SSI Brown Bag Speaker Series – November 28, 2017

“Improving Distance Learning Opportunities Using Blackboard”
Dr. Jennifer Bernstein, Lecturer, USC Spatial Sciences Institute

https://bluejeans.com/885801943

Distance educators are astutely aware of the changing face of higher education. Imparting knowledge through the “sage on a stage” model has been debunked, as educators increasingly rely on learner-centered approaches. What were once-called “non-traditional students” make up more and more of the student body, and course content is now divided into small manageable modules. The rising cost of textbooks has been offset by the emergence of high-quality open educational resources. Distance educators are also cognizant that learning must be made accessible to students of a variety of backgrounds, with a culture that is proactive rather than reactive. Thus, not only are distance educators intimately familiar with changes affecting higher education, they are uniquely positioned to be at the forefront of addressing them effectively.

This talk will provide an overview of contemporary best practices in distance teaching and learning, with examples of pedagogical principles and pragmatic tips to create better experiences for remote learners and higher rates of student success. This includes brief discussions of flipped classrooms, learner-centered activities, achievement-based learning, and classroom assessment techniques. It will also discuss how multimedia technologies (automatically captioned videos, virtual reality, voice annotation) can be deployed to achieve desired student outcomes. Additionally, the talk will demonstrate some of the capabilities of USC’s learning management system, Blackboard, to create interactive, personalized courses that are accessible to students with diverse backgrounds, with special attention played to Blackboard analytics. Faculty will be invited to reflect on their own teaching, and leave inspired to apply new principles and techniques within their own courses.