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Schedule
2014
Friday, May 30th
9:15 AM

Biology & Technology: A Collaborative Approach to Making Learning Better for Students

Jay Rozgonyi, Fairfield University
Christine Earls, Fairfield University

Dolan School of Business

9:15 AM - 10:15 AM

It goes without saying that the Internet has provided students with a range of information that was inconceivable 20 years ago, and nowhere is this more true than in the health sciences. Even successful faculty, however, who may be committed to finding ways to bring some of this materials to their students, can be intimidated by the technical difficulties involved on both their end and that of their students. In this session, we will provide an example of how an experienced professor of biology took her already-successful introductory course and, with the assistance of academic computing staff and her textbook publisher’s representative, is creating a more robust, integrated, and compelling learning experience for her students. Led by the Director of Academic Computing, this session will highlight the ways in which well-planned technology can serve a faculty member’s instructional vision, draw together disparate sets of material from a variety of sources, and integrate and present them to students in straightforward way that serves instruction rather than complicating it. And while the session will focus on the specific technical tools at use in this teaching example (Blackboard and WileyPlus), a major theme will be the way this serves as a model for faculty collaborations that can assist in helping instructors engage their students and become “guides on the side.”

9:15 AM

Collaborative Textual Editing: The Thrill of Engagement

Sally O'Driscoll, Fairfield University

Dolan School of Business

9:15 AM - 10:15 AM

Those of us who teach literature that’s not contemporary face very specific challenges in engaging our students: for example, in teaching18th-century British literature, I need to help my students read language that seems unfamiliar to them, and introduce them to a historical period that they rarely know anything about.

Recently, I tried a new approach: I asked my students to collaborate on editing an actual 18th-century novella: the goal was to take the difficult and unfamiliar typography and language, and challenge my students to make it accessible for readers just like themselves. This new level of engagement with the text itself brought them into a more interactive understanding of the story, and pushed them to collaborate with each other and with me.

This workshop outlines the methodology I used to prepare my students for the work of editing and annotating an 18th-century text. We will discuss problems that arose, and the ways that students themselves resolved the problems.

Finally, we will discuss the ultimate goal of such a collaborative project: publishing the edited text as a digital edition, on a website.

We will review some current technologies and tools for producing durable websites for presentation of edited texts.

Workshop participants are invited to share their own experiences with textual editing and collaborative digital humanities projects.

9:15 AM

The Engaged Presentation: PechaKucha and Prezi

Lisa Tessier, State University of New York (SUNY) Delhi
Michelle Gibbons, State University of New York (SUNY) Delhi

Dolan School of Business

9:15 AM - 10:15 AM

After briefly discussing the limitations of PowerPoint presentations, presenters will introduce PechaKucha and Prezi presentations as engaging alternatives. They will model a PechaKucha, sharing an example tied to civic engagement, and show a sample Prezi that underscores its dynamic and collaborative powers. The second half of the session will be dedicated to a hands-on co-creation of a Prezi presentation that explores the positive potentials of both these presentation styles.

10:30 AM

Creative Perspectives on Using Twitter & Google Glass

Roxann Riskin, Fairfield University

Dolan School of Business

10:30 AM - 11:30 AM

During this session you will be actively engaged in learning about emerging, wearable technology and participate in demonstrations for collaborative learning. Examples of these demonstrated technologies for teaching and learning will be presented using the social media microblogging site, Twitter, and the wearable technology, Google Glass.

You will be introduced to GOOGLE Glass, the mobile, wearable technology device. It is the most newsworthy, talked about, wearable technology in today’s world. Glass is a mobile computer, worn as a person wears eyeglasses, with amazing high tech capabilities i.e. featuring an encapsulated computer, GPS and the OHUD-optical heads up display. Glass can take a picture, post an Evernote, make a phone call, read and answer e-mail, compose a Tweet, record-post a video, and has additional interactive features. You will learn how Glass is being used in hybrid educational environments, as a collaborative, communication device which transparently connects to online social media like Twitter, Evernote, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr, offering an unlimited amount of teaching and learning opportunities for instant communication and feedback. Whether you are teaching in a traditional or flipped /hybrid classroom model, Glass, has a 12GB storage capacity synced with the Google cloud storage, and APP compatibility to provide educators with voice, text or contextual information, instantly using real-time communication (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth). Exploring Glass and seeing it as an emerging technology with its hands free communication advantage, will hopefully bring new insight to educators to engage in further inquiry, and unlock its educational value potential value for teaching and learning.

