As colleges seek to reduce prohibitive textbook costs for students and improve access and equity, open educational resources (OER) degrees can help them achieve a large-scale impact. However, building a viable and sustainable OER degree can seem daunting because it involves 1) many faculty 2) many disciplines, 3) every area of the college, 4) often different campuses, and 5) maybe even different colleges. San Jacinto College is building an OER degree that does all five. We will discuss how we have created a rapid-response OER team and developed a ready-to-teach OER degree in less than six months.Outcomes: Identify a degree at your institution that is suitable for a rapid response OER program *Be able to design a strategic plan for creating a rapid response OER degree *Define a feasible timeline for completing an OER degree
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In what ways is technology integrated into classrooms in meaningful and engaging ways? Are students more plugged into technology than their instructors are? What is the top reason faculty ban mobile devices from the classroom? What learning environments do students most prefer? If you think you know the answers to these and other higher education IT questions, put your knowledge to the test at this ECAR quiz show–style session as we share key findings from the most recent faculty and student survey reports in an engaging and fun environment. Grand prize: Bragging rights!Outcomes: Explore faculty and student perspectives on IT in higher education *Identify ways to minimize the gap between tech expectations and experiences in the learning environment *Be inspired to become a change agent on your campus to use tech in meaningful and engaging ways About ETRAC
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Exploring Barriers to Success for Online First-Generation Students through Cross-Institutional CollaborationThis session will explore the findings from a qualitative research project that aimed to uncover barriers for first generation college students (FGCS) taking online courses at the UW-Milwaukee (UWM). Findings from this study will provide strategies to address these barriers and to increase retention, progress to degree, and course success for this group of students. Additionally, learn how UWM is working to deepen their understanding of these barriers through a cross-institutional collaboration with UW-Whitewater.Outcomes: Describe barriers related to success for first-generation students in online courses *Articulate how student-, course-, and institution-centered barriers are being addressed and which may need additional strategy development on your campus *Identify benefits adn limitations regarding cross-institutional collaborationsConnected Scholarship: The Library as Innovation PartnerConnected Scholarship was introduced as a new department at the University of Michigan Library in 2016 as a strategy for positioning the library as a partner for innovation in teaching and learning. The speaker will discuss the evolution of traditional faculty and graduate student technology training programs into a connected learning ecosystem designed to engage everyone on campus, regardless of status around the intersections of technology, learning, and pedagogy, and will detail how Connected Scholarship is committed to creating pathways for a diverse campus community to pursue shared questions that can enable new contexts for scholarship and academic transformation.Outcomes: Explore the principles of connected learning and their application to program and learning space design in higher ed *Define strategies for developing an interdisciplinary team of learning design specialists and librarians *Articulate local possibilities for reenvisioning technology training programs to meet evolving campus needs related to academic transformation and innovation
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A Tale of Two Contexts: Student Perceptions of Adaptive LearningThis session will demonstrate how the University of Central Florida and Colorado Technical University formed a cooperative research partnership to identify elements of students’ perceptions of adaptive learning that were distinctive and common across the two institutions. Students from both campuses agreed on assessment aspects of adaptive learning, but disagreement surfaced about the ease of material, item sequence, personalization, and interaction within the platforms. Interestingly, although these two campuses are very different, students evaluated the adaptive learning construct similarly across the institutions—categorized into learning climate, platform noise, and guidance effectiveness factors.Outcomes: Articulate student reactions toward adaptive learning *Identify challenges with adaptive learning *Adapt the UCF student survey to your campus to examine adaptive learning or technology-enhanced learningA Student View of Adaptive LearningCTU began using adaptive learning in 2012 to capitalize on the advantages of personalized learning to improve student success and the student experience. In 2014, UCF began a similar initiative, examining adaptive learning to help meet the ongoing goal of providing increased access with quality to over 64,000 students. This session will discuss cooperative research examining student attitudes regarding adaptive learning across these two very different settings. Implications for the future will be discussed.Outcomes: Articulate student reactions toward adaptive learning *Identify challenges with adaptive learning *Adapt the UCF student survey to your campus to examine adaptive learning or technology-enhanced learning
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The Teaching Academy, a professional development program for Johns Hopkins graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, leverages the power of online and face-to-face learning communities to promote the use of evidence-based teaching practices. The presenters will describe how the program’s structure supports collaboration among graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty, teaching-support staff at Johns Hopkins and other colleges. These collaborations sparked educational transformation across the institution. The presenters will provide initial data documenting the program’s impact and engage session participants to consider how they might implement similar strategies and educational technology to foster academic transformation at their own institutions.Outcomes: Explore how institutions can leverage graduate student professional development to lead academic transformation locally and at other institutions *Explore the Johns Hopkins Teaching Academy framework for preparing future faculty to become 21st-century educators *Discuss how future faculty professional development programs could be implemented at your institution
