What I Learned at the Online Learning Consortium in Orlando, Florida October 12-16, 2015

Tiffani did a GREAT job telling us about FlipCon! It was a wonderful resource, especially for those of us exploring more about blended/hybrid learning. And it was very interesting to hear what high school teachers are doing across the disciplines.

I attended the Institute for Emerging Leadership in Online Learning (http://coil.psu.edu/ielol/) master class before the Online Learning Consortium conference began.

I learned quite a bit in that day-long workshop--

One element that got a lot of discussion was a faculty member's charisma in teaching an online class. I was surprised to learn a few tips to increase a faculty member's online charisma:
1. Write like you talk--implement short videos of yourself teaching/lecturing with the first "take." That is, let students see your mistakes and see the "real" professor.
2. Talk "off script." Fellow faculty sharing this information said that talking "off script" (that is, not reading a prepared sheet of paper onto a camera but rather lecturing more like you would in front of a class) increases faculty charisma, which in turn increases student retention.

Another very interesting ideas had to do with student-student interaction outside of online classes. One institution with a lot of online students said that online students had set up clubs based on identity such as students who are parents, returning students who are military, etc. The students used Yammer, but the faculty member sharing the information said Facebook would also work.

Another topic that was discussed was standardization of online courses. On the one hand, it might make sense to standardize the course look across an institution. However, one institution experimented with standardizing an entire program--with the look and feel of every course, right down to the same number and type of  assignments in every course in the program. The institution found that overstandardization can negatively impact critical thinking skill development of students.

An additional idea that was discussed had to do with improving online courses--and doing so mid-semester. One institution has formal, early-semester evaluations. After the evaluations are completed, the institution's center for teaching excellence reads all the evaluations, looks for patterns, and approaches faculty and offers assistance to improve elements of the course that seemed to be an issue for multiple students. If the faculty member agrees, improvements are implemented mid course to improve the student experience. Pretty bold!

The Online Learning Consortium Conference itself is an amazing whirl of technology, instructional design, pedagogy, and faculty development strategies.

Many of the panels I attended addressed best practices in faculty development. Highlights included ideas like making sure that your institution appreciates scholarship of teaching and learning if you want your faculty to ask for/participate in faculty development. Also, if you want your institution to appreciate and support faculty development, you want to make sure you measure the success of your faculty development efforts in ways that administrators can understand and appreciate. Another panel addressed ways of collaborating faculty development and online program administration efforts across multiple campuses--15 multiple campuses to be exact! I also attended a panel on gaming that used SoftChalk to create gamified online classroom scenarios to engage students and increase student success.  Another panel explained the task of translating the QM Rubric into Chinese! And I learned about software tools such as GoReact, Educannon, and Zaption.