REMOTE Summit 2021

The use of technology in education typically focuses on knowledge mastery. However, in a rapidly changing world, one thing is certain: knowledge mastery is no longer enough. To navigate the unknown challenges of tomorrow requires that ever more people go beyond mastery, developing the ability to evaluate, use, and even produce new knowledge - the skills of exploration. This presentation will showcase new digital tools and techniques that cultivate these essential skills.

Do you feel as if you are building a boat while sailing? It can be challenging transferring faculty presence from the classroom to online. Whether you are a veteran or novice online instructor, a vital element in any online course is presence and compassion. Participants will discover seven ways to show presence and compassion in online environments.

Connection. Consistency. Content. Community. Compassion. These terms encompass a critical core of what new students need from their university, perhaps now more than ever, regardless of modality or student type. This session will explore strategies we've developed using these components to foster student success in their early courses.

This session will explore how the University of North Carolina (UNC) System successfully supported expedited institutional transitions to remote and increased online learning. Attendees will receive a comprehensive overview of the strategies used by UNC System institutions to ensure quality digital education such as preemptive Quality Matters implementation, collaborative development of thousands of high-quality open educational resources for high-enrollment courses, and inter-institutional quality assurance initiatives to promote regional e-learning excellence.

The onset of the pandemic has resulted in seismic shifts within education globally, presenting faculty, students and administrators with significant barriers related to access and inclusion in digital learning environments. From inequitable access to technology, to design and teaching that inadvertently leaves many students behind, the global disruption caused by COVID-19 has challenges that have often gone unrecognized and unaddressed. Educators find themselves with a critical opportunity for transformation, reimagining teaching and learning practices around quality, equity, and engagement that demands the success of all learners and not a privileged few. This presentation will spotlight actionable effective practices for designing inclusive digital learning environments, and facilitating online and blended learning that supports all learners. Participants will explore examples of quality, equitable, and engaging digital learning while taking part in live activities that model instructional design practices for online engagement. Weaving together stories of impactful, student-centered digital learning from around the globe, this session will provide participants with concrete approaches to digital learning across multiple modalities in support of student success.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

The Learning Objective Design Deck is a practical tool to make the process of defining Learning Objectives and Assessment Strategies for any type of educational experience easier, more creative, collaborative or even playful. It is based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, can be used in both physical & virtual environments and is aimed at educators, instructional designers or anyone tasked with creating educational content, ranging from classes, workshops, seminars to courses in school or university.

Historically there has been resistance to change studio-based education, specifically in architecture and design, to modalities other than in person and face to face. This presentation will explore the opportunities to re-imagine a studio-based education that were developed in response to the pandemic.

Exams stand out as a problematic barrier within STEM programs at colleges and universities. What should be a performance of learning is too often a struggle for representation and against anxiety, disenfranchisement, and language issues. With broader efforts underway to overhaul the teaching of STEM, we are investigating methods for making college STEM exams more educative and inclusive. Here we’ll discuss the methods in the public exam system as well as a new, multi-institution research program designed to help understand for whom these methods work and under what conditions.

Collaboration and the exchange of ideas is how new knowledge is created, based on the Socratic method. Yet how do we encourage our students to collaborate, engage, and improve - especially through such turbulent times? This session will focus on using a next-generation discussion board, powered by AI, to generate in-depth discussions between students, empower them with descriptive and prescriptive analytics, and assist the instructors with meaningful automated student assessment. We will touch upon different use-cases and lessons learnt from shifting between face-to-face, remote and hybrid teaching.                                                                                            

All online learning experiences are not created equal. As more colleges and universities are working to expand their distance, online, and hybrid learning course offerings, the data and resources available to deliver instruction has become more robust and is helping to inform virtual classroom tools and pedagogy.  
Join Dr. Erin Morris, Assistant Professor at SUNY Cortland, and Dr. Kim Oppelt, the Director of Advocacy and Community at Class, as they discuss best practices in digital teaching and learning, data and assessment that produce outcomes, engagement techniques, and the latest trends surrounding instruction and tools in the virtual classroom.