Description: Virtual reality and virtual worlds (VWs) are powerful technologies currently helping to define the digital world. These technologies are characterized by user control, immersion, and sense of presence or “being there.” They have been examined from a variety of theoretical perspectives, technical and user variables, and psychological approaches. The purpose of this study was to extend VW research relating the roles of user age, gender, and technical characteristics such as screen size, directly to the VW-critical features of immersion and perceived presence. This study used a photo-real, on-screen, first-person VW in which users “enter” and “walk through” a VW via mouse navigation, viewing it through their own eyes rather than through an avatar. It used a quasi-experimental design with 35 adult subjects who were tested for perceived immersion and presence in a VW showing a 360-degree city panorama using different screen size treatments. Data were analyzed using mixed methods (e.g., interview comments and responses to questionnaires) to examine relationships among age, gender, immersion, presence, and screen size in the VW. Findings supported conclusions relating to the relevance of age and gender as user variables in VWs and the role of technology characteristics in VWs’ effective use. The study also opened a potential new line of inquiry by raising previously unaddressed questions about the importance of the psychological trait vs. state nature and measurement of immersion and presence in VWs. Implications and recommendations for instructional design and delivery and further research are offered.

Facilitators: Dr. Jon Martens (Analytics Journey, LLC), Dr. Robert Dionne (University of Oklahoma (ret.)), Dr. Ina Agnew (Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology), Dr. Chuck Baukal (John Zink Institute), Dr. Lynna Ausburn (Oklahoma State University), Dr. Floyd Ausburn (Oklahoma State University)

Description: This session will cover the importance of organization, consistency, and communication in supporting online learners’ self-regulation in asynchronous courses.

Facilitators: Dr. Kalianne Neumann (Oklahoma State University)

Description: Grading feedback is only effective in the learning process if it is reviewed and used by the students. For my Composition class, I have re-designed the rubric to contain instructions for a follow up assignment, personalized to what they individually need to work on to improve their writing skills. In this session, I will show the rubric I have made and how it is used in my class. Participant discussion of how this could be improved or how a similar approach might be used for other subjects will be welcome!

Facilitators: Christala Smith (Southeastern Oklahoma State University)

Description: Are you hesitant to call on your college students in class? Are you looking for a way to include more students in your synchronous online discussions without embarrassing anyone or causing anxiety? This presentation will help you develop a method for increasing student engagement and participation in your class in a non-intrusive manner. Most college instructors are looking for ways to bring learner-centered pedagogy and high-impact practices into the classroom, especially strategies that prioritize diversity and inclusion. This session will help you to build relationships and trust with your students in a short amount of time, and more students will be actively engaging in classroom discussions. The percentage of students participating in your class will dramatically increase! If you’re looking for a way to move from a traditional lecture format to more of a discussion format, this session is for you!

Facilitators: Tracy Jackson (Tulsa Community College)

Description: Create an area in your online classroom for brain breaks so that students have the option to take a break without leaving the online classroom. Look at a module with links and suggestions so that you can get ideas to create an optional resource module to guide students through a quick breathing exercise, screen break, a stretch, or music for focusing.

Facilitators: Ally Sharp (Langston University)

Description: E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning.

Facilitators: Lora Pezzell (University of Central Oklahoma)

Description: To promote the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Oklahoma, members of COLE’s OER subcommittee have developed two sets of modules – OER: 101 and OER: A Deeper Dive, as well as an open textbook – Open Educational Resources: Basics & Beyond.

The self-paced modules frame the objectives and refer the learner to the textbook, which contains most of the content and includes interactive quizzes to reinforce concepts. Upon completion of each chapter, learners return to the course site, where they can complete an activity to demonstrate deeper understanding and earn a digital badge, which can be used to show competency in this area.

The presentation will introduce the course and textbook, how to gain access, and explain how they work together. The presenters will also share their own process of adapting these OERs from “Texas Learn OER,” an open course produced by the Digital Higher Education Consortium of Texas (DigiTex) and licensed under CC-BY 4.0.

