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The typical coaching engagement spans a period of three months with most sessions taking place via phone or video conference Zoom on a bi-weekly basis. While coaching conversations are private, common themes center on life and academic goals.
Feedback from Students suggest that Coaching has addressed diverse topics such as career progression, communication, relationships, professional growth, leadership development, interview preparation, time management, and skill development. Given the diverse scope, an effort was undertaken to explore a targeted method of coaching designed to improve a specific skill.
In August a new form of our Coaching Program was piloted. The pilot involved an undergraduate leadership course. At the beginning of the semester Students were asked to introduce themselves to the class. Besides the routine introductory topics, the Students were also asked to identify a specific leadership skill they would like to work on during the semester. In the August term two leadership courses were selected to participate in the pilot taught by a Faculty member, CTA Certified Coach, who had coached over Students over the years.
The next step was to inform the Students that Coaching Sessions would be available, on a volunteer basis. The Leadership Skills Coaching Sessions on averaged lasted an hour in length. A wide array of leadership skills were discussed to include: delegation, communications, trust, confidence, and empowerment. The one-on-one coaching sessions resulted in a lively discussion and interaction between the Faculty and Student. As part of the Coaching process, the Certified Faculty Coach did not make any recommendations, but rather used reflective inquiry and shared personal experiences related to the leadership skill being discussed.
The comments from the Students reflected positive sediment. In addition, the many Students mentioned that they will begin implementing some of the leadership skill pointers as soon as possible. At the end of the semester the Students that participated in the Coaching Sessions evaluated these sessions. Curriculum content in an online course can be overwhelming Fawaz, Al Nakhal, Itani, A proactive approach to identifying a skill-based need ensures that Faculty are not only addressing the learning outcomes of the course, but also being responsive to the individual student and providing them real-world skills they can utilize on the job.
Following the original pilot, the Worldwide College of Business plans to expand the Skills Coaching Service to more courses. Continuing the proactive approach, the initiative will target courses where Students can identify a specific skill they may wish to focus on.
Besides management and leadership courses, this includes the disciplines of project management, human resource management, engineering, and business analytics. To support expansion of the Coaching effort, a pipeline of coaches must be established.
Opportunities include the utilization of current Certified Faculty Coaches, as well as volunteer groups of Peer Students, Adjunct Faculty, and Alumni to support instructors teaching the courses. A training program is needed to highlight what coaching is all about, as well as the roles both Coach and Coachee play in the Coaching process. Certified Teaching Faculty serve as a resource for developing coaching competencies through a train-the-trainer program.
Achievement of skills obtained through Coaching could be documented through badging, another feature Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is currently pursuing. Coaching services are commonly used in business as a means of professional and personal growth. Incorporating the use of coaching methodologies into the online curriculum provides multiple benefits to the Student, as well as the institution of higher education.
Students exposed to Skill-based Coaching walk away with a skillset customized to their individual self, as well as an expanded network of connections and sense of community. Furthermore, coaching supports an enhanced learning experience from which retention, persistence, and affinity are positively impacted. Bettinger, E. The effects of student coaching: An evaluation of a randomized experiment in student mentoring.
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 36 1 , 3— Fawaz, M. Current Psychology , 1—8. Linkow, T. The power of coaching: Highlights from the interim report on the impact of success Boston's transition coaching on college success. Abt Associates. Understanding how students experience the use of and interpret the value of tools intended for specific purposes is an important element of teaching with technology online.
This session will present data from students on their perceptions of value and experiences implementing PowerNotes in their reading, research, and writing across disciplines. Similarly, most of the library resources they find and use for secondary research are also digital e. In short, the problem is that students need support for reading and understanding digital secondary research resources in their entirety.
Citation management applications like Zotero free , Mendelay free , and RefWorks our library subscription ended in February predominantly focus on resource tracking and citation generation. Some provide more robust note taking like Zotero ; however, none of them allow for highlighting and note taking that support students in digitally synthesizing across multiple sources.
PowerNotes is an application that can help most students who are conducting secondary research for papers or other projects. The learning curve for those actions is minimal. To support the scaffolded approach, we will design and develop a quick video training guide and "a practice with the tool assignment" to be used in all of our classes.
Having the uniform introductory assignment will help develop some alignment between the varied courses during the assessment process. In this education session, we will present data collected from an IRB approved assessment study, whose purpose is to assess the value of using PowerNotes as a reading, research, and writing tool for online students across disciplines.
Research questions guiding this study:. We will present data from students on their perceptions of value and experiences implementing PowerNotes. In this session, we will show the data analysis while simultaneously asking the audience to:. We will provide participants with copies of activity prompts different instructors used with PowerNotes as well as access to presentation materials and a reference list. Gierdowski, D. Research report. Howard, R. Writing from sources, writing from sentences.
