Dear Commons Community,

Phil Hill and Michael Feldstein from MindWires  Consulting, gave a keynote address yesterday at the Online Learning Consortium Conference here in Orlando.  As described in their abstract, their talk focused on:

“As online and hybrid education enter the third decade, there are significant efforts to move beyond the virtualization of traditional face-to-face classroom and instead take advantage of personalization of pedagogies and technologies. This shift has the potential to change the discussion of whether online approaches “can be as good as” traditional approaches to a discussion of how online approaches “can provide better learning opportunities”.

But this move to personalization – centered on the student instead of the course, and focused on active learning – will not be easy. How will personalization change the role of the teacher or of the teaching assistant? For that matter, how will personalization change the role and expectations of the student? What institutional changes are required to support these new pedagogical approaches? During this talk we will explore this long-term trend, several of the drivers enabling the change, and the implications for current and future educators.”

They presented video commentary from faculty and students at Essex County Community College, Empire State College, and Arizona State University.  Between the videos and their own presentations, they covered well many of the critical issues (time on task, software, faculty buy-in) of moving to blended learning environments. 

An excellent keynote!

I also attended several other presentations on faculty attitudes, the new California Community College Online Initiative, and professional development for K-12 teachers.

Tony