I connected with friends and colleagues this week and it was awesome.
This week was more Brightspace and it’s going to be like that for the 2 days I’ll be here next week too. I am working on the third module of my certificate course with the intent to finish the course before I go away on Wednesday. This section on assessments is more involved than the creating courses course was. There are a lot more steps and more variables for settings.
I just lost my draft of about 3 paragraphs here so I’m going to try and remember what I wrote about… Jen and I have been meeting regularly to work through our sessions. It’s good practice. I stumbled through a part I was feeling good about so that was a good lesson. We’re working out what we need to have in our demo course to show people and figuring out what will need to be interactive.
Friday was the etug conference. As I saw the names and faces entering the zoom room I was reminded how much I miss these people, and this event. We have two new people on the stewardship committee and it was really fun to work with them and watch them have their first ‘behind the scenes’ experience. I had to take over as host for a bit as our chair was having technical issues. We had an ‘open’ session because one presenter had to back out and I thought I would lead a world cafe but we ended up just talking as a group – there were about 45 people there for a session with no topic. All day right up until 4 we had from 40 to over 100 people in attendance. I guess I’m not the only one who has missed etug.
The opening panel was fantastic. We had Brenna, Colin, Brian, Vivian and Ian each sharing their perspective on analytics, privacy, online proctoring and the student experience. My notes from the panel session are really vague, I was too engaged listening. Brenna said something about the co-opting of the language of care and support and asked if we can call what’s being measured ‘learning’. A couple of sessions were a little over my head but still interesting and I noticed a them emerging around ethical frameworks and policies around learning analytics. There were conversations around who is making the purchasing decisions and what kind of access vendors have to student data – and is anyone reading the fine print?
It was such a great way to end the week. Next week, in my two days I’m going to write my last quiz in my course and work on the supporting pieces for the sessions and meet with Jen for another run through.