10:30 AM

Service Learning Associates Panel: Building faculty/student partnerships

Karen Parkinson, Fairfield University
Melissa Quan, Fairfield University
Betsy Bowen, Fairfield University
Solanlly Canas

Dolan School of Business

10:30 AM - 11:30 AM

The Service Learning Associates (SLA) program engages 8 to 10 undergraduates each semester as student leaders to their peers in service-learning courses. Each SLA works intensively with one professor to support a service-learning course that aligns with the SLA’s academic background and interests. The SLAs meet regularly with both faculty and fellow SLAs throughout the semester and attend professional development trainings facilitated by the Office of Service Learning. SLAs provide much-needed logistical support to faculty, promote service learning on campus, and lead their peers in critical reflection multiple times throughout the semester. SLAs serve as liaisons to students and the community and work in partnership with faculty on facilitating high quality service learning. This session will highlight and discuss these student-faculty partnerships, a teaching-learning model that situates students as co-educators, the challenges and successes of peer educators in service learning, and how the SLA program complements other student leadership programs on campus.

10:30 AM

VALUE-Added Discourse Communities in a University Seminar Series

Timothy Dansdill, Quinnipiac University
Paul Pasquaretta, Quinnipiac University

Dolan School of Business

10:30 AM - 11:30 AM

“Value: Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education”—a report from the American Association of Colleges and Universities—rationalizes the recent fervor for “accountability” in higher education. This interactive session profiles and accounts for Quinnipiac University’s innovative Seminar sequence on the empowerment of teaching and learning as communicated across three interdependent spheres: The Individual in Local, National, and Global Communities. Session participants engage with challenging curricular content, proven pedagogical practices, and students’ VALUE added practices across discourse communities.

1:00 PM

Blogs, Wikis, and Discussions: Which ones do I use and why?

Scott Ready, Blackboard
Kim Yuster, Blackboard

Dolan School of Business

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Learn to increase student and teacher interaction in the eLearning environment by knowing which communication tool, wikis, blogs, discussions and journals, to use for which type of communication.

1:00 PM

Empowering the college student through transparency in classroom pedagogy

Michelle Farrell, Fairfield University

Dolan School of Business

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

As the study of liberal arts, and college education, come under attack in the twenty-first century, we scramble to add new aspects to our curriculum to remain relevant to contemporary demands. In the liberal arts, and college teaching in general, professors carefully craft the class session to weave the invisible background workings of a course to provide the best possible learning experience for students.

In the face of this crisis of relevance, the classroom space itself is an ideal place to empower students by making visible the behind the scenes work that we do in the classroom. By making this work visible we are empowering liberal arts students with the language necessary to understand their active role in the classroom. In this session I will discuss the classroom as a space to empower students to better understand what it is they do in the liberal arts classroom, while also sharing with students the language that they will need to talk about their relevant and transferable college experiences.

1:00 PM

The Teacher as Learner: an Institutional Approach to Promoting Pedagogical Innovation

Jaya Kannan, Sacred Heart University
Adrianna Dattoli, Sacred Heart University

Dolan School of Business

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Our University has renewed its vision for better integration of the digital environment to meet curricular and program goals, and to improve student learning. Since the inception of the Office of Digital Learning (ODL) in fall 2013, there has been a revitalized collaborative effort between ODL and I.T. to enhance digital fluencies among faculty. When faculty members take on the role of “teacher as learner,” we observe 5 main challenges:

  1. How to create a paradigm shift in the application of pedagogy principles for the synchronous and asynchronous online environments?
  2. How to take account of anxiety as a factor when building courses for the online environment - the role of affect when the teacher becomes learner?
  3. How to strike the right balance in managing student expectations when switching between face-to-face and online contexts?
  4. How to maintain realistic expectations about the workload involved in creating, delivering, and sustaining an online presence?
  5. How to create better infrastructural support for faculty, regardless of whether they are experts or new to the online environment?

We will use a recent case study to facilitate discussion of these challenges, and learn from the roundtable attendees’ experience in their respective institutions. The case study will focus on the process of building interactive learning using Lecture Capture tools to achieve the course goals and teaching objectives in two different disciplines. Observations from this study will be used to articulate the complexities involved in course redesign, and to develop effective, solution-oriented strategies for faculty development.

2:15 PM

Helping Students Learn in an Age of Digital Distraction

Dr. Katie Linder, Suffolk University

Dolan School of Business Dining Room (104A)

2:15 PM - 4:15 PM

Our students are inundated with an overwhelming amount of information each day as they navigate social media, peruse various websites, listen to the radio, read print media, and flip through innumerable television channels. Unfortunately, very little of this information is directly connected by our students to their interactions with us in the classroom. In this session, we will explore how to break through the cognitive overload that our students experience on a daily basis and discuss how we can help our students develop effective strategies for learning in the midst of this Age of Digital Distraction.