Writing and Pedagogy, 02 2 , Nicol, D. Seaman, J. Freeing the Textbook: Educational Resources in U. Higher Education, Babson Survey Research Group. Smale, M. Digital technology as affordance and barrier in higher education. Palgrave Macmillan. The impact of widespread remote learning during the COVID pandemic has exposed a lasting need for educators to assess the use of online learning technologies in their teaching and design practice critically.
Yet starting conversations about critical and strategic technology usage in online learning can be a challenge to untangle from the now-inseparable pairing of remote learning experiences during the pandemic with trauma.
As we move forward, we can recognize the trauma experienced during the pandemic, while also naming sustainable approaches that will continue to be care-oriented. Building this vision for online learning will require: 1. To engage with these three components of a sustainable and imaginative future for online learning, we will look to our past before engaging with our future.
Participants will be invited to name and share how they imagine a future for online learning that is aligned with students' full lived experiences of pursuing an education. In the process, we'll consider instructional approaches that designers, instructors, and technologists can take to build courses that are clear, navigable, resilient, and accessible. As companies increasingly value competence over credentials, institutes of higher education must ensure achievement for all students.
This discussion will help participants: a define equitable achievement, b explain the relationship between equitable achievement and expertise, and c describe the role of instructors in supporting equitable achievement in their classes. Major companies, such as Google and Starbucks, that once required college degrees are now favoring competence over credentials Forbes, Forces from both within higher education--cheaper and faster degree alternatives from reputable institutions--and outside it--widely accessible and insanely affordable job-ready certificate programs--are exerting often ignored but ultimately unstoppable forces and trends that will "snowball as more and more talented and motivated Millennials and Gen Z-ers opt out of a system that is unnecessarily lengthy and costly" Craig, The implications of these changes are many.
But one specific area of concern--an area that institutes of higher education can lean into and leverage--is achievement.
Not that it was ever a preferable approach, but give the challenges to its core value proposition, institutes of higher education can no longer rely on a model that sorts students based on perceived aptitude determined by problematic assessments.
That is, for their students and for the marketplace that might hire them, it is woefully insufficient for institutes of higher education to distribute grades from Cs to As as students matriculate through a curriculum and then ultimately to award them the same degree at the end--a degree representing a comprehensive?
What internal and external market forces are showing is that credentials count for something, but competency can count for a whole lot more. And what this means for institutes of higher education is that they need to focus on ensuring that all their students are able to demonstrate competence at all the skills the curriculum sets forth to develop.
And, what this means at a very fundamental level, is that institutes of higher education must retrain their focus on equitable achievement. In this interactive conversation--where participants will share ideas, opinions, and experiences using a responsive discussion platform to help identify key themes and summarize emerging ideas--we will explore: a what it means to aim for equitable achievement; b how thinking about education through a lens of equitable achievement can help us understand more clearly our role as educators as helping students become experts in our courses, the curriculum, and eventually their field of study; and c some practical strategies we can use to begin shifting our courses to support equitable achievement.
E-Learning specialists from five art colleges came together to review positive impacts of the e-Learning "pandemic pivot. However, the forced transition online revealed actionable resources about fostering socially engaging and inclusive spaces to enhance student learning now and in the future. Artists as learners have a tendency to require a higher level of visual and kinesthetic modalities in their learning experiences, and their social engagement is a critical component in the learning processes for these students who are learning the socioemotional language of their discipline and developing a critical eye to assess their work and the work of their peers as a regular function of their discipline.
Experts in learning design can attest to the challenges in developing social presence and engagement in online classes in general, and these challenges are exacerbated by developing courses that require a high level of visual and tactile instruction. Prior to the pandemic, faculty in art and design expressed these challenges as reasons that classes in the disciplines of painting, sculpture, wood and metal craft, ceramics, and printmaking might not be a good fit for eLearning environments.
Similarly, many of the experts in these disciplines are experts in the visual and tactile arts and perhaps have less time to devote to the technological skills necessary to be proficient eLearning instructors. According to a recent article by Araminta Matthews, research suggests there are possibly 89, placebound American adult learners who might pursue an art and design degree if one were offered in a modality flexible enough to meet their needs, suggesting that perhaps the need for art and design programs online has always been there and the pandemic helped us to acknowledge this reality.
When art pedagogy moved online, it revealed some new things about what we thought were best practices in instructional design. For example, early research in instructional design suggested that lengthy Zoom sessions might contribute to Zoom-fatigue Stanford , and this is how we advised our faculty. Unexpectedly, it turned out that our students felt these sessions fostered that connection they were missing in live classes--even live classes prior to the pandemic where students sometimes shied away from interpersonal interactions until some weeks had passed--and this is a critical component of eLearning for artists.
Some faculty members evolved the process further by adapting new and existing tools to accommodate prolonged online student interaction.
This session will describe how online art and design courses have unique needs and how to design to meet those needs. We will discuss the critical need for faculty to build spaces within their courses with forward-thought for their students to develop a cohort and social presence.
