Full conference NERCOMP Annual Conference attendees will gain early access to bonus pre-recorded sessions that will be available online from March 11 to June 30, 2022.
Access Information
Participants will receive access to the on-demand sessions through an email invitation from Canvas. Please check your spam folders or reach out to [email protected] if you do not receive an invite by March 11.
A Software Build System—Reliability Is Repeatability
Martin VanWinkle
This technical session will focus on the life cycle of a simple software project. A small script will be installed using system-based packages. Revision control will briefly be covered. Upgrading and removal will then be covered. Some flexibility will be demonstrated, and then there will be a brief foray into script libraries.
Advanced Tech Culture: Collaborative Communication Practices - Discussing Captions
Stacy Cohen, Steph Kent, Erin Sanders-Sigmon
After two years of virtual conferencing/learning/interacting, let us further the conversation of how to engage one another through this medium. This advanced, but brief, session explores virtual communication through the lens of interpreted interactions, comparing how Deaf and Hearing people experience virtual meetings both similarly and differently. We specifically invite you to come and experience "captions and cRaptions" with us! Our recorded offering to this year’s conference provides the audience with an experience with language access through a series of clips discussing auto-captions and CART. In addition to the discussions, the recording itself embeds demonstrations of human-corrected/human-produced captions juxtaposed alongside unedited auto-captions. The presenters share and demonstrate some guidelines and things to watch for with regard to captioning. After this immersive experience, we hope that participants will gain new awareness, develop questions, and will be interested to engage in further discussions about language access and language justice as we continue to shape the "new normal."
This presentation is delivered in ASL and English, and is captioned in both English and Spanish.
Bridging Digital Skills and the Student Body
Sean Keenan
Within a traditional curriculum, it can be difficult to fit in the digital skills that are quickly accelerating from accessory into a necessity. The focus of this session is on the role taken by the Bryn Mawr College's Educational and Scholarly Technology Department in leading digital skill intensives and workshops outside of class time. The purpose of these sessions was to provide supplemental educational experiences that provided students with the skills needed to succeed in the current market. The focus of this presentation will be on the type of intensives and workshops the department led, as well as methods of making the sessions accessible to a student body affected by pandemic. There will also be a brief look into Bryn Mawr College's Digital Competencies program, which aims to provide the framework for students to understand what digital skills exists and how these skills can be molded based on their interests and lived experiences.
Campus-wide Development Planning: Creating a Faculty Culture of Transformation and Resilience
Varying levels of skill and practice across institutions can result in frustrating inconsistencies for students, faculty, and administration alike. When faculty become isolated in their professional development patterns, they miss opportunities to develop campus-wide culture and modern pedagogical practices that set their community apart. Developing a campus culture of innovation in teaching requires a sustained effort to create a culture where faculty are in contact with supportive peers dedicated to each others' pedagogical growth. After working with a diverse set of instructional designers with experience from dozens of institutions, Moodle US has developed a set of principles to guide institutions in developing a self-sustaining development community on their own campus: Pedagogy transcends discipline. Professional development is an ongoing process best situated in a community of trusted peers. Faculty are most successful when they have both structure and agency in their professional development. Both lateral and vertical peer relationships are required for a successful campus-wide development plan. Integration of pedagogy and tools is essential to significant development. Existing campus and third-party resources should be readily available in the LMS. This presentation will include a high-level overview of these principles, examples of how they can be applied, and a live demonstration of community development activity that is both structured and flexible.
Diversity in Classroom Discussions Maximized with Teachly
In this session, we will explore a tool that has helped the Harvard Kennedy School tackle one of the most prominent issues in today's classrooms: inclusion, diversity, and belonging. Teachly is a tool developed at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) for educators by educators. Teachly allows faculty to learn more about their students and get to know their teaching. Using statistics, Teachly reveals unconscious bias in the classroom and gives faculty the tools to correct the effects of unconscious bias (e.g., under-calling a particular student population). We will also discuss the benefits of maximizing the diversity of voices participating in a classroom discussion. The presenters have direct experience supporting Teachly for use across courses at HKS.
Essence of Good Course (Re)Design: Applying Gagné's Nine Events of Instruction
Roula Creighton, Mounika Ragula, Royce Robertson
Robert Gagné's learning and instructional theories are still relevant today. Known as the father of instructional strategies, Gagné's Nine Events model can be applied to online, hybrid, and traditional teaching and learning contexts to build effective courses and learning experiences. With this presentation we will explore ways to apply the structure of Gagné's Nine Events of Learning to the online, hybrid, and traditional learning and training contexts to transform traditional teaching and learning experiences into motivating and engaging interactions.
