2015 TLTS Conference Takeaways

I had the opportunity to attend several engaging and thought provoking sessions at this year's TLTS conference. Below are a few sessions that were particularly interesting and my takeaways from each. 

Empowering Student's Self-Management Behaviors Online
This session focused on a discussion about how to help students manage themselves when working in an online course. It was interesting to hear what other programs were doing and the primary idea that stuck with me was simply putting the responsibility back on the students to consider their own strategies.

Takeaways:

• Engage students online in a discussion about their strategies for success.
• Create accountability teams in the online environment to help students stick to their study plan or goals for any given week.
• Encourage students to use a goal app on their phone to keep them on task.

Talking About Taboo Topics in Online Courses 

Our courses are designed to push students to learn about new ideas and topics and sometimes include topics that are traditionally seen as taboo in mainstream society like gender, politics, sexual orientation, religion, etc. This session focused on how to have these types of discussions online in a constructive and safe way. 

Takeaways:

• Set boundaries for a safe environment.
• Allow multiple viewpoints or sides of a story to be shared for additional perspective.
• Use videos and animations in the course.
• Encourage students to take an issues centered approach.
• Provide glossary of terms that will be used in the course.