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Many Gen Xers learned how a bill becomes a law in the United States from Schoolhouse Rock’s “I’m Just a Bill.” This song helped make a seemingly complex process both memorable and understandable. Data science is couched in the same air of complexity, and that black box thinking hurts the utility and adoption of these approaches. While we don’t have a catchy song, we do have concrete examples of how we’ve been able to use data science to extract value and utility form raw data.Outcomes: Learn specifically how an institution can turn raw data into valuable information that have promote student success *”Sorta kinda” understand higher ed data science *Understand how a random forest machine learning algorithm works (using the “Plinko” analogy)
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Redesigning College Remediation for Working Adults: Essentials for a Sharable, Scalable CBE Technology and FrameworkWe will outline principles for a competency-based redesign of higher education academic remediation and use the JUICE FITW grant-funded project to demonstrate implementation and results. The design goal is to offer students a choice of friendly and engaging competency-based review and practice options that are contextually relevant and available “just in time” to support academic skills required for the online project or assignment at hand. A demonstration of the learning platform will show the competencies and skill framework, personalized interactive learning, use of real world contexts and game-based practice, LMS integration, data capabilities for ongoing research, and potential for an open model.Outcomes: Identify key design principles for an unconventional, competency-based redesign of developmental (remedial) education *Explore the roles of learning technology, a skills framework, real-time authoring and revision, and data *Argue the potential benefits or drawbacks of a more open, sharable platform, including a faster response to the national development education crisis and overcoming limitations of commercial “walled garden” platformsCreating a Competency-Based Teaching Online Certificate for Faculty Professional DevelopmentInstitutions might struggle with the development and maintenance of an online teaching credential localized to their institutions, and external providers could provide a solution for institutions. However, these long, cohort-based programs demand a lot of faculty time. With a competency-based framework, Quality Matters (QM) developed a Teaching Online Certificate consisting of a series of seven short workshops that enable the flexibility faculty need in their professional development. Meaningful evidence is generated through each workshop, which is tied to a digital credential that can be shared on social media and enables existing and potential employers to vet potential online instructors.Outcomes: Identify online instructor tasks for online teaching *Describe the QM Teaching Online Certificate program *Discuss how to connect competencies to evidenced-backed credentials
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Design of new learning environments combines dynamic physical spaces (e.g., flexible infrastructure, moveable furniture) with high-tech interactive capabilities (e.g., interactive mirroring and screen-sharing software) for those in the space and those who join from remote locations. Designing, understanding, and optimizing learning in such spaces requires research approaches that are as creative as the spaces themselves. This session will focus on two novel data-collection strategies to better understand the intersection of technology and instruction in technology-enhanced classrooms. The approaches support learning spaces research, invite new forms of faculty engagement, and require new kinds of faculty development.Outcomes: Consider 2 novel approaches to data collection in learning spaces *Explore how these approaches could be leveraged to inform your technology-enhanced learning spaces *Brainstorm additional ways to collect real-time data in learning spaces
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Instructional activity data from digital learning environments (DLEs) enable educators and researchers to gain a better understanding of student engagement. Course-level analytics in the Engage e-text reader allow instructors to monitor students’ engagement with assigned readings and diagnose students’ needs for remediation. Institutionally, DLEs data can go beyond descriptive reports through explanations engagement and achievement as a function of other determinants. In this presentation, researchers from Indiana University will discuss their experience in processing, analyzing, visualizing, and interpreting the Engage data. This presentation seeks to inform researchers and institutions on possible approaches for developing analytics from DLE data.Outcomes: Explore the challenges and opportunities for analytics with data from e-texts and data from other DLE *Explore and discuss the development of analytics for e-texts and other data from DLEs *Explore the practical approaches for understanding student engagement from e-text and other DLE analytics
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We use data to make decisions small and large every day; we know its value and use. When it comes to decisions about how to define our organization’s goals, how to use our resources, and how to evaluate our initiatives, however, not everyone has the same sense of confidence. Join Leah Lang (EDUCAUSE) and a panel of leaders whose institutions embrace and use data to drive decisions to share your top challenges to building a data-ready culture and learn strategies for building a data-ready culture on campus. Outcomes: Articulate how to start and influence a path toward a data culture at your institution *Recognize challenges and opportunities that affect broad adoption of and sustainability of a data ready culture change *Attendees will be able to synthesize examples from other institutions that will help improve data-related initiatives at their campuses
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