NWACC
Instructional Technology Roundtable 2024:
Humanizing Education
November 6-8, 2024
Courtyard City Center
550 SW Oak St
Portland, OR 97204
Wednesday, November 6
4:30 Check-in begins & Welcome Reception – Meet and Greet at the hotel – Conference Level
5:30 Welcome & Dinner – Park Ballroom – Hae
6:00 Keynote: What Humanizing Means Now – Michelle Pacansky-Brock https://brocansky.com/
As we move forward from COVID, we continue to see increases in loneliness and burnout. With more students opting for online classes and AI capsizing our traditional approaches, emotions are piqued among faculty, staff, and students. How do we best support teaching and learning through this era of disruption and uncertainty? This presentation will provide an overview of the evolution of humanizing, an instruction model scaling in California, and couch it within our current challenges to help us collectively identify what humanizing means to higher education now.
Thursday, November 7
8:00 Breakfast
8:30 Welcome & Getting on the Same Page – Park Ballroom
8:45 Speed Networking – Park Ballroom
Get acquainted with your friends and colleagues at other institutions by discussing common issues around humanizing, technological changes, and building connections.
10:00 Break
10:30 Breakout Sessions:
Breakout A:
AI in Education: Crafting Human-Centered Learning Experiences – Park Ballroom
Imagine a classroom where technology doesn’t replace the human touch but enhances it. Where AI empowers educators to connect more deeply with their students, fostering an environment that is not only inclusive and engaging but also profoundly personal. In this session, we will discuss ways AI can revolutionize education by making learning experiences more human-centered as well as current challenges and concerns around using AI in the classroom.
Breakout B:
Developing Resilience and Finding Joy in Our Work – Laurelhurst
How have you found ways to stay afloat during the past several years amidst changes in higher education and the field of instructional technology? Have you been able to leverage your creativity to practice “no money fun” to further your reach across campus? How have you developed ways to stay relevant, joyful, and moving forward? Join us in this session as we ask participants to share their answers to these questions.
11:30 – 1:00 Lunch & Birds of a Feather
1:00 Breakout Sessions:
Breakout A:
Humanizing Our Profession – Park Ballroom
We understand why the work we do is important for teaching and learning, but who else does? Especially for those of us who work within the IT organization at our institutions, it can be tricky to situate ourselves as pedagogical partners rather than technical support staff. Even after establishing productive collaborations, we often need to re-prove the value of our work to the next provost, CTL director, or department chair. Join us to share your successes and challenges in humanizing yourself and your team as instructional technologists or instructional designers.
Breakout B:
Humanizing within the LMS – Laurelhurst
The LMS environment can be perceived as cold and sterile by students. What steps are your institutions and your instructors taking to make the learning environment more human? From responding in a more timely manner, creating informative announcements, purchasing accessibility tools to make content universal, to add-ons that encourage dialog and video, what tools are your teachers asking for? What are you implementing? Will the coming onslaught of AI tools help or hurt these efforts?
2:00 Break
2:15 Three-Minute Presentations – Park Ballroom
This is your chance to share tidbits from your work with the whole group! Sign up to present an innovative practice on your campus, a recent accomplishment, lessons learned from great challenges, or anything else you think the group should know about. The three-minute time limit will be strictly enforced.
3:15 Three-More Minutes – Park Ballroom
Three minutes goes really really fast – this additional session provides opportunities to ask questions of any of the three-minute presenters.
3:45 Connection time
5:00 Optional Dinner with Colleagues
Friday, November 8
8:00 Breakfast
8:30 Plenary: Cool Tools Show & Tell – Park Ballroom
Share in small and large groups and learn from colleagues the tools that make edtech and your work easier, shinier, and pedagogically effective!
9:30 Break
9:45 Plenary: The Future of Instructional Technology: CIO Perspectives
Artificial intelligence, IT outsourcing, remote learning, institutional budget pressures, and other factors may have a profound impact on instructional technology during the next few years. This panel discussion of NWACC CIOs will focus on the ways that chief information officers expect the nature of instructional technology at colleges and universities to change in response to these influences.
10:45 Break
11:00 Plenary Session: Looking Ahead and Circling Back
Return of the NWACCo Award
Roundtable Survey
11:30 Adjourn