Monday, April 22, 2019

Storytelling workshop with The Moth

In this workshop, dive into the art of storytelling with experts from The Moth and explore how to enhance curriculum connection, affect classroom engagement, and promote faculty community-building through stories. Participants will learn The Moth’s Seven Principles of Storytelling, apply the principles to craft and tell their own personal stories, and have the opportunity to participate in the opening StorySLAM featuring their peers.

Opening reception featuring StorySLAM with The Moth

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Breakfast

Opening Keynote

The Art of Collaboration: (An Interactive Art Experience)

Phil Hansen, multimedia artist, speaker, author, and innovator

Finding creativity within limitations will inspire you to stop looking on the outside, and start looking inside yourself for resources that can transform your challenges into opportunities for success. Through jaw-dropping visuals and LIVE interactive art, get ready to break preconceived assumptions, activate your creative capacity, and bring fresh ways of viewing the task at hand that will culminate with success.

Break

Track: Access & Affordability

Who cares about day one access?

Phillip Anaya, OER and Digital Coordinator, Alamo Colleges District

We may have heard the phrase “Day One Access,” but what does it mean for students? The Open Educational Resources (OER) community brags about it and how it accounts for the success rates of students but those instructors are already rock stars. Let's take a look at Alamo’s IM Direct, inclusive access model and see how beneficial “Day One Access” is to students. Join this session to understand how Alamo’s IM Direct program has impacted students in and out of the classroom.

Track: Digital Innovation

Outcomes don’t happen by accident: How to make ed tech work for you

Dr. Kristen DiCerbo, VP, Learning Research & Design, Pearson

Better learner outcomes happen by design and implementation. Ed tech has so much potential to impact outcomes at scale, but it's often a challenge to know where to start. At Pearson, we not only identify the outcomes that matter most to learners and educators and design products based on evidence of what works to improve those outcomes, but we also measure the impact of the implementation of our products can have on learning. This practical, hands on session shares how to make ed tech work for you.

Track: Access & Affordability

What faculty really think: Changing perceptions on access and affordability

Gates Bryant, Partner, Tyton Partners

Jeff Seaman, Director, Babson Survey Research Group

Drawing from the results of multiple national surveys on higher education teaching faculty by the Babson Survey Research Group and by Tyton Partners, this session will review changing faculty perceptions of access and affordability and speculate on what the future might hold.

Faculty believe that, "the cost of course materials is a serious problem for my students." Both individual faculty and the publishing industry are reacting to these concerns by taking steps to control costs, including: supporting used textbooks and rental programs, placing copies on reserve, and selecting materials based on cost while publishers are introducing new distribution models, such as inclusive access. The session will cover faculty satisfaction with textbooks, OER, and courseware, the positives and negatives that moving to inclusive access presents, and what faculty and administrators are saying they expect the next steps to be.

Track: Digital Innovation

Increasing student engagement and social presence through technology

Sean Nufer, Director of Educational Technology, TCS Education System

Both traditional and non-traditional students use social media networks (Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest) to keep track of friends, family, industry updates, news, politics, etc., so why not use them in education? Let’s close the gap between educational platforms and popular social media interfaces. This session will discuss best practices and innovative ways to bring social learning into discussions, assignments, and content pages within an LMS to add a collaborative and interactive element to typical course offerings.

Track: Career Success

5 key strategies for designing impactful digital credentials with employers

Brenda Perea, Director, Education and Workforce Strategies, Credly

Kim Moore, Director, Workforce, Professional and Education, Wichita State University

Heidi Shoemake, Director of Academic Technology and Communications, Division of Information Systems, University of Mississippi Medical Center

Hiring and staffing movements are happening as we speak. Employers are shifting from degree hiring to competency-based hiring, creating an opportunity for educational institutions and training organizations to develop digital credentials that offer more precise indications of an applicant’s ability. In this session we’ll provide actionable insights and 5 key strategies to help educational institutions partner with local employers and regional industry leaders in designing digital credentials.

Lunch

Keynote Panel - Women in Tech

Dr. Lisa Dawley, Executive Director, Jacobs Institute for Innovation in Education, University of San Diego

Sanam Raza, Pearson

Mickey Revenaugh, Pearson

Hear from the remarkable women working on the front lines of edtech. They’ll talk about the challenges faced in creating diverse and empowering solutions and driving fundamental change for learners around the world.

Track: Digital Innovation

Transmedia Storytelling: Creating an educational experience across multiple social/digital platforms

Rick Ramsey, Education Director for Visual Arts, Full Sail University

"Social media", "multi-media", "transmedia" are all terms that speak to the complex systems of communication that are used by virtually everyone. What if we could corral these multiple platforms to work together to present a single idea, lesson, or story? Transmedia Storytelling is the key that unlocks a whole new voice for the educator. Learn to use multiple platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, text messaging, and more to seduce the learner with creative and interactive narratives. More than copying and pasting to multiple forms of media, Transmedia Storytelling sends the learner on a journey of discovery as each piece of the narrative is unfolded on different platforms. Videos, blogs, images, and texts all reveal a part of the story, that when assembled, creates a new experience for the user. In short, Transmedia Storytelling is using diverse forms of media to convey a message in a unique and intriguing way. Learn to use the various forms of communication that are already becoming part of a digital culture to engage critical, creative, and out-of-the-box thinking with Transmedia Storytelling.