We will demonstrate the unique challenges to art-based classes offered in web-facilitated formats and guide our participants through a learning design process to determine collaboratively how we might overcome those challenges to deliver effective, inspiring, engaging online classes for growing designers and emerging artists. By the end, our participants will have a clear framework for selecting meaningful, purposeful technology to integrate into their classes that will encourage student engagement and nurture social presence.
The eLearning pandemic pivot forced us all to adapt quickly to new modalities of teaching and learning, but it is through these profound moments of purposeful implementation that we will carry forward the many lessons learned during this period in our history so that the next generation of learners can benefit from these shared experience. This best practices session will provide strategies and ideas for how you can structure micro-credential projects, find tools for designing badges, and how you can have your students display them in their e-portfolios.
You will be provided with resources and guided on how to design your own badges. Badging and micro-credentialing are becoming more prevalent in the world of computer science and coding. They can also be used as a curriculum design model for online learning.
With badges, students can identify the skills they have and provide evidence of them to their employers and instructors. Badging and micro-credentialing is an innovative curriculum model that spans across technology coaches, educators, and students.
Coaches can design their own micro-credential and badging projects for professional development purposes. They can also share this design model with teachers who are looking for innovative uses of technology with project-based learning. As an educator, micro-credentialing is a creative way to remove the stress of grades from the classroom and help students in secondary and higher education, to focus on mastering skills versus earning a grade.
The badge is actual evidence for each skill they have developed that can be placed on an e-portfolio for college, employers, and networking. During the session, the attendees will participate by completing a simple badge and earning a microcredential.
They will also be placed into small groups to collaborate on creating and designing a badge and the microcredential requirements for it. This way, the attendees will be personally engaged in achieving a badge to help them experience the satisfaction and self-efficacy of accomplishing a new skill.
The presentation will be scaffolded by beginning with an explanation of badging and microcredentialing and how they work together. Several examples will be shared for how to include badging and microcredentialing in an online or blended learning course.
Next, the attendees will actively participate to complete a microcredential and earn a badge by using their web-enabled device. Finally, the attendees will be placed into groups of three to design, create, and share a microcredential and its badge. Each person in the group will have a specific task to complete. Once the group decides on what microcredential they want to create and what the requirements are, one person will complete a template with the credentials. At the end of the workshop, each group will have the opportunity to share their badge and the microcredential requirements.
I will also be providing resources for other sites that have badge templates or provide more information about badging:. Model the e-portfolio and four micro-credential projects used in a recent graduate course. Group Activity: The attendees will be placed into groups of three. The presenter will visit each group to provide guidance.
Each group will have three tasks to collaborate about and complete:. Include any additional links and a brief description of the badge. Group Presentation: Each group will present their microcredential and badge. They will be able to receive feedback and suggestions from the group about their work. Throughout the pandemic, educators have had to rely on remote learning and online tools. As COVID cases decrease and students return to campuses, what online tools and practices should stay with us?
What has been discovered that will support student learning as we go forward? This is relevant and important to current educators and their students. This presentation will include five approaches to learning that have thrived in the pandemic and highlight at least one tool or technology that should remain a part of instruction or instructional delivery from each category below as Education moves forward with teaching and learning.
After highlighting the selected tools, attendees will be able to select one of five breakout rooms in order to further discuss one of the five categories with a presenter from our team who will moderate that specific discussion. Additionally, attendees will be able to share tools and technologies they believe to be useful in post-pandemic instruction to a shared Google Doc, adding to the initially presented materials. This Google Doc is made available to all attendees.
Post-pandemic instruction offers challenges and possibilities for educators and students. As educators, it is critical that consideration be given to what worked and what did not work with online instruction and delivery. Those who will make a difference in the future are reflecting on this now.
Curtin, R. Reimagining higher education: The post-covid classroom. Educause Publications. Nworie, J. Two professional educators navigate an exciting journey while gathering stories and best practice conversations over a common interest: Canvas LMS.
With over 30 years of educational experience, there is something in this session for everyone. The THECB is facilitating the use of OER through capacity building grants to encourage adoption of affordable, accessible, and flexible resources at scale. Online Learning Support funding for Open Educational Resource OER initiatives will be used to enhance quality in online course offerings and reduce the costs of instructional materials for students. This session will examine the successes that have been obtained by building and scaling OER initiatives in partnership with public and independent institutions and organizations across the state and nation.
Several initiatives including the creation of an OER repository, the development of professional learning academies, and ongoing research projects will be discussed. There will be an interactive panel discussion regarding creating productive partnerships. Innovations that have led to successful adoption of OER, the impact of the work on students and institutions, and lessons learned from the launching of the first OER grant program in to the present will be shared.
Participants will be encouraged to consider how initiatives could be adapted for their own OER advocacy. In addition, presenters will share pedagogical and curricular strategies for developing high-quality OER, engagement approaches, and strategies for effective collaboration.
