Category: Conference

The #OTESSA22 Recap and Resources

One of my favorite things to do after a good conference is to collect the resources acquired in a blog and re-share it with others. It is also a great way for me to tag a resources to a specific event (in my blog) in case I want to go back to it in the future. Don’t ask me why, my brain just works that way. Any who, last week I attended OTESSA 2022 which was her virtually and is organized by the Open/Technology in Education, Society, and Scholarship Association (OTESSA).

Here are a few thoughts on the conference:

  • Really enjoyed the conference sessions, social events, and the schedule.
  • I was also really appreciative of the active efforts to promote all sessions via social media, at times it served as a reminder to a session I wanted to attend.
  • I was not sure how the sessions were going to relate to theme of the conference “Critical Change” but at least based on the sessions that I was able to attend, there were several critical conversations happening about “what is next” and “how we do it in a meaningful, critical way”.
  • Going back to the schedule, it was a bit more challenging to catch the evening talks but glad I can catch the recording until the beginning of June.
  • The conference organizers did a phenomenal effort running is smoothly (i.e., sharing updates daily, the pre-conference info to check login information, and just attending sessions to make sure everything was going as planned).

At the beginning of the week I made a post on Twitter stating that I would be sharing resources during the week but honestly it was too much for me to tweet out every day. Trying to attend sessions, tweet giving proper credit (important to me), and trying to keep up with what is going at home was too much. So, instead I bookmarked and hope to proper share in this blog post. I will include the session the resource was mentioned or shared.

Metaphors of Ed Tech, Martin Weller

Surveillance in the System: Data as Critical Change in Higher Education (Research-Oriented), Bonnie Stewart (University of Windsor), Samatha Szcyrek (University of Windsor)

  • @bonstewart and @samanthaszc discussed findings on research related Surveillance in the System: Data as Critical Change in Higher Education. What do you know about datafication in your institution?

Online or Remote Learning and Mental Health (Research-Oriented), Stephanie Moore (University of New Mexico), Michael Barbour (Touro University California), George Veletsianos (Royal Roads University)

Hide and Seek: On Kids, Power, and Resistance in Education, Sherri Spelic, American International School Vienna

Outside-In: Openness as Subversion, Maha Bali, American University in Cairo

Embracing Feminist Pedagogies in Learning Design, Enilda Romero-Hall, The University of Tennessee Knoxville

Taking Experiential Learning Online During COVID-19 (Research-Oriented), Theodora Kapoyannis, Astrid Kendrick, Patricia Danyluk (University of Calgary)

Exploring university teaching during a pandemic to derive recommendations for post-pandemic times (Research-Oriented), Joerdis Weilandt, Sandra Dixon, Richelle Marynowski, Lorraine Beaudin, Rumi Graham, Stavroula Malla, Angeliki Pantazi (University of Lethbridge)

Multi-Section Open Course Design: Design and Implications for Faculty, Sessional Instructors, and Learners (Practice-Oriented), Valerie Irvine, Michael Paskevicius, Colin Madland, Rich McCue, Verena Roberts (University of Victoria)

The social events were lots of fun! The Bhangra dance with @GurdeepPandher was a great workout and I definitely need more of it my life. I was a bit uncoordinated at first and too shy to turn my camera on but I finally got it and still too shy to turn my camera on. The DJ session so much fun too! I didn’t participate in the trivia challenge but I enjoyed all the beats. Thank you again to all involve with planning and organizing the conference (Valerie, Aras, and Terry!) .

Resources from #AERA22 #AERA2022

A few weeks ago, I attended the American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2022 Annual Meeting. I really had two-days of sessions that I could attend and I wanted to make the most out of it. This post is primarily for me to compile the list of resources collected as I attend the sessions and that are currently in my Notes application.

Critical Race Theory, White Supremacy, and the Ongoing Fight for Black Existence

Cultivating and Expanding Equitable Education Opportunity by Implementing Multicultural Research, Policy, and Practice

Cultivando Metodologías Feministas: A Chicana/Latina Feminista Praxis in Educational Research

Women of Color Faculty: Persisting in a Colonized Academy

When Nothing Is Something: Null Results in Informal Learning Research

SIG Informal Learning Structured Poster Session

I attended my first in-person conference: #NSEE 2021

This past week I attended my first in person conference since February 2020. It was the Annual Conference of the National Society for Experiential Education. Back in early Summer, when I received the email from the Center for Teaching and Learning about attending the conference I felt good with attending the conference. Florida at that time was doing better with the number of COVID-19 cases but that quickly changed and I was starting to become hesitant about attending the conference. Thankfully the numbers are starting to decline after a massive spike due to the Delta variant. Another encouraging aspect was that the conference had a mask mandate for all attendees. It was sent out via email several times prior to the conference. It was also nice that the conference was in Orlando so if I didn’t feel comfortable with the COVID-19 measures, I could drive home in 45 minutes. Thankfully after I walked into the keynote session I immediately noticed that everyone was wearing their masks and wearing them properly. The conference did include a lunch but I didn’t attend because I didn’t feel comfortable attending this event so I just ordered some UBER eats.

