Seeing is Engaging

If you haven’t already, see Ken Fairbank’s presentation and then join the discussion on Face 2 Face with Facebook: Connect With Your Students Where They Live! Ken has inserted a short video to encourage us to join with him in discussion. What a great way to grab your students’ (and your) attention and draw them (and you) into a discussion. In her presentation on using blogs in her composition class, Bev has a video that gives students screen by screen and mouse click by mouse click directions on setting up the blog as a homepage. Both of these are useful examples of how “seeing” can encourage students to engage.


Highlights of the keynote presentation by Dr. Hilyard: Acknowledging that the dropout rate in community college is too high, in her keynote comments, Dr. Hilyard suggested that we should take advantage of the advances in instructional technology to focus on “mastery learning by responding to a student’s knowledge base and taking them to the next step.” The technology supports things like scenario applications, use of adaptive software, sequential modules capped with quizzes, and other instructional strategies to help students “be involved in challenging learning environments where they can progress at their pace, continually learning new information and applying it”. Considering the desire of the millennial student for lots of engagement and the adult learner for practical, shorter, and focused study, Dr. Hilyard suggested that we are challenged to “create stimulating learning environments where one’s thirst for information and learning (curiosity) remains constant and the level of excitement for learning remains high … The challenge for us as teacher/creators of online courses is to build into our courses the stimuli that enable our students to be excited about their learning.”

Coming soon to the Virtual Conference: You will be able to view a short interview with Dr. Hilyard in which she shares more about her views on the future of distance education and teaching with technology.

Marian