Facilitators: Jamie Holmes (Tulsa Community College), Dr. Pamela Louderback (Northeastern State University), Ann Raia (Oklahoma City Community College)

Description: This continued introduction to OPEN OCO Pressbooks will provide an overview of how to find existing Pressbooks, how to import your own existing content into Pressbooks, and how to navigate the dashboard of an existing Pressbooks OER.

Facilitators: Brad Griffith (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education), Jamie Holmes (Tulsa Community College)

Description: This session will provide an overview of some of the more advanced features of the Pressbooks platform, focusing on its available plugins. Participants will hear about H5P, Hypothesis, LaTeX, MathJax, and TablePress. Best practices will also be provided for ensuring digital accessibility of Pressbooks OER.

Facilitators: Brad Griffith (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education), Jamie Holmes (Tulsa Community College)

Description: In 2020, the K20 Center’s 24th annual Innovative Learning Institute (ILI) was held virtually for the first time. ILI is traditionally focused on sharing best practices and cutting edge technology for teaching and learning for a variety of educators and school types. This year, pandemic restrictions made addressing innovative learning more important than ever. The K20 Center used various online platforms to build and create an online community for ILI, keeping strong the network of educator support and collaboration cultivated through the previous Institutes, but expanding to create an interactive, collaborative and sustainability professional learning experience while aligning ILI with existing K20 Center virtual resources including the online lesson repository, digital educational games, and free online professional development. Despite the challenges of 2020, the K20 Center created a conference that facilitated mentorship, innovation, and shared strategies using the center’s foundational partnerships and resources. The K20 Center set out to do this all while holding the 2020 Innovative Learning Institute 100% virtually.

Facilitators: Dr. Jackie Mania-Singer, Dr. Dawn Pearce, Danny Mattox, Lacy Pennington

Description: Women are often underrepresented in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) professions. Without access to equitable opportunities to explore careers, acquire interdisciplinary contents, and develop the 21st century skills that can further impede women’s abilities to participate in the highly competitive global workforce; and succeed in fast-growing, STEM-related emerging careers (e.g. analytics, data science). This multi-tier STEM Career Builder grant (2018-2021), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), aims to discover what partnership models, strategies, and innovations can effectively support female high school teachers and students through the research, development (R&D) and implementation of five multi-tier interventions: (1) teacher professional development (PD), (2) a summer academy, (3) job shadowing, (4) mentoring, and (5) internships, and research fellowships.

Facilitators: Dr. Joselina Cheng, Alexia Benson (University of Central Oklahoma)

Description: Group work in many college courses is necessary but often difficult due to scheduling, time constraints, and other demands on student schedules. In this session I will demonstrate the procedures and technologies I have implemented in my upper-level Project Management course throughout the 2020-2021 school year that have yielded outstanding results for students. By setting simple guidelines and utilizing some basic frameworks for structure and expectations, group work can be transformed from stressful to successful.

My student feedback about groups includes comments such as “We were all very satisfied with our group and decided to continue with this group going forward.” and “This is probably the best experience I’ve had with a group during my time at OSU.”

Facilitators: Simon Ringsmuth (Oklahoma State University)

Description: Online learning can be very impersonal and distant. In our program, which is totally online, I’ve found a method that allows for professional dialogue among classmates who are taking graduate level courses and who sometimes feel overwhelmed with returning to college in order to complete an advanced degree. This method revolves around spending an extra hour (after class) getting to know my students on a personal level and letting them share about what’s causing them stress. Judging from the emails I’ve received from students, this approach has yielded positive results and has been very rewarding for all involved, including the professor.

Facilitators: Dr. Todd Williams (Southeastern Oklahoma State University)

Description: This session will provide an overview of Rogers State University’s offering of concurrent college courses at a distance broadcast through RSU TV.

Facilitators: Royal Aills (Rogers State University)

Description: Get ready! Higher education in Oklahoma is about to reach an entirely new summit through a brand new initiative coming later this spring. This session will help you develop an understanding of micro-credentials and digital badging, including brainstorming of how to apply this opportunity to your own programs and offer students a greater connection to workforce opportunities. You will also hear some hot-off-the-press updates on new system-wide pilot led by the Online Consortium of Oklahoma (OCO) to equip Oklahoma higher ed institutions to develop these exciting and nimble new programs!

