We’re Inspired by the EDUCAUSE Conference

This week, CCCOnline staff share their favorite takeaways from the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference (held this month in Denver). Enjoy their contributions below – and we welcome you to join the conversation in the CCCOnline Community!

Of the talks I attended, the presentation by Steven Sachs of Northern Virginia Community College (Engaging Online Learners for Success: Beyond the LMS) was particularly informative for me (the presentation slides can be found here).

Of particular note in his presentation was the use of a tutoring service, student authentication process, student coaches, embedded librarian, and a virtual student union for NVCC’s online program in helping students stay, succeed and feel connected in the virtual environment. By the data provided, their efforts have met with good results.

I also benefitted by visiting vendors in the exhibit hall and received an education of lots and lots of tools.  In particular, Respondus is beta-testing a student authentication tool that may hold some promise for us.  Also, kudos to Karen Kaemmerling and JoAnn Burkhart for doing a great job presenting at the D2L Booth. 

-Terry Reeves

Here are some of my favorite quotes or new sources:

“We are using too few of the capacities of technology.”
“Our students are our partners in scholarship.”
“Generative scholarship=apprenticeship model.”
Digital scholarship must still work in established forms of academics.
Geocode History helps provide a space for synthesis with content.
Mad Science book (Theo Gray)
Periodictable.com
WolframAlpha.com
Education formats should support the pattern of our students’ lives.
The workplace can become the place of learning, and education and workplace training can interact transparently.
Education is about discovery.
We need to bundle education and archive our learning.

-Karen Kaemmerling

Here are some tidbits:
Statistics site: www.gapminder.com

Clayton M. Christensen: The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out

Eric Muzar: Peer Instruction: A User’s Manual
      Flipped classroom
University of Minnesota: Academic and Corporate Relationship presentation

-Monica Falk

I was struck by the confluence of business and educators. If I have to take away anything it is how is Education as an Institution going to integrate the waves of innovation that business is heaping upon us.  

The parallel is that school buses integrate fairly involved technology that the students riding them will never "see" and hopefully not ever have to experience, say in a collision. It can be as simple as the safety glass of the windows, never noticed like the materials and designs used to build the safety cage, the hours of unappreciated testing of the locking mechanisms of the doors, or the hours of scrutiny the seating had to have passed during combustion tests for noxious and toxic gases.

All these systems go unnoticed but are the first to be examined in the case of accidents or catastrophes. The corresponding parallels for those taking educational courses can be found.

Are the locks on all the network's "doors" as rigorously tested?  What happens if a student receives emotional or physical harm due to a data leak of their private information akin to a busted window due to a rock on the road?  If the bus' tires blow out unexpectedly, how quickly can the students recover and get to school? If the Information System of the schools is down for a short time at the wrong time of year like grade reporting that’s quite a severe problem: nobody goes anywhere. Is Data compartmentalized enough to keep "fires" leaping between classes or department to department if the record is publicly released; students and instructors often can't retract what they post online nor know who is reading them.

These situations of technology integrating into education are in real need to be solved. Business is selling solutions to Education as an Institution but often Education as an Institution is slow to take them up or is blindly trusting of the company to deliver.

-Joseph Foss 

I enjoyed the presentations and picked up intriguing nuggets of information, such as

-Tristan Denley and Austin Peay State University are using a Netflix-like “suggestion engine” to supplement advising; students meet with greater success in courses that were recommended to them. A brand-new interface also suggests a series of majors to undecided students to help them out with decision-making.

-The “edX: A Breakthrough in Online Learning” (Harvard, MIT) and “MOOCs: The Coming Revolution” (Coursera, U of Maryland) presentations were well-attended and seemed to generate excitement. The projects have been rewarding for faculty and show promise to enrich the classroom and provide opportunities to understand how students learn.

-The final keynote, “Discovery in a Digital World” by Edward Ayers of U of Richmond, was powerful and inspiring. He discussed generative scholarship and the importance of Humanities embracing technology to enhance learning. He also demonstrated “Visualizing Emancipation” at the Digital Scholarship Lab, U of Richmond (http://dsl.richmond.edu/).

-Liz Dzabic