Track: Career Success

The new education: Learning 21st century skills through game design

Gregory Garvey, Director and Professor of Game Design & Development, Quinnipiac University

This presentation argues that the “New Education” should impart 21st century skills–namely critical thinking, design thinking, systems thinking, algorithmic thinking, creativity and interpersonal skills. Gregory Garvey claims that learning game design teaches these very skills, which can transfer to other knowledge domains and disciplines. When coupled with a solid grounding of a liberal education students are better prepared to be responsible citizenship and to compete in the global economy. This presentation will provide an overview of 21st century skills, along with a discussion of the skills employers are looking for. This will be followed by a discussion of how learning game design addresses the acquisition of these skills through hands-on experiential learning through the methodology of the spiral loop of prototype–test–iterate. The presentation includes a short workshop on game design.

Less Stress, Clearer Thoughts

Recharge and reset with this mindfulness meditation session. Take these easy techniques back to your colleagues to help promote wellness in the workplace.

Track: Career Success

The benefits of iterative failure

Lauren Liss, Assistant Professor, Interactive Arts and Media (IAM) Department, Columbia College Chicago

As educators and design thinkers, we must focus on the process and not just the end goal. This presentation will address the benefits of creating learning environments that allow students to take risks and fail; through this failure, they become more resilient, more realistic, and more accountable. In turn, their future work is more thoughtful and they have a greater ability to be nimble, collaborate, and pivot away from ineffective ideas.

Track: Digital Innovation

Learning analytics in action: Identifying struggling students with precision for faculty intervention

Jason Lokkesmoe, AVP, Big Data & Analytics Business Development, Pearson

Jenna Olsen, Data Analyst, Western Governors University

A holistic view of the student provides higher education leaders and educators the necessary tools to help optimize their students' educational experiences and, ultimately, their success. Moving beyond a point in time, data gathered from the student experience within digital content allows for a more comprehensive — and early — view of where they are exceeding as well as struggling. Institutional intelligence and analytics help institutions and educators identify these students and act on data to improve student and institutional outcomes.

In this session, you'll hear from your peers on the front line at Western Governors University, and see how they’re working together with Pearson to take Learning Analytics beyond student engagement.  You’ll also learn more about new methods for unlocking a precise ability for intervention.

Learning Lounge on the Lawn

Unwind with fellow attendees and share your lessons learned from the day.

Evening Social

Spend an evening with us at El Chorro — a historic schoolhouse turned world class restaurant — enjoying delicious food and drink and sharing ideas about the future with fellow attendees.

Transportation will be provided to El Chorro and then back to the hotel.

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Breakfast

Track: Career Success

Academic, human-centric, or job specific: Which skills matter the most?

Nate Anderson, Senior Director, Jobs for the Future

Jayme Heffler, Campaign Strategist, Pearson

Meena Naik, M.S., Faculty & Staff Development Coordinator, University of North Texas

The skills gap is one of the most critical topics for both educators and employers today. How can higher ed institutions provide students with the necessary skills that are most important to employers in their chosen career pathway? It's about discovering, developing, and aligning soft skills to a students' academic plan and future work goals. And further, how research and analytics can provide evidence of learning that both institutions and employers can depend on.

In this session, attendees will hear about national trends addressing the future of work from Jobs for the Future. They’ll also learn about progressive programs, such as the University of North Texas’s Career Connect, which arms students with the skills necessary to help them prepare for career success.

Track: Digital Innovation

Industry-inspired innovation in design education

Miguel Cardona, Assistant Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology

The New Media Design BFA at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has built a curriculum that empowers students to enter into any number of creative, design and technology-driven positions providing them with skills that remain in high demand. We accomplish this through an interdisciplinary approach to design with technology, methods, and standards sourced from current industry practice, emphasis on process and presentation, and applied problem-solving through collaboration. This presentation will overview the interdisciplinary undergraduate design curriculum that leverages design thinking, applied design elements and visual principles across Digital Humanities, Human Centered Computer, Computer Programing, and New Media Design programs. We will also demonstrate how we employ our methods in the classroom and showcase how we teach foundation concepts, visual design, information design, interaction design, motion graphics, and 3D with an applied mindset giving students the tools and courage to tinker and experiment as they continue their development beyond the academic environment.

Track: Career Success

Preparing students for a globally competitive world

Jimmy Cervin, Program Liaison for Curricular Innovation, BUILD-IT, Arizona State University

Kristin Hunt, Partnership Director, Pearson

Nguyen Minh Quang, Can Tho University

There is a need for a more effective approach to preparing students for today’s globalized epoch, in which they must have in-depth preparedness to compete and thrive in an interconnected, diverse, and rapidly changing world. This led to an initiative of an online performance-based assessment tool, called Supervicon, which was implemented as an “outward-looking education” approach at Can Tho University (CTU) in Vietnam. This session aims to present an overview of the Supervicon tool, including its yardstick for educational success, and outlines its contribution to producing globally-competent students.

Track: Digital Innovation

Innovative technology in education: What's hot right now

Sean Nufer, Director of Educational Technology, TCS Education System

This session is not for the faint of heart. Get ready to sprint through 20 edtech platforms in 45 minutes. You’ll discover how to bring your course content to life in engaging and meaningful ways using freely available or very affordable products. This session will showcase the latest edtech resources and strategies aimed to improve the student experience and enhance your online and blended course content. We’ll also cover some of the more professional platforms and interactions that are available through licensing including: presentation tools, interactive platforms, infographic tools, audio/video editing software, multimedia creation and editing platforms, and collaboration tools. Come ready to explore — leave informed and inspired.

Lunch & Closing Remarks