Facilitators: Brad Griffith (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education)

Description: As an online business communications instructor, my quest every semester is to find more innovative and creative ways to engage students in online learning – how can I bring a face-to-face experience into an online platform? While I continue to learn more and more every semester, I would love to share some of the creative solutions I have drummed up over the last couple of years. Join me for a preview of my business communications course and the technology and resources I am using to breathe LIFE in my online classes!

Facilitators: Dr. Niccole Miller (University of Central Oklahoma)

Description: This presentation will look at the foundation of the online course design and look at some of the ideas and steps you can take before actual course design. They are steps in backward design, the basic foundation of online courses such as interactivity, discussion, effective feedback, modules, and navigation. It also presents some ideas for designing online courses based on other’s experiences and findings.

Facilitators: Dr. Abe Soltani (Langston University)

Description: Use Microsoft Stream, part of Office 365, to create screen recordings and videos with automatically generated, searchable transcripts. Learn to embed and share the videos.

Facilitators: Ally Sharp (Langston University)

Description: Following best practices and processes in instructional design is key to a quality course. Looking at rural areas where broadband access is limited, download times of images are important to the learning process and supplanting visual ques. When file size of images exceed norms and are detrimental in the download process when broadband is not available. In this session you will learn little tricks of the trade preparing imagery for online course content delivery, sizing, layout, adding accessible tags, etc.

Facilitators: Dr. Gary Dotterer (Rogers State University)

Description: Whether you are an OER champion or just discovering the magic that is open education, we have opportunities to share with you! Join the co-chairs of COLE’s OER subcommittee and OSRHE’s director of online learning to hear how you can get involved. Plan to come away with a plan for how you could embark upon your own journey with OER with the support from your friends throughout the state. We will discuss who in Oklahoma is collaborating on OER, professional development opportunities for faculty and staff, and resources from the Council for Online Learning Excellence (COLE) and Online Consortium of Oklahoma (OCO) available at zero cost!

Facilitators: Brad Griffith (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education), Dr. Kathy Essmiller (Oklahoma State University), Marla Lobley (East Central University)

Description: In October 2020, the Online Consortium of Oklahoma launched OPEN OCO, a shared instance of PressbooksEDU. This dynamic platform provides 30 initial open textbook project spaces to OCO members, in addition to an option for unlimited access for individual institutions.

During this session, you will gain an understanding of Pressbooks and explore some OER developed using the system. You will also be some of the first in OK higher ed to hear about our upcoming opportunities for project funding.

Facilitators: Brad Griffith (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education)

Description: The easier it is for students to access and understand your content,​ the easier it is for students to engage in and learn from your course. Office 365 has tools to help everyone.

Facilitators: Ally Sharp (Langston University)

Description: SEOSU partnered with OneNet to produce approximately 50 VR enabled modules for 12+ faculty in multiple departments at Southeastern. The first few are in the final stages of development. We will share our experience thus far and discuss how others might begin similar projects at their own institutions.

Facilitators: Christala Smith (Southeastern Oklahoma State University)

Description: UCO’s IDEA team was task to develop four virtual experiential learning assignments to allow students to virtually experience projects that were previously only possible in person. The assignments focus on allowing students to virtually collaborate to build and restructure essays, receive tangible feedback on persuasive speeches, turn their paper presentation poster into a robust online presentation, and simulate first-hand experience of what it is like to lead a team to climb a dangerous mountain.

What kind of lessons did we learn? How were did we get our faculty involved? What kind Technologies were used and how did we use them? Did all of the students make it up the mountain? Come by and have all of your questions answered.

Facilitators: Robert Wall, Drew Stephenson (University of Central Oklahoma)

Description: Marla Lobley is the winner of the 2021 Oklahoma Online Excellence Award for Individual Leadership. This session discusses what elements of an OER initiative at East Central University have worked well and what mistakes have turned into learning opportunities.

Facilitators: Marla Lobley (East Central University)

Description: Online students miss out on the informal interactions which are typical on campus. In a F2F session, students and professors have non-course related talks which relate the professor as a person to the students. Everything from current events to (sometimes awful) jokes are shared. Heightened because of COVID – students need more interactions. Students want more interactions. The human is a social being and the isolation from online classes can be minimized (not eliminated). You can add these to your online course without trying to be a standup comic.

