MAIN CONFERENCE SCHEDULE AND SESSION DESCRIPTIONS
“These aren’t just good strategies (and they are!) but, when integrated systematically, they are transformative experiences for both students and instructors.” –Jim Kain, Neumann University, PA
The 2022 conference will be held virtually through Zoom!
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SPRING CONFERENCE SCHEDULE:
Please note: all times are listed in Pacific Time (PT)
| THURSDAY, April 28 | |
|---|---|
| 7:00am-8:00am PT | Gourmet Breakfast on Your Own (recipe suggestions will be shared) |
| 8:00am-9:15am PT | Session #1: Opening Keynote (75 Minutes) |
| 9:15am-9:30am PT | Restoration Break |
| 9:30am-10:30am PT | Session #2: Breakout Sessions (60 Minutes) |
| 10:30am-11:30pm PT | Meal Break (recipe suggestions will be shared) |
| 11:30am-12:30pm PT | Session #3: Midday Keynote (60 Minutes) |
| 12:30pm-12:45pm PT | Restoration Break |
| 12:45pm-1:45pm PT | Session #4: Breakout Sessions (60 Minutes) |
| FRIDAY, April 29 | |
|---|---|
| 7:00am-8:00am PT | Gourmet Breakfast on Your Own (recipe suggestions will be shared) |
| 8:00am-11:30am PT | Session #5: Intensive Sessions (3.5 hours) |
| 11:30am-12:30pm PT | Meal Break (recipe suggestions will be shared) |
| 12:30pm-1:45pm PT | Session #6: Closing Keynote (75 minutes) |
“Thank you for putting this together and having good presenters with valuable content.” –Sylwia Kulczak, Rio Hondo College, CA
“Thank you – this was an amazing conference!” –Nicole Adsitt, Cayuga Community College, NY
2022 Spring Opening Keynote Session with José Antonio Bowen,
Author of Teaching Naked
You’ve heard about “flipping your classroom”—now find out how to do it! Introducing a new way to think about higher education, learning, and technology that prioritizes the benefits of the human dimension. José Bowen recognizes that technology is profoundly changing education and that if students are going to continue to pay enormous sums for campus classes, colleges will need to provide more than what can be found online and maximize “naked” face-to-face contact with faculty. Here, he illustrates how technology is most powerfully used outside the classroom, and, when used effectively, how it can ensure that students arrive to class more prepared for meaningful interaction with faculty. Bowen offers practical advice for faculty and administrators on how to engage students with new technology while restructuring classes into more active learning environments.
José Antonio Bowen has been leading innovation and change for over 35 years at Stanford, Georgetown and the University of Southampton (UK), then as a dean at Miami University and SMU and as President of Goucher College (voted a Top 10 Most Innovative College under his leadership). Bowen has appeared on five continents as a pianist and conductor and with Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby McFerrin, Dave Brubeck, Liberace, and many others. His compositions include a symphony (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 1985), and music for Jerry Garcia. Bowen holds four degrees from Stanford University, has written over 100 scholarly articles, is editor of the Cambridge Companion to Conducting (2003), and an editor of the 6-CD set, Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology (2011).
He received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and has a TED talk on Beethoven as Bill Gates. In 2010, Stanford honored him as a Distinguished Alumni Scholar. Bowen has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Newsweek, USA Today, US News and World Report, PBS News Hour, and on NPR for his book Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology out of your College Classroom will Improve Student Learning (Jossey-Bass, 2012, and winner of the Ness Award for Best Book on Higher Education from the American Association of Colleges and Universities). It was followed by Teaching Naked Techniques: A Practical Guide to Designing Better Classes with G. Edward Watson (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017).
2022 Spring Midday Keynote Session with Michelle Miller,
Author of Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology
Dr. Michelle D. Miller is a Professor of Psychological Sciences and President’s Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. Dr. Miller completed her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology and behavioral neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include memory, attention, and the impacts of technology on learning and on the mind.
Dr. Miller is the author of Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology (Harvard University Press, 2014), and she has written about evidence-based pedagogy in scholarly as well as general-interest publications including College Teaching, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Conversation. Her new book, Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology: Teaching, Learning, and the Science of Memory in a Wired World, is coming out with West Virginia University Press in early 2022.