The conference this year had an overall theme focused on social justice in experiential education. My first session was the keynote by Dr. Raja Gopal Bhattar (they/them/theirs) on Tuesday morning. As stated in the website of the conference: “Dr. Bhattar is a nationally recognized higher education leader, advocate, consultant and author. Raja will address how effective experiential learning requires intentionality and clear understanding of outcomes for our communities. Through storytelling and reflections, this keynote will offer insights and strategies on how experiential education leaders can incorporate equity, inclusion and belonging in all aspects of our work.” I loved the keynote speaker! I like it when keynote speakers make me reflect and this was a perfect example of this. Some of the questions I had to think about white listening to keynote speaker:

  • How do we show up?
  • Identity versus perception?
  • What is our role in upholding/disruptive inequitable systems?
  • How our students receive us?
  • Whose perspective is not on the table?
  • How do societal systems enhance or inhibit student success on campus?

We also had to do an identity grid that helps us reflect on “how often do we think about who we are beyond our titles? ”

Identity grid.
Identity Grid at NSEE 2021

Other sessions that I really enjoyed were:

  • Social Justice and Antiracism in Career Education and Experiential Education: Session discussed a process for creating a Call to Action with accountability measures, equity-oriented course syllabi, and a 5-step model to consider in your own work. This is a wonderful resources shared during the session: https://tinyurl.com/4j2tmxaw. This resources were used to create the Social Justice and Career Education infographic. Please see image below.
  • Providing career readiness support to female students in male dominant industries: This was a nice round table session focused on different kind of events that staff and faculty can use to create opportunities for networking, grow , and support for female students and those who identify as woman.
  • Using immersive virtual reality in higher education to facilitate authentic learning experiences: This was a very introductory session into VR and how a university had employed VR experiences into the curriculum to provide learning experiences related to manufacturing at the start of the pandemic in lieu of in person field trips. We got an opportunity to brainstorm ideas for our own curriculum.
  • Learner-centric virtual exchanges: No travel, no problem: This session related to a virtual global challenge that an institution took at the beginning of the pandemic in lieu of study abroad programs. As soon someone who has coordinated a study abroad program in the past and who is considering one next Spring I want to think of alternatives in case the pandemic requires me to make a change in plans. This session helped me think about different approaches that I can take virtually.
  • Influencers abroad: Enhancing cross-cultural awareness through social media activities: This session explored leveraging strategically designed social media learning activities to enhance cross-cultural awareness. I thought it was a creative to consider alternative assignments during study abroad experiences. Some of this assignments included: Vlogs, Instagram stories (academic versus personal accounts) every day, Instagram food related posts, and end of a program presentation/reflection.
Social justice and career education infographic

#AERA21: Session Info, iPoster, and Published Paper

It is that time of the year! The American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference is here. However, this year it is a virtual conference. I will miss getting to learn from, connect with, and meet 15,000 other educational researchers from around the world. I don’t want to make this post about the AERA21 virtual setting experience. Perhaps I can write about that topic in a future post. Also, I am sure someone is already collecting tweets for a paper about it! I do want to share our session info, link to our iPoster, and link to the published paper.

Session Information

Presentation Date:
Sunday, April 11, 2021  [10:40 AM ET – 11:40 AM ET

Instructional Technology SIG Poster Session:
Instructional Technology in Higher Education and Corporate Settings

Title of our Presentation:
Critical Competencies for Practice Among Educational Technologists in Latin America and the Caribbean

Event Link: https://aera21am.simcita.net/fast/evt36972

iPoster

Use this link to explore and read our iPoster: https://bit.ly/32236Kc

iPoster Presentation Screenshot

Published Paper

If you want to learn more about this topic. We published a book chapter discussing our research project and findings. This is the citation and link to our book chapter:

Romero-Hall E., Adams L., Petersen E., Vianna A. (2020) Educational Technologists in Latin America and the Caribbean: Perceived Importance of Competencies for Practice. In: Spector M.J., Lockee B.B., Childress M.D. (eds) Learning, Design, and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17727-4_169-1

Hope everyone has a good conference and hope to “see” you next year!