Facilitators: Dr. Marty Ludlum (University of Central Oklahoma)

Description: This session discusses the use of visual rhetoric to increase learning comprehension and engagement in online and hybrid courses. In particular, I will share examples using free graphic design software, such as Piktochart and Canva, to demonstrate how transforming traditional text- only assignment instructions to visual assignment instructions (aka “infographics”) impacts student engagement and understanding. l will also present research on best practices and results of this and similar uses of visual rhetoric on student engagement.

Facilitators: Pamela Rollins (Southwestern Oklahoma State University)

Description: In March 2020, the First Year Math Team at OU, like many others in higher education, transitioned from in-person to online instruction. Much of the online instruction and tutoring carried over into the fall 2020 semester. In this presentation, I will focus on the team’s efforts to allow meaningful student engagement and rigorous assessments in online environments while trying to take into account the additional stress both instructors and students were encountering. The presentation will cover lessons learned and what we hope to take away from this experience.

Facilitators: Dr. Deborah Moore-Russo (University of Oklahoma)

Description: A demonstration of how Articulate Rise is used to increase learner engagement in self-paced online courses offered by OSU Extension.

Facilitators: Joan York (Oklahoma State University)

Description: Hear annual updates from the Online Consortium of Oklahoma, Council for Online Learning Excellence, and Oklahoma Quality Matters.

Facilitators: Brad Griffith (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education), Christala Smith (Southeastern Oklahoma State University), Dana Lindon-Burgett (Rose State College)

Hear updates about online education in Oklahoma and meet our online collaboration group leaders. This session features:

Mr. Brad Griffith – OSRHE Director of Online Learning Initiatives
Dr. Gary Dotterer – Chairperson, Council for Online Learning Excellence (COLE)
Ms. Christala Smith – Chairperson, Online Consortium of Oklahoma (OCO)
Dr. Dana Lindon-Burgett – Co-Lead Coordinator, Oklahoma Quality Matters

Available as an on-demand course, Zoom Towards Engagement targets best practices when teaching online via Zoom.  Many of the resources are also useful for administrators and staff as many events and functions have transitioned into an online environment.  This course will be continuously updated as new Zoom updates and functions are released.

Held on October 30, the 2020 Oklahoma OER Summit is now available as an on-demand course.  Faculty and staff may complete a short quiz upon viewing the resources to earn the OER CHAMPION digital badge from the Online Consortium of Oklahoma (OCO).

Description: For nursing faculty and online learning professionals: a workshop to uncover issues related to teaching traditional skills and nursing simulations remotely. The workshop will brainstorm ideas and help participants start a plan to prepare for any future transition to remote instruction.

Facilitators: Brad Griffith (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education)

Description: Learn how Western Oklahoma State College shifted its student tutoring programs to a fully virtual format using existing tools, including Zoom.

Facilitators: Melissa Smith and Katie Brewer (Western Oklahoma State College)

Description: Has anyone ever said to you that online education does not have as much quality or rigor as face-to-face instruction? Have you struggled to provide and intelligent reply? Are you concerned about the quality of your online course during the recent, and rapid, conversion to remote instruction? If so, this topic is for you! This session will provide a blueprint for establishing quality measures, gathering data, seeking student and faculty input, and building a process for continuous improvement to help ensure quality in your online environment. Examples will be given as well as lessons learned, from a recent start-up of an online program track.

Facilitators: Nancy Gwin (University of Central Oklahoma)

Description: Many faculty approaching a new term of fully remote instruction may now be wondering how to ensure academic integrity and identity of learners outside of the traditional classroom. This session will first provide you with an overview of various techniques to assess learners in the online environment, some of which do not require any form of proctoring. For those cases where proctoring is necessary, a sampling of current online proctoring strategies and technologies will help inform faculty and administrators.