2022 Spring Closing Keynote with Dr. Jonathan Brennan,
Author of Engaging Learners through Zoom
The Poetics of Zoom
Ah, Zoom.
The frail passage to our learners
(the bane of our existence).
Pleading for life from the maddening little windows
Staring into the void.
Transported like cyberdust and reassembled
In the breakout room.
Hurling ourselves over the edge of the platform
Into the whims of everyone’s bandwidth.
How much can I stand?
I can’t raise my hand.
Mute. Unmute. Mute. Unmute.
Why is everyone looking at me?
Why am I looking at me?
Mute. Unmute. Mute. Unmute.
The small reprieves of a family visit
The trickling flow of a Chat stream…
Unartful group singing of “Happy Birthday.”
Looking at myself and cringing
Looking at you: frozen…still frozen…wait…no, still frozen.
In this session Dr. Brennan will explore the construction of a Poetics of Zoom.
What have the last 2 years offered to us on the Zoom platform?
What have we experienced?
How shall we proceed?
The topics for exploration include:
Shared Learning Experiences
Harmony and Convergence
Zoom Poetry
A Sense of Fragmentation
The Experience of Belonging
Technology Disruption
Gendered Zoom Worlds
Zoom Beauty
Disruptive Learning
2022 Program
Please note: all times are listed in Pacific Time (PT)
Session 1: Opening Keynote (75 minutes) 8:00AM-9:15AM PT ThursdayPresenter: José Antonio Bowen
Summary: Learning something new–particularly something that might change your mind–is more difficult than we think. A new 3Rs of Relationships, Resilience and Reflection can help us lead better discussions and reach more students. Without sacrificing content, we can design courses to increase effort and motivation, provide more and better feedback, help students learn on their own and be better able to integrate new information now and after they graduate. The case for a liberal (or liberating) education has never been stronger, but it needs to be redesigned to take into account how human thinking, behaviors, bias and change really work. Recent and wide-ranging research from biology, economics, psychology, education, and neuroscience on the difficulty of change can guide us to redesign an education of transformation and change.
Session 2: Breakout Sessions (60 minutes) 9:30AM-10:30AM PT Thursday
Breakout Sessions coming soon!
Session 3: Midday Keynote (60 minutes) 11:30AM-12:30PM PT Thursday
Session 3: Midday Keynote: You Must Remember This: Why Memory is Important for Learning (Even in the Age of Google)
Presenter: Michelle Miller
Summary: Contemporary faculty are wary of over-emphasizing memory and memorization in their courses. This aversion to focusing on memory is traces back a wide variety of concerns, from the wish to nurture higher thinking skills, to resistance to a culture of over-testing in K-12 education, to repudiation of an outdated and hierarchical “banking” model of learning. These are all valid goals. However, neglecting or avoiding memory in our teaching creates missed opportunities to take advantage of new research on the importance of developing a knowledge base for becoming an expert in a discipline. It also sets students up to fail in situations where relying on the Internet for information is impractical. This interactive keynote challenges common myths and misconceptions about the role of memory for learning, reviews provocative new research linking memory and thinking skills, and offers techniques and technologies that help students develop a solid base of knowledge, without detracting from application or critical thinking.
Session 4: Breakout Sessions (60 minutes) 12:45PM-1:45PM PT Thursday
Breakout Sessions coming soon!
Session 5: Intensive Sessions (3.5 hours) 8:00AM-11:30AM PT Friday
Session 5A: Teaching Change
Presenter: José Antonio Bowen
Summary: This is a practical and active intensive workshop for all faculty that distills the latest scholarship on how students learn into tested techniques and best practices that work. Decades of research have brought an explosion of knowledge about how human evolution has shaped the way we remember, process, and think. Better discussions and assignments require designing for the collaborative but socially conforming human brain. We will learn how to disrupt the social reasoning (what will my friend think) that alters how we see evidence, disrupts how we experience class discussion, and interrupts our ability to change.
