Day 3 of the conference kicked off with a breakfast and panel titled “The Art of Innovation.” This panel interviewed several individuals involved in start-ups in educational technology, representing such companies as EdSurge, BuzzMath, Gingkotree, HireArt, PAR Framework, Scrible, and Value Pulse.
I devoted the morning to volunteering as a session chair for virtual attendees. Not only were individuals able to attend the conference on-site, but nearly 900 individuals also attended virtually. I ran the chat feature and relayed questions between the virtual attendees and presenters. As a volunteer, I was able to take few notes, as I was busy re-typing questions and providing summaries of parts virtual attendees might have missed. I volunteered for two sessions, one titled “How Riverside City College’s School of Nursing Uses Webcasting,” outlining a live broadcasting initiative developed by a community college to accommodate 15-20 additional students per classroom; and “A Gap Analysis: Curriculum Mapping and Redesign for Everyone,” outlining a free tool called CMAP (http://cmap.ihmc.us/download/) and how it can be used to map out courses in curriculum.
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| Screenshot of a chat with virtual attendees of “How Riverside City College’s School of Nursing Uses Webcasting.” |
The final session of the conference that I attended was titled “Road to Success in Online Learning: Implementing Instructional Design Theory and Best Practices.” I thought this session would be fitting as we are about to roll out a Faculty Orientation course at Maryville University, and I’m always interested in seeing how other universities approach this concept. The presenter outlined the development of his orientation course by taking us through their instructional design model, which was a version of the ADDIE model. He identified three core goals of instructional design:
- Understand how people learn
- Construct learning activities based on how people learn
- Measure the effectiveness of the learning activities
The presenter described an orientation course titled “Road to Success in Online Learning,” a prerequisite to registering for online courses. The course was designed to evaluate and determine students’ commitment and ability to function effectively within an online learning environment. He briefly walked us through the course, identifying the following learning units:
- Getting Started
- Orientation to Blackboard
- Student Resources
- Online Expectations (learning styles, netiquette, time management)
- The Discussion Board
- Assessments and Assignments
- Wrapping Up! (gradebook)
And so concludes the outline of my experiences at the Sloan Consortium’s Emerging Technologies Conference in Las Vegas, NV. While the travel is exhausting, I know that I always gain tremendously when I attend such conferences. The enthusiasm of the crowd and the very high energy of attendees was wonderful, and I love opportunities to expand my personal learning network and make connections. I truly hope that I’m able to attend this conference again next year when it’s held in Dallas, TX.