Kauai Writers Conference - "Mastering the Art of Nonfiction" workshop

I have been attending the Kauai Writers Workshop here in Lihue, Hawaii. This has been an AMAZING experience, and I am so grateful for the great support that Franklin University provides in professional development.

I started out attending a four-day workshop by Mark Kurlansky on “The Art of Nonfiction.” It’s amazing to chat with and learn from such a well-known, successful author. He is a very interesting and impressive. 

Mark Kurlansky Workshop Quotes

Here are some quotes on Writing from Mark Kurlansky from the workshop:

• “You don’t have to follow any rules. What you have to do is make it work.”
• “I’m still wondering what writer’s block is supposed to be.”
• On fiction and nonfiction: “Either way it has to ring true.”
• “Writing doesn’t just come to you. You have to work at it every day.”
• “Get all the crap down… To me, fixing it is what’s fun.”
• “You write the way you do because of your background.”
• “The question is, when someone picks up a book and starts to read, do they want to continue reading?”
• “When you are writing a book, never worry about the length. Go on and on and you can cut it later.”
• “There’s got to be more there than the facts.”
• “You’re always better off showing something than explaining it.”
• “Storytelling is the most fun in writing.”
• “If you read a book and you stop reading, ask yourself why.”
• “You can always go off wherever you are, as long as you can find your way back.”
• “Stories should be as long as they need to be good stories.”
• “In any art, you rise and fall on the choices that you make.”
• “Do I want to spend three years talking to Neo-Nazis?”
• “Agents are about selling a book, but don’t let them write the book.”
• “I’m just trying to do what I believe in, and it’s really great if people get into it.”
• “As a 70 year old writer, you ask yourself ‘have I done the things I want to do?' And you don’t want the answer to be no.”

On Writing Process

Here is how Mark describes his writing process. 

• Research - Mark does all of his research before he writes anything. This includes books, articles, videos, interviews, etc. He uses plastic arrow tabs to note key parts of a book or article so he knows where to come back to it. He figures he uses around 60% of the things that he reads in the final book.
• Outline - Mark writes an outline of around 60 pages. This outline captures everything he wants to include in the book. 
• Write - He writes the book. This includes: Writing out the content in the outline.Add in the “anecdotes” and stories to add life to the content. 
• Edit - Mark edits, revises, and improves the writing. This includes cutting, trimming, and tightening everything. Mark has used the same editor for 17 of his 34 books. You have to have a good relationship with the editor, and you don’t have to do everything the editor suggests.

Nuggets of Knowledge from Mark

• Assessing criticism is a critical skill. You don’t have to agree with everything you receive criticism on.
• When considering your book, ask yourself: what is the story I am telling with this book?
• How can you help the reader feel? What do you want the reader to feel? To know? To do?
• Write a lead (the opening to the book) that compels the reader. The first few paragraphs need to GRAB the reader’s interest and make people feel and wonder what you are going to do.
• Your opening must be a real attention-getter. This should introduce the topic, convey the compelling nature of the book, and cause the reader to ask questions or to want to know what happens next. 
• After the opening, you can go ahead and start to teach the content of the book - get into the meat of the book! Set the stage so the reader knows what is coming (or at least knows that the answer to their question is coming). 
• Small moments are illuminating. Details are gold, but they must be telling details - they must help tell the overall story. You don’t want people to die in a graveyard of facts. Bring the story to life.
• Mark says you must have an agent. It needs to be the person who has already published about the topic you are writing about. Though, an energetic younger agent might be great, too. It is a good idea to select an agent who has published successful books in the area or topic that you want to go for.
• When you are considering what book to write next, ask yourself: Do I want to spend 3 years thinking about this topic?
• The size of a financial advance shows the level of commitment of the publisher. You have to decide if the advance they are offering is worthwhile. It is a calculation of what you are going to earn in royalties, basically.
• On going international with your book: your agent negotiates lots of things, including foreign rights. If you give the publisher foreign rights, you get a bigger advance.

What I Want to Do In My Writing

• Grab and maintain interest and attention of the reader at the beginning of the book and each section.
• Teach and impart knowledge that is meaningful. Potentially use repetition of key principles and phrases that teach the main principles.
• Tell stories that teach the key principles.
• Have a cliff-hanger at the end of each section or at least each chapter to keep people interested and excited about.
• Use my academic skills at structure and organizing to create a smooth, meaningful flow of content and knowledge.

Reflections

Casual versus Formal Self - At one point, we talked about the difference between the casual self and the formal self in writing. I have been immersed in “academic” or “work” writing for so long (over 10 years) that I have a very hard time breaking free from it. This sense of restriction is not only mental but I actually feel it. I can easily hammer out an academic article, but when I try to write something that is actually interesting, I freeze up and revert to the formal. 