Reflection: Undergraduate Researchers

I start by sharing that last week I found out that my application for an undergraduate research grant for 2020-2021 was rejected. I was a bit disappointed, I am not going to lie. I do not really care for the “recognition,” but I care about mentoring students. Specially when those students are female minority students (which has been most of the students who I have worked with over the last three years).

Over the last three years, I have worked with three different students. It really has been great. I have found weekly meeting on a specific date and time (in-person or online) is the best approach. During the meeting we usually discuss tasks the undergraduate researcher has completed and we discuss upcoming tasks. I do not like to make assumptions that the students understand every step of the research process so I like to have plenty of time for questions. I have found that students who are at the undergraduate stage and are interested in doing research are usually very good with time management, are super curious about the research process, and usually develop a better understanding of what it means to do research as a faculty member. 

Although I have worked with three different students (a different researcher every year), all of them were very quick to learn the tasks they were required to complete. We normally start with completion of the IRB CITI training and obtaining their certificates. Then, I usually give them time to read the research proposal that has been drafted for the project. We create a Google drive were all our mutual files for the project will be hosted. We set, as previously mentioned, a specific date and time to meet. I also like to provide samples of prior work completed, so that the undergraduate researcher can have an idea of what a report, section of a manuscript, conference proposal, or other documents looks like. I try to not overwhelm the undergraduate research with the many tasks that we will complete over the year, instead we focus on weekly tasks (a literature review, an annotated bibliography, review of a survey, creating tables, writing an introduction, putting together a poster, practicing a presentation, etc.).

Over the last year, I had the pleasure of working with Caldera Ripine (Elementary Education major). Just before the pandemic, in February, we attended the 2019 Eastern Educational Research (EERA) Conference in Orlando, FL. It was a wonderful experience. In a room with over 30 poster sessions, Caldera was the only undergraduate student presenting and she did amazing! 

I should also add that all of the prior undergraduate researchers who I have worked with in the past, Megan, Renata, and Caldeira, have been instrumental during the writing process. Here are some publications featuring undergraduate researchers:

Romero-Hall, E.J., Petersen, E., Sindicic, R., & Li, L. (forthcoming). Most Versus Least Used Social Media: Undergraduate Students’ Preferences, Participation, Lurking, and Motivational Factors. International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments.

Romero-Hall, E.J., Adams, L., & Osgood, M. (2019). Examining the Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Usability of a Web-based Experiential Role-playing Aging Simulation using Formative Assessment. Journal of Formative Design in Learning, 3(2), 123–132.

I do not know what will happen during the 2020-2021 academic year. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is difficult to know what the academic year will look like. However, I am open to the possibility of working with an undergraduate researcher, if the opportunity presents itself. 

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Podcast Episode (@VisionOfEd): #SocialMedia in #HigherEducation

This past week, I was invited as a guest speaker in the Visions of Education podcast series. I am sharing it here for anyone who is in the education field and wants to subscribe to the podcast. Also, I want to share the link to the podcast episode. I discussed SocialMedia in HigherEducation:

You can click on this link to access a full list of resources (articles, books, and videos) mentioned in podcast episode: https://visionsofed.com/2019/03/10/episode-108-social-media-in-higher-education-with-enilda-romero-hall/

This is a one of five podcast episodes that focus on #SocialMediaEd discussions leading up to the SITE conference next week in Las Vegas, NV.

The EduTech research group at #FURC2019 (@UTinquiry)

This past weekend The University of North Florida hosted the Florida Undergraduate Research Conference (FURC). Many undergraduate students from The University of Tampa presented topics in which they engage on research. One of these students was Renata Sindicic, who has been working with me and collaborating in research since last August 2018. I feel extremely proud of Renata, #FURC2019 was her very first time presenting in a conference! She worked hard on the design of the poster and practice her presentation prior to the event. I am thankful to have her as part of the research team!

Renata presented preliminary results of our research related to the use of social media by undergraduate students.

img_7254.jpg

Renata_Sindicic

Moment of Honesty

Moment of Honesty A:
I was really dreading attending AECT 2018.

Moment of Honesty B:
I feel that I am changing as a scholar, as person, and a member of society

I attended my first AECT conference in 2009 and felt welcomed. I knew immediately that I would come back every year. I became involved in the leadership as part of the Research & Theory Division (RTD). I started serving in the RTD board in 2010 and I am stepping down from my leadership role this year. As an active member of AECT it has been a very rewarding experience.

This year, however, I felt a bit different and I think it is related to the “Moment of Honesty B.” I wish I could articulate all of this in a better way but that seems to be work in progress.