From Pivot to Permanent: Collecting Faculty and Student Insights to Assess Technology's Impact
Sherri Braxton, Sam Burke, Tina Finneran
Even though faculty and students were exhausted after a year of online courses, Bowdoin College took the opportunity during the spring and summer of 2021 to gather data on best practices that enhanced student learning during the pandemic. A collaboration between academic affairs, information technology, and institutional research sought to collect minimally burdensome qualitative data from faculty and students to inform a newly formed college working group's efforts to identify ways to support faculty in the classroom post-pandemic. Virtual faculty meetings were used to conduct brief polls and pose an open-ended prompt. This anonymous synchronous feedback along with an anonymous feedback form, faculty listening sessions, and student focus groups elicited positive experiences and techniques that improved student learning and engagement. The listening sessions and focus groups allowed for a shared reflective experience and the opportunity to identify what emerged as effective teaching and learning practices that could be carried forward upon the return to campus. During this session, the presenters will share insights gained from the data collection and discuss how the results were used to inform the work of a shared governance group's reporting and recommendations for how the college should proceed in three strategic areas: adopting effective practices, promoting inclusive excellence, and creating a collaborative decision-making model for academic technology acquisition.
Get and Graduate More Students with Integrated Academic Operations
Dearbhail O’Crowley
Is your institution executing student-centric, data-driven, cost-efficient academic processes? From our work with hundreds of higher ed institutions, we've learned that administrators and students alike face limited, shrinking resources and avoidable roadblocks to success; a lack of easy-access data that's needed to make student-centric scheduling and curriculum decisions; and an integrated, easy-to-use tool or method for executing curricular and scheduling processes. Join our presentation to learn how to execute exceptional educational experiences for your students. You'll hear how an integrated platform helps colleges and universities support student-centric scheduling, build efficient curriculum processes that support innovation, publish marketable online catalogs and handbooks, and inform strategic resource allocation decisions through enrollment and demand-based analytics.
Grant Funding for IT Initiatives
Liz Shay
Technology is an integral part of higher education throughout campus. The coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated the need for creative solutions and innovative technology. Finding the funding to support these innovative approaches to education and research technology is critical to making progress as an institution but can often be challenging. This session will explore the grant funding landscape for funding technology initiatives at institutions of higher education. We will also discuss how to effectively position technology within a project to increase the likelihood that a proposal will stand out for reviewers.
Integrating Technology in Learning Activities to Identify Knowledge Gaps Among Undergraduate Nursing
Kimberlee-Ann Bridges, Eileen Campbell, Teresa Puckhaber, Monica Sousa
Faculty teaching in an undergraduate medical-surgical nursing course adopted a new online platform to enhance student learning and provide an interactive experience. Students were required to complete a virtual clinical scenario based on a concept that was presented in the classroom. To meet the criteria for competence, students needed to apply the nursing process to provide competent and safe care to a patient in the virtual simulation. The online adaptive quizzes were assigned for each of the four units in the course. The faculty assigned a minimum knowledge level that students were required to reach. Students answered questions independently until they reached the required knowledge level. Student performance determined what type of question they would see next and how many more questions needed to be correctly answered to achieve the assigned knowledge level. The integration of innovative technology, including virtual simulation and adaptive quizzing allowed the faculty to identify knowledge gaps. The virtual simulations in particular revealed a knowledge gap about basic nursing concepts and a lack of clinical reasoning. Faculty were able to address these knowledge gaps in the classroom with students. Based on end-of-course survey results, 89% of students found the virtual simulations assignments helpful to their learning, and 96% of students rated the online adaptive quizzing helpful to their learning.
Intrusive Advising—Faculty Style
Intrusive Advising is traditionally practiced on students by having faculty members insert themselves more directly into students' academic life. "Intrusive Advising involves intentional contact with students with the goal of developing a caring and beneficial relationship that leads to increased academic motivation and persistence" (NACADA website). Librarians from Keene State College and Franklin Pierce University will discuss how their libraries have practiced a form of Intrusive Advising on their faculty members to keep the library services and resources in front of the faculty during these challenging times. The abrupt transition to hybrid learning and reduction in budgets caused by the pandemic can easily lead to frustration and burnout among educators. Librarians can play a leadership role in promoting resilience by helping to guide faculty members in these challenging times. Presenters will discuss the process of reallocating budgets to accommodate increased demand from faculty for streaming videos, the importance of transparent communication with faculty members about collection decisions, and informing faculty members about content provided free or at reduced cost during the pandemic. By actively engaging with faculty and adapting quickly to changing instructional needs, librarians can have a direct and positive impact on teaching and learning.