Is writing an art? - The name of the workshop is “The Art of Nonfiction.” But, is writing actually an art? Art can be defined as “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination.” Is nonfiction an art? Or just fiction?  

On Stories - When I speak, teach, or give a workshop, I often tell three brief stories that illustrate the principle I am going to teach. I don’t necessarily tell everything, but I use it as a way to capture attention. When I do my writing, I think I am going to try a similar approach. Though, I think I will need to do it somewhat differently. However, the stories must have depth to them so that they are compelling, interesting, and convey the overarching story.

Channeling Douglas Adams - I’ve found that I tend to want to write like Douglas Adams. I honestly feel like I am connecting to a different me - a me that is around 17 or 18 years old. I love Adams’ really surprising, humorous, light-hearted approach to his stories.

Believing in What is Possible - I appreciate being here among other writers, and especially with Mark. He is expanding my mind and beliefs about what is possible, and I really appreciate the vision of what is possible. I love being with someone who has done many of the things that I want to do.

Summit Notes: Essential Institutional Capacities to Lead Innovation

I recently attended the WECT 2017 Summit on Essential Institutional Capacities to Lead Innovation. It was a very good conference that shared some best practices in higher education for innovations to improve student success. Below are some of the notes I took during the conference.

Michelle Weise - Sandbox Collaborative – Southern New Hampshire University

Michelle discussed some of the things that her university has been doing to promote design thinking and collaborative, creative problem solving at her university and as a service for other universities. They created the Sandbox Collaborative, which is a space where people can really think through their design needs and consider solutions for their work. They pulled together a variety of research-based tools and techniques from research and other organization. The space looks very open, beautiful, different, and inviting. It seems to be the kind of space that would be interesting and exciting to be in. The space and group serves as internal consultancy focused on performance improvement for the university (the current needs) and to help look at over the horizon solutions and opportunities (the future). In my experience, it is very difficult to maintain and optimize what is already existing while simultaneously planning for new, innovative systems and approaches.

She noted that they started in “stealth mode” which allowed them to develop and grow and innovate. If you are under scrutiny of others and have the existing culture and patterns imposed on you, you may have a difficult time being able to move forward and will likely lose many of your innovative ideas. Autonomy is critical in the initial phases.

Jeff Borden - St. Leo University – Innovation Incubator

Jeff talked about their innovation incubator, which has been a place for innovating and creating great solutions for the university. They eventually created LionShare, which is a system that pulls together all kinds of student behavior data and provides the students with a variety of supports and tools that provide just in time support to students that is strong up-front and decreases over time. “For technology to work, integration is the key.”

Does your university support innovation? Will they put money behind it? Will they support it?

If an organization or individual is rewarded for innovation, then innovation will happen.

Some reflections: to me, it seems that implementing the innovation is a major issue. Jeff addressed it with the need to consider stakeholder engagement, but there is much more to it than that. What if we never put enough resources toward solving the problem? What if we don’t beta test? What if we ignore cultural or international issues? What if we don’t use foundational project management strategies effectively?

Breakout Session 1: Identify the Talent You Have, What You Need, and Where to Discover Candidates

MJ Bishop

Dr. Bishop shared some key results of a couple of powerful studies that look closely at centers for teaching and learning.

Bishop, M., & Keehn, A. (2015). Leading academic change: An early market scan of leading-edge postsecondary academic innovation centers.

The results of the study included the following insights:

• Institutional culture is one of the biggest challenges to innovating, along with lack of resources.
• Innovation centers seem to be regularly undergoing reorganization. (7 of 10 interviewed were undergoing a major revision).
• Building collaboration was a key thing organizations were doing (collaboration within campus organizations).
• There seems to have been a shift from faculty success to student success.
• Most teaching/learning centers started between 2001 and 2010.
• Most leaders of these centers have had faculty experience.
• Most report to the provost or academic affairs.
• In most, the mission and reporting function changed a lot over the last several years.

Outreach to department chairs and financial incentives were the most effective methods for increasing faculty engagement with the center.

Christina Anderson

Christina asked a few questions that really help us gain a focus with the changes we are working to make within an organization. Some good questions here:

• What are you trying to change?
• Why?
• How will you know it’s been successful?
• When does it need to happen?
• Who needs to be involved?

There are certainly some foundational project management/goal setting/change management principles embedded in these questions.

Jay Hollowell

Sometimes we are pushed into a swimming pool of sharks. (If you don’t know the joke, it is funny J). This is often the cause of innovation –we do it as a reaction to something in the environment. We can also do it proactively without a push into the shark pool - either way, we must react and adapt and innovate.

