Description: Required peer reviews are challenging! This session describes our experience implementing a peer review process to support those new to online instruction at the pandemic’s beginning. We discuss how the internal review works and why we adopted the process as an annual event for all who teach online.

Facilitators: Jennifer Campbell and Greg Stone (Tulsa Community College)

Description: This session is an overview of what humanized online learning is and how it can help students succeed in college and university courses. Tips are provided for instructional designers and faculty to use in their courses to help make their online offerings have more relevant content that in turn helps to improve student motivation.

Facilitators: Lora Pezzell (University of Central Oklahoma)

Description: This presentation discusses proven strategies for building a workable balance between ensuring consistency and standardization throughout an online program while maintaining faculty academic freedom.

Facilitators: Dr. Nancy Gwin (University of Central Oklahoma)

Description: Research has demonstrated the effectiveness of creating a sense of community in classroom environments, but this is difficult to do when teaching online. This session will demonstrate successful methods of using simple technologies and teaching practices to create a community of connected, engaged learners in online classes.

Facilitators: Simon Ringsmuth (Oklahoma State University).

Description: Every semester I ask myself, how do I bring an in-person teaching experience to the online environment? While I get better at it every semester, in this session I focus on the use of videos for humanizing the online experience to communicate about assignments, discussions, expectations, and feedback.

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

Description: Laura Garrett discusses the most successful methods to enrich Zoom and outlines the pitfalls. These methods allow participation in engaging ways, sometimes more than in a live classroom. Personal engagement creates greater feelings of community and lessens feelings of isolation. More responsive exchanges between students and instructors can prevent miscommunication. There can be advantages for students who have difficulty with many challenges.

Facilitators: Laura Garrett (Tulsa Community College)

Description: Two most important learning outcomes in STEM courses are critical thinking and problem solving. I talk about course design technique and applied methodology for active learning in online STEM courses. I share ideas to humanize an online STEM course to provide students with engaging classroom experiences.

Facilitators: Susmita Hazra (Cameron 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: 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: E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning.

Facilitators: Lora Pezzell (University of Central Oklahoma)

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: 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: 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 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 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: 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: 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)

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)