Facilitators: Bucky Dodd (University of Central Oklahoma); Brad Griffith (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education)

Description: Have you been grappling with whether labs can be delivered effectively in the online environment? This session will review what the Eberly College of Science at Penn State University is doing for online labs, proving that it’s not about the labs, it’s about the outcomes. This highly interactive and collaborative session will utilize problem-based learning to help participants uncover strategies to use in their own courses.

Facilitators: Melissa Hicks (Penn State University)

Description: All hands on deck! With the spread of COVID-19 this spring semester, many institutions have answered the unexpected call to action to continue operations by bringing online education to all students. This session will ask attendees to dig in and explore ways to maintain the quality of online learning and innovation within this record-paced transformation of interactions, environments, strategies, and cultures. During this collaborative session, we will develop a toolkit with resources to help you promote innovation in teaching, course design, program design, and learning culture at your institution.

Facilitators: Brad Griffith (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education), Bucky Dodd (University of Central Oklahoma)

Friday, April 10, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Central

Description: This session will provide attendees a pathway forward for increasing availability of low/no-cost course materials for students within Oklahoma institutions.  Lessons from the field will help you expand your “why” of OER and envision where we can go as a system through harnessing current resources and future opportunities.

Presenter: Kathy Essmiller (Oklahoma State University)

Thursday, April 9, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Central

Description: AI is the next evolution of big data’s use in education. As more institutions develop their capabilities and architecture to obtain more data on their students, mining this data to better serve the student will become the focus of getting students to completion. Yet, the process to “hire” AI and implement it at scale should be guided by thoughtful conversations from administrators, faculty, students, and staff. While the promise of specific AI technology will be discussed, the leadership required to advance AI enabled strategic change will be a focus of the conversation.

Presenters: Luke Dowden (Alamo Colleges District), Karen Srba (St. Francis University)

Wednesday, April 8, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Central

Description: The world is in unprecedented territory. You’re being asked to move your classes online, and seeing enrollment in existing distance education climb. Students are not on campus. How do we make sure that we keep our obligations to students with disabilities in the middle of all of this change? During this session we will discuss how critical it is, especially now, to build accessible educational environments. We will share some tips and guidance and leave you with resources to help.

Presenter: Rob Carr (Oklahoma ABLE Tech)

Wednesday, April 8, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Central

Description: Each of us has a finite amount of mental bandwidth for all the tasks in our lives. By bandwidth, I’m referring to attentional resources. This isn’t about how smart a person is, but about how much of their cognitive capacity is available for learning. One of the most powerful bandwidth stealers is uncertainty. In this public health crisis, our students – and our instructors – are living in a situation where uncertainty is the only constant. What can we do, within classes and as institutions, to provide environments of certainty for our students so they can recover a bit of bandwidth for learning?

Presenter: Cia Verschelden (Malcolm X College)

Tuesday, April 7, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Central

Description: This session will provide an overview of un-grading, a movement in both K-12 and higher ed to put the focus on feedback, not grades. The goal: increase motivation, decrease stress, and advance learning by providing students with actionable feedback instead of number/letter grades.

Presenter: Laura Gibbs (University of Oklahoma)

Tuesday, April 7, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Central

Description: Best practices to keep students involved and moving through an online course.

Presenter: Akram Taghavi-Burris (University of Tulsa)

Monday, April 6, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Central

Description: This event will showcase the 2020 Oklahoma Online Excellence Award winners.

Facilitator:  Brad Griffith (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education)

Guest Presenters: Jason Stone, Breeman Ainsworth, Dorothy Weaver (OSU-OKC Division of Liberal Arts)

Friday, April 3, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Central

Description: Learn what skills are critical for online instructors, and how to develop those skills while also motivating online instructors to stay active and engaged in their courses right alongside their students.

Presenter: Simon Ringsmuth (Oklahoma State University

Thursday, April 2, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Central

Description: From the humble beginnings of automating a paper statistics report to predictive analytics, the KPI Dashboard (custom built by the IDEA Team at UCO using Blackboard Analytics) has had its share of growing pains as well as triumphs. This session will discuss some of the features (room search, schedule toxicity, enrollment projection, and department and university profiles) and the pitfalls, both hit and avoided, along the way.