Not if, but when. A student gets sick, you get sick, wildfires, floods, hurricanes, a pandemic - big or small, disruptions occur. While you can plan on disruption you rarely can plan on when or for how long. After more than a year of disruption, most faculty have experience in delivering instruction in a virtual format. But we are also acutely aware of the potential inequity a pivot to virtual learning can create.
What can faculty do to ensure academic continuity that is also inclusive? The template was not prescriptive, but rather provided topics to consider, which included the affordances and limitations of certain virtual platforms from an equity perspective.
The Matrix presents four Zones ranging from low immediacy and bandwidth to high immediacy and bandwidth with types of technology that fit the parameters of each zone. For this session, we will facilitate a conversation to generate specific actionable teaching and interaction strategies for each zone in the matrix. Participants will use Padlet to crowdsource strategies. Then we will facilitate group discussion to consider how instructors might combine items from different zones to create high and low bandwidth and immediacy options to ensure students have inclusive options for learning and interacting with the same content.
Ideas and combinations will be recorded on a Google Doc for easy sharing with participants. If successful, this logic model, shared with a Creative Commons License, could serve as a resource for faculty to reference when seeking to construct inclusive and flexible virtual alternatives when faced with disruption. Investing in faculty development to address the challenges of teaching in hybrid environments can be achieved by building a teaching community of practice through a multi-layered model that incorporates coaching and peer mentoring.
This model is transferable across institutions that have increased their online presence in an effort to ensure strong and ongoing faculty support. With the ongoing expansion of online and blended learning, it has become increasingly critical that instructors are provided with initial and ongoing support to better understand the needs of their learners and enhance their teaching practice Bloomberg, ; Golden, Investing in faculty development, specifically designed to address the challenges of teaching in the online environment, develops a culture of ongoing support, providing opportunities to enhance both individual and organizational capacity.
While onboarding training can provide faculty with the required knowledge and pedagogical skills, faculty members require ongoing support networks to enhance professional development, and inspire continuous improvement as engaged members of the educational team.
This can be achieved by building a strong online teaching community Bloomberg, , Building community through coaching and mentoring allows faculty an opportunity to more fully engage with each other, share experiences and resources, and model effective teaching practices to support their colleagues.
The faculty development model that has been implemented in the School of Education at one online university aligns well with the community of practice construct in that learning is conceived of as a continuously evolving set of relationships situated within a social context. This university has implemented a holistic model which includes a central coaching and mentoring component, whereby faculty are provided with support and guidance to teach in graduate degree programs.
Both coaching and mentoring include an essential reciprocal learning relationship that is characterized by trust, mutual respect, and commitment, in which a coach or mentor supports the professional and personal development of another Zellers et al. As the first layer of support, all faculty are assigned a coach who serves essentially as a mentor to enhance their teaching practice, and meetings take place using synchronous collaboration tools.
Coaches work to provide guidance regarding ways of ensuring teaching presence and effectively facilitating learning through a process of guided individual discovery which results in increased engagement, experiential learning and skill building, goal setting, accountability for goal achievement, and specific and measurable action planning.
In addition to individual coaching, peer mentoring communities provide further informal opportunities for learning and development through colleagues sharing resources, expertise, and skills; thereby adding a further layer of faculty support. Community members work collaboratively, engaging in ongoing and regular dialogue groups to support each other as peers and colleagues, and sharing relevant information, resources, and materials.
Through this integrated faculty development model, the School strives to develop an organizational culture that supports and guides learning for continuous growth and performance improvement. This multilayered model, which is based upon both formal and informal support structures, is focused essentially on achieving three key goals; building a culture of learning and collaboration, fostering a growth mindset, and facilitating reflective practice.
The model is potentially transferable across the range of online and hybrid contexts and at institutions that have increased their online presence since the onset of the COVID pandemic in an effort to ensure strong and ongoing faculty support and development.
From late till early , two studies were conducted using open-ended surveys to assess how and to what extent our faculty development model provides a platform and resource for meaningful learning and ongoing support regarding pedagogical expectations and requirements. The research purpose of both studies was to uncover insights and more comprehensively understand faculty experiences of coaching and mentoring as a means of support.
Survey transcripts were manually analyzed through a qualitative process of open coding and thematic development. Overall, the findings illustrated how coaching and peer mentoring singly and in combination contribute to establishing and maintaining ongoing pathways to enhance online teaching practices for the purpose of continuous growth and performance improvement. Research participants were each sent a survey that consisted of open-ended items.
This study yielded findings related to their motivation to serve as faculty mentors as well as their perceptions regarding the value of professional mentoring communities within the School.
Key findings included the following:. Findings illustrate that this faculty development model fosters opportunities for faculty to learn with and from their peers, and hence ongoing development is embedded within layers of support, multiple participation opportunities, voluntary levels of engagement, and continuously evolving working relationships with colleagues.
At the same time, this model eases adjustment to the academic environment by promoting a culture of collegiality and collaboration thereby relieving feelings of isolation that many faculty members typically experience in the online environment. Investing in faculty development by adopting this multi-layered model specifically designed to address the challenges of teaching effectively in the online environment is an opportunity to build both individual and collective capacity.
