The OLC-MERLOT Innovate conference is nearly upon us. In just a few weeks (March 3-5), hundreds of OLC and MERLOT community members will come together virtually to share innovative ideas and practices that they have spent their time and talents pursuing. The collective experiences and expertise of the online learning community that is shared during the Innovate Conference is our annual “gift and not a burden.”
If you’ve ever tried to do something new or do it in a new way, you’ll know that sometimes innovation works and sometimes it doesn’t. Lessons are learned from trying and failing, and it takes skill (and often courage) to identify when an innovation needs to be abandoned or modified. Most of us cannot “try and try again” when it comes to innovation because each try requires time, resources, and the institution’s political will.
Therefore, our challenge is this: How do we effectively manage the time and resources we do have within our diverse institutional contexts to innovate successfully and efficiently? The strategy we recommend is to learn from others who have attempted to innovate and who are willing to share their outcomes, and the OLC-MERLOT Innovate Conference is where such sharing happens. Even though individually we can’t “try and try again,” collectively we can, by learning from members of our community about the creative solutions (and failures) to our common problems.
Another current trend in higher education is the frequent transitioning of academic leaders. Presidents, provosts, AVPs, and deans these days often leave after just a few years, and if you are one of the campus leaders who replaces them, you are expected to bring vision and innovation to strengthen your campus’s success. In these situations, you may be thinking: How do I explore and evaluate which innovations will be most productive in the academic ecosystem that is new to me as a leader? Once again, learning from a range of other leaders from diverse academic ecosystems at OLC-MERLOT Innovate Conference can be tremendously valuable. A new academic leader can bring multiple options to a shared governance process with evidence of how it works at other institutions. Consequently, your leadership can be valued for providing thoughtful options of possible practices, facilitating decision making.
Furthermore, as a virtual conference, engaging with others in the community is much more affordable than an in-person event (no travel costs, time, and headaches), and all sessions are recorded and available for viewing months after it ends. Plus, if you are a new campus leader, you can bring a campus team affordably with our group discounts.
What we can say for certain is that at the upcoming OLC-MERLOT Innovate conference, you will discover innovative thinking and creative solutions from people you can call upon to help you implement change. We invite you to join us at there virtually to share what you’ve learned—whether you are a presenter or not—and be open to the opportunities to engage with others as we build a knowledge base of innovation to the betterment of higher education.