Near the end of the presentation, we met as a table and discussed the following question. I have added in our responses.

How must higher education institutions change to better support learning?

• Redesign the tenure process to go the teaching track or research track. This will help facilitate improve teaching and learning.
• Bring in additional roles such as mentors to help students move through a learning path as opposed to different courses. Western Governors seems to do this. There could be other supplements including having students provide that kind of support.
• Incentivize faculty to design courses more effectively so that the students start effectively.
• Faculty learning communities – faculty teach the same course and come together and have a  conversation about the course and what they are doing, struggling with, what is working. Faculty seem to struggle with the concept of community and dialogue can help instill the idea of sharing experiences and expertise.
• Hire more full-time faculty.
• Quality onboarding of new faculty. Be more intentional in onboarding. Focus on teaching them how to teach online and face-to-face. Create an experience of up to 12-18 months. Use quality standards and rubrics, peer evaluations, and others.
• What role should the teaching and learning center plan in today’s learning design infrastructure?
• We focus a lot of effort on instructional design to help support the teachers Simplicity is often key – focus on the basics of ID, teaching effectiveness. 

Again, this was a great experience. I have found, though, that very often the context of sitting in a conference is not that I am acquiring the content that is being shared, but that I am thinking alongside the presentations. These presentations often spur ideas and insights that are meaningful but that are not at all related to the presentation content! That was the case at this conference - many ideas for improving myself, my work, and creative endeavors, and the university for which I work.

Thanks, WCET, for a great experience!

AECT 2015 - Day 1 - HPT Workshop

I am once again attending the annual convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. This has been an outstanding conference to attend in the past, and I have appreciated the opportunity to be here again this year.

Dr. Lewis Chongwony elaborates on important HPT concepts.

Today my Franklin University colleague and instructional design faculty member Dr. Lewis Chongwony and I presented a workshop entitled How to Analyze and Improve Human Performance. We took an interactive, project-centered approach in the workshop. There were about 10 participants from universities across the country and internationally. 

Dr. Joel Gardner looks on as participants grapple with real-world human performance problems.

Several of the participants in the Analyzing and Improving Human Performance Workshop.

It was a great experience, and informal feedback from the participants has been positive. We have also distributed an informal survey to participants to gather additional feedback on our work.

I look forward to the next 3 days of the AECT Convention! It is always a great time to reconnect with old friends and colleges, learn about new research in the field, and refresh my vision for where I would like to go in my work in higher education.

My Experiences at AECT 2014

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been spending the last several days at the AECT 2014 International Convention. This year was an outstanding experience, and I was surprised by the sense of mission, vision, energy, and excitement among the faculty and the organization's leadership. It was an outstanding experience.

I will highlight some of my experiences below. I also tweeted throughout the conference, and you can review my AECT 2014 tweets here.

The conference hotel was the Hyatt Regency in Jacksonville, Florida. A very nice place.

I roomed with my great friend Dr. Greg Francom. We had a great time, and I appreciate his kindness and friendship. Here he is by the river just outside the hotel.

Me just outside the hotel.

Beth Oyarzun and Sheri Anderson, finalists in the Pacificorp Design and Development Competition. I had the privilege of serving as their mentor for the competition. They did an excellent job.

All of the finalists in the Pacificorp Design and Development Competition.

My shoes during one of the presentations.

Keynote presentation by Dr. Johannes Cronjes. Some of his writing has had a great influence on my thinking in instructional design, and I enjoyed hearing from him. (That is him in the top-left of the picture. My good friend Mike Rook is on the bottom-right interacting with Dr. Cronjes' highly interactive keynote presentation). 

I participated in a discussion on the future of instructional design programs. I presented my thoughts, which I blogged about earlier here. It was really fun interacting with the other presenters, and I enjoyed sharing my thoughts.

I ran into Caglar Yildirim who was presenting a poster on teaching 21st Century skills (which I call the skills of knowledge work) using a marshmallow challenge. I liked how he visualized some of these skills in this image.

I ran into my scholarly hero Dr. David Merrill. It was great to see him and chat with him for a few minutes. He remains very active in the field, and I hope to emulate his creativity, courage, and drive as a scholar. A good man.

I attended a presentation by Dr. Charles Reigeluth on the 6 core changes that must take place for a paradigmatic shift in K12 (and I believe also in higher education) education. He is certainly a visionary leader and I appreciated the presentation. I later won a copy of his new book Reinventing Schools at a raffle. I've skimmed it and have enjoyed it thus far.

