Category: Educational Technology

XR Symposium at ORETTC (Y-12)

Today I had the opportunity to participate in a panel presentation at the 2nd Annual XR Symposium organized by the Oak Ridge Enhanced Technology and Training Center (ORETTC). The specific panel that I was invited to join was focus on Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion specifically on Inclusive Technologies related to XR research & development.

The panel addressed the following questions:

  1. What are some new advancements you have seen in regards to diversity and inclusion in XR?
  2. What are some obstacles within XR technologies? What are the long-term consequences if we ignore D&I?
  3. What would you say is the most difficult part of implementing D&I especially in a world that persistently changes?
  4. In order to encourage accessible and inclusive practices within our workplace and everyday lives; how can we authentically address these topics?
  5. Can you share some valuable resources that we should all be aware of?

It was a great conversation! I am specially gratefully for my fellow panelist and the insights shared:

Huge thanks to Mary Lin, Ed.D. (Senior Manager, Knowledge Acquisition and Performance Studies ) and Austin Arnwine (Instructional Technology Lead, Knowledge Acquisition and Performance Studies) for the invite to participate in the panel.

Crowd at the symposium and the panelist in front of the big screen

AERA SIG Instructional Technology Newsletter

“Hi everyone,

First and foremost, it has been a pleasure serving as the AERA SIG Instructional Technology Program Chair. Huge thanks to everyone who submitted proposals to our SIG. It was very exciting to see the range of topics covered in the proposals submitted. I was also deeply impressed with the quality of the proposal submitted, which made for a difficult peer review process for our reviewers. Speaking of reviewers! I am profoundly grateful for our 94 reviewers who took on the very meaningful tasks of providing feedback and recommending proposals for our SIG Instructional Technology program. Huge thanks to all that have volunteered as Session Chairs, you are a critical component for a smooth conference session! Gratitude!

I can humbly say that we have an amazing AERA 2024 program for the SIG! Each session was carefully designed to ideally create a cohesive line up of presentations. I look forward to meeting you in Philadelphia and to your presentations! I am excited for all of us to engage in academic discourse, professional development, and informal social conversations. See you soon! Go Vols!

Enilda Romero-Hall, Ph.D., Associate Professor, University of Tennessee Knoxville

These quote is a section of the AERA Special Interest Group Instructional Technology Spring 2024 Newsletter recently shared with our members. Below is a copy of the complete AERA Special Interest Group Instructional Technology Spring 2024 Newsletter compiled, formatted, & organized by the 2023-2024 board members of the SIG Instructional Technology:

24-spring-aera-sig-it-newsletterDownload

The FPTO Editors First In-Person Meeting!

Last year, I received an invitation from my colleague, Clare Daniel, to present in a panel to discuss the Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online digital guide and other scholarly efforts related to the digital guide in person at Tulane University. The invitation to travel to New Orleans was extended to Niya Bond and myself (Clare, Jacque, and Liv live in New Orleans). The goal was for all the five editors of the digital guide to join in the panel.

Fast forward to February 2024, Niya and I travelled to New Orleans for the in-person panel. Meeting my colleagues in-person for the very first time was a joyous occasion. I have been personally interacting and collaborating with the FTPO editors for the last 3 years and we had only met through Zoom. It was so nice to fully interact outside the Zoom software and engage in informal convos that allowed us to learn more about each other personally and professionally.

“We want to acknowledge that this panel discussion is part of a lecture series dedicated to Adele Ramos Salzer (NC ’40). Her interest in academic programs focusing on women’s experiences led to the establishment of the Salzer lecture series. Her donation endowing the series has been generously strengthened through gifts in her memory from her family, friends, and classmates.”

Clare Daniel

During our visit to Tulane, we all got to have an short meeting to discuss panel, have dinner to talk about every under the sun (also, celebrate Clare’s new promotion at Tulane University), and have the panel at the Tulane University’s Newcomb Institute for students, faculty, and staff.

The editors of the FPTO digital guide
The editors of the FPTO digital guide
The editors of the FPTO after the panel presentation
The editors of the FPTO after the panel presentation

During the panel we:

  • Provided a brief explanation of the origins of the digital guide and the idea for the forthcoming book
  • Shared why and how we expanded our team of editors
  • Shared a brief description of the forthcoming book
  • Discussed how and why we expanded the guide to include annotated assignments
  • Shared an explanation of the blog and the collaborative editing process
  • Allowed for Q & A

It was really nice to have such a strong presence of students during the panel session. The students were very curious about of opinions on online learning, now past the COVID-19 pandemic. We also had some good questions and conversations with faculty who attended the event. I am very thankful for the invite to participate in this panel. I am also grateful for the opportunity to meet my colleagues in-person for the first-time. Online environments, synchronous and asynchronous, have allowed is the opportunity to genuinely connect and communicate. However, it is always nice to further engage in-person to deeper our understanding of each other (personally & professionally), converse about the future of the digital guide, and discuss upcoming projects.

Learning Designers in Context: Examining Practices Across the Global South [Book in Progress]

I guess it is time for me to write a blogs post about my forthcoming book 😊

It has been a while since I first announced that I was working on my next book and sadly due to various reasons I had to rescheduled my submission of the book to the publisher twice! But over the last two months I have moved full steam ahead with this book project.

I love how it is taking shape and that I get to work on it. Today, I was working on chapter 12 (in a coffee shop) and I was just smiling thinking that someone else would get to read this work.

