A Special Thank You to our Sponsors!

This session will talk about the phases that Higher Education has gone through since March. We will highlight why it’s important to measure KPI’s to understand how your school is performing, who’s using what, how often, and is it working.

Presenter: Mike Katz, Platform Executive-Analytics

Presenter: CT Nguyen, Account Manager

How you choose to design your online course site can have a significant impact on the success of your students. I’ve been teaching online since 2007, but it wasn’t until I went through the Quality Matters and Online Learning Consortium certification programs that I truly discovered how impactful good quality design can be! In this presentation, I will share my current course design strategies in Blackboard, how I manage the site each week, and how I develop a sense of community with my students. Even if you’re not a Blackboard user, expect to come away with design and management strategies that you can incorporate into your own online course sites.

Presenter: Eric LePage, Executive Director – Teaching & Technology Center Bridgewater State University

An empirically successful approach that includes deeper learning principles (DLPs) in online curricula is through game-based learning (GBL), which can facilitate cognitive rehearsal (CR). A project to develop and test an online gamified roleplaying module to facilitate CR in business students was undertaken. Data from 108 students were evaluated, where nearly half the students used the module. Major themes suggest that the online roleplaying GBL module led to students undergoing CR and problem-solving, which is evidence of DLPs. In terms of learning objectives, between 87% and 90% of students reported the module helped them learn the lesson content.

Presenter: Audrey Pereira, Associate Professor Fitchburg State University

Online courses suffer from a higher than average dropout and failure rate. Without the learned habits of in-class work and in-person faculty reminders, students prone to procrastinate do so even more in an online class. The lack of instructor presence and classroom community can lead to student isolation, frustration, and confusion. All of this is compounded by a reticence to ask questions, outreach to the instructor, instructor response time, and course design confusion becomes a recipe for failure. This presentation and discussion will look at some of the reasons students fail and three proven methods that have improved completion and success results.

Presenter: Dianne McDermott Cerasuolo, Assistant Professor North Shore Community College

Do your online students struggle with understanding course expectations and navigating Blackboard? Learn about an innovative solution that utilizes trained academic support student employees, Bb Ambassadors, to support online students in the first four weeks of the semester. Bb Ambassadors assist students in: locating and submitting assignments, posting to a discussion board, communicating with professors, time management and study strategies, and much more. Bb Ambassadors create a comfortable online environment for students to ask questions. Please join us and learn what faculty and students are saying about this new successful program!

Noreen McGinness Olson, Director, Academic Support Programs

Beth Kelley, SI and Science Learning Specialist

Uyen Mai, Bb Ambassador

Middlesex Community College

Blackboard experts will walk through all of the UBN benefits, and share communication best practices for when your school updates your Blackboard platform.

Brad Katz, Solutions Engineer

Lisa Andion, Ed.D. Sr. Solutions Engineer, Blackboard

Jeff Rubenstein, Vice President of Product Strategy, Kultura

The presentation will provide a glimpse at different ways open pedagogy has been used in an online course to facilitate more meaningful engagement among students as well as opportunities for students to take control of their learning. The presentation will cover what was done but also how others can build open pedagogical practices into their online courses.

Lance Eaton, Part Time Faculty North Shore Community College

When the Dean walks into your office on a Tuesday and asks if on Thursday you can train the faculty to teach remotely, how do you respond? Framingham State University’s Education Technology Office (ETO) shares how we defined what needed to be covered and how we distributed the training to faculty, students, and staff during the COVID 19 crisis. The interactive session will include what we learned from delivering training under pressure and how the office is transitioning our training from emergency remote learning to thoughtfully designed online learning for the summer.

Steve Courchesne, Instructional Designer

Robin Robinson, Director of Instructional Technology and eLearning

Framingham State University

In the process of reviewing multiple courses, we have realized that many syllabi are taken for granted from one semester to another. Instructors forget to reflect on how their syllabus could be designed more effectively just by following some simple but effective Instructional Design rules: clarity in the expectations, the overall structure of the course, as few assumptions as possible, UDL principles, and visually appealing and engaging. What makes a well-designed syllabus? How to design one better? We will find out by providing examples of high impact syllabi. Then we will compare and contrast them with other syllabi and go through a makeover process, in a hands-on style workshop.

Daniela Loghin, Instructional Designer

Roxanne McCorry, Director of Academic Technology and Online Learning

Middlesex Community College

Join this session to learn about the growing body of work that offers approaches to building and teaching online courses that are equity-centered in their design and practice. We explore the Peralta Equity Framework for online courses, and dive into a number of other strategies instructors and instructional designers can use to engage all students in digital learning.

Danielle Leek, Director of Academic Innovation and Distance Education

Bunker Hill Community College

Presenter: Krystylynn Fusaro, Account Manager

We will touch upon the journey from face to face to remote teaching and how that impacts the way you deliver content through Course Design and Instruction. We will highlight how we work with Faculty to prepare them for distance instruction and how to ensure their content is deliverable through the LMS

Presenter: Angela Robbins, Content Development Manager

New Tools for Saving Faculty Time, and Driving Online Student Engagement

Presenters: Greg Sixt- Account Executive

Sean De Caire- Senior Account Executive

 

Presenter: Jeff Rubenstein, Vice President of Product Strategy

Intro to Community Planning is offered through WSU’s Dept. of Geography, Planning, & Sustainability (GPS), and addresses topics such as environmental planning, transportation, economic development, public participation, historic preservation, and urban design. Taught in an in-person standard-semester format, the course has included a final presentation on a planning issue facing the student’s hometown or a location of their choice. This course was offered in a two-week online format over Winter 2020. This session will address the compressing of this course into the two-week online format, as well as the evolution of the final project from an in-class presentation to a screencast.

Presenter: Alina Gross, Assistant Professor of Geography, Planning, and Sustainability

Westfield State University

This presentation reviews techniques discovered during the mid-semester shift from in-class to online, and has two pieces. The first portion of the presentation details the integration of Zoom into the classroom environment as a tool for simulating face-to-face encounters from a remote setting – specifically, how Zoom can be used to deliver content, engage students, and assess understanding. The second part deals with the dissemination of this material to other faculty, and draws on the presenter’s experiences as Zoom Faculty Champion at WSU. The goal is to provide attendees with a better understanding of Zoom’s capabilities, and help them develop the means for sharing this knowledge.

Presenter: Robert Chatt, Assistant Professor of Finance

Westfield State University

eTutoring is here and strong! The Northeast eTutoring Consortium’s (NeTC) first year with the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) has been a resounding success. eTutoring, which provides 24/7 synchronous and asynchronous tutoring services in a range of subjects, has adopted student-centered changes to the platform, including full accessibility using Zoom for live tutoring. The workshop will demonstrate the interface and highlight collaboration among tutors and between tutors and students, collaboration among member schools to provide support to students, and collaboration among consortia and the SBCTC to enhance the platform to engage students and support their success.

Presenters: Nancy Thompson, Coordinator, Northeast eTutoring Consortium

Noreen McGinness Olson, Director, Academic Support Programs

Middlesex Community College

Our social and instructional presence play crucial roles in maintaining a strong learning community. This session identifies, and demonstrates, techniques and considerations for building instructors’ online presence, in both synchronous and asynchronous environments.

Presenter: Gerol Petruzella, Director of Academic Technology

Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts