ANN ARBOR, MI - There are multiple ways to use a potato. Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew, as Samwise Gamgee from Lord of the Rings might say.
But one University of Michigan professor has found a non-culinary use for a spud: He has hashed an idea to use a potato Zoom filter to keep his accounting class students engaged.
Ryan Ball, an assistant professor of accounting at UM’s Ross School of Business, started testing out the potato trick to mix it up during the early virtual learning period of the COVID-19 pandemic. It clicked well enough for students to make him go viral through TikTok videos, leading to a cameo on NBC’s “Today” show and one video garnering about 49 million views, according to a UM release.
It was nice to go from “a Z-list celebrity to a Y-list celebrity,” Ball joked.
However, he just hopes his students found a new way to absorb accounting concepts he admits can be pretty dry.
“It’s a means to an end,” Ball said. “And the end is teaching them stuff. Nobody loves accounting, but it always comes up in the real world. So you do whatever it takes to get their attention, and don’t get me wrong, there’s solid content there.”
With that said, the videos do show off Ball’s “improvisational humor,” he said. One video depicts him in potato form checking in on his family, only to find a full pan of baked potatoes to his sarcastic dismay. Then he moves onto a 2.5-hour exam review session still in potato form.
“Once you are the potato, you can’t get it off without leaving Zoom, so you’re stuck with me,” he said in the video.
The root of the idea came in April 2020 when UM was mostly virtual. On April Fool’s Day, a student asked Ball if he had any tricks up his sleeve. When Ball realized he had nothing planned, he researched and discovered a story about a corporate leader using Zoom filters to break up boring meetings.
The reason he chose the potato: The filter is not overly complicated or distracting, he said.
“The potato filter is very dynamic,” he said. “It moves around well. It doesn’t have extraneous things like arms.”
In terms of classroom humor, it’s also mild, he said.
“You’re really in the minimal danger of offending somebody,” he said.
With the potato gag becoming popular, Ball has other bits he plans to deploy this fall semester (though he wants to keep them a secret for maximum effect). With his class entirely in person now, the Zoom filter is no longer viable.
While Ball said he normally would prefer in-person to virtual learning, he finds in-person more difficult with UM’s mask mandate for classrooms, (a policy he fully supports, he said).
“It’s just hard to read facial expressions,” he said. “I realized how much I read facial expressions and changed the tenor of what I’m saying. If they looked bored, I try to amplify it. If they look confused, I try to repeat it. You just can’t read that with masks on...but rules are rules.”
Overall, though, Ball said he is more excited about being in the Ross building again more so than his “15 minutes of fame,” he said.
“We have the winter garden here at the Ross Business School,” he said. “Just having rooms full of people, it made me realize how much I missed it.”
Read more from The Ann Arbor News:
University of Michigan president is getting a 3% raise despite delayed performance review
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