Category Archives: virginia

OpenVA 2.1 Agenda

At long last we have firmed up the agenda for OpenVA 2.1! Landing at William & Mary this coming Saturday, the event is packed with a diverse set of disciplinary and institutional perspectives. As any updates (such as presentation titles) and amendments come up, I will update them here. I will also be emailing those registered with detailed directions and possible venues for follow up discussion. At this point we are nearly fully booked, but have room for a few more attendees before we lock it down. So if you’ve been putting off registration, now’s the time! If we fill up before you can register, or if you just couldn’t fit in the trip, we will be live streaming and recording the event for future reference. The link will be posted here on openva.org.

OpenVA 2.1 | May 2, 2015 | The College of William and Mary

10:00 – 10:30 | Coffee, sign-in, getting settled

10:30 – 10:40 | Welcome
Introduction: Diane Ryan, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies (TCC)

  • Michele Jackson, Associate Provost for University ELearning Initiatives (W&M)

10:40 – 11:30 | Session 1: Intro to OER
Moderator: Richard Sebastian, Director of Teaching and Learning Technologies (VCCS)

11:30 – 11:40 | Break

11:40 – 12:25 | Keynote and lunch
Introduction: Gene Roche, Executive Professor of Higher Education (W&M)

  • Gardner Campbell, Vice Provost for Learning Innovation and Student Success, Dean of University College, and Associate Professor of English (VCU)
    The Grand Narrative of a Way of Life in an Open Integrated Domain

12:25 – 12:30 | Break

12:30 – 1:45 | Session 2: Exemplary Practice
Moderator: Jim Groom, Director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies (UMW)

  • Jennifer Kidd, Senior Lecturer of Teaching and Learning (ODU)
    Create your own OERS: Student-Generated Text(book)s
  • Andrea Livi Smith, Chair/Associate Professor of Historic Preservation (UMW)
    System D
  • Tom Geary, Assistant Professor of English (TCC)
  • Sue Fernsebner, Associate Professor of History (UMW)
    Rebel Kingdoms, OERs, and Student Authorship

Closing: Beverly Covington, Policy Analyst for Academic Affairs and Planning (SCHEV) and Diane Ryan (TCC)

 

An Innovation Incubator Grows in Virginia?

THE OG Incubator from Ridley Scott’s Alien

What might Virginia’s higher ed institutions do in terms of experimenting with distributed, virtual learning? How can the Commonwealth encourage technology-mediated exploration, collaboration, and implementation amongst a wide range of faculty, technologists, and students from its 39 public institutions of higher ed? These are two of the questions I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. In fact, I talk about them to just about anyone who’ll listen. A couple of months ago I asked Joe DeFillipo and Beverly Covington of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), whom I’ve been working closely with on OpenVa for the last 18 months, what Virginia is doing at the statewide level in terms of fostering collaboration amongst its public universities and colleges. The question seemed worth pursuing, so we organized a discussion about that very idea a few weeks later.

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From Punk to Policy

1118lovestreams
For over a year now I’ve been part of the Digital Learning Resource working group (along with 15 other representatives from a range of public colleges and universities) run by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. I’ve already written about my excitement at witnessing this committee morph from a routinized exploration of e-textbooks to a much more relevant focus on the broader landscape of open, online learning. It’s been a wild ride, and I have been having a lot of fun all the while talking about some of the implications if public colleges and universities start sharing and collaborating on the work we are doing in this space.

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