Passhe Virtual 2013 Conference

Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education Virtual Conference:

On February 13th 2013, I attended the Passhe virtual 2013 conference. Most of the sessions that I attended talked about the need for creating a focussed curriculum for online education. It is not always easy for all people to adjust and adapt to the demands of an online education system. There is always a period of initial adjustment that one has to make in any kind of live interactive space. One of the sessions I attended talked about using quality matters 7. This is a rubric to create an online orientation. I really liked this session as it chalked out a step by step plan on how to create online orientation for educational programs.
On February 14th 2013 I attended three interesting sessions: The first interesting one was on designing and developing course shell. It was useful because it showed very clearly that for both the faculty and the instructional designer it makes sense to have a plan before beginning to teach online and also there is need to come to some already setup expectations. The second interesting session was on how to design effective faculty development workshops for faculty who are interested in Distance Eduation. The presenter gave a snapshot of bullet points right from linear planning for implementing a faculty training program to assessing the program using a pre-determined rubric to creating a good times atmosphere in the training. It also hightlighted the fact that the focus of the instructrional design training should be on familiarity and not mastery of the technology tools content . The third interesting session that I attended was on filling the gap using mobile first and I learned a whole new perspective on online learning through mobile applications.