I do want to say that although I was dreading attending AECT 2018, I am glad I attended this year. First, I had a pretty awesome roommate (Dr. Valerie Irvine)! Also, I got to hangout with the usual suspects that shall remain nameless and with whom I can be brutally honest. Third, I got to see colleagues from around the globe and talked about the projects they are working on (great intellectual discourse!). Last, I joined several panels and contributed to conversations related to the IDT field, higher education practices, and our role as scholars.

I am very much looking forward to AECT 2019! We are so lucky to have Dr. Michael Grant as our president-elect (and as the person who will be leading the planning of AECT 2019). Based on my past experiences working with Michael, I know it is going to be amazing!

Screenshot 2018-10-30 11.41.33

 

 

#HKAECT18: New Media for Educational Change

I feel like I have neglected my blog a bit this summer but I have to be honest it has been a busy summer (just like every summer — this is starting be a trend in my life). Anywho, this post in going to be nice, sweet, and short post because its going live today (enough of neglecting my blog).

I attended the Hong Kong AECT conference a few weeks ago. It was amazing! I mean this very honestly. I like learning from others and connecting with different people. I know for a fact that I will experience this (learning from others and connecting with colleagues) at the conferences that I attend regularly, AERA and AECT (this is why I go back to those conferences every year). But I also like to put myself in uncomfortable situations that force me to talk and meet people who I have never connected with in the past. So I made a promise to myself that I would aim to attend a conference that I have never attended before because: a) I want to know what others, who are outside my network, are researching and b) because I think it will expose me to topics that are new to me.

With this in mind, last year I attended the Social Media and Society conference in Toronto which by the way was an absolutely fantastic experience (if I had the budget, the time, and the energy, I would have gone to Copenhagen this year — where the conference was held — and then to Hong Kong to attend HKAECT). This year, I decided to attend HKAECT18 conference. I saw that a friend and colleague attended last year (Dr. Ana Paula Correia) so I reached out to her to ask about her experience. I also saw that the theme of the conference which aligned well with my research interested so I submitted a conference proposal. It was accepted and a few months later I was on a plane to Hong Kong.

I wish I could put into this blog everything that I experienced and the topics we discussed but since I have other things I should be writing, I am instead going to share the link to conference program: http://www.hkaect.org/hkaect2018/programme.html (some

A few things I do want to mention:

  • All sessions were well attended and we had some really good discussions about the topics presented
  • Presenters were prepared, addressed questions, and engaged with the audience
  • There were several social aspects to the conference that allowed us to continue conversations outside the presentation rooms in a more informal manner (coffee breaks, lunch, and dinner)

I saw that the call for proposals for HKAECT19 was posted today: https://www.aect.org/docs/HKAECT2019-Call_for_Papers.pdf. If you are considering attending and have questions, please feel free to reach out.

 

 

 

#AECTRTD is seeking nominations

Association of Educational Communications and Technology (AECT)
ELECTIONS 2018

We are looking for candidates to serve in the AECT Research & Theory Division Board (2018 – 2019), in the positions listed below:

President-Elect [Three-Year Term]
Shall be responsible for chairing the division convention planning activities (first year). Shall conduct all business, meetings, and other tasks relating to division activity within AECT (second year). Shall be responsible for elections of officers and R&T division awards (third year).

Professional Development Coordinator Elect [Three-Year Term]
Commits to serving a 3-year term through the cycle of Coordinator-Elect, Coordinator and Past Coordinator. The Professional Development Coordinator Elect assists the Coordinator with professional development event planning and Early Career Symposium funding application.

Featured Research Coordinator [One-Year Term]
Responsible for reviewing, selecting and arranging featured research sessions for the AECT convention.

Secretary [One-Year Term]
Shall document meetings, prepare minutes and complete other tasks as assigned by the division president. The Secretary is elected from the division membership annually to a one-year term.

Member-at-Large [One-Year Term]
The Member-at-large may serve any number of consecutive terms, but must run for the office each year. Serves as the voice of RTD membership. Provides assistance, as needed, with professional development.

RTD Graduate Student Representative [One-Year Term]
Must be a current graduate student.  The Graduate Student Representative acts as the liaison to the Graduate Student Assembly and provides a voice for graduate students to R&T leadership.

Communications Officer [One-Year Term]
Shall act as R&T Webmaster and run the division’s social media channels. The Communications Officer is elected from the division membership annually to a one-year term.

Self-nominations are welcomed. If interested, please send:
– Nominee’s full name and title
– Institutional affiliation
– Email address
– Short bio (300 words)
– Photo of nominee

The RTD Immediate Past President, Enilda Romero-Hall, will coordinate the nomination process. To submit a nomination, of yourself or a colleague, email the requested information to eromerohall@ut.edu by December 1, 2017.