OLC Accelerate 2023 - Summits

The Online Learning Consortium and EDUCAUSE are delighted to welcome all online, digital, and blended learning educators to a Research Summit centered on “The Research to Practice Cycle: Opportunities for Online Learning Communities.” Research plays a vital role in supporting and refining practice, and practice can mobilize research findings to enhance learner and instructor experience. However, real barriers, such as institutional and departmental silos, continue to prevent collaborative study design, timely sharing of findings, and cohesive implementation of study-driven strategies. These barriers can result in a research and practice gap, wherein researchers, practitioners, decision makers, and designers become siloed and lack opportunities to share insights from their respective areas of expertise.

This Research Summit invites all who have a stake in online learning to participate in conversations with emerging and experienced researchers, decision makers, designers, and practitioners to forward collective problem solving. The Summit is free to all conference attendees, and everyone is encouraged to attend. Together, we will consider how we might leverage insights from research and practice to improve student experience, drive engagement, and facilitate institutional, departmental, and classroom change. Conversations will include topics such as: co-design across research stages, translation of research findings into practice, decision-making variables for researchers and practitioners, reflection on successful and unsuccessful implementations, and more.

Emergent themes from this discussion session will be shared with the OLC and EDUCAUSE communities in the coming months.

Session specifics are coming soon.

• 1:15pm-2:00pm: Part 1 – Building Bridges for Education Transformation: Connecting Researchers, Practitioners, Designers, and Decision-Makers (D. Barth, J. Robert, A. Gunder)
• 2:15pm-3:00pm: Part 2 – Empowering Research in Higher Education: Insights from the Experts (J. Dean, C. Ford, B. Verdine)
• 3:00pm-3:45pm: Networking Coffee Break (Exhibit Hall)  
• 3:45pm-3:30pm: Part 3 – Cultivating Change: Strategies for Co-Design and Collaboration in Higher Education (N. Weber, E. Loepp, A. Gunder)

Instructional Designers are often the catalyst for change, but they cannot do it alone. Join us as we explore the variety of stakeholder relationships and collaboration opportunities for instructional designers. Sessions topics include student-centered practices, building faculty trust and buy-in, collaborative course design, and using personalization and design thinking for engaging stakeholders. The Instructional Design Summit is included in your conference registration. All current and aspiring Instructional Designers or stakeholders who collaborate on learning design projects are encouraged to attend. Attendees will leave with valuable insights and strategies for creating engaging and effective digital learning experiences as part of a community of educators within your context.

Session specifics are coming soon.

• 9:30am-10:15am: Part 1 – Envisioning a New Approach to Collaborative Instructional Designer and Faculty Relationships (E. Saade, J. Miyake-Trapp, S. Lee)
• 10:15am-11:15am: Networking Coffee Break
• 11:15am-12:00pm: Part 2 – Promoting Positive Instructional Designer and Faculty Relations (H. Watson-Held, J. Gray, E. Grodziak)
• 12:00pm-1:15pm: Engagement Lunch (in exhibit hall)
• 1:15pm-2:00pm: Part 3 – Building Effective Instructional Design Processes:  Strategies for Using Design Thinking and Collaborative Mapping to Engage Stakeholders and Maximize Impact (M. Kadish, C. Ocasio Ilarraza, B Yang)

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