New Year, New Horizons: Empowering Educators Feedback
Background
A five-question feedback survey was distributed via email to employees who attended at least one session of New Year, New Horizons: Empowering Educators. Reminders to complete the survey were included in The Teaching Center’s weekly e-newsletter and Friday session reminders.
Administration
Target population(s): Employees who attended New Year, New Horizons: Empowering Educators professional learning sessions.
Method: Online survey via Microsoft Forms.
Survey administration period: 1/12/2024 – 1/19/2024
Results
21 responses were received.
2. Which sessions or workshops did you find most valuable? Why?
17Responses
| ID | Name | Responses |
| 1 | anonymous | Sessions on fear Any session talking about class methods |
| 2 | anonymous | Gradebook |
| 3 | anonymous | Workshops that directly address different strategies I can use in my classroom and all of the workshops from OOL on tools I can make better use of in D2L to make navigating it easier for both my students and I. |
| 4 | anonymous | I found the discussions on the 7-week courses most enlightening. But to be honest, each one I attended was valuable. |
| 5 | anonymous | Building Community with Student Life….Helpful resources and ideas for student connections Science of Reading…..So relevant to our students and my interest area. Looking forward to discussion group going forward Learning in 1/2 the Time….Good to learn from the honest reflection of one’s unique experience as we all try to adapt to this format |
| 6 | anonymous | All of them were very informative! |
| 7 | anonymous | All of them were great. |
| 8 | anonymous | The ones by Robert Ladd and Kristen Bradley, Ladd and Kurstin Bush, Kurstin’s bit on reading, and Eli Nettles’ on 7wk math were all exceptional. I so enjoyed how deeply these all made me think! |
| 9 | anonymous | The ones about how to engage students more and about using technology. |
| 10 | anonymous | Discussions and panels |
| 11 | anonymous | Sessions about Slate and 7-week courses. These are topics that my office is invested in. |
| 12 | anonymous | Yuja platform, it is new to the system that I needed to use. |
| 13 | anonymous | Engagement in Asynchronous Courses: Can AI save our online students? and Save Time and Engage Your Students Using “Smart” Tools in D2L I have wanted to use IA for a long time, but didn’t know h ow to set them up. These sessions really helped me understand how to use IA. Not only have I enabled all of the IA preloaded into Learning Support Writing, but I have also created assignment reminders for every major assignment and quiz in both of my other classes. I even figured out how to schedule a weekly reminder for assignments in an online workbook that is not integrated into D2L – I created a Q & A discussion with no description, and buried it at the very end of the Discussions. Then I set the condition for the workbook reminder to email students every week if they haven’t replied to a post in the Q & A. A few students might actually find that discussion & post a question for me, but I highly doubt any of them will REPLY to a thread in the Q & A. That way, all students should always meet the conditions for the weekly reminder! Fingers crossed it works! |
| 14 | anonymous | How Can I help Students Persist in their Studies by Rachel Lewis. |
| 15 | anonymous | What is CRTP, 7-week Math data, Ladd/Bradley IA data |
| 16 | anonymous | About the intelligent agent |
| 17 | anonymous | The three sessions on the 7-week term courses. Excellent information and I recommend that the administration review the recorded sessions to learn for themselves that “one size does not fit all” and that there are students who need to be in 15-week courses. Some courses just have too much information to process in 7 weeks. They can complete the course, but not really have learned the material. |
4. What aspects of the conference would you like to see improved in the future?
11Responses
| ID | Name | Responses |
| 1 | anonymous | I still think we’re missing out on things like academic misconduct, FERPA, a reminder of basic policies that new faculty may or may not know. I feel like there is missing oversight and we could use in-service week for the administration to communicate with us. They used to provide sessions like this, but they don’t anymore. |
| 2 | anonymous | Not sure |
| 3 | anonymous | More workshops geared not toward abstract concepts and ideas, but toward tools we use daily in our classes and how to expand our use of them. Knowing psychological aspect of students and how to employ equity are extremely important, but the day to day operation in the classroom is another important way to ensure that equity and student centered concepts are the focus. Tools that help us manage this are extremely helpful. |
| 4 | anonymous | Some of them were going too fast to follow the instructions to do it in our own classes online. Slower pace would be great. |
| 5 | anonymous | It is great the way it is. |
| 6 | anonymous | no suggestions |
| 7 | anonymous | More sessions on ways to use library databases with students. |
| 8 | anonymous | Workshops that actually allow faculty to do step by step of performing a task during the workshop, such as creating a rubric in D2L. Hands in workshop and not a 50 minute lecture. |
| 9 | anonymous | I know you post the recordings of the sessions, however, for skill-based presentations, it would be great if there were a HOW-TO folder for reference & refresher, with clips of any instructional sections from the presentations – cut out the intro and end discussions and just clip the sections where we are being taught how to do the skill presented. I have pinned the link to Audrey Cross’ IA video because it is so useful, but often during the PD sessions a 20-30 minute chunk of the session demonstrates a useful skill. If those sections could be clipped out and stored separately, so we don’t have to hunt for them, that would be lovely! |
| 10 | anonymous | May be letting people know about each day’s theme earlier. |
| 11 | anonymous | Not a thing, you are doing an excellent job! |
5. Is there anything else you would like to share about your conference experience?
11Responses
| ID | Name | Responses |
| 1 | anonymous | Interaction from other instructors and ideas were amazing |
| 2 | anonymous | Great experience as always! Thank you all for your hard work! |
| 3 | anonymous | I appreciated the focus on the limited interruptions and the aim for 45 minute sessions. |
| 4 | anonymous | The presenters were very nice and very open to questions and answers. They are so motivated and patient. |
| 5 | anonymous | No |
| 6 | anonymous | The way sessions were moderated, the relegation of chat to meaningful and rare posts, and the focus on the presentation instead of comments made these feel more professional. |
| 7 | anonymous | We need a session for faculty telling the differences between Academic Search Premier and Academic Onefilee, and also one explaining the benefits of MERLOT for students. Thank you for what you do. |
| 8 | anonymous | I really appreciate all the work that must go into hosting all of these sessions. Thank you! |
| 9 | anonymous | Just how grateful I am for all of your hard work! This semester’s sessions have been extremely enlightening, useful, and inspirational. |
| 10 | anonymous | I like the semester’s organization for presentation. |
| 11 | anonymous | Thank you for the opportunity to participate. |