Join us Monday, November 17, 2025 for these special onsite pre-conference classes addressing the hottest topics in digital learning.
Looking to deep-dive into the hottest topics in online learning? Join us on November 17, 2025 for our pre-conference Accelerate 2025 Immersion Classes.
Immersion class registrations are at an additional fee, and are available only to attendees with an Accelerate 2025 Conference Pass registration. Immersion classes can be selected with an individual class registration, or through our cost-saving Combo Package (one AM & one PM class). Discounted rates are available for OLC members for both individual and combo package registration options. Class selections are made at the time of registration.
All Immersion classes are listed in U.S. Eastern Time Zone and are presented onsite at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort in Orlando, FL.
Date: Monday, November 17, 2025]
Time: 9:00am – 12:00pm U.S. Eastern Time Zone
Lead Presenter: Kaitlin Garrett, Instructional Designer, Online Learning Consortium
Explore how AI tools can support accessibility and inclusion in digital learning. This interactive workshop guides educators in using AI to create accessible content, inclusive assessments, and equitable learning experiences for diverse students. Leave with tools, strategies, and hands-on practice for immediate implementation.
As digital learning becomes a cornerstone of higher education, ensuring accessibility and inclusion for all students is more urgent than ever. Recent updates to the ADA Title II guidelines, rising rates of reported and unreported disabilities, and increasing neurodiversity among students demand that educators and institutions take meaningful action toward creating equitable learning experiences.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to be a powerful ally in this work. From automating accessibility features like image descriptions and captions to helping educators create inclusive assignments and assessments, AI tools offer scalable solutions that can support diverse learners. Yet many faculty and instructional designers lack the time, resources, or training to meaningfully implement these tools.
This interactive, skill-building immersion class responds to this need by providing a deep dive into practical AI applications for inclusive course design. Participants will explore the intersection of AI, accessibility, and inclusive pedagogy, gain hands-on experience with curated tools, and walk away with tangible strategies and artifacts to use in their teaching practice.
The session is particularly timely as institutions prepare for compliance with upcoming accessibility mandates and work to close equity gaps in student outcomes. It is relevant to faculty, instructional designers, accessibility specialists, and educational technologists committed to making learning more inclusive.
This session is designed to maximize participant engagement through a blend of presentation, real-world case studies, tool demos, and collaborative hands-on activities. Participants will not be passive listeners; they will actively apply what they learn, experiment with AI tools, reflect on their practice, and co-create accessible resources.
The session will follow this structure:
By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
Date: Monday, November 17, 2025
Time: 9:00am – 12:00pm U.S. Eastern Time Zone
Lead Presenter: Brian Beatty, Professor of Instructional Design and Technology, San Francisco State University
Co-Presenter: Glori Hinck, Instructional Designer, University of St. Thomas
This hands-on workshop introduces educators to custom GPTs that enhance student engagement in HyFlex and online courses. Participants explore real-world examples, analyze prompt design, and create their own custom GPTs. The result? Student-ready GPTs to use, practical skills, and strategies for integrating AI-powered interactions into your course designs.
Online and hybrid learning environments often challenge educators seeking to maintain high levels of student engagement, particularly for “Accidental Asynchronous Learners”, students who prefer synchronous learning but participate asynchronously due to schedule or life constraints (Moore, 1997). These students may experience high transactional distance, leading to disengagement and reduced learning outcomes (Moore, 1989). Traditional course design models often fail to fully bridge this gap.
Recent advances in Generative AI, particularly with custom GPTs, offer innovative opportunities to simulate interactions with instructors, peers, and content. Custom GPTs can extend engagement beyond live sessions, provide equitable learning opportunities, and support all learners across in-person, synchronous online, and asynchronous online modes. These tools have been piloted at multiple conferences and institutions, demonstrating their potential to transform student experiences in HyFlex and fully online courses. Recent user experience testing (which we will explain in the workshop) shows the potential for improving student engagement in effective and interactive learning experiences even when there is no other learner around.
This workshop builds on prior efforts focused on introducing custom GPTs for student engagement. It expands that work into a three-hour hands-on experience where participants will not only learn to use these tools “as is” but also dive into their design. We will explore basic prompt engineering and provide the participants the opportunity to create their own GPTs using the OpenAI platform. Whether you are new to AI integration or have experience with GenAI, this workshop will provide insights, guidance, and practical skills to empower their teaching practice.
