Day 4 of the Lilly Conference was Wednesday, May 26th. I am watching the recordings a couple of weeks after the live session. I do like the format with four Wednesday sessions. Todd Zakrajsek from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and ITLC started each week with “Game Changing Teaching Tips” and this last one was about “Must Includes for the First Day of Class.” They always used breakout groups and Padlet boards. At the end of each session, they had hundreds of posts on each Padlet! The simplicity of the tool is great for sharing resources and topics. This past week we did our fourth (yes, fourth!) HITS workshop and one suggestion was to use Padlet boards next time. During this session, they spend several minutes talking about the different features of Padlet and how they use Padlet boards in courses. I wonder if we can have participants for our re-group and HITS group presentations on the 24 use a Padlet to share suggestions and resources for each case that is presented? The prompt Zakrajsek was “things to do on the first day of class” and several great suggestions were shared. One was to make a mobile-friendly version of the first day activities. Another suggestion was to be intentionally late to class on the first day and leave specific instructions to show the learners that they will direct their learning. Another group mentioned asking the students what they want to learn from the course and refer to this over the course. An audience member also asked if it makes a difference to phrase it as “what do you hope to get out of this course” or “what do you want to get out of this course.” Zakrajsek also shared that we don’t have to wait until the end of the semester to gather information. Zakrajsek asks four questions:
- What am I doing to help facilitate your learning?
- What could I do to further facilitate your learning?
- What are you doing to facilitate your own learning?
- What could you do to further facilitate your learning?
Zakrajsek explained that the first two are about the instructor and the second two about the student with the goal of highlighting that we are in it together. This first session had several tech tips about Padlet and suggestions from the audience for the first day of class. In a second session, Zakrajsek talked about “Creating a New Normal that Further Enhances Student Learning.” The beginning of the presentation emphasized how difficult the pandemic has been on everyone. Mental health challenges will not go away. Zakrajsek talked about the work by deans, staff, and employees to keep campuses serving and teaching students. Fiscal stability and human interaction will require addressing. Zakrajsek mentioned that some colleges have closed (citing Macmurray College closure) and “an estimated 570,000 people laid off from higher education jobs”! Zakrajsek also reminded us that institutional history as well as educators retired. Zakrajsek reminded us that the emergency remote pivot taught us several lessons: long lectures don’t translate to online environments well, different ways of learning, being human is critical, grace from both students and instructors, and the ability to just hang out at the library! Attendees also reminded us that international students were affected in different ways by the pivot: some couldn’t come back while others couldn’t go home.
Zakrajsek then emphasized that it is important to pick ed tech solutions that facilitate learning, and a slide presented had examples including Flipgrid, Mentimeter, PowerNotes, AnswerGarden, Jamboard, Conceptboard, Kritik, Slido! We now have new opportunities for developing online learning experiences, and Todd said that students won’t let us go back to courses without digital and online components.
Think of students as multiple story lines […] parents, siblings, children, employees.
Todd Zakrajsek, Lilly Conference Online 2021
Zakrajsek talked about new opportunities to address inequities in higher education to support all students and strive for inclusion. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Open Educational Resources (OER) are becoming more popular. I agree with Zakrajsek that we now can rethink our work lives and look at more work-life harmony. Todd mentioned time limits and working smarter as much as possible. Zakrajsek ended with a message to make things better and to take care of ourselves as humans. I enjoyed his honesty and talking about being sick and the workload issues academics face. We all had a rough year and a half. I have always struggled with stress and work. However, I’m excited that now I am starting to be truthful to myself and focusing on what I like to do: teach, mentor, learn… and I am learning a lot from the Quality Matters (QM) workshops and Open community. That time and effort, to me, is worth it simply because it makes me happy and has direct effects on our students.
