Last week’s Distance Teaching & Learning conference (in Madison, WI) has been storified. Some great resources and discussion. Well worth checking out:
https://storify.com/UWDEPD/2015-distance-teaching-learning-conference
Tag Archives: distance teaching
Notes from The Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning
I was at The Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning last week. The conference seems to get better each year, and I needed the weekend to think a little deeper about what I saw and heard. This here, is both a prompt and a reminder (so that I don’t forget what I saw, and work on the projects that I want to).
As usual, several of the participants used Twitter for back-channel conversations. This became a useful tool to aggregate comments and resources via the #UWdtl hashtag. Hopefully more participants get onboard next year.
Speed Sessions
I managed to catch a couple of Speed Sessions Tuesday afternoon, only the last four, but these were helpful. The “speed” part of the speed sessions was hurt a little when presenters had difficulty getting their laptops to work with the HDMI connection to the projector in the room, but luckily those with recalcitrant laptops were able to borrow working MacBooks. Of the four sessions that I saw, Moses Wolfenstein‘s “Finding a Place for Gamification in Learning” was the most entertaining, but Laura Bunte of Stratagem had some very useful formulae and templates to share for projecting the cost of developing online content.
Information Sessions
The Conversation Prism
I was lucky enough to see a series of information sessions that met my interests and needs:
- “Using Game Design Theory To Develop A Faculty Self-Assessment”
- Susan Manning shared four game design elements (story, mechanics, technology, and aesthetics) that could be used by instructors to help inform their instructional design.
- “Social Media in Education: So Many Choices!”
- Ronald Hannaford posited that Social Media in Education has many of the same amorphous aspects of online learning fifteen years ago. I particularly liked the Conversation Prism image he used. He suggests a strategic plan for campus-wide integration.
- “Are Games And Simulations A Good “Fit” For Your Curriculum”
- Penny Ralston-Berg demonstrated some great examples and games. The one I will be looking at in more detail is Quizlet.
- “Voice And Screencasting Feedback”
- John Orlando started his session with my favorite video of the conference (Hexaflexagons). More interestingly, he shared research on the amount of time some faculty spend on student feedback – more on textual feedback, and less on audio feedback. However, the audio feedback contains more “words,” so is both more efficient and more detailed. I am pondering running some research along these lines at work.
- “MOOC Development And Delivery From The Support Staff’s Perspective”
- Hui-Lien (Sharon) Hsiao and Norma Scagnoli shared their processes, challenges, and merits of facilitating courses at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I am very, very curious to see how these business courses pan out.
Distance & Learning Conference: Call for Proposals Now Open
The Call for Proposals is now open for the Distance Teaching & Learning Conference that takes place Madison, Wisconsin from August 11-13, 2015.
The deadline to submit your Call for Proposal is: Monday, January 26, 2015 at 4pm CST
The Distance Teaching & Learning Conference welcomes hundreds of distance education and online learning professionals every year to share effective practices, research, strategies, and new tools/techniques.
- Share your data on established practices
- Present a hot new topic in distance learning
- Have your results published in the proceedings publication
- Network with experts from around the world
Some suggested topics include: New course design models, mobile & social learning, learning analytics,
competency-based learning, gamification & badges, open educational resources
More information can be found at:
28th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
A week ago I spent three extremely rewarding days at the Distance Teaching and Learning conference in Madison (full disclosure, I am on the planning committee). It has taken a few days to put my notes and thoughts in order, and here they are.
Wednesday
Madison, 2012
Early morning saw me boarding the Megabus to Madison. The cost of the trip was shockingly low – just five dollars. I spend more travelling to and from work on the El each day.
I arrived in Madison in time to meet with Dawn Drake and finalize our presentation for one of the Communities of Practice sessions that afternoon (on Management and Administration). I enjoyed discussing the topic with the folks there.
I was slightly shocked to discover an inadvertent promotion on page 33 of the conference brochure (I am not Dean of the College of Commerce).
Thursday
The trending topics of the conference from my perspective were mobile learning and MOOCs. Previous conferences had been abuzz with discussion on Second Life, Google Wave, and Social Media. The focus on mobile and MOOCs seemed to me to be more pragmatic. Mobile communication was ever present during the conference – the effective use of Twitter heightened my enjoyment of the sessions (and muted any dissatisfaction with particular presenters). The keynote from James Zull was not the strongest part of the conference. Zull is a far better researcher than large-venue presenter. His premise did make me think, and his presentation style gave me plenty of time to tweet and retweet with others in the room. This was particularly refreshing, with a vigorous discussion and commentary taking place along the back channels.
Norma Scagnoli’s and Seung won Hong’s presentation on “iPads is graduate professional education” was enjoyable. Norma admitted that the use of iPads at the University of Illinois in the Management program was flawed, with students and faculty not knowing initially whether they owned the iPads or had to return them. I hope they are able to repeat the experiment and train students and faculty on effective use, rather than discover what happens organically. I wanted to know whether students were able to use etextbooks on the iPad effectively in a classroom situation (I have observed that students are able to make notes and refer to material more rapidly in printed textbooks).
Ray Schroeder’s “eduMOOC: Open online learning without limits” presentation was packed, and worked as an iceberg presentation – there was much more material below the surface. I will have to return to his site and explore more:
https://sites.google.com/site/edumooc/
Ray Schoeders talk about MOOCs was probably the most productive session for me.
Scott Schopieray’s “One Week, One Course (OWOC): A rapid prototyping concept for courses” contained a little smoke and mirrors – the courses were not completed in a week, but the idea is intriguing. The design of the rapid prototyping model was clever, and effectively implemented. I am tempted to see if this is an idea that can be implemented at work.
The “iPad apps for utility and learning” was not a presentation that I should have attended. Unfortunately I was in the front row as the presentation started, and when I realized my mistake it was too late to leave….
I did not see much at the vendor presentations that was new and exciting, but I am taken with the idea of Camtasia Relay. This may be an effective way way to scale classroom recording and adhoc lecture capture. This is something I will look later.
Thursday evening ended with a delicious meal with some of my colleagues from DePaul at Harvest, a little restaurant with a great view of the capitol.
Friday
The Capitol in Madison, and a statue of Hans Cristian Heg
Friday morning began with a fun follow-up discussion of Administration and management. I then attended Dean Blackstock’s and James Mudie’s presentation on “Streaming high quality mobile video: A conversation and some code!” Dean and James developed a great solution to automatically serve up the right type of video to mobile users. Not a solution that I need at the moment, but fun and interesting.
I next attended Johanna Dvorak’s and Laura Pedrick’s presentation on “Developing a comprehensive campus-wide online student services initiative.” What they presented was a work in progress, but the policies applied to assemble the stakeholders and determine what needed to be done are ones I will gladly borrow.
The last concurrent session of the day was “Using mobile technology in faculty development and training.” This was a Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt session, with George Engel providing most of the information I was interested in. Their handout is on the web, and can be found here:
http://mobilefieldworkshop.wikispaces.com/file/view/Faculty+Training+Using+Mobile+Technology.pdf
What I didn’t see answered was how mobile devices constrain focus. Anecdotally, I have noticed that those that I correspond with on mobile devices frequently cannot process multiple concepts in the same email. This topic is deserving of a conference presentation (and research).
The conference ended with a keynote from Judy Brown. Already I am looking forward to next year.