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USG OFD – Summer Webinar Series:

• Connecting in the Time of Corona: Techniques to Listen and be Heard (Jun 10)
• Small Teaching Online: Minor Changes, Big Impact (Jun 12)
• Online Course Design and Course Planning (Jun 18)
• TILTing Your Online Assignments (Jun 23)
• Supporting Students During Uncertain Times (Jun 30)
• Online APPQMR (Applying the Quality Matters Rubric) (Jul 07 – 20)
• Supporting Adjunct/Part-time Instructors (Jul 09)
• Facilitating Online Discussions in Both Synchronous and Asynchronous Environments (Jul 15)
• Humanizing Your Online Course (Jul 23)

More information and registration

Pre-register for this free virtual event to prepare for the challenge of teaching in what promises to be a complex and messy Fall semester.

Join thousands of faculty, thought and practice leaders across global universities and colleges to discover immediate ways to improve online class delivery and to obtain navigation assistance around blended delivery. Build your network of peers and experts. Learn from their responses to COVID-19 to help you build a better back to school for this fall and beyond.

WHY JOIN?

• Learn best practices by discipline. We will showcase master practitioners across Gen Ed, and you can see how they lead their classes online.
• Increase student engagement. Sessions on how to engage students virtually, ensure diversity and inclusion in the online classroom, improve the effectiveness of mixed mode teaching, among other topics.
• Build a network of support. Meet and engage with peers and experts, as in any in-person event! Participate in one-on-ones, one-to-many, and virtual lounges to allow serendipity and connections to blossom.
• Gain access to curated free resources to use in your courseware. Recorded sessions from the event itself will be available for six months up until the end of 2020.
• Understand policy issues from the industry shift in Higher Education. Ideal for deans, provosts, and administrators.

WHEN

The event will run between July 13th-14th, 2020. Each day will consist of three hours with multiple simultaneous learning tracks – providing you access to over 20 hours of valuable content.

WHO WILL ATTEND?

Remote is FREE of charge for those involved in learning delivery (faculty and learning practitioners) as well as Administration worldwide.

Connect, Share, Innovate!

The Fast Track to Success Project invites you to the fourth annual conference on innovation in higher education. This conference will provide a forum for sharing lessons-learned, strategies, outlooks, data, pedagogy, and design elements of competency-based education and other innovative models at all levels of instruction and learning in higher education.

Conference Features

• Interactive sessions and workshops facilitated by experts in the field
• Keynote address featuring Dr. Harrison Keller, Commissioner of Higher Education for the State of Texas
• Excellent presentations and panels
• Sponsors demonstrating ed-tech tools and platforms

Description

For the past three years, the Fast Track to Success Conference has provided a valuable forum for discussing best practices in CBE and related innovation in higher education. We are excited to host the fourth annual conference in a new, online format. Keeping in mind how overcommitted we are to online time in these COVID days, the conference will provide rich, in-depth sessions for only a few hours per day over three days. The full conference schedule will be available shortly after you register.

We have over thirty exciting, inciteful presentations from Texas, around the US, from Canada, and Mexico. Along with the presentations, the program includes an inspiring opening plenary.

Many thanks to the Perkins State Leadership grant and our stalwart sponsors, the conference will be free for participants, but registration is required. D2L is providing the hosting platform along with all the technical support required to run the conference. This conference, once again, promises to be a valuable forum for all those interested in CBE.

Conference Website

A useful compilation of digital tools from EDUCAUSE: “The Typology of Free Web-based Learning Technologies (2020) provides educators with a list of 226 technologies arranged into 40 types and 15 clusters that can be used via a browser to promote more productive and interactive learning. “

The last few months have been full of uncertainty. Are you feeling drained and fatigued? Are you feeling like you don’t have enough energy for the summer semester? Are you stressed just thinking about the fall semester?

Join the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) on May 11 – 13 for the 2020 Summer Institute. Faculty and staff can explore strategies to maximize the usage of GGC’s technology tools, communicate effectively with co-workers and students, and make the best use of the existing resources to help maintain energy and well-being during these stressful times.

