Canvas and Digital Storytelling

I split this session, which again had many things I wanted to learn about. First I went to hear Renee Carney from Lower Columbia speak on transitioning to Canvas. I mostly wanted to hear the concerns expressed by folks in the room to give me an idea of what might be worrying faculty at Seattle Central as we prepare to transition. I want the process to be as stress free as possible and the better we understand people's concerns, the better we will be able to address them.

Then I went to a session on digital storytelling. Usually I am very strategic about the sessions I choose - how will this session help me directly in my teaching or how will it help me to help other people. This session just looked cool. I had no idea how I would use it, though I do now (I'm going to integrate it into my service learning project).  The presenters, Lisa Predovich and Lakeisha Jackson from the College Success Foundation, talked about the process of teaching student to tell stories using the 6 word memoir as an example (mine was "share - what have you got to lose?). They showed examples of student digital storytelling that was incredibly powerful.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to fit something so complex into my summer course, but I am definitely going to think about it for fall.

Arts, Crafts and . . .Assessment?

The afternoon session on Thursday was jam packed with things I wanted to see all at the same time. I finally decided to go to this session on making assessment concrete.  I really had no idea what that was going to look like, but I trusted my former Cascadia collegues Travis Timmons, David Ortiz and Dave Dorrarcague would do something great and I was right. Wow. They created these machines or dashboards to look at an assessment through the lens of the various hoped for outcomes to see if you can get there from here.  

I can't really describe the workshop in this blog post, but I would love to have these guys come to Seattle Central to present on this topic. It was probably the coolest assessment idea I've ever learned. I can't wait to give it a try. 

Plenary Session on the future of Higher Education

The plenary session on Thursday morning looked at the future of higher education.  The presenters pulled together several scary headlines about how higher education is failing and needs to do things differently. They also posed some good questions about how we should think about the disruption - should we push back or should we do things differently?

They did not attempt to present any answers. Rather, they encouraged participants to discuss at their tables and write down their thoughts in an action research exercise. They will use the information to inform a follow up session that they will do on Friday morning.  They also asked participants to consider the plenary themes as they moved through the other conference sessions.

It was interesting talking to people about this after we left the session. I made a presentation on disruptive innovation in higher education at the Tegrity conference a couple of weeks ago. I've been reading articles about this topic for at least the last 18 months or longer. But to many people, this was the first time that they had heard many of these ideas and it left some of them shaken.

Qualitative methods to assess student learning

I attended the pre-session on Wednesday. The session, put on by Bill Moore from the State Board and Robin Jeffers from Bellevue College, focused on research methods related to the qualitative data that faculty tend to gravitate towards. 


They offered hands on opportunities to form research questions along with the chance to evaluate some real data from undergraduate research going on at Bellevue College. The session was helpful in giving me a framework for using some of my methods courses from grad school in a practical manner in the classroom (which was what I was hoping it would do).  


While I know that people tend to push back against the evidence culture that seems to be evolving, Bill and Robin showed how this kind of data can really inform improved teaching.

Workshop on group communication

This workshop presents several ideas from a small group communication class on structuring group work. Ideas included having a "norming agreement" between the students, being clear with the students about why you are doing group work and allowing for self and peer evaluations.

There were a lot of good ideas, but I could see that several of them would take a lot of time. Since I could see how essential some of the activities were, it is clear that one should not launch into group work activities without being willing to commit to the time needed for groups to form properly.

I asked the presenters for ideas around groups online and, unfortunately, but non surprisingly, they had no suggestions.