eLCC 2014 Conference

I have recently returned from the E Learning Consortium of Colorado Conference. This is an excellent local conference that celebrated its 25^th year as an organization. Perhaps its most endearing quality is that the same faces keep returning and strong local relationships are forged. These relationships help to address common issues and look for common solutions.

A good example of cooperatively working common issues pertains to the LMS. A large number of Colorado Institutions use Desire2Learn and even though implementation is very different, many of the problems are shared. At this conference I co-chaired a roundtable discussion of LMS Managers and Administrators. This was the second meeting of this group whose goal is to share knowledge and information about updates and changes to the LMS configuration. Discussions resulted in some solutions or strategies for addressing problems, awareness of issues that are still to come, and some common agreements to voice disapproval of design changes to the LMS that seem defy common sense. 

I presented for the first time at a conference on the topic of Designing New Student Orientations with retention in mind. My key points were that higher education enrollments have been and are continuing to decline over time and that retention is the job of everyone on campus. My main presentation outline included:

•  Importance of finding departments on campus that were crucially involved with retention and work with them to identify what users needed.

•  Keep the content focused and start with the end in mind.

•   How to manage users and the importance of facilitated orientations.

• Provide good directions

• Seek user feedback and implement their suggestions to improve.

• How to orient to upcoming LMS upgrades

There was another session I attended titled Strategies for Designing Effective Online Student Orientations. This was complimentary to my own presentation and I came away with several new strategies for evaluating the New Student Orientations currently used at Regis.

I highly recommend that you consider attending either next year’s ELCC or the upcoming COLTT conference on CU campus in August. These two small conferences pack a large value. Contact rhadmin@regis.edu if you would like to find out more about these conferences.