As with previous Summer Institutes, participants may mix and match sessions to fit their interests and needs to:

• Level up on new teaching ideas.
• Level up and reinvigorate your teaching.
• Level up on professional/personal development (there are sessions for staff).
• Have an opportunity to step back and think about your classes with fresh eyes.

Facilitators will conduct all sessions through Microsoft Teams, Blackboard Collaborate or Zoom. Information on which platform to be used and relevant materials for each session will be sent via an Outlook calendar invite by May 10. Schedule and register for sessions today!

“Count finals among the many rhythms of academic life that have been disrupted by the pandemic. For some professors, at least, rethinking their finals under duress has raised questions about whether their usual approach was the best one in the first place.”

An article from the Chronicle of Higher Education: What do final exams mean during a pandemic?

FREE WEBINAR SERIES

As the higher education community responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, AAC&U is offering a series of webinars to support those at the forefront of efforts to maintain the commitment to quality, equity, and inclusion. Thanks to generous support from Microsoft, the webinars are available live and on-demand at no cost. The webinars in this series are presented in two formats:

TRANSFORMATIONAL TUESDAYS
Hosted by AAC&U President Lynn Pasquerella, presidents, board members, and national changemakers discuss their responses to the COVID-19 crisis, the tough decisions they are making, and how COVID-19 is transforming higher education.

FACULTY FRIDAYS
Hosted by AAC&U leaders and featuring special guests, faculty come together as a virtual community for a weekly “happy hour” conversation with the staff, administrators, and community partners who share and support their commitment student success.

UPCOMING LIVE WEBINARS

FACULTY FRIDAY: Teaching, Learning, and Assessing in Remote Learning Environments

April 3, 2:00–3:00 p.m. (ET)

Join a “happy hour” conversation about how rapid course redesign and the move to teaching, learning, and assessing online can illuminate equity issues and lead to improved learning for all of your students. Read more >>

REGISTER

 

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU)
The National Association of System Heads (NASH)
The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC)
The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) and
The Association of College and University Educators (ACUE)

Invite leaders, faculty and staff across higher education for focused and practical discussions on:

Effective Online Instruction

Higher education has made an astonishing national transition to online learning. Traditional classrooms may be closed across campuses, but class is still in session, as faculty have gone above and beyond to ensure that their students keep learning.

Yet moving a course online—like being assigned to a classroom—is just the start.

Join nationally recognized experts in online teaching and learning for a virtual discussion on best-practices in key areas to ensure quality online instruction for student success.

Confirmed experts include: Flower Darby, Kevin Gannon, April Mondy, Viji Sathy, Alyson Snowe, Michael Wesch and more.

LEARN MORE (https//acue.org/webinars)

Webinar topics, dates, and times:

Welcoming Students to your Online Environment, Thursday, April 2, 2020, 2:00pm ET, (recording)

Managing your Online Presence,  Monday, April 6, 2020, 2:00pm ET (recording)

Organizing your Online Courses Thursday, April 9, 2:00pm ET (recording)

Planning and Facilitating Quality Discussions Tuesday, April 14, 2:00pm ET (recording)

Recording Effective Micro-Lectures Friday, April 17, 2:00pm ET (recording)

Engaging Students in Readings and Micro-Lectures Monday, April 20, 2:00pm ET (recording)

These one-hour, live webinars will include Q&A with participants and will be recorded and hosted by ACUE. Additional open educational resources to support effective online teaching are being offered in conjunction with OpenStax. Implementation resources related to each topic are available from ACUE’s Online Teaching Toolkit.

Some interesting food for thought:

“For my colleagues who are now being instructed to put some or all of the remainder of their semester online, now is a time to do a poor job of it. You are NOT building an online class. You are NOT teaching students who can be expected to be ready to learn online. And, most importantly, your class is NOT the highest priority of their OR your life right now. Release yourself from high expectations right now, because that’s the best way to help your students learn.”

Full blog post