Agenda:

7:30am – 9:00am Registration and Coffee

9:00am - 9:05am Welcome

9:05am - 9:45am Preparing Students for Online Learning
Speaker: April Bellafiore, Dean of eLearning, Bristol Community College

Bristol Community College’s eLearning 101 course was designed to introduce students new to eLearning to the technologies used in the online environment and to prepare them for what it means to take a class online. We use this same course as a way to help students determine if eLearning is a good fit for their learning style. The class is highly recommended for all students, and some programs actually do require that students complete it as part of their orientation process. It has been an extremely successful method of providing orientation and support to our online students and faculty.

9:45am - 10:30am Beginnings, Middles and Ends: Motivating and Engaging Your Online Students
Speakers: Paul Beaudoin PhD, Assistant Professor Of Humanities, Fitchburg State University

Finding ways to motivate and engage the online learner is one of the biggest challenges facing online education. Using examples from Dr. Beaudoin's award-winning classes, "Beginnings, Middles, and Ends" will offer several practical strategies to motivate and engage your online students at any grade level, all semester, so that they stay in class and successfully reach the finish line.

10:30am - 10:45am Break

10:45am - 11:15am Small Group Conversations and Activities

11:15am - 12:00pm Library Services to Support Online Students

Caring for our Nursing Students
Speaker: Millie Gonzalez, Reference and Electronic Resources Librarian, Framingham State University

The nursing program using the embedded librarian program extensively. The talk will describe the nature of our support, and the challenges and successes we have experienced supporting their research needs.
 

Instamatic Instruction: Cool Tools to Help Students from a Distance
Speaker: Laura Kohl, Head of Reference Services, Douglas and Judith Krupp Library, Bryant University

The library at Bryant University is making use of free tools to enhance the traditional instant message service that we offer. We find that students who may be sitting in the library to those studying abroad make use of our IM service and often ask questions that are too complicated to answer via a simple text response. Screen casting and screen sharing tools allow us to take our interactions further and even allow for instruction to occur often with no need for the end user to download anything. Any university department that works with students remotely can use these tools to enhance their services and reach students through a medium that they often prefer to face to face interactions.

12:00pm - 1:00pm Lunch

1:00pm - 1:45pm Enhancing the Student Learning Experience with an Online Course Framework
Speakers:
Tony Sindelar, Instructional Designer, MGH Institute of Health Professions
Victoria Wallace, Instructional Designer, MGH Institute of Health Professions

Whether face-to-face or fully online, the presentation of course materials can impede or improve student learning. The Instructional Designers at the MGH Institute of Health Professions created support resources and a course framework in the Desire2Learn LMS to help faculty efficiently design and organize course materials. During this presentation, instructional designers will share their course design process and explore the elements of the Desire2Learn framework including weekly organizer pages, placeholder activities, and instructor resources.

1:45pm - 2:15pm Break/Small Group Conversations and Activities

2:15pm - 3:00pm Creating Accessible Online Course Content
Speakers:
Lance Eaton, Coordinator of Instructional Design, North Shore Community College
Andrea Milligan, Director of Instructional Technology and Design, North Shore Community College

Accessibility is about making sure all students can easily access the course content so that they can focus their time, attention and learning on the content and not the technical barriers to the content. This session will address the best practices around ensuring accessibility for any online content that instructors may use in face to face, hybrid, and online courses. Participants will walk away with a clear set of methods and resources to help them create content that all their students can benefit from. 

3:00pm End