Moreover, it is apparent that ongoing collaboration, reflection, and deepened relationships have evolved through membership of these communities of practice. The author proposes recommendations for further research to shed light on designing, developing, implementing creative and impactful ways to improve faculty development offerings in this ever-evolving education environment. Conference attendees will be presented with the findings of the two research studies that were conducted at one institution to better understand how and to what extent this model provides a platform and resource for meaningful learning and ongoing support regarding pedagogical expectations and requirements, and how faculty engagement in communities of practice builds a culture of collegiality and support.
Toward this end, reflection checkpoints will be introduced at periodic points during the presentation so that participants will have opportunities to share insights and engage in discussion about the ways in which formal and informal faculty support structures can serve to address three key areas: 1 build a culture of learning and collaboration; 2 foster a growth mindset; and 3 and facilitate reflective practice.
Furthermore, a reflection checkpoint will be built into the close of the session to discuss lessons learned, critique the model, articulate limitations of the study, and offer suggestions for further research in this area. What will attendees learn from this presentation? By attending this session, participants will be able to:.
Bloomberg, L. Coaching faculty to teach online: A single qualitative case study at an online university. International Journal of Online Graduate Education, 3 2 , Teachers College Press, Columbia University. Golden, J. Supporting online faculty through communities of practice: Finding the faculty voice.
Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 53 1 , Lave, J. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Zellers, D. Faculty mentoring programs: Reenvisioning rather than reinventing the wheel. Review of Educational Research , 78 3 , — We have all asked the question, "What's next? Kelvin Thompson and special guest s for a discussion about what the future might hold for education and design.
OLC Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force convened in Spring , with a diverse group of colleagues gathered to plan for an equitable path for our community. Task Force leaders and participants will share findings, as well as invite you to be a part of the conversation as we operationalize this vital work for the OLC.
The Online Learning Consortium Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force was convened in recognition of the need to center diversity, equity, and inclusion across organizational and community efforts. From the call to action from the Executive Committee to determine how OLC will take concrete steps to impact DEI in our field, a group of colleagues was brought to gather to talk and plan for a more equitable path for our community.
Come join us in hearing from the Task Force leaders as they share the findings and recommendations of this task force. More importantly, we invite you to be part of the conversation as we operationalize this vital work for the OLC.
Join us for this special version of "Vineyards and Villainy," Inspired by the picturesque landscapes of vineyards, join us for this OLC Innovate mystery game where we explore hidden messages, dive into collaborative storytelling, and explore the boundaries between hero and villain.
This special virtual version will be an opportunity to explore the game through a "mini mystery. Mystery solvers will be entered in for a chance to win a prize. The OLC is known for fun, low-stakes, and inviting evening events. Whether they are intense and gameful or entertaining and reflective, they are designed to make space for one of the greatest things about the OLC: our community.
Start your day with some quiet time to decompress, reconnect mind and body, and practice some self-care as we turn our focus inward for a short while. Mindfulness has been defined as a practice of "bringing one's attention to the internal and external experiences occuring in the present moment" Baer, Clark Shah-Nelson will lead this guided mindful meditation session geared toward centering ourselves on higher levels of consciousness so that we can experience OLC Innovate Virtual Conference in a healthy and present way together.
Whether you are new to meditation or a seasoned practitioner, all levels are welcome to join us for this session. Baer, R. Mindfulness training as a clinical intervention: A conceptual and empirical review. Clinical psychology: Science and practice, 10 2 , Textbooks often price students out of courses. This is particularly notable in STEM courses where there is a noted lack of diversity. While the issue of diversity and access in higher education is often focused purely on admissions data, that is not the whole story.
However, this false ideal of an inherent even playing field fails to take into account the factors that impede student success beyond simple admission. One of those factors is often the high price of college textbook costs.
OER Open Education Resources is a concept focused on substituting exorbitantly priced textbooks and resources for works that are open and free for student use. At other institutions, there are reports of faculty getting kickbacks from publishers for having their students order specific textbooks. As a result, students often spend thousands of dollars on textbooks they might not even open.
By contrast, our institution's faculty often encourage students to save money on textbooks, including resources about second hand swap sites, rental programs, and popular textbook resale campus Facebook groups in their course and syllabus. As we are a public institution whose student population has a large portion of low income, first generation students this is a constant source of concern for faculty and students alike.
As part of our mission is to increase diversity and access for our students, all facets that enhance that mission are used. When our Instructional Technologists and Designers collaborate with faculty, we encourage them to use low cost or no cost to the student resources whenever possible.
This is often based in an overall discussion of equity and access including ensuring all course design and policies are accessible and inclusive. For example, we have a fund to secure Journal licenses for faculty to post relevant materials on the library eReserve system and the course LMS.
