Introduction
The 2018 UPCEA Summit for Online Leadership and Administration + roundtable was held between June 18th and 20th in Washington, DC. Two representatives from the School of Professional Studies attended and gave a presentation on collaboration across departments,”Program CPR: Staying Alive in a Changing Global Market” Read on to learn more about their experiences and lessons learned.
Conference overview
Suzanne Rovani, Program Coordinator for the Professional Development Programs as SPS and Reba-Anna Lee, Assistant Dean of Distance Learning attended the conference.
The conference began with an opening keynote by Bharat N. Anand who is the Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and the Senior Associate Dean and faculty chair of HBX, the school’s digital learning initiative that he helped create.His keynote was about Scaling Online & Building the Online Enterprise. Dr. Anand discussed thinking beyond content and how this approach enabled him and his team to create HBX, the school’s digital learning initiative that focuses on the delivery of course content by thinking innovatively. Dr. Anand shared his insights on what we as educators can do to create new learning experiences for online adult students.
The following day began with a keynote by Nancy Harhut who focused on how we think and process information and how this can play a key role in learning. She touched on how thinking about how our online student think and process can assist in creating new learning opportunities and experience for online students.
This keynote lead the second day of the conference in its focus on new approaches to online learning that had various tracks. The creating and offering courses at scale presented by Georgia Tech which , over the course of conference, shared all aspects of creating and implementing affordable online courses at scale for adult students. Another track was Online Non-Credit/Alternative Credentials, and Instructional design. The highlight of the evening was the Popsicles and Puppies themed reception which included interactions with puppies in training with Guiding Eyes for the Blind.
On Wednesday June 20th was when Suzanne and I presented on ”Program CPR: Staying Alive in a Changing Global Market”. Our presentation was well attended and received by a variety of administrators and faculty. The last day of the conference concluded with a well themed closing keynote by Adam Alter who shared ideas about making online learning engaging by including subtle gamified elements.