Conversation with Anthony Pina

Last night I had a brief conversation with Anthony Pina, the Dean of Online Education at Sullivan University. He shared several insights related to administration of online education in higher ed. It was an illuminating conversation, and I will certainly begin learning more about this area.

Again, this was a great conference experience, and I am excited to be a member of this association. I plan on continuing my involvement and appreciate the many wonderful opportunities AECT has given me as first as a graduate student and now as a scholar and educator.

Summary of Experience at 2014 Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy

I recently attended the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy. I drove down to Blacksburg, VA from Columbus, Ohio with several coworkers and really enjoyed the experience. It was a lovely conference, and I had fun getting to know my coworkers better. Below are links to the blog posts on my thoughts and experiences at this conference.

• Day 1 - Technology, Individual Change, and Poster Sessions
• Day 2 - Argument Analysis, Brain-based Learning, and Training Teachers in Higher Ed
• Day 3 - Effective Student Teams

Day 3 - Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy

This post is part of a series reporting on my experiences at the the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy. Click here to read more on this conference. #2014CHEP

Session - Effectiveness of Student Teams

The final session that I attended at the conference was a session on how to help student teams work effectively. It was presented and facilitated by Eric Rice and Richard Parsons.They did a good job facilitating the sessions, and one thing I really liked was that they hung posters that seemed to categorize effective teamwork into 5 general themes. I'll show these posters below and discuss how I think they can be implemented effectively into a team environment.

 

1. Formation of Groups

Teams need to be formed in the class. Groups seem to be most effective at around 4 group members. Be sure that they are composed of a variety of strengths and capacities. Keep in mind that these individuals may have had a history of working together.

2. Workload Distribution

Teams need to ensure that their work is distributed effectively so they can accomplish the tasks required. This distribution should consider the following components:

• Balance of the Quantity of work assigned
• Expectations and standards of Quality for the output desired
• Selection of Tasks related to the work
• Assignment of Ownership of each component of the work assigned
• Create mechanisms to control or penalize Social Loafing and Disengagement

3. Scheduling

Student teams must function efficiently, and having an effective schedule can help them to do this. The schedule should enable the students to complete each component within the time required. Schedules should include (a) when/how often to meet as a group, and (b) when to draft, revise, and submit work to the instructor.

4. Resolving Conflict

Sometimes conflict arises in a team environment. Students and instructors must establish methods for resolving this conflict.

5. Grading and Evaluation

When working with student teams, it is important that their work be effectively evaluated. This should include the following components:

• Peer Evaluation - have students evaluate one another so that you can understand how each individual contributed throughout the teamwork. This evaluation should occur frequently so that everyone has a feel for how they are doing and how they can improve.
• Individual Contributions - evaluation of each student should include an evaluation of what each individual contributed to the work completed. This will help you see how that individual contributed and see the quality of their work.
• Overall Grade - evaluation of the overall grade for the team is also key. This helps in the grading of the team as a whole.
• Rubrics and Standards - all evaluation should be based on rubrics and standards that are established from the beginning. This will help the students and teams see the end from the beginning and have something to work toward.

This was a great Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy, and I was very glad to have been able to attend it with my friends and coworkers at Franklin University. I cam away with ideas on how I can improve my own work. If possible, I hope to attend the conference again in the future.

Day 2 - Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy

This post is part of a series reporting on my experiences at the the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy. Click here to read more on this conference. #2014CHEP

As I wrote in yesterday's post, I have been attending the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy in Blacksburg, Virginia. Thus far it has been a really nice experience. The conference planners and managers are doing an excellent job at keeping the conference moving in a smooth, enjoyable manner, and the sessions are meaningful and thought-provoking, for the most part. In this post I will share some of my learning experiences and reflections from Day 2 of the conference.

Session - Creative Approach to Argument Analysis

In the first session of the day, I attended a presentation on a creative approach for teaching freshman argument analysis. The instructors shared an approach for helping their students really analyze arguments in meaningful, critical ways. They defined several different approaches to analyzing arguments, which they called different "Hats."  The image below shows the general approach to be taken for each had. Students were assigned these different approaches and were asked to analyze a video, a piece of text, or some kind of media.

One thing I liked was that they used progressively difficult analysis tasks. They began by having students analyze shorter, less-serious videos and pieces of text. Specifically they shared a video (below) of a young man giving a speech to incoming freshmen and had them analyze the video.

 As I mentioned, the arguments the students analyzed became increasingly complex and mature as the semester progressed, and near the end students were analyzing TED talks and scholarly articles.

I particularly liked the progressive nature of the course. The slow increase of complexity really aids students to handle increasingly difficult concepts and tasks. I also liked that video was used - this makes the task perhaps more interesting and also helps students transfer to different settings and media. A good strategy.