We have also hosted OER development workshops for faculty to learn how to find, embed, and develop OERs for their courses as well. We noticed a major problem arose particularly when it came to our STEM classes. Unlike other subjects in which used editions were more or less identical and available for much cheaper , STEM textbooks contained problems and homework that differed from edition to edition. STEM is a particularly skewed field in terms of population representation, with the profession disproportionately having low numbers of minorities and women.
As cost is often a major factor, by having yet another roadblock in this case, exorbitantly priced textbooks and resources , it further skews the population who can seek this path towards the already privileged. Seeing this as a problem, CTL worked with the Biology department to change this.
The biology department was at the forefront of this change, specifically for their Introductory Biology courses. The first course in the successive series is Biology , which not only has the highest DFWI rates on campus, but is also the largest course on campus. This course serves as the gateway to many courses in the premed and STEM track. However, we noticed that one of the major challenges in the course is not just learning the content knowledge but the textbook costs for both lecture and lab on top of the tuition.
Oftentimes, lower income students hold off on buying textbooks until they know they will not drop the class, or ensure that their limited funds go towards books they know will need. This created a barrier and somewhat unfair advantage for students who were able to purchase the textbooks in the first couple of weeks of class.
In order to ameliorate this, several Biology faculty worked together in developing an OER for students to use. The Biology OER Team collaborated on these developments by looking not just what was essential for success in this course, but longitudinally what would be needed as resources and knowledge for later in the course series as well.
For example, a major component of many biology textbooks and courses is the visualization and identification of key aspects of tissue. The histology atlas detailed essential components that students needed to know, geared towards the larger context of the system. Another major reason that an OER was deemed more impactful than having students use older edition textbooks, is in textbooks often the only major change is the problem sets used.
While this may seem a minor part of the cost, this alone forces students to pay for the new textbook to ensure they are on the same page as their classmates. The OER Biology development team built the lab manual and lecture study guides to update with the material as well as ensure that no student would fail as a result of insufficient funds. Not wanting to limit these resources to students at our campus, in true OER fashion, we published many of the resources on our university's online Academic Commons Resource Center.
Since the Academic Commons is for faculty use, we can extrapolate a significant ultimate student impact. Since the launch of the resources, students responded positively to each resource in our end of semester survey. They reported that it dealt directly with the course content as opposed to the more generic textbooks, as well as the immediate financial concerns.
Another advantage of developing this OER over using a standard textbook was incorporating student feedback on iteratively improving and growing key areas that needed clarity or improvement. We hope to grow this project by developing similar OER resources for later courses in the series, as well as other STEM courses offered at our institution. This is a highly participatory session. Throughout the session, the presenters will engage the audience through tools such as Mentimeter and the Zoom chat, and frame the conversation around that.
A large chunk of the session will also be spent in scaffolded engagement breakout rooms. Essentially, after presenting the problem to a large audience members will have the option of moving into a breakout room guided by a presenter focused on topics that the audience seemed most interested in earlier in the presentation.
To support and engage our audience at all levels, engagement during the session will be scaffolded. During the breakout rooms participants can also choose to engage:. X marks the spot… but how do you get there?
All value quality template design, but what makes that happen? Follow my lead and imagine the possibilities for your own institutional course template. Participants can anticipate a high level of engagement when considering a mock course template design and an associated data-focused analysis process.
Inspired in the winter of by the books Creative Confidence , Mismatch , and The Accidental Instructional Designer , a new approach to developing course template structure was envisioned.
This approach blended a student-centered focus with effective teaching pedagogy. Methods for assessing user experience and usability were intentionally selected to ensure that both overt and hidden student motivations could guide the final state of the course template.
Reflective practice and collaborative questioning allowed for an innovative process that sought to identify existing pain-points within the student learning experience in the current state of the course template. Via this brainstorming process, the first iteration of the new template adaptation was produced. Five key elements were incorporated into the development of this work.
Instructional Design theory and methods to evaluate user experience lay the groundwork for each element. The recommendations of the student body representatives significantly supported the effort to reassess the online learning environment. To focus our work, our student demographics and special population groups were reviewed. Further, consideration of the online learning space itself was rooted in learner experience design postulating that by building a consistent experience students would find this space welcoming.
H - Humanistic… Students are human and humans relate emotional responses, knowingly or unknowingly, to all experiences. Formulating an empathetic means to review qualitative responses into the prototype testing was essential. How are we to grasp the idiosyncrasies of our student respondents without inferring their motivations, worries, and expectations while learning online?
Humans need support. Support needs may be expected or unexpected, critical or momentary, and disclosed or undisclosed. To target this aspect, open-ended questions were thoughtfully written to unveil emotions that are linked to online learning for our students.
E - Engaging… as learner experience design has its foundation in visual arts, such as graphic design and game design, we found an opportunity to capitalize on considerations which originate in these fields as applied to our educational environment. Specifically, engaging visuals were incorporated and accessible practices were intentionally applied.