Session 5B: Leveraging Psychology to Create Compelling Learning Experiences: Attention and Memory
Presenter: Michelle Miller
Summary: Educators are all in the business of changing minds: We build new memories, guide students in developing new skills, and promote the development of values and mindsets. Attention and memory are aspects of the mind that are particularly critical to learning. These are both areas where concepts from cognitive psychology can suggest effective and innovative approaches to teaching.
In this highly interactive workshop, we will work together to explore the ways in which attention and memory shape learning. We will then apply those principles to challenges we face in designing learning activities, including face-to-face, hybrid, blended, and fully online environments.
Session 5C: On Course & Equity
Presenter: On Course Facilitators
Summary: TBD
Session 6: Closing Keynote
Presenter: Dr. Jonathan Brennan
Summary:
The Poetics of Zoom
Ah, Zoom.
The frail passage to our learners
(the bane of our existence).
Pleading for life from the maddening little windows
Staring into the void.
Transported like cyberdust and reassembled
In the breakout room.
Hurling ourselves over the edge of the platform
Into the whims of everyone’s bandwidth.
How much can I stand?
I can’t raise my hand.
Mute. Unmute. Mute. Unmute.
Why is everyone looking at me?
Why am I looking at me?
Mute. Unmute. Mute. Unmute.
The small reprieves of a family visit
The trickling flow of a Chat stream…
Unartful group singing of happy birthday.
Looking at myself and cringing
Looking at you: frozen…still frozen…wait…no, still frozen.
In this session Dr. Brennan will explore the construction of a Poetics of Zoom.
What have the last 2 years offered to us on the Zoom platform?
What have we experienced?
How shall we proceed?
The topics for exploration include:
Shared Learning Experiences
Harmony and Convergence
Zoom Poetry
A Sense of Fragmentation
The Experience of Belonging
Technology Disruption
Gendered Zoom Worlds
Zoom Beauty
Disruptive Learning
Also, as is our tradition, this session will end with a raffle of some great prizes, including one full scholarship to the 2022 On Course National Conference and two 50% scholarships to any 2021 virtual On Course National Workshop.
Dr. Jonathan Brennan is a faculty member in the English Department at Mission College in Santa Clara, California. He is a researcher in best practices in student success, holds a BA and MA in English (UC Berkeley), an MA in Counseling Psychology (USM), a PhD in Comparative Ethnic Studies (UC Berkeley), and an EdD in Leadership and Change (Fielding University). He has chaired the Student Success Committee, English Department and Language Arts Division, and served as VP of the Academic Senate and on multiple distance learning committees.
He was voted Faculty of the Year at Mission College and awarded a NISOD Teaching Excellence Award in 2000. In 2005 he was awarded the Stanback-Stroud Diversity award from the California State Academic Senate, and in 2008 the California State Hayward Award for Excellence in Education. Since 2006, he has been Chair of the On Course National Conference, and is currently Editor of the On Course Student Success Newsletter which has 150,000 subscribers worldwide. He has facilitated workshops on improving student engagement and learning for over 6000 faculty from colleges and universities across North America.
Dr. Brennan’s books include Engaging Learners through Zoom (Wiley Jossey-Bass), On Course: Strategies for Success in College, Career, and Life (Cengage), Choosing a Good Road (a student success textbook for high school students), Mixed Race Literature (Stanford Press), and When Br’er Rabbit Meets Coyote: African-Native American Literature (University of Illinois Press). In the last 2 decades, he has focused his research on higher education leadership, best practices in non-cognitive learner competencies, effectiveness in distance learning, and the intersection between race, culture, equity and access to education.
Dr. Brennan has been teaching online courses since 2003, and was a member of the Academic Senate Committee on Distance Learning. He has taught using multiple CMS platforms, including ETUDES, Blackboard, Angel and Canvas. He has assessed online courses for the demonstration of regular, effective student contact and engaged learning. He developed the On Course Online workshop and is the lead designer of the new, Engaging Learners through Zoom workshop. On Course workshops (www.oncourseworkshop.com) offer educators the opportunity to acquire new best practices in both supporting online learners in strengthening non-cognitive variables and in designing and implementing active online learning structures that improve learning outcomes, success rates and retention.
