow, real time!) purport to deliver the clearest possible picture of participation and progress when what they really do is trigger migraines and seizures. And always lurking in one on-screen corner is your insipid avatar; I’m totally the beard and knit-hat guy! This whole whiz-bang contraption is supposed to be the point of departure from which unprecedented levels of audience engagement, customer satisfaction, and shareholder value will be realized. Sure. To paraphrase Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now, the bullshit piles up so fast you need wings to stay above it.

Now teaching undergraduate composition and rhetoric after a two-decade hiatus, it never occurred to me that the virtual contagion promising hyper-connectivity and productivity had infected higher education. And then I had to start training in a learning management solution (goddamnit, again!) specifically engineered for academia ironically named Blackboard. Training was required, and even though it was presented with cuddly, welcoming edu-speak, as I launched orientation videos and sifted through explanatory PDFs, a familiar trepidation returned. My efficiency was being optimized. But here’s what gave me a deep scare: The more I sifted through Blackboard, the better I understood its features and functionality, the more it made sense. I started to enjoy it, uploading articles and videos, crafting pithy inspirational messages to my students, developing lists of topics to post in the “Discussions’ section because of course kids these days not only want to attend my class and complete the readings and assignments, they also want to spend their spare time plinking around a message board engaged in relevant discourse, right?

The ease with which I could drop in what I felt was supportive content and comments made involvement all the more alluring. I found videos, articles, lists and infographics reinforcing lessons, all retrieved by the score after thoughtful Google searches like “Rhetorical Analysis Examples: Undergraduate” or “College Level Transition Sentences” or “Research Paper and Works Cited Page Samples.” It was like a progressive-slot jackpot. Paper after exemplary paper, cheat sheets posted by fellow students, introductory paragraphs ending with beautifully constructed thesis sentences diagrammed by professors from every English-speaking nation around the world. Courses on YouTube, lectures on TikTok, e-books free for the downloading, and podcast after podcast.

Then I realized this wasn’t teaching. This was inundation. This was replacing the genuine, interactive, dialogue-driven environment of the classroom with Internet data overdrive. I wasn’t being a professor. I was being a curator, doing little more than serving as a proxy Google-meister for my students, able to direct them to relevant information simply because I knew how to put in more precise search parameters.

The next insight was more chilling. Knowing the capabilities of AI, what need would these students have for me once so many proper inquiries had been set up? How easy would it be for an algorithm to scrape through an archive of content that could stand in for classroom interaction? How quickly could it be argued that a professor was no longer needed? Just follow the amalgamated online offerings, preserved threads of inquiry and student-generated responses to hack your way through class requirements. Why would anyone dedicate time to original thought and individual expression when they could absorb info through online osmosis and regurgitate accordingly?

This high-altitude realization, that I might be engineering my own obsolescence, dogpiled onto the collaboration-platform disregard I brought with me from my time in the corporate netherworld. Deciding that this technology could be a useful servant, but a terrible master, I had to find a boundary. So, I’m fine reposting content I distribute in class. I don’t mind sharing the occasional supplemental article that provides a good example of what was taught that week, or a quick video that helps students push through mental sticking points. But inundating them with information instead of working with them as individuals, and worse appropriating their curiosity and familiarity with online forums to create classwide parity, diluting their distinct voices and inviting sameness across assignments, feels horrifyingly like doing AI’s job for AI. Worse, perhaps, is that it’s capitulating to some startup’s idea of the best way to work, relentlessly hammering the square peg into the round hole: ye shall adopt this homogenized, soulless process that has been designed by committee, refined by focus group, and explained with the eloquence of an air fryer instruction manual.

I’ll pass. My use of technology is functional, like streaming music or shows, sending emails, getting news through select channels. It is not a proxy for organizing my thoughts. It can disseminate my instructions and related materials like a virtual messenger boy, but the means by which I prioritize and amplify experience and expertise remains mine to develop and deploy. My students will print their papers, get them back with a bloodbath of hand-written comments, and workshop their revisions with face-to-face classmate feedback. I’m as optimized as I’m going to get.