The post-season for Major League Baseball is nearly upon us, and I’m happy to report that the Milwaukee Brewers—my hometown team—are (as of the time of this writing) in first place in the entire league. I’m admittedly a fair weather fan when it comes to baseball, so I’ll be watching the playoffs this year only because we have an all-star team.
The point of this article is not about baseball but about the all-stars you can connect with at the upcoming Leadership Network Symposium (LNS). I will say that we have an amazing lineup of speakers … but that’s not new to this year. For the past three years, the LNS has been what I consider the premier event at Accelerate and a must-attend for current and emerging leaders in digital learning.
Why is that? Well, we are intentional about the programming, inviting experts (all-stars) in the field to present on highly-relevant topics that complement one another. To wit, check out these session titles and speakers:
- Digital Leadership in Action: Skills for Leading Change in Higher Education (Morgan Johnson, UAGC and Dylan Barth, Online Learning Consortium)
- Surviving the Regulatory Whiplash: A Digital Leader’s Guide to Federal Policy Turbulence (Van Davis, WCET-WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technology)
- Innovation and Technology for Online Learning Leaders (Nicole Westrick and Dionne Thorne, Morgan State University)
- From Generative AI to AGI: Preparing Higher Education for the Next Technological Leap (Tawnya Means, University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign)
- Bridging Career Trajectory Perspectives (Matt Vick and Morgan Anderson, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater)
- Retention, Rewired: Innovating Student Support for the Digital Age (Carmin Chan, Northern Arizona University)
- The Entrepreneurship Imperative (Thomas Cavanagh, University of Central Florida)
- Addressing Current and Future Challenges in Education (Dylan Barth, Online Learning Consortium, Glenda Morgan, Phil HIll & Associates, Jennifer Mathes, Online Learning Consortium, Van Davis, WCET-WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technology)
We also attract amazing attendees who are eager to share their ideas and to network with others. But don’t be intimidated if you think you’re not experienced enough as a leader. We all have things to learn when it comes to leadership, and the LNS is about as convivial as it gets. Furthermore, there’s a cozy reception following the presentations and panels that offers an opportunity to informally chat with other attendees.
Interested? Here are some details: The Leadership Network Symposium will be held on Monday, November 17, the day before the official start of the OLC Accelerate conference, in Orlando, FL. This allows attendees to enjoy the LNS experience without having to worry about missing anything at the main conference. Because the LNS is separate from the full conference, there is an additional fee, but compared to the price of a ticket to an MLB playoff or all-star game, the LNS is a heckuva deal. And don’t worry if you’ve already registered for the conference; you can still go back and add the LNS onto your existing registration. Not a problem.
I understand that the institutional coffers may be a bit empty now, so you might not have the funding to attend the full conference and the LNS. Don’t fret. We have plenty of high-quality sessions in our leadership track as part of the full conference. You can search for them in the list of session types on our conference website.
Either way, we hope you join us at the Accelerate conference, the Leadership Network Symposium, or both! By that point, the Major League playoffs will be well over, so baseball fans can fully focus on attending the conference and connecting with other players in the field of digital learning.
Dylan Barth is the Vice President for Innovation and Programs. Dylan provides strategic vision and oversight for professional development, consulting, research and publications, and the Quality Scorecard Suite at OLC. He has 20+ years of experience teaching in higher education and 12+ years working in faculty and instructional development. Dylan holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with an emphasis on masculinities in contemporary post-apocalyptic fiction.
