And on to Day 3, the final Day, of the 21st TCC Online Conference! Unfortunately, I simply couldn’t attend all of the seminars I wanted to, but I was still able to get in three more seminars before the end of the conference.
The first seminar was titled “Working Conditions for Online Professors – A Survey Study,” presented by Danielle Babb and Mary Dereshiwsky. This was very interesting. The presenters discussed a survey they completed for online faculty members. Specifically, they looked at the demographics of online faculty, the primary source of income, their general physical locations, their total income for 2014 (subdivided into teaching versus course development versus mentoring), types of schools they worked for, insurance and benefits statuses, and non-compete agreements. One thing they noticed was that many of the surveyed instructors were female, many of them did not make a lot of money from online teaching, many of them worked for multiple institutions, and most did not look favorably on a non-compete agreement – some even stated they would break this agreement for a full time position. It was interesting to see this information, having recently obtained a full time position two years ago – I can definitely sympathize!
The second seminar was titled, “Student-generated videos: Demonstrating competencies and increasing engagement,” presented by Allison Selby and Glen Jenewein. While the presenters were working with students more in the “tech” side of classrooms, their encouragement of students to create their own videos was very interesting! Having the student create a video and discuss the project he or she completed demonstrates their ability to understand the concepts and discuss them with others – both great skills for their future careers. These videos can certainly demonstrate student learning and help the students feel more connected to the course work as well.
The last seminar I attended was, “Getting together with a click: Evaluation of E-Learning via Rubric,” presented by Katherine Watson. I thoroughly enjoyed this session as it discussed the different types of rubrics and how/why some rubrics may differ from others (and which may be better based on the type of assessment needed). The presenter discussed three principal types of rubrics, overviewed each type, and discussed the pros and cons of each type. It definitely reminded me that I use the analytic rubric for most of my assignments, but I feel that this is the strongest type for my work with students as I am looking at a variety of characteristics, issues, and requirements from students, each of which needs to be fulfilled, but each of which may be fulfilled to varying degrees.
After all of these sessions during the last 3 days, I definitely feel more energized in my own work and I can’t wait to find ways to integrate these different concepts into my teaching repertoire! Can’t wait for the next conference!
Leave a Reply