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:
What are some new advancements you have seen in regards to diversity and inclusion in XR?
What are some obstacles within XR technologies? What are the long-term consequences if we ignore D&I?
What would you say is the most difficult part of implementing D&I especially in a world that persistently changes?
In order to encourage accessible and inclusive practices within our workplace and everyday lives; how can we authentically address these topics?
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.
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:
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 guideThe 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.
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:
So I am a little bit in my feelings. Tonight as I wrapped up AERA 2023 and was posting about it on LinkedIn. I realize that this year marks my 10th anniversary of attending this annual meeting of educational researchers.
I do not know why I feel it is special, the 10th anniversary. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that 10 years ago, I just embarked in this adventure (on my own – without my advisor – self-funded) without any clear idea of what I was doing but I just did it.
I remember a few months before AERA 2013 my advisor was talking to me about conferences and she told me: “AERA is where Sweller goes to present about Cognitive Load Theory. It is a hard to get accepted. But if you are doing education research, that is where you want to go.” I do not know why but my immediate thought was: “well that is exactly were I am going to go.” I went home and I told my partner: “I want to go to AERA, I need to invest on my professional development.” Without hesitation, he just said: Sounds like a plan!
BTW, in my post from 2013 I wrote this “The AERA program was massive! Thankfully, I had browsed through the online program and downloaded my schedule to the mobile app before my arrival to San Francisco.” Dear AERA can we go back to whatever app we used in 2013? The App this year was awful!
Here are other blogs posts I have written about AERA throughout the years:
On December 2015, I gave birth to my son. I was not initially planning to attend AERA 2016 but a dear friend and colleague asked me to moderate a panel and so I made my way to Washington DC (It was the first time I travel after having my son): The “Quick Update” Post
I guess I did not blog for AERA 2017 (San Antonio), AERA 2018 (New York), and AERA 2019 (Toronto). But I was there lol
AERA 2020 was cancelled. I was really looking forward to San Francisco but glad that the conference was cancelled.
During AERA 2015, I participated in the Division C – Early Career Mentoring Program. I met some pretty awesome scholars as part of the program. Here is a blog post about it: New Faculty Mentoring Program: 2015 Cohort [Research, Teaching, Collaboration, & Support] #AERA15 #AERADivC. This year during AERA 2023, I had the opportunity to connect with colleague Bodong Chen, who in addition to his amazing scholarly work, is genuinely a wonderful person. The first thing he said to me when saw each other was: “Remember we met here in Chicago 8 years ago in the mentoring program!”
This has been a journey. Somehow in the massive sea of people that is AERA, I have created my own community and network.
Some highlights of AERA 2023:
The first three nights in Chicago for the conference, I had dinners in which we (me and other who were with me) just spoke Spanish and that was pretty freaking awesome!
Meeting colleagues from Universidad de Sevilla (Thanks to Jeff Carpenter): Paula Marcelo-Martinez, Carlos Marcelo, and Paulino Murillo. In one dinner outing we enjoyed some Chicago style pizza together, It was pretty awesome to do the Chicago style pizza with colleagues from Spain. Paula and Carlos are doing some research on Edu Influencers in Spain: Here are slides from their presentation titled “Don’t call me an influencer: New digital artisans in education.”
Definitely getting to catch up with Bodong in person for the first time in a long time.
Presenting two awards at the SIG Instructional Technology business meeting and starting in my role as program chair (please submit to SIG IT and sign up to review!)
Presenting work that colleague Maria Luna-Thomas and I already published on Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in Digital Praxis: tiny.utk.edu/CRP_AERA23
Attending the University of Canterbury breakfast on Sunday morning and experiencing a Māori start of the day, Karakia. Thank you for the invite Cheryl Brown!
Catching up with doctoral students from Old Dominion University (Go Monarchs)!
Presenting a paper session on some part of the work that I started with Dr. Lina Gomez-Vasquez and our teams of graduate and undergraduate researchers on the use of digital networks by academics in higher education.
Getting to see so many friends, colleagues, and connections.
Two resources that I want to add to this blog post because I can come back to them later:
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:
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:
This past week, I was invited to speak as part of the STEM education seminar sponsored by the Theory and Practice in Teacher Preparation (TPTE) Department STEM team. I am part of the STEM Education team in the department and this semester a group of colleagues are organizing this seminar with presentations for faculty and graduate students every two weeks. I have really enjoyed all of the presentations this semester. Our STEM Education team is doing really amazing work and I love learning about it.
For my presentation, I was a bit nervous because I was not sure how my work would relate to STEM education. I know educational technology is consider part of STEM education. However, I think of my work as more than just educational technology. I actually see Learning, Design, and Technology as the umbrella term under which educational technology, instructional design, instructional technology, learning engineering, and others similar terms come together. Perhaps one of my main concerns is that under the term STEM, learning design is primarily associated with the “technology” term which I really see as just one aspects of the far more complex ecosystems of the learning, design, and technology field.
The presentation focused on how it is okay to have many areas of research interest. We are often encouraged to stay very narrowly focused on a topic. But, what if you are curious about other topics and want to explore them? So, basically, I used myself as an example of an eclectic research agenda. My research has evolved so much and in part it due to my curiosity to explore other topics. This has also been true in my life, curiosity to try new things or study programs outside my focus has helped me evolve and grow. Here is the link to the slides, in case you are curious.
This event is for Spanish speakers, who more than likely live in Latin America but anyone is welcome. If you are interested in an instructional design program or a program focused on learning and development for a corporate environment, join us! We will be talking about this topic on September 28! The organizers of this event are the Learning for Improvement group the is organized by instructional designers in Peru. I am thankful that I was invited to be part of this Cafe Virtual. Here is the link to register for the event: https://forms.gle/5sexFAfqaBM6J6jE7
Flyer for the “Cafe Virtual” organized by the Learn for Improvement group
October
On October 19, I will be doing a presentation for my alma mater, the Graduate Student Organization of the Instructional Design and Technology program at Old Dominion University. More details coming soon.
November
On Nov. 3, I will be presenting as part of the University of Tennessee Knoxville (UTK) Theory and Practice in Teacher Preparation (TPTE) STEM seminar and discussing “inclusive and equitable learning design practices”
For my Spanish speaking connections! On Wednesday, November 23 I am honored to be joining an amazing group of speakers as part of the Semana de la Innovación (Innovation Week) of the Centro de Innovación y Excelencia Docente de la Universidad Autónoma de Chile. Tema: “Inclusión e igualdad en la enseñanza en línea”. Mas detalles pronto.
December
Last but not least, for the European crowd, the ProDiGI project at the Technische Universität Braunschweig @tuBraunschweig is hosting a free & open conference in early December. I’ll be sharing more details about my presentation later on. But, in case you want to learn more about the conference or would like to join the conference here is the link: https://bit.ly/3BKcHIs
Grateful for the opportunity to participate in this events in an online format. Also, grateful that colleagues thought about me and asked me to join them in these events.
Huge thanks to all my colleagues who shared their favorite learning/instructional design podcasts as well as other podcasts that related to education or education research. If you see this blog post and have a podcast recommedation(s) that is currently not included in this list, please post it in the comments. I will update the blog post as needed.
Design Goodiness 
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