S - Student Reviewed… Design Thinking champions that a solution cannot be identified as the right solution unless determined through end user evaluation. For all of these to occur, current students must be invited, and encouraged, to interact and respond to the proposed solution. These surveys are posted at key points throughout the term - after the first week, following midterms, and the final week of the course.
Akin to the urgency of a treasure hunt, the facilitator will encourage quick idea generation, collaboration, and engagement. By answering a series of questions, attendees will be led near to the ultimate goal - X that marks the spot - of creating a prototype for a mock institutional course design template.
Embracing the pirate analogy within the title of the session, these items are: a treasure map including question prompts, a student persona sheet, and an information request form. Each item will serve to either lead attendees through their prototyping process or provide supplemental information to them post-conference.
Following this, a short introduction will be given for each crew to imagine that they represent the invented Lost Island University LIU. Consider the LIU student personas presented at your workspace. Question 3 - Engaging: How might you create a visual learning space that encourages LIU students to return to it? Question 5 - Tested: How might you analyze your prototype to confirm or adjust your assumptions?
For the next 15 - 20 minutes of the session, these attendee crews will regulate their journey through these prompts. Each crew will quickly brainstorm, process, and record their initial ideas.
Through this intense iteration, refinement, and selection process, crew members are exposed to a plethora of options to consider for their own future application. During their collaboration, the presenter will circulate from crew to crew to concisely address questions, provide insights, and prompt new investigations.
Crews will then share corporately, or with a few other groups possibly, in new breakout rooms , their prototype ideas. Sharing key points or learning moments briefly will be encouraged to allow most to share in the 10 minutes allotted. By offering these resources, attendees can be in the present moment without concern for capturing the process through their own note-taking efforts. Attendees who desire this resource may log their name and email address on lists pre-arranged at session tables. These lists will be collected and the resources shared at the conclusion of the OLC Innovate conference.
Each attendee exits the session empowered to implement the C-H-E-S-T approach in their respective institutions. Starting with a little bit of orientation, some guided roadmapping, and most certainly lots of key reflection and collaborative learning, this session will get us thinking about the possibilities for asynchronous online engagement. Whether these took the form historically of a poster or more recently, a pre-prepared digital presentation, these sessions afford presenters and participants alike a unique opportunity for sustained engagement because they were designed with the asynchronous in mind.
But taking the time to orient to these types of sessions in a conference setting, as well as meaningfully engage with them is not always easy, particularly given all of the other opportunities presented to us. As such, this interactive session was designed to address those two considerations specifically. Our work will be guided by an intentionally designed Discovery Session Roadmap, which will help us identify which sessions to start with and those we want to intentionally plan to get to in the future.
The mission of the DDL is to provide leadership and advocacy for digital learning in higher education and promote, sustain, and advance a quality digital learner experience positioning Texas as a world leader. Providing a holistic digital learning ecosystem is of growing importance in an increasingly digital world. Digital learning has become common place in higher education over the past several decades.
Notwithstanding the advancements in digital learning, definitions and standards vary greatly making it difficult for educators and institutions to effectively discuss and implement effective policies and best practices.
Over the past two years the COVID pandemic has brought digital learning to the forefront of higher education. Multiple research methods are being employed to better understand the effects of the pandemic, including state-wide surveys and a design research engagement. These initiatives inform effective resources for educators and students, including a digital clearinghouse. This digital clearinghouse will serve as a primary means to enhance pedagogical innovation, stimulate digital transformation, promote digital solutions, connect communities, encourage scholarship, share resources, and make possible holistic, quality digital learning experiences.
This session will provide an interactive forum for conversation regarding the state of digital learning today and innovations coming in the near future. Attendees will participate in a discussion regarding the scaling of best practices, creating programs for institutional capacity building, and promoting sustainable partnerships. Targeted research initiatives demonstrate the importance of creating a diverse digital ecosystem which supports students, educators, and administrators.
Digital Learning provides the opportunity to create equitable and inclusive spaces. The presenters will discuss ways in which they are driving innovation, change, and equity through partnerships and networking.
From game changers based on cognitive science to best practices found in education psychology and support for it all through technology platforms and frameworks, session attendees will gain a better understanding of how to make tomorrow's learning start happening today as we build Education 3.
Neuroscience suggests that for some, learning should not be attempted before 10am while for others, learning should conclude by noon. Learning research shows that listening to a lecture is the brain-equivalent of watching televised fishing. We know more about the brain and about learning than ever before in our history. While what we do know about the brain is still relatively little, it is significant that so little research makes its way into the classroom.
At the same time the skills, aptitudes, and abilities to critically think and problem solve have shifted dramatically in the past several decades, yet these paradigm shifts are also absent from many teaching and learning experiences. Never before has a catch phrase been interjected into educational mission statements around the world with so little understanding of what it means as, "21st Century Learning. This highly interactive session will "Do, Show, Tell, Review, and Ask" as participants engage in pattern recognition, craft problems prior to solving them, collaborate in real-time to promote social learning, and employ other, immediately usable techniques for the classroom — both online and in person.
