Kassia and Lindsey were in Portland last week for the NorthWest Academic Computing Consortium‘s annual Instructional Technology Roundtable. The downtown Portland setting was an energizing one–it gave Lindsey, InTRO’s NYC refugee, a little taste of home!

The roundtable is a small regional conference geared towards instructional technology practitioners. While overall numbers are small–roughly fifty people attend each year–there are nearly thirty institutions represented from seven states, making for not only rich conversation, but ample opportunity for comparison between different institutional missions and cultures. The conference featured one keynote session, three plenary sessions, and six collaborative breakout sessions, but also included ample time to take advantage of the institutional diversity present, making it an excellent opportunity to network with other instructional technology providers from across the Pacific Northwest.

An extensive Twitter backchannel and crowdsourced notes for all sessions are just a few of the rich resources produced by and for this event. I know InTRO will be referring to these items throughout the year! But in addition to this collectively produced material, there were some specific sessions and case studies that were very good to hear about:

• We’re intrigued by EWU’s new module for Canvas, which provides detailed analytics about discussion boards and forums–allowing the faculty member to assess the overall shape of class conversation, especially in instances of asynchronous or fully online course delivery. Such fine-tuned detail, point biserial correlation, and an institutional focus on student retention are all methods through which we might increase faculty investment in learning analytics.

• We learned a lot from an extended discussion of Quality Matters–many institutions are using this tool, and we have piloted it at UO, but satisfaction with the QM rubric varies widely. Some institutions are adapting QM ideas into rubrics more in keeping with their own institutional needs and values, while others are choosing to invest more deeply into the QM community.
• We have a lot in common with the other area institutions that are thinking about collaborative course development, especially as we continue to help brainstorm the strategic growth of UO’s online course offerings. The idea of hiring educational technology staff with education degrees as a means of establishing faculty trust has significant merit. Our own little office is staffed by academics; choosing to hire people of a scholarly bent to do faculty outreach at a research university was a similar strategic choice.

• Finally, we’re very excited to participate in the next iteration of the EdTech Teaching Deck Project, a deck of cards for use with faculty which concisely present generic pedagogical strategies or technological tools and explain how they might be used in the classroom.

We have more thoughts to share; if you’d like to see our full conference summary, please e-mail Lindsey. Thank you to UO CIO, Melissa Woo, for facilitating our participation in this conference–and thanks to all at NWACC for being so welcoming to newbies like ourselves! By Friday we felt like we were part of the tribe. 🙂