12 Jan 2011 Conference Call

Teaching and Learning Group

12 Jan 2011 Conference Call

TitanPad: http://titanpad.com/t-l

Agenda

1.  2011 Conference Planning - with the main conference 6 months out and planning happening for regional and international conferences it might be useful for us to talk as a larger T&L group about topics we would like to see focused on, presentation sessions we want to propose and any events that we might want to organize.
    
2. Format for Quarterly Updates - we've done two of these so far and although they've gone well and been useful, we've not necessarily attracted folks from outside our group (which was one of the intents).  I'd be interested in talking about what we might do differently with these sessions moving forward.
    
3. Recruiting Participants - This is really related to the first two items but I'd be interested in discussing ways in which we might recruit more participants as it seems like there are a lot of T&L folks out there who we've not engaged with yet.

Meeting Notes

TWISIA:  
don't know for sure the location for the main annual conference; should it be at the international (main) conference and the regional conference; discussed putting the location on the OpenEd Practices update.
- Hard to market free travel if we don't know where...
- Will there be a Euro and a North American equal conference?
-- NA is the main conference, Europe is regional
- Cost to travel to the main conference has a significant impact on the attendance; hoping to grow the presence of the regional conferences
- An important year to hold he conference in the US given the rapid change in LMS here in the states
- Travel bans in US schools
- Preliminary judging, need volunteers
- Next meeting, tomorrow at noon EST
- Deadline to submit 2-7
Josh: on the question of where to hold the awards ceremony,  what is the thinking
Rob:  During lastmeeting, still unsure of the mature of the international conference; now that this issue has been settled, the committee has a better sense.  Winners would receive in international (North American) conference and possibly their regional conference
Salwa:  Should there be a winner in each category?
Kim:  likley to be a lag before the definitive location for the conference; suggest that committee announce that the awards will be given in the North American conference.  The longer we delay, the greater the impact on who submits applications.
Josh:  the term international conference is being used to describe the conference in North America, and this is confusing people a bit;  
- Faculty presentations have become a must to the international conference
- the more the committee can progress, and the more the foundation can support this the better; ambiguity can have a negative impact on the awards program
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Format for Quarterly Updates
- Purpose was to engage a broader part of the community
- Bring in new blood
- So far, the attendees have been mostly  the usual suspects in the T&L groups
-  Ideas to increase attendance:

• accompany with an article on the Sakai project site or a recording
• be more purposeful in spreading the news
• change our strategy for promoting the event
• maybe do a showcase type presentation as opposed to status updates; more of a webinar; distance learning group has been doing this and others have found these sessions to be useful
  - Two populations: 1) larger community (designers and developers)  and 2) new teaching and learning people
  - We need to increase our base of participants, to be able to share the load
  - What kind of topics would be approriate for new Sakai institutions (and those in the process of evaluating Sakai)
  - Past winner of TWSIA
  - Rob:  American Publc University has prepared a presentation for the distance learning group on their migration process.
  - Emphasizing that the T&L group can help new Sakai institutions acclimate to the application, sharing lessons learned and best practices
  -  Would some of the Sakai Commecial Affiliates be interested in supporting and promoting this effort; they can help get the word out.
  - Matt: the biggest challend with gotoMeeting is the push approach; no backchannel;  important to allow people to interact and answer questions without the presenters handling
  - Matt volunteered to do a formal presentation based on Delaware's recently published case study: http://www.udel.edu/udlms/ 
  - Need to decide about whether we want to focus in evaluating LMS's or migration and transition ( think about faculty and faculty support focus)
  - Maybe a short presentation with a lot of time for Q & A
  - right want to recruit of APUS, since they are in the midst of the transition to Sakai; would be great to the them involved in the T&L group
  Action item:
• identify the topic or topics to focus on
• identify lead presenters
• might be helpful to have people self-register (more likely to show up); could use a simple web form for registration.
• check on user limits in IU Connect instancehttp://www.udel.edu/udlms/