St. Thomas staff members from STELAR recently presented at the STAR Symposium, a virtual-only conference hosted by the Minnesota Online Quality Initiative.  The conference held on February 8, drew approximately 155 participants from around the state and country, with a large representation from Minnesota state colleges and universities.  The all-day Symposium was conducted in a Zoom webinar format.

One of STLEAR’s Instructional Designers, Michael Wilder, offered a workshop called “Increasing Engagement with Multimedia-based Projects & Presentations” which had approximately 58 attendees in the afternoon session.

In his workshop, Wilder heightened awareness of instructional video and the importance it plays for students. Participants learned about non-complex strategies for using video to deliver instruction. They also explored options for creating multimedia projects and presentations that can increase interaction and engagement. Taken from his workshop description:

Video is the new “text” for 21st century learners and is replacing traditional delivery systems as a way to communicate content and demonstrate authentic learning. Today’s students consume much more video than they read in text.* Using multimedia video in your course opens up options for communicating and presenting your subject in ways two-dimensional text just can’t do.

Wilder’s presentation materials can be accessed here.

Jo Montie, Lisa Burke, and John Kinsella presented a session called “Online Orientation Learning Sites: Student Success Resources” and shared the story about STELAR’s development of two student orientation and success sites.  

The presenters illustrated numerous benefits in using Canvas, our learning management system (LMS), to attend to student onboarding needs in online, blended and face to face programs. 

They shared a student success framework from the ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2018 Report (Galanek, Gierdowski, & Brooks, 2018). The findings illuminate ways that success tools benefit students, and emphasize ways to involve faculty and staff who play pivotal roles in helping students notice and use digital success tools.  

The presenters also shared how a self-assessment tool can assist students to better identify what they already know (which helps them to better connect new learning to prior learning) and points them to content that addresses their own prioritized needs.

Many of the 59 attendees in this session, engaged in the conversation via chat which reflects a shared commitment and high interest around creating effective orientation experiences with students.  

See the Online Orientation presentation materials.

Our St. Thomas team members found significant benefit in the task of preparing to share our collective learning (we practiced with each other!); then the actual presenting and interacting with participants sparked further learning.  

In addition, that opportunity to attend other Star Symposium sessions widened our own understandings about what is possible and might be possible. For example, attending the conference modeled numerous best practices around using video conferencing tools (like Zoom) for an entire all online conference, including the importance of having room moderators in an online conference. 

This post was co-written by Michael Wilder and Jo Montie on behalf of the St. Thomas E-Learning and Research (STELAR) Center at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. Please visit our website at www.stthomas.edu/stelar or email us at stelar@stthomas.edu.