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This Online Learning Council Town Hall will be held in "speed dating" format, with attendees engaging with several presenters throughout the morning.

A cross between a poster session and a traditional presentation, "UPick5" provides the opportunity for advocates of technology-enhanced learning from across the university to share and discuss their work with peers, who will be moving from table to table every fifteen minutes.

Those live-streaming the event will be able to watch five presentations in real time, as well as view the recordings on the INSPIRE website.

Register Here

Presentations:

Using Learning Pathways and Digital Badges to Support Early Student Success and Retention

Learning pathways and digital badges provide unique opportunities to student success. Learn how Dr. Kristen Betts worked collaboratively with graduate students and faculty to develop and launch an APA Mini-MOOC for students. The free online Mini-MOOC was designed for new students as a way to engage them early in APA writing style and to decrease enrollment melt, as well as current students who would like to increase their mastery of APA writing style.

Presenters: Kristen Betts, Andy Stutzman, Brian Delaney, Tamara Galoyan

Creating "Physical" Presence with Kubi

Most agree that creating an environment in which remote attendees can fully engage with others in the room presents challenges. There are many virtual meeting tools available but most only allow remote attendees to be a ‘fly on the wall’ rather than a ‘person in the room’. Kubi is a mini robot giving remote attendees a ‘physical’ presence in the room and consequently, increasing active engagement. It lets remote attendees easily look around with 300 degrees of pan and 90 degrees of tilt to see and interact with others through remote robotic control during a video call—not having to rely on the host of the meeting to move the camera.

Presenters: Fran Cornelius

Using Padlet to Bring a Sticky Note Classroom Activity to an Online Learning Environment

Affinitizing is a methodology used by designers to uncover relationships and patterns. A traditional affinity diagram consists of numerous color-coded sticky notes, each reflecting one observation, quote, finding, or question. Notes are posted to a wall and clustered by affinities. Clusters are named and disclose insights and opportunities for problem resolution. How can we bring this valuable collaborative activity to an online environment? Padlet! This freemium application allows users to create an online bulletin board that fully mimics the affinitizing activity.

Presenters: Anne Crowther Cecil, Eileen Shanahan

The eDUsuite Resource: A Just-In-Time Approach for Educational Enhancement

The eDUsuite project, supported through the Office of the Provost, combines educational technology and pedagogy by developing a portal to provide access and training to innovative educational and learning modules. The eDUsuite demonstration system, known as the eDUsuite Resource Center, is available now in Blackboard and consists of several elements: The eDUsuite Innovation Center; the eDUsuite Collaborative Lab: the eDUsuite Repository; the Peer Review System, and the Rating System. While not all elements are fully functional, there is sufficient structure to show how the eDUsuite Resource Center might function as a one-stop shop for the development, sharing, and evaluation of educational applications to promote both instructional quality and learning efficacy.

Presenters: Kristen Betts, Tamara Galoyan, Rajashi Ghosh, Donald McEachron

Using Practice to Reinforce Learning at Scale

Practice creates a scalable means for students to receive meaningful, timely feedback through the power of peer-to-peer video assessment and coaching. This session demonstrates ways to use Practice in online programs.

Presenter: Vinay Ganti

Using RStudio ioslides and PollEv to Make STEM Lectures More Engaging

This session showcases two different technologies that can be used to make lecture presentations more engaging. These are orientated towards STEM subjects but can be applied in other areas. The first is using open source RStudio to make presentations that include dynamical elements. I use this in material that is heavy with equations to break the barrier of understanding complex mathematical notation. The idea is to make a plot of the equation and allow the class to experiment with changing the key parameters and see in real time how the curve changes. The second is using PollEv APP to create polling activities in class and use it to facilitate student discussion.

Presenter: Maher Harb

Using FlipGrid to Help Students Feel More Connected to Their Peers

Online learning can be isolating for students who prefer interacting with classmates and faculty. Using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) Model developed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer, faculty searched for a way to engage students and faculty as “real” people. In lieu of one-dimensional text-based discussion boards, FlipGrid was initiated. It is an easy to use, web-based video discussion platform allowing for meaningful collaboration in an online environment.

Presenters: Joanne Serembus, Jackie Murphy

Calculus Online Learning Platform

Project One’s online assessment platform for Calculus captures more data about the processes students use to solve problems, rather than just the answer. As a result, students get more personalized feedback, to the points of where they made a mistake, why the mistake was made, and what resources they can use to correct their thinking. Additionally, tutors, teachers and administrators can measure student learning and course efficacy with real-time analytics. These analytics can be used to understand a student’s strengths and weaknesses, and measure how well a certain concept was learned based on overall class performance. The platform has been beta tested at numerous local high schools and universities, including Drexel University and The University of Pennsylvania.

Presenter: Mansoor Siddiqui

How to Use Local Experts to Enrich Online Courses

If you don’t have the time or budget to bring out-of-town experts into your classes, there is a low-cost alternative. Drexel faculty and staff have deep knowledge and experience in a wide range of disciplines and are usually willing to share their expertise with students. It’s very easy to create virtual interviews with one of Bb Learn’s newer tools, VoiceThread. During this session, I show how I have recorded guest-expert interviews with representatives from the Graduate College, the Department of Sociology, the Academy of Natural Sciences and Drexel’s Office of General Counsel.

Presenter: Lawrence Souder