Solving the ubiquitous challenges of our field requires that educators of all roles and organizational types come together to define and implement effective practices that support equitable and inclusive student success. The Foundry Days were conceptualized as a way to gather the field together within a free and open space for experiential learning and meaningful collaboration that leverages our collective thought leadership in tackling wicked problems.

Offered collaboratively by OLC and an industry partner from the digital learning space, community members can participate in both live and asynchronous activities offered for free in the hopes of increasing the scope and impact of our collective efforts to prioritize equitable and quality online, blended and digital learning.

If you are interested in collaborating with us on a Foundry Day, please contact Julie Threet at julie.threet@onlinelearning-c.org. 

Past Foundry Days
McGraw Hill Education Logo

The Equity Challenge: Putting Equity into Practice in Higher Education

 

Together we will collaborate on ideas and practices to advance equity in Higher Education, informing a report for putting equity into action. Our goal is to leave you feeling empowered, inspired to make an impact, and with practical tools to take back to your institution.

Learn more →

Guild Logo

The Future of the Workforce: Advancing Quality Learning Experiences for Adult Workers

The Online Learning Consortium and Guild Education are partnering on a leadership event dedicated to designing a learner experience that accounts for the lived experiences of working adult learners. Through this interactive event, we hope to engage the leading minds in higher ed to drive forward practical and innovative solutions in order to create better outcomes for working adult learners.

This will be an exclusive event the day before our conference.

Learn more →

Breaking the Cycle of Burnout and Charting a Path for the Future

 

Burnout is a significant, ongoing challenge in higher education that affects the entire educational community (including students, faculty, instructors, support staff, and administrators). In a partnership between Alchemy (formerly O’Donnell Learn) and the Online Learning Consortium, this collaborative, two-day Foundry Day event will bring together institutional leaders for a series of constructive dialogues to consider strategies and challenges related to burnout.

PlayPosit

Creatively Reimagining Engagement with PlayPosit

Engage Asynchronously — An event dedicated to collaborative storytelling, remixing, and transformative action on innovative teaching and learning. Learn more →

How Does It Work?

OLC Foundry Days are not “sit and get” events, nor do they center the sales pitch. Rather, they represent an aligned effort with our industry partners to find more ways to celebrate our commonalities across roles and collective strength and to celebrate the creativity that our community employs in reimaging equity and quality of design and facilitation of digital learning environments.

Because Foundry Days are designed and facilitated in collaboration with our industry partners, we are able to offer cohorted participation that is removed of any registration or attendance costs to you (it is free!). Additionally, we value the ability for people to come together around shared needs and have intentionally designed each Foundry Day event to include both synchronous and asynchronous programming so that you can make connections and collaborate with others across roles, institutions, countries, and global regions in the ways that make the most sense to you.

While the actual schedule of each Foundry Day is unique in format and length, here are some of the types of experiences that you can expect when participating in these free events:

  • Interactive and experiential demonstrations
  • Design sprints and hack-a-thons
  • Expert panels
  • Flipped lessons
  • Storytelling and sense-making
  • (A)synchronous networking
  • Socials and informal gatherings

Whether these opportunities provide you with a spark of innovation to cultivate and grow in your local contexts or creates space for wide-reaching collaboration, our hope is that the ideas forged in the Foundry Days will lead to scalable and sustainable change within our community more broadly.