This immersion session workshop is designed to be highly interactive and collaborative, combining demonstrations, discussions, hands-on exploration, and guided practice. The structure ensures participants gain both foundational knowledge and practical skills, leaving with personalized strategies for using and creating GPTs in their own courses.
Participants will have access to a variety of GPTs demonstrated at prior conferences, including:
Participants will also explore the OpenAI platform for building their own GPTs (https://platform.openai.com/). Note: A paid account on OpenAI.com is required to build custom GPTs.
Resources and strategies for implementing AI tools in their courses with an emphasis on equity, accessibility, and student empowerment.
Date: Monday, November 17, 2025
Time: 1:00pm- 4:00pm U.S. Eastern Time Zone
Lead Presenter: Ceredwyn Alexander, Founder/CIO, Bryan Alexander Consulting, LLC
Co-Presenter: Bryan Alexander, Senior Scholar, Georgetown University
Most believe principled AI is still years away. We will demonstrate otherwise.
Participants engage with Symbolic Language Intelligence: AI systems leveraging pre-existing, underused capacities already present in today’s models. This is not a prompt engineering workshop, but a paradigm shift. We show how educational institutions can implement trustworthy AI now.
Many AI researchers and educational technologists still treat principled reasoning in AI as a future goal. It appears in academic papers, industry forecasts, and long-range institutional strategies—something to prepare for, not something to build now. The assumption is that better, faster models will eventually solve the problem.
But trustworthy, value-aligned AI is not years away. The core capabilities already exist. What’s missing is not technical capacity, but intentional design application.
This workshop makes that clear. The building blocks are here, but they remain underused.
What’s needed is not a new model, but a new design approach. Human language carries compressed logic through metaphor, social ritual, ethical signals, and institutional norms. For example, words like please and thank you aren’t filler. They encode frameworks of trust, obligation, and relational stance. Language models already recognize these patterns. We just don’t ask them to act on them.
This is what we mean by Symbolic Language Intelligence (SLI). These systems don’t just produce text—they reason with it. SLI designs provide context that allows for the AI to behave in a predictable and ethical manner.
SLI systems use constraint logic rooted in institutional values, grammatical form, and symbolic reasoning. They maintain integrity under pressure by embedding values at the system level rather than patching filters on top.
While most institutions are still planning for AI alignment “someday,” this workshop shows how that future is already here. And it invites educators to shape it.
This workshop uses hands-on practice to make Symbolic Language Intelligence tangible. Each segment moves from demonstration to co-creation, showing how SLI works and how participants can apply it.
Participants will leave with practical tools, theoretical grounding, and real-world design experience in Symbolic Language Intelligence:
Date: Monday, November 17, 2025
Time: 1:00pm- 4:00pm U.S. Eastern Time Zone
Lead Presenter: Michael Jones, Assistant Director of The Future Learning Lab, Indiana Wesleyan University – National & Global
Co-Presenter: Tasha Bleistein, Director of the Future Learning Lab, Indiana Wesleyan University-National & Global
In this interactive workshop, participants will learn to design and implement AI-driven educational games using Boodlebox.ai and OpenAI. Starting with a healthcare simulation example, attendees will then build their own experiential games on topics of their choice, with a demonstration of single-player mobile practice using verbal commands and OpenAI.
This workshop provides participants with the tools and knowledge to create interactive, AI-driven games for educational and professional practice using Boodlebox.ai and OpenAI. The session will begin with a demonstration of a collaborative healthcare simulation game, followed by participants designing and implementing their own games on topics of their choice. The workshop will also feature the use of free custom bots to workshop Learning Objectives, Game Design, and Assessment, as well as a demonstration of building single-player practice games using OpenAI and voice commands on mobile devices. By the end, attendees will have hands-on experience in game development, leveraging AI to enhance learning and practice scenarios.
This session is ideal for educators, trainers, and professionals who are interested in integrating AI into experiential learning, whether for academic subjects, professional development, or skill practice.
Attendees will:
Buy two Pre-conference Immersion classes (one AM class, one PM class)
OLC Accelerate showcases groundbreaking research and highly effective practices in online and digital learning across K-12, higher education, and corporate L&D. This event is designed to empower and support leaders, instructional designers, educators, and training professionals by offering a wide range of sessions and activities.
Online Learning Consortium
6 Liberty Square #2309
Boston, MA 02109
617.716.1414