Friday, August 8, 2014

Online Teaching Conference 2014: The Live Sessions (Part One)

The 2014 Online Teaching Conference had terrific presentations and - since it was sold out a month before the conference - you may have missed them. Heck, even if you were at the conference, you couldn't attend more than one session at a time, so everyone missed some of these. But we were able to capture many of the presentations, and I'm happy to share the links with you here. Enjoy!

Caveats for Use of Social Media for Teaching with Judy Baker, Foothill College.Social media and cloud services such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Slideshare, LinkedIn, VoiceThread, Edmodo, Wikispaces, Instagram, and Flickr can provide engaging and powerful learning experiences for our students. However, before faculty use these resources as part of course requirements, they must employ safeguards that comply with laws regarding student privacy, copyright, and accessibility as well as protect students’ intellectual property. This presentation discusses how to provide your innovative faculty with the guidance they need to use social media and cloud services for instruction responsibly and effectively.

 The Center: An Online Learning Community for California's 112 Community Colleges with Michelle Pacansky-Brock, @ONE . The Center, launched in October 2013, is @ONE's newest program. Coordinated by Michelle Pacansky-Brock, the online community is anchored by a Google+ community and a Twitter presence (@Center_Ed). Its focus is to connect all of CA's 112 community colleges in a social conversation about innovations in teaching and learning through technology. Learn how to be notified about regular Hangouts on Air (live online video conversations between CCC community members), how to use participate in our bi-weekly Twitter chats, improve your personal learning network through participation in The Center, and explore ways to leverage Center events in on-campus workshops. Join The Center and experience next-gen professional development!


 Creating Dynamic Discussions to Energize Your Class with Jim Marteney, West Los Angeles College. This session explores strategies you can use to make your discussions more appealing and thought provoking. It examines uses for discussions from icebreakers to debates, to user generated content and examine strategies for grading discussions. It also provides some very specific approaches you can use to improve your discussions in your class.

Developing a Course Specific Online Orientation to Increase Student Success & Retention with Anna Stirling, Mt. San Jacinto College. By creating an orientation that is explicit to your course, you can introduce the tools and structure your students need to be familiar with to succeed in your course. Using this course orientation as the check-in process removes the burden of "teaching" the tech while you are teaching the content. The examples provided in this presentation are specific to Blackboard, but the concepts apply to any course or learning management system. Anna provides example activities you can use, along with help links and videos, to get your students past the learning curve of the course management system and focused on learning the curriculum content.

Engaging Students Using Live Chats with Judith Crozier and Rachel Roske, El Camino College, Compton Center.Often missing in the online classroom are real-time conversations where students converse and collaborate in an immediate way. Live Chats provides a fun, interactive experience for the online student! This innovative teaching tool allows students to generate their own small group discussions via a platform already familiar to them. Designed with accessibility in mind, Live Chats are a democratic forum where all students have their voices heard. Live Chats also accommodate various learning styles since dialogues are driven by students’ own perspectives and ways of processing information.


 Familia Online: Overcoming the Isolation of Online Learning
 with Marc Coronado, Mia Hernandez, and Michelle Nunez Alvarez, DeAnza College. This workshop was offered by two DeAnza Community College students who created and continue to mentor for a high-tech/high-touch online class where they build relationships through the use of the familia concept, a commitment to service learning, and by using social media technology in addition to standard English Composition curriculum.


Google Apps for Education with Joshua Kitzerow of Mt. San Jacinto Community College.Terrific, spirited overview of the free, online Google tools that you and your students can use to make great projects, collaborative shared documents and presentations, and a lot more. Joshua shows how to work more efficiently by searching for information within the documents utilizing the embedded research tool. This is also a presentation that lets you see
how others are using these tools in online and classroom teaching.

 How can Online Learning Orientations Contribute to Student Success?  with Jim Julius, MiraCosta College. In spring 2014, MiraCosta College offered in-person online learning orientation sessions for the first time. What content is essential to include? What are some effective ways to get students to participate? How should the sessions be organized similarly or differently for live in-person offering vs. live online vs. asynchronous online? What effect, if any, does participation in these orientations have upon student retention and success? What are some ways to track these effects?

Interactive Learning with NearPod  with Michael Kieley, Loyola Marymount University. NearPod is a game changing app for interactive learning. Imagine transforming a set of PowerPoint slides into a rich, multimedia experience which allows students to express their opinions, answer quiz questions, and even make drawings related to the content. NearPod summarizes these responses in vivid pie charts, which can be shared with students immediately, and NearPod Reports archive all the student input for later review by the teacher.

Ten Best Practices for Teaching Online with DeAnna Kirchen, Golden West College. This presentation covers the top ten things you should be doing in your online class according to the “Ten Best Practices for Teaching Online” by Judith V. Boettcher, PhD. If you’re new to online teaching, this will help you get off to a great start. If you’re a seasoned online teacher, see if you are doing all 10 things!



 Tips and Tricks for Using Blackboard with Eric Wilson, Orange Coast Community College. A fun session that shows Blackboard users more effective ways to build content in their courses.




A Wealth of Information: Online Learning & the Library with Gretchen Keer, CSU, East Bay.  This presentation offers practical tips, including best practices for online information literacy instruction and a guide on collaborating with your local librarian. It is presented by an academic librarian with ten years of experience embedding library services and resources into the online environment.



Get Twitter Fan Box Widget