This is not a book in which I tell someone else’s stories or tell you how to be a learning designer. The book is about learning designers telling their stories. It is about conversations, experiences, and journeys.

More on this coming soonish 😊

Culturally-Competent Design Mini Course

Super excited to connect with a second cohort of school librarians this summer as part of the Online Ready project led by my colleague Dr. Lucy Green and funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

As part of the project, I am teaching an online asynchronous mini-course on Culturally-Competent Design. Here is an overview of the mini-course: tiny.utk.edu/MiniCourse_CCD

Also, here is a short video I made for one of the modules:

10 Years!

You know when you go to an interview and the hiring committee ask you to predict the future! The typical question: Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years? Honestly, can we even answer this question? Don’t get me wrong I have asked this question and I have answered this question. We’re my predictions accurate? I don’t remember 😊

Today I was trying to make my way through my to-do list when I got a notification on my phone. It was one of those were you see a photo “on this days” years ago. I looked at it and it show me that:

10 years ago today I was hooded by my doctoral advisor, Dr. Ginger Watson and I celebrated my earning my doctoral degree (I actually had a bunch of revisions and didn’t really graduate until the end of summer but who cares I still partied like a rockstar!). I remember my mom and my brother came to celebrate with me and that was pretty awesome.

Doctoral advisor and a scholar who recently received her Ph.D. In their academic regalia.
Drs. Ginger Watson and Enilda Romero-Hall

5 years ago I was in Zurich, Switzerland leading a study abroad program with primarily undergraduate students and an alumni of the Instructional Design and Technology program from The University of Tampa. My co-coordinator Merrie was honestly the best! I don’t know how I would have finished this trip without Merrie! 💖

Switzerland study abroad program

Reflection on this post:

So I am now, 10 year later from getting hooded, wrapping up my first year as a faculty member at The University of Tennessee Knoxville. I am working on a research plan with my first doctoral student. I am conducting research with two additional graduate students. I am the graduate coordinator of the learning, design, and technology doctoral program and we are in the process of welcoming a nice group of doctoral students this fall (very exciting!). I am also working on other research and writing projects.

If you had asked me 10 years ago or even 5 years ago, where I was planning to be in ____ number of years, I do not know if I would have even been to come up with my current life. As we say in Panama: la vida es loca y a cualquiera le toca!

ChatGPT SWOT Assignment

As part of my course this semester, I asked my students to conduct a SWOT analysis of Chat GPT. Here is the assignment:

  1. Visit the website: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/Links to an external site.
  2. Explore the website and use  AI interface (ask the AI to write an essay on the topic of your choice)
  3. Ask yourself the following questions (Source: Dr. Torrey Trust “Teacher and Student Guide to Analyzing AI Writing Tools”) and write your answers down to as many in a Google Document (we will discuss your responses to these questions in the following synchronous class):
    • Why was this tool created?
    • What are the objectives, aims, and values of the tool designer?
    • What does the tool designer gain from your use of this tool?
    • Who is the target audience for this tool? How do you know this?
    •  Who is harmed and who benefits from this tool?
  4. As you are using chatGPT think about the Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) of this tool in teaching and learning
  5. Create a figure (using Canva) that helps illustrate your SWOT analysis 

I was pretty excited to see the outcome of the exercise but also to hear the stories during our discussion. Here are some examples of the SWOT analysis created by the students, shared in this post with their permission.

SWOT analysis of the ChatGPT application.
Designed by Keiko Eda
Designed by Hunter Preston Carlheim

DICE Conference Workshop on Digital Literacy

This past week I joined the DICE Conference to host a workshop on Digital Literacy. The aim was not to enhance the digital literacy of the participants but to discuss how we can organize, collect data, and execute a digital literacy plan. The workshop was hosted at 3 am local Knoxville time. I really did not know how responsive I was going to be, but it is amazing how you feed from the energy of others. The participants of the workshop were energetic, open, and engaged, they made the three-hour session go by so fast. Grateful to the organizers of the DICE conference for the invitation to join the conference and organize this workshop. Here are some of the resources I used during the workshop:

Semana de la Innovación: Educación del Futuro (CIED)

During the week of November 22 to November 25, 2022 the Centro de Innovation y Excelencia Docente (CIED) of the Universidad Autonoma de Chile hosted the Semana de la Innovation: Education del Futuro.

I was honored to join the event as an invited speaker for the day of “Mujeres Innovadoras”. It was a wonderful experience to shared an hour with colleagues in Chile and other Spanish-speaking scholars. The hosts of the event Claudia Osorio Alfaro, Maria Jose Suazo Ocares, and Ignacio Andres Vilos Fredes were amazing and very welcoming. The title of my presentation was “Pedagogia Intersectional Digital: Inclusion y Equidad en la Enseñanza en Linea”. Here are the link to my slides: tiny.utk.edu/CIEDChile

To learn more about the event here are two press releases by the Universidad Autonoma de Chile:

“los docentes debemos de ser juiciosos en el uso de la tecnología en la aprendiza, es importante saber cuándo y cómo el uso de la tecnología es beneficioso para la estrategia educativa y cuando es una barrera para el aprendizaje“

Enilda Romero-Hall

Tenured. Again.

A few weeks ago, I found out that the Tenured Upon Appointment process at The University of Tennessee Knoxville (UTK) was completed. I am grateful to the UTK community for honoring my work and contributions as an Associate Professor with tenure. I look forward to continuing my work as researcher, instructor, and member of my professional community. Also, thankful to the many collaborators so much of the work that I do is a join effort with colleagues and students.