Presenter: Liz Crowell (University of Central Oklahoma), Sean Gausman (University of Central Oklahoma)

Wednesday, April 1, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Central

Description: The U.S. Department of Education is redoing several regulations regarding distance education and educational innovations offered by colleges and universities. This session will explore those that you most need to understand and take your questions.

Presenter:  Russ Poulin, Executive Director (WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technology)

Tuesday, March 31, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Central

Description: This presentation highlights key trends, issues, and updates related to online and blended learning in Oklahoma.

Presenters: Bucky Dodd (University of Central Oklahoma); Dana Lindon-Burgett (Rose State College); Brad Griffith (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education)

Monday, March 30, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Central

Description: Introduction to digital accessibility in Microsoft Word 2019.

Facilitators: Lyssa Prince (OK ABLE Tech)

Description: This presentation highlights key trends, issues, and updates related to online and blended learning in Oklahoma.

Facilitators: Bucky Dodd (University of Central Oklahoma); Kyle Foster (Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education)

Description: This presentation will cover proven strategies to set-up faculty, their students, and their departments for success in online courses. The use of data-driven decisions, mobile course design, mobile content development, implementing OER, and the engagement-edutainment of students will be demonstrated from online science courses across Oklahoma. This presentation will empower you to achieve higher enrollment, higher student completion rates, and higher personal satisfaction in your online courses – while having a blast!

Facilitators: Kenny Tapp (University of Central Oklahoma)

Description: Learners formulate their first impression of a course before they even step inside. In the typical online course, the syllabus can be very telling of what one can expect to learn and experience. It can be follow the standard “terms of contract” approach or it can be designed in a way that grabs attention, engages, and initiates the learner’s interest. This session will present design methods that can be used in the course syllabus to maximize the value of the learner experience.

Facilitators: Tracy Fairless (University of Central Oklahoma), Steve Covello (Granite State College)

Description: Beginning with the end in mind, this workshop will take a look at measurable course objectives and how they provide the foundation for much of the design, including types of learning activities and assessments that are necessary to help learners achieve the desired outcomes. We’ll consider course mapping and module mapping and how participants might share those in their online course designs. The emphasis throughout this session is on alignment.

Facilitators: Dana Lindon-Burgett (Rose State College)

Description: We will take some time to discuss how accessibility in technology spans across traditional higher education silos and some of the people that are key to moving accessibility from a project or add-on to a sustainable program.

Facilitators: Rob Carr (Oklahoma ABLE Tech)

Description: This presentation takes a look at the new Oklahoma Learner Readiness Tool and how the tool can assist first time online students. The tool covers areas such as organizational skills, time management, learning preferences, and more. In many cases students are overwhelmed with self-directed learning. This tool will help first time online students to be successful in online courses.

Facilitators: Gary Dotterer (Rogers State University)

Description: If you have never taught online, recently began teaching online, or would just like a refresher, consider joining us for this 2 hour session focused on helping educators begin their online teaching journey. The session will be interactive and include several examples. Some of the topics that will be covered are: • Faculty readiness • Needed technical skills and how to strengthen those skills • Creating an online community • Re-thinking the instructor’s role in an online class • Ideas to help student’s start strong in an online class • Examples of consistent organization & navigation

Facilitators: Randy Dominguez (Tulsa Community College), Dana Lindon-Burgett (Rose State College)

Description: This presentation will focus on experiences gained through implementation of the OpenStax OER in a community college science course. Tools that have assisted with this implantation will also be presented and discussed.

Facilitators: Amanda Carlisle (Beaufort County Community College)

Description: Augmented, Mixed, and Virtual Reality are powerful and fundamentally different from existing communication mediums. Ken Parker will explain them and how can you potentially use them for education.

Facilitators: Ken Parker (Next Thought)

Welcome to the 2019 Oklahoma Learning Innovations Summit! 

Next week we kick off the 2019 Oklahoma Learning Innovations Summit. Here’s what is coming up!

Wednesday we gathered for the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education to honor a group of individuals who demonstrate excellence in online learning across Oklahoma. The 2018 Online Education Excellence Awardees are the pillars of leadership, innovation, teaching, and teamwork in our state. Below is a summary of each awardee.