Microsoft Accessibility Solutions
There is no limit to what people can achieve when technology reflects the diversity of all who use it. This course shows how people can achieve more with the built-in accessibility tools and features in Microsoft technologies.
Not Your Typical Flip to Zoom
How the Worcester Institute for Senior Education (WISE) brought its lifelong learning program to its 350+ members, expanded its reach to multiple states and one Canadian province, and improved its inclusivity.
Remote Access Mac Labs
David Corcoran, Bill Suppa
Our university needed to move all classes online to combat the COVID-19 Virus. This created issues as most members of the student body did not have access to a powerful machine and professional software required by their major. We needed to find a viable solution to properly meet their needs. Apple does not provide a native solution for virtual lab access. After vetting multiple vendors, we elected to use the Splashtop for Business client. Their technical support team worked with us to set up a viable solution that was easy to use and access. We were able to create a 24-hour-accessible virtual Mac lab for our students as a stand-alone option to be used in conjunction with the labs we already have in place.
Sherpas of the Digital Age: The Case for Instructional Technology Support
Online learning had already been a disrupter in the higher education landscape when COVID-19 threw the world into chaos. In April 2020, Peter Decherney and Caroline Levander (2020) wrote that "instructional designers have become the sherpas of online learning teams" (para. 5). EDUCAUSE's Top 10 IT Issues 2022 identified "Digital Faculty for a Digital Future" as the number three IT issue in higher education (Grajek, 2021), specifically noting that staff with instructional design and instructional pedagogical expertise were key to supporting faculty in the digital age. In 2021, a research study was done at a large research university exploring faculty participation in online learning. A part of that study looked at what faculty need to be successful in the online learning space and their experience with instructional design support. This presentation will discuss this original research and give participants tools to help them make a case for their institutions to invest more in instructional and pedagogical technologists to support faculty in the digital age.
Strategies to Help Students with Disabilities to Navigate the Learning Management System
Mounika Ragula
The COVID-19 pandemic has unearthed many challenges for colleges and universities. One of the problems that became even more prominent during the pandemic is assisting students with accessibility needs. Although most of the products we use advertise themselves as accessible, we do not know how accessible they are until we are presented with a challenge to test the accessibility limits. One such challenge our team at Le Moyne faced is the accessible use of our learning management system, Canvas, when used with screen readers. This session will focus on discussing strategies to help students who use screen readers. The participants will be able to engage with everyone and share their strategies in helping faculty develop inclusive courses and assisting students who have accessible needs as they navigate through the learning management system.
Taking Student Engagement in Online Learning to the Next Level
Hui Rong
Online learning has recently become an indispensable part of higher education. Even fields traditionally considered unfit for online learning such as medical education have started to embrace online learning and move towards a hybrid model. At UMass Chan Medical School, a similar trend has been witnessed. To better satisfy the needs of current students, our leadership announced its online learning initiative aiming to improve students' medical education experience. Under this initiative, about 60 independent learning modules (ILMs) have been developed in the past 2 years. At the end of each ILM, a survey is embedded to collect student feedback which will be used to understand students' learning experience and learning satisfaction and propose changes for continuous improvement.One thing I learned from reviewing the survey results is how students perceive engagement and when they feel most engaged. As instructional designers, we always aim to create modules as interactive and animated as possible because we believe interactivity and animations help promote student engagement. However, the survey results suggested that not all interactions and animations are created equal in terms of their impact on engagement. In some cases, they might be considered meaningless or distracting. In this presentation, I will share my findings regarding student engagement and propose some design tips to help instructional designers create meaningful and engaging online learning products.
That Time We Migrated an Entire University from One LMS to Another in 11 Weeks during a Pandemic
Imagine your institution signed a contract on June 1 with a new LMS vendor and then gave you 11 weeks to complete the switch from one LMS to the other. During the height of a pandemic, where everything had to be done remotely. Relive this exciting time in my life as I go through the five stages of LMS Transition. Denial: No we are NOT doing this. Anger: I am so angry we are doing this. Bargaining: OK, I can get behind this, but can I have six months? Depression: It's a beautiful summer day, everyone is complaining, and I am stuck on another Zoom call with a vendor. Acceptance: Let's load the users and the fall courses and let it rip. If you've never transitioned from one LMS to another and would like to try but are scared it will be too difficult, you aren't alone. I'll share my tips and coping strategies. Hopefully, they will make your next transition from one platform to another easier, or at least you'll get a few laughs along the way.