How can learning coexist in physical and virtual spaces? With over a year of hybrid learning under their belts, university educators and instructional designers have findings to share. From what’s working well to what you should avoid doing, join Verbit as we host a live virtual summit, EduALL: Making Higher Education Work for All Learners on April 22nd.
We’ll explore existing research on how to make sure engagement is working and create ease for teachers and students.
Our opening session of the day, Multi-Format Teaching Hacks, will feature success stories, research and interesting tips to incorporate into your classes. The session will begin at 10AM EDT and be led by Dr. Sherri Restauri, Senior Executive Director of Digital Learning, Coastal Carolina University and Dr. Thomas Tobin, Faculty Developer & Professional Consultant, and Program Area Director for Distance Teaching & Learning, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“We want to take some work off your plate,” Dr. Tobin said. “You’re busy. You’re frustrated. Things have been piling up and your workload has been increasing. This session will help you to understand what is important and where you can put your focus that’s going to pay you back for the effort that you’re investing. We want to take some work off of your list.”
Dr. Tobin is an author and international speaker on quality in technology-mediated education. He is well known in the accessibility community for his book, Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone, which focuses on Universal Design for Learning in higher education.
Dr. Restauri, who will join Dr. Tobin, said if EduALL attendees walk away with one helpful tidbit that gets them thinking more creatively about how they’re teaching, their joint session will be worth it. The session will also offer opportunities for interactivity to learn from peers and findings at all universities whose leaders attend.
“Our session will offer a nice broad overview of some ideas of what’s been working and what’s not been working. We’re here to help curate some of those ideas. It’s really about curating it down to: these pieces are what’s going to work,” she said.
Dr. Restauri has extensive online learning experiences as a faculty member, student, trainer, ID/developer, researcher and administrator. She’s a certified online instructor who has 20 years experience in team leadership and administration in higher education.
“My faculty, specifically, we have a magical rule of three on my campus. We use three tools, three assignments, three assessment methods. We don’t do more than that because it’s more about teaching here and it’s less about technology.
Dr. Restauri and Dr. Tobin will use this session to talk about teaching. They’ll explore what really makes for good teaching outside of a pandemic and outside of everyone moving to remote teaching, she said.
“It’s really all still about the principles of good teaching and putting us in front of faculty and these EduALL attendees to walk through those. I feel like I say on a weekly basis, ‘this is not about technology. This is about good teaching.’ During the session, we’ll talk about what your goals actually are and how we can help you accomplish those.”
While technology is incredibly important to the process and enhancing it to keep students engaged and meet their needs, Dr. Restauri will address how all educators’ approaches should be about “technology behind and teaching first.”