Description: This session will be an interactive exchange of ideas and effective practices from expert online educators across Oklahoma. Topics will include online teaching and course design practices as well as questions from the audience.

Facilitators: Bucky Dodd, moderator (UCO); Maria Christian (NSU); Randy Dominguez (TCC); Gary Dotterer (RSU); Brett King (UCO); Stacy Southerland (UCO)

Description: This session will be a discussion of the characteristics of online learners and tips and strategies for supporting them as they prepare to enter the world of online learning. Please come join the conversation as we discuss ways to prepare students to enter the world of online learning.

Facilitators: Glenne’ Whisenhunt (OCCC)

Description: Learn the interactive elements this instructor implements in her online class and the budget-friendly resources she uses. This workshop features free (and almost free) tech tools and resources for creating interesting instructional videos and facilitating student engagement. Skill level: beginner to intermediate. More advanced Q&A also available for animation, etc.

Facilitators: Kinda Wilson (OSU)

Description: Identifying barriers to accessibility may not be as difficult as you think. There are tools and techniques that you can use, for free, to test your web and non-web content for accessibility. Join Steph Rogers from the University of Central Oklahoma and Rob Carr from Oklahoma ABLE Tech to learn some of the basics of testing websites, PDF and Microsoft Office content for accessibility.

Facilitators: Steph Rogers (UCO); Rob Carr (Oklahoma ABLE Tech, OSU)

Description: Open licensing, open access journals and open educational resources provide the foundation for a world in which universal access to education is possible. Governments are supporting this shift with a move toward open policies: requiring public access to publicly funded resources. Dr. Cable Green, Director of Open Education at Creative Commons, will provide an overview of open licensing and OER, and discuss specific examples where faculty, institutions and governments have moved the default on practice, culture and funding from “closed” to “open.”

Facilitators: Cable Green (Creative Commons)

Welcome to week 2 of the Oklahoma Learning Innovations Summit.

Here are some exciting events happening this week!  

Description: Detecting academic dishonesty in the online environment isn’t always easy. This session will focus on tools, tips, and tricks to reduce academic dishonesty in the online environment. The discussion will also give examples of how some of these tools and practices were used to detect and stop student cheating.

Facilitators: Travis Hurst, moderator (Rose State College)

Description: When developing an online course, there are different third-party programs and software that can be used to help enhance the students experience. The University of Oklahoma’s College of Professional and Continuing Studies will discuss and demonstrate the following products: SoftChalk, Salas, GoAnimate, Google Drive, and others.

Facilitators: John Boekenoogen (OU)

Description: This session is a virtual panel discussion on lessons learned from administration, faculty, and Instructional Design perspectives for those who are just beginning to teach online. Issues addressed will include training needed, course design considerations, managing an online course, and communication tips. Join us for a panel presentation and then open discussion on how to get started with teaching online.”

Facilitators: Randy Dominguez (Tulsa Community College)

I hope you are enjoying the 2018 Oklahoma Learning Innovations Summit!

I want to provide a few updates and information related to the summit.

Description: Class time is valuable, particularly in labs. This presentation will focus on the use of video to free up time to focus on content by moving the pre-lab material online and will discuss how SCORM content is used for a “flipped class” model.

Facilitators: Amy Hurst (Rose State College)

Description: This session shares innovative initiatives and collaborations occurring across the state of Oklahoma aimed at growing the quality and excellence of online and blended education opportunities.

Facilitators: Bucky Dodd (University of Central Oklahoma); Kyle Foster (OSRHE)

I’m excited to announce the launch of The Guide to Online Teaching. This resource was created by members of the Council for Online Learning Excellence and highlights course design techniques and principles relevant for educators who teach in online and blended learning environments.

The Oklahoma Online Learning Excellence Awards were established by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education’s Council for Online Learning Excellence to recognize individuals and groups from organizations in the State of Oklahoma that are dedicated to supporting and advancing excellence in online learning. Nominees have been determined by their peers to display the highest levels of achievement in leadership at their home institutions as well as across the state of Oklahoma and the nation, develop ground-breaking innovations in the industry, cultivate collaborations with internal and external peers, and promote high quality online learning experiences that evidence robust learner achievement and success.