Thanks to Vanguard’s professional development funds, I was able to attend the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Conference in Orlando, Florida, this week.
This post will provide some resources related to the sessions that I presented in, as well as some other thoughts on the conference.
Retrieval Practice Session
I gave a workshop called: Leverage Three Educational Technology Tools for Retrieval Practice, as a part of the learning effectiveness strand (which is their way of referring to breakout tracks). Some of the Vanguard faculty were able to join me for a practice presentation in early November.
If you missed that session, I did also record my presentation as a part of my Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, episode 127. I also built a conference session webpage, which has my slides and other resources.
Panel Sessions
In addition to presenting, I was invited to be a part of two panel sessions. The first one was an overview of the learning effectiveness strand. Marti Snyder gave an excellent history of how learning effectiveness has been defined and provided us with rich questions to consider.
The second dialog I was a part of was the podcasters panel. Our esteemed moderator, Kelvin Thompson, brought together six individuals who are all involved in some form of podcasting.
Some of us are more traditional in our approaches (meaning that we have a more produced show, with planned interviews and detailed show notes), while others are experimenting with new approaches (one of the shows is done on Periscope, while another is a live conversation a few higher ed women have over a glass of wine).
My listening preference is definitely toward the more planned/formal podcasts. Katie Linder’s Research in Action podcast is an excellent example of this style. It is constructed such that people like me can listen, who are interested in different types of research methods.
However, it can also be used as a supplement or resource for a research methods class. Each episode is accompanied by downloadable instructor guides, making it that much easier to incorporate into a class.
Next Steps
I like to spend some time reflecting about action steps I want to take, after having the opportunity to attend a conference like this. OLC’s events are pretty overwhelming, in terms of breadth and depth.
One particularly memorable session was from Thomas J. Tobin on online copyright. He kept us engaged with regular review questions throughout his session and had a lively presentation style. He mentioned that he would have additional resources available on his website, but I don’t see anything there, yet, as I type these words.
I bookmarked a bunch of tweets that came from sessions I was unable to attend, under the hashtag #OLCaccelerate. Each breakout strand offered around 30-40 workshops, making it very difficult to select which one to see in person.
Fortunately, many of them were also recorded. I’ll be making a list of which ones I want to watch after-the-fact and which resource pages I want to explore further.
Vanguard is an institutional member of OLC. If any of you want to sign up to be able to access their resources, just send me an email and I’ll get you set up.
