Day 2

Thursday, June 22, 2017

The day began with Paper Awards and the keynote. Today's speaker was Diana Oblinger, President Emeritus of EDUCAUSE, USA. The title of her talk was "The Futures of Higher Education".   The subtitle could have been "interdependence on the ubiquitous use for availability of technology. Oblinger showed a myriad of ways that technology should be enhancing our lives and showed us evidence of computer-based research capabilities. At the end she reminded us to plan for our students' realities of having their jobs potentially enhanced with technologies like robots that may work alongside of the students doing their work.

We also need to be aware, she warned, of the potential of how analytics work and realize the good side where students can actually take advantage of how analytics can be doing searches for them getting jobs on a potentially global scale.    

 

For me, the most interesting thing she shared was how analytics have massive potentials for learning, knowledge, and news. These analytics can do research using the incredible number of research papers being done each day and find solutions that would take human beings potentially years to achieve. We need to watch our students' reactions to such inundating information and work with them to navigate their world. 

ROUNDTABLES

 The first session I attended for the day was in a round table configuration. Many of the presenters were graduate students wanting/asking for input on their research. The session I selected was called, "The Potential of Media-Augmented Instruction to Foster Empathy at a Foundational History Course at the Collegiate Level" by Andrea Dawn Rector from Indiana State University.  This topic addressed the presenter's (and my) concern for her students' inability to feel empathy for horrific world events. She quoted writers such as Jason Endicott (Historical Empathy) and Simon Cohen (The Science of Evil).  It is my experience that we definitely need to be aware of the impact the constant bombardment of graphic images our millennials are exposed to and the effect it can have on their psyche.

In my own classroom this year, I had the largest number of students needing accommodation for unwielding degrees of anxiety and depression. Following the research by academics like Rector can help get ideas for supporting our students by teaching empathy, and then addressing severe degrees of mental health issues which are popping up in our learning environments.

BRIEF PAPERS
It was clear that our current theme in this conference on educational technology was, indeed, the impact on social and emotional learning.  I also attended the session and titled, "Teaching Assessment in an Online Environment: Ethical Conflicts, Concerns, and Solutions" by William Garner from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.  Much of this presentation focussed on self assessment tools, and the presenter provided a selection of the ones he uses for students who are undergoing rehabilitation counselling at Little Rock Arkansas. He recommended careerking.org and other tools like the Keirsey and Myers-Briggs sites which I already use as part of my resume building curriculum. More links were as follows:
-(Free occupational Career exploration tools)  

www.onetcentre.org/tools.html 

-(Texas career check interest profiler)

www.texascareercheck.com. Connected to all the schools in the schools in the USA)

-(California career zone)

 www.cacareerzone.com   

-(Self reporting tool)

glasbergen.com

Often as instructors of  technical communication at BCIT, we help students prepare their job packages, and even though they know the field into which they are training, knowing more about their own selves to get ready for an interview is always helpful

 OBSERVATION

 As a general comment to presenters, I would recommend that they always check in with their audience to see how much the audience already knows on the topic, and remember that a presentation can also be a collaborative event.  These kinds of conferences are asking us to change the way we teach based on personalized learning models, so we must begin with how we present and practice these methodologies. Just last week on my own campus at BCIT, we were  told that the students coming in to campus will have these learning experiences, and we must adjust our styles to engage them and us. 

NETWORKING LUNCH

  

 Chairing a networking lunch table was also part of my executive duties: 

 

 All delegates discussed software  they used to build community, dialogue, and participation in the courses. I'm pretty sure that our LMS,  D2L, has the capacity to handle many of these types of activities, but great to hear about collaborative techniques that are happening in so many ways throughout North America and Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia and New Zealand. I was dutifullykeeping track on my napkin:

To annotate some they are as follows: 

1. Google Hangout
2. Slack
3. Groupme
4. Zoom
5. Today's Meet
6. Basecamp
7. Trello
8. Voicerecorder (app)

There was a lot of discussion on giving feedback through audio tools from both the student and the instructor. I wish I knew more about these systems, but learning and having an open mind and networking is all about why I am here!

AFTERNOON

 In the afternoon, as part of my executive duties, I bought metro tickets for and accompanied a group to the Natural History Museum. I learned that Theodore Roosevelt offered 250 carefully labelled specimens of birds and mammals that he began collecting from Egypt in Africa with his father from before he was 10 years old, pre-1900! I would encourage my Fish, Wildlife, and Recreation students to go and see these intact artifacts, which surprisingly, have been kept in such amazing condition for over 100 years!

POSTER SESSION JUDGING 

I returned in time to be a part of the executive committee who judged the poster sessions. The criteria were "Concept, Presentation, Innovation, Methods and Results, and Implications for Practice". Joining the executive for the final decision was always encouraging because almost unanimously we all agreed on the top three! Executive member, Betsy, had provided tips on the conference website for making an exceptional presentation. It's clear some of the presenters followed the guidelines. The other great thing about working in a team, in terms of the poster composition, was hiring a design team to help with the display. The winning poster made good use of their media design team at their institution. We must always remember to rely on the strength of people on our teams and institutions and call on them when we need their input and skills

I'm excited to be announcing the winners tomorrow.