Faculty and Instructors Can Enhance Their Ability to Connect With Students

The Global Campus will host two webinars this fall that will focus on ways to connect with students in such a manner that they feel engaged with their instructors and course material. The webinars will focus on setting up avenues to receive student feedback and humanizing course content and material.

Organizations known nationally for their insights in distance learning in higher education – the Sloan Consortium and Blackboard Inc. – will provide the webinar content. After the presentations, University of Arkansas participants will be invited to discuss the information received, how it might be applied and other suggestions and information they want to share with colleagues.

Although the webinars may focus more on online and distance education modes of instruction, the topics and tools presented have applications for the face-to-face environment. All faculty and instructors are invited to attend.

The webinars include:

• “Human Element: Tools for Humanizing Your Online Course,” a webinar presented by the Sloan Consortium, 1 to 2 p.m. (webinar) and 2 to 3 p.m. (discussion) Tuesday, Oct. 29, in the Arkansas Union, Room 503. Seating is limited to 40 people; RSVP to Suson Wheeler at sswheele@uark.edu by Oct. 25.
  As online learning initiatives continue to expand so does the need to leverage new learning technology to ensure students feel connected and engaged with the instructor and the course material. Reshan Richards will demonstrate and discuss a tool that can be used to add the human element to both the student and faculty online experience, “Explain Everything,” as well as his research on emerging educational technology. This is called “humanizing,” which, according to DuCharme-Hansen, Dupin-Bryant, 2005 “reduces the psychological distance between the students and the instructor.”
• “Strategies for Providing Effective Feedback to Students,” a Blackboard Web conference, noon to 1 p.m. (Web conference) and 1 to 2 p.m. (discussion) Monday, Nov. 18, in the Arkansas Union, rooms 512-514, lunch will be provided. Seating is limited to 50 people; RSVP to Suson Wheeler at sswheele@uark.edu by Nov. 4.
  Meaningful feedback is a critical element in the learning cycle that needs to be done frequently and consistently to ensure learning outcomes are achieved by all students. Attend this seminar to learn new techniques to provide feedback to students, missed opportunities to provide feedback, strategies to provide feedback that will be implemented by students, and what type of feedback students desire.
  

The Sloan Consortium is the leading professional online learning society devoted to advancing quality e-Education learning into the mainstream of education through its community. Sloan-C is dedicated to providing access to high quality e-Education to individuals, institutions, professional societies and the corporate community. Originally funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Sloan-C is now a non-profit 501(c)(3), member-sustained organization.

Blackboard Inc. is an education technology company dedicated to improving every aspect of the education experience for millions of learners and educators around the world. The company works with thousands of higher education, K- 12, professional, corporate and government organizations.

The Global Campus supports the academic colleges and schools in the development and delivery of online and distance education offerings.