Strategies for Success in Online Teaching and Learning

Teaching in the Time of COVID: What Makes a Difference

The COVID experience showed us that the ability to teach effectively online is no longer a desirable trait for faculty—it’s essential. Higher education must have instructional approaches that are resilient in the face of continued coronavirus surges and other disruptions to education as usual. Digital Promise’s Survey of Student Perceptions of Remote Teaching and Learning administered to a nationally representative sample of undergraduates this May revealed the depth of the equity issues around learning opportunities and the instructor practices that led to higher levels of student satisfaction and willingness to learn online in the future.

January 15
Webinar

Speaker:
Barbara Means, Ph.D
Executive Director of Learning Sciences Research, Digital Promise

Transform Engagement: Interaction and Online Course Design

Cuyahoga Community College Interaction is the glue that holds the learning environment together. Rich media tools and thoughtful student-student, student-teacher, and student-content interactions can be powerful tools that inform “how we teach” and underpin successful use of technology in the online learning environment. Examples of these tools – avatars, digital storytelling, interactive online poster boards, YouTube and other instructional videos, remote polling, video conferencing, and podcasts – and how to properly incorporate them into any course will be presented. Attendees will have an opportunity to see these tools in action and see how they can be taken back and incorporated into their own courses to inform “how we teach”.

January 22
Webinar

Ask an Expert Live Q&A: What Faculty Need to Know

A large part of the student learning experience is accomplished through interaction with the course content. To offer students engaging content that will also achieve course objectives, faculty must follow strong instructional design principles. Good course design not only enables students to learn better, it also influences faculty workload. Do you have questions about the common design elements in an online course? How do we successfully engage students with course content, each other, and with the instructor in a digital environment? Do you want to ensure that your online course meets course credit requirements for workload hours? In this live Q&A panel, participants will engage with experienced professionals to answer these questions and more.

Differentiated Instruction for Equity in Higher Education

While designing online college courses it is vital to ensure an equitable environment where each student receives high-quality experiences that are aligned with their academic readiness and goals. Through intentionally unbiased and inclusive teaching practices faculty play a crucial role in improving learning outcomes, increasing course completion and graduation rates. Differentiated Instruction is a viable asset-based approach that can serve as an engine for learners who face historically systematic barriers in institutions of higher education. This presentation will provide faculty an overview of strategies and adaptive learning technology that engage their students’ prior knowledge and supports their performance by differentiating the content, process and assessments. Faculty will be encouraged to use learning analytics to structure their course to meet learners where they are and support students’ attainment of course goals.

February 5
Webinar

Speaker:
Ruanda Garth-McCullough, Ph.D.
Director of Programs
Achieving the Dream

Addressing DEI Issues in STEM Education

This session will facilitate participant discussion on how to connect local environmental and climate justice issues to STEM concepts. Participants will explore a series of questions about what they know regarding climate and environmental justice from a race, class, and gender perspective, and brainstorm ways on how to use that context to engage students about STEM. The presenter will share her personal story about environmental and climate justice in her local community and how she has related that to her students.

February 12
Webinar

Speaker:
Dr. Elaine Villanueva Bernal
Lecturer, Sciences, CSU Long Beach

Ask an Expert Live Q&A: Inclusive Teaching

Technology presents vast opportunities to engage students through an exciting and effective learning experience. However, during the shift to remote learning this past year, colleges and universities exposed hidden obstacles within the system for delivering quality, equity-focused digital education – particularly for students of color, poverty-impacted students, and first-generation students. How do we turn this crisis into an opportunity to advance equity and inclusion in blended and online modalities? In this live Q&A panel, participants will engage with Every Learner Everywhere Expert Network professionals to discuss equitable teaching practices and digital learning to foster student-centered learning. The panel will examine the need for equity-minded and culturally relevant changes in higher education to support students beyond the pandemic.

February 19
Live Q&A

Moderator: 
Ryan MacTaggart, Ph.D.
Manager for Professional Learning
EDUCAUSE

Panelists:
Cherise McBride, Ph.D.
Every Learner Everywhere Expert Network

Kristal Moore Clemons, Ph.D.
Every Learner Everywhere Expert Network

The Future of Learning: Every Learner Everywhere, Any Time?

Throughout 2020, higher education institutions engaged in a massive and rapid transition to remote learning that exposed a new cadre of faculty with no prior online teaching experience to the use of digital learning techniques. In partnership with the Every Learner Everywhere Network, we surveyed over 8,000 faculty at three points throughout the pandemic, with a focus on understanding the experiences of those instructors who worked to transition a course from face-to-face to a remote format to understand the experience, challenges, and applicable lessons moving forward.

While the institutional response to the pandemic was at times disorganized, our findings paint a picture of a flexible professoriate readily adapting to change and keenly focused on its students’ best interests. In this session we will address key learnings about instructional practices and student learning outcomes, usage of digital tools and impact on faculty time, and share key challenges we must continue to confront as well as the strategies faculty and institutions are deploying to better ensure that every student everywhere is able to learn.

March 5
Webinar

Speakers:
Kristen Fox
Managing Director
Tyton Partners

Nandini Khedkar
Principal
Tyton Partners

Adaptive Learning Beyond STEM

Instructors will share their experiences in redesigning the first-year sequence of a language course through a university initiative focused on increasing student success in gateway courses. Instructors eliminated the traditional textbook and publisher courseware and used only Open Educational Resource (OER) and self-authored materials employed in the Adaptive Learning program, Realizeit. Instructors focused on challenges, such as trials in the online delivery mode, students’ prior knowledge of subject matter, textbook and courseware fatigue, and DFW rates. Learn about the process, lessons learned, and strategies implemented to leverage the benefits of online, blended, adaptive, and active learning, while working toward program-wide implementation.

March 12
Webinar

Speakers:
Anne Prucha
Senior Instructor, Spanish and TESOL
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Central Florida

Kacie Tartt
Associate Instructor of Spanish
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Central Florida

Ask an Expert Live Q&A: Active & Adaptive Learning

Research tells us that a student-centered approach to teaching is more effective at helping students learn and succeed. As a result, higher education is moving away from faculty-centered instruction in favor of student-centered approaches such as active learning, which more effectively engages students in the learning process. Adaptive learning technologies can help support faculty in addressing the unique needs of students, while offering more active and engaging learning experiences. Bring your questions to this live Q&A session with our expert panel as we explore how active and adaptive learning strategies can engage students in blended and online environments, resulting in improved student outcomes and success.

March 19
Live Q&A

Moderator:
Megan Tesene, Ph.D.
Director, Personalized Learning Consortium
Association of Public and Land-grant Universities

Panelists:
Peter van Leusen, Ph.D.
Manager of Instructional Design
Arizona State University

Susan Adams, M.Ed
Instructional Designer
Achieving the Dream

Designing with Quality and Engagement at the Forefront

April 2
Webinar

Speaker:
Angela Gunder
Chief Academic Officer
Online Learning Consortium

Building a New Approach to Continuous Learning

April 9
Webinar

Speakers:
Dr. Laura Gambino
Vice President
New England Commission of Higher Education

Bret Eynon
Associate Provost (Ret)
LaGuardia Community College, CUNY

Randall Bass
Vice President, Strategic Education Initiatives
Georgetown University

Ask an Expert Live Q&A: Evidence-based Practices

April 16
Live Q&A

Moderator: 
Megan Tesene, Ph.D.
Director, Personalized Learning Consortium
Association of Public and Land-grant Universities

Panelist:
Ryan Luke, Ph.D.
Program Director for Adaptive Learning
University of Louisville