This presentation will focus on ways to create multi-nodal and multi-modal connections based on effective practices from practitioners around the globe, all of which could be categorized as Education 3. Participants will be shown many examples of web assets and learning experiences both in-person and eLearning that promote social learning, transformative learning, game-based learning, and learning based on cognitive science.
The audience will see and hear about how to create better more authentic MOOCs, simulation, curriculum integration events, authentic assessment, and problem-based learning experiences within an eLearning framework.
Be sure to bring your devices as the session will encourage feedback, web-based experiences, and interaction. Finally, participants will leave this presentation with multiple resources learning games, web tools, apps, illustrations, etc and opportunities for application immediately from this seasoned presenter. Join a researcher, innovator, university administrator, and 20 year college professor to unpack what neo-millennial learning and assessment can and should be, as well as a some old procedures, embedded deeply in the educational DNA that need to go.
From game changers based on cognitive science to best practices found in education psychology and support for it all through technology platforms and frameworks, attendees will have a better understanding of how to make tomorrow's learning start happening today as we build Education 3. In line with the celebratory nature of the session, we invite you to select your most festive Zoom background and join us for an enlightening session filled with accolades and new ideas, featuring some of the amazing individuals in our field!
Join us for an inspiration session led by forward-thinking leaders in online education! In this inspiration session, professionals in roles ranging from those leading online programs and campuses to those researching, teaching, and designing online learning will share their most innovative ideas generated from challenges that inspired action.
As online education units within higher education institutions HEIs continue to expand and evolve, it is important to not only research their nature and organizational structures, but to make sense of them through sharing histories, pain points, evolutions, and practices of peer. These inspiring professionals ranging in roles from those leading online programs and campuses to those researching, teaching, and designing online learning will share their most innovative ideas generated from challenges that inspired action.
Serving as a preview of the book, but also an opportunity to have a more intimate conversation about their stories, session attendees can expect to leave the session with feelings of validation that we all have shared challenges and triumphs. Furthermore, session attendees can expect to leave the session with tested and practical solutions to common challenges and a renewed sense of energy to elevate the work of online programming at their institutions.
First Year Experience FYE faculty seek opportunities to increase student engagement in discussion board threads. FYE students hesitate to participate due to different classroom fears. This session shares the active faculty reflection process that resulted in the implementation of innovative strategies, which demonstrated increased discussion board engagement in FYE courses. Faculty, especially those teaching FYE courses, observe lower discussion board engagement in their classes.
Student participation is sparse and sporadic, as reflected by incomplete posts. In the process, different students tend to emerge, posing a threat to student success:. Unfortunately, these emerging students contribute to low student engagement if the issue is not addressed. Student engagement within the first year is important and essential to the first year experience.
Furthermore, students who are not fully engaged are more inclined to withdraw from their university Kuh et al. How can faculty get ahead of this curve and affect a greater level of engagement?
Discussion board threads can provide faculty with an opportunity to assess the needs of their students and adapt pedagogical methods that would effectively meet this need, thus increasing both engagement and academic progress Waheed, However, faculty members are challenged with student engagement in discussion board threads because students bring to the classroom different challenges and fears about writing. Based on this theory, we can infer that a lack of confidence causes fear and constraint.
What faculty strategies can alleviate the fear factor and drive student success? Increased faculty activity in the classroom is assumed to correlate with high student engagement, regardless if quality proved futile. In order to achieve increased success, faculty must have the flexibility to think outside the box and be empowered to innovate where needed.
When faculty are focused on meeting items on a list, this pushes the focus away from student success. Essentially, faculty members are less able to meet the students where they are nor are they effectively able to determine which students need the most attention. This only leads to a downward spiral where some students are left behind. How can we alter our approach for the benefit of our students? In this workshop, course instructors […].
Create engaging class discussions. Learn how to automatically create discussion groups. Registration is required. Microsoft Stream is a new video hosting service, replacing Office Video.
It allows instructors to upload and share video content with their students through ReggieNet, websites, or direct links. Get started using Nearpod, an interactive tool replacing classroom clickers at Illinois State. This one-hour workshop will give you a tour of the tool's basic features. It allows you to empower students, track attendance, distribute learning resources, and check the pulse of your class with ongoing formative assessments in many learning scenarios.
Padlet is a web-based program that allows you to organize content for viewing in multiple layouts, including website, bulletin board, blog, or portfolio. This session will provide participants with important and usable knowledge to help support students with disabilities in higher education. The presenters will guide you step-by- step through various ways to […]. Learn how to set up virtual meetings, and explore useful tools like polls, break-out rooms, and more.
Create compelling media with Adobe Creative Cloud Express, a browser-based, mobile-friendly graphic design app formerly called Adobe Spark. Discover how students can use this free tool to craft single web […]. Learn how to make eye-catching flyers for events with this powerful layout program.
Get an overview of this page layout editor, including a tour of basic tools.
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