Session - Brain-based Learning 

The next session I attended was one on brain-based learning. The presenters' goal was to share "key instructional principles (that)... incorporate brain-based learning" which apparently is based on neuroscience. They started the session by briefly describing how the brain on a molecular level functions. In basic (as I understand it) when something is learned, the brain creates new "links" between neurons. These links occur on a molecular level and involve some kind of a chemical reaction in which dendrites (the little arms of the neuron) share chemicals back and forth. This is a super-basic definition that is probably wrong, so if you are a biologist or a neurologist, please be kind :). Anyway, the idea is that this knowledge of how the brain functions really should help us know how we can teach effectively.

Sharing how the brain functions on a basic level.

Based on this information, the presenters (who did not claim to be neuro-scientists but educations who have learned about these principles and attempted to use them in the class) share the following three major strategies based on brain science.

• Activate Prior Knowledge - have students describe or present heir prior learning related to the topic to be learned for that day.
• Show Patterns/Organize Knowledge - we should provide students with patterns or organization of the knowledge and should even have them categorize and organize themselves such as through a mind map. One of the instructors mentioned that she did this by sharing the organization and sequence of activities to take place within a session or during the week. I tend to think of this as more of a classroom management strategy than activation - the activation should show the structure of the content, not the sequence ofa ctivities in a course. Still, it could accomplish both at the same time...
• Support Deep Learning and Active Processing - This includes things like helping students see the relevance of what they are learning, helping them become emotionally connected to what they are learning, and helping them contextualize the knowledge.

What I thought was interesting was that all of these activities have been recommended for quite some time, long before the idea of brain-based learning came around. They have a cognitivist slant to them, from what I could see. I a not totally convinced that a knowledge of how these dendrites communicate with each other really changes how we teach - I tend to think that making that leap is a bit much. But I do believe in these principles and think that a general knowledge of how the brain works can have an influence on how we teach. One good side-effect of this presentation is that I plan to check out some books on the topic to see if I can glean any more knowledge on the topic.

Session - Preparing Graduate Students to Teach in the College Classroom

Preparing instructions effectively is a big issue in higher education. In this presentation, employees of the Office of Teaching Effectiveness at University of Georgia shared how they prepare their graduate assistants to teach their courses. They actually require GA's to take a semester-long course on pedagogy before they can teach, which I thought was a good idea. This is similar to how we do our training of adjunct faculty at Franklin, though our course is only 1 credit. One interesting fact is that the University of Georgia has hundreds of teaching GAs (650, I believe) at any given time. This is as many as Franklin's entire adjunct faculty. We are definitely a smaller university, but I believe that we have excellent instructors. Anyway, below is an image of the overall strategy they use at their University, the pedagogy course being one of the major root components. The leaves are additional work that a faculty member can take as desired.

Day 1 - Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy

This post is part of a series reporting on my experiences at the the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy. Click here to read more on this conference. #2014CHEP

I have been attending the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy at Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. Today was the first day of the conference, and I will report on some of the interesting things I have learned or thought about today. As I mentioned, the conference has been on the campus at Virginia Tech. Below is a picture of the conference center/hotel. It is a very nice facility and makes for a good meeting location.

The conference center on Virginia Tech Campus in Blacksburg, Va.

Keynote Speaker

Jose Antonio Bowen speaking as keynote speaker.

Our Keynote Speaker who was the opening speaker was Jose Antonio Bowen. He is a music professor and Dean of the Meadows School of Arts. His talk was entitled "Teaching Naked" in the classroom. By this he was implying that we should use technology to deliver content and then use classroom time to engage students. Strangely many of his ideas for engaging students actually involved using technology, so I got the impression that the title of his presentation (which is also the title of a book he recently wrote) was more an attention getter than an actual strategy for teaching in class.

Anyway, one of the main points of his talk is that educators' main strength is not providing content (which seems to be readily available on the internet). Rather, it is helping students gain thinking abilities - the capacity to solve problems, do complex tasks, think critically, etc. This makes sense to me - we live in a world where we have limitless information available, so we should mainly help people know how to take that information and make use of it.

He had an engaging style and share examples of how he has engaged his students using technology. He uses audio files to share examples of musical concepts, has games that students play to try and "level up" their understanding as they progress through a set of quizzes. His content is inherently interesting, and I enjoyed listening to his musical examples.

All Change Starts With Individual Change

One of the sessions that I attended had the above title. It was a session facilitated by Eric Pappas and Olga Pierrakos. They facilitated a discussion around the concept of individual sustainability as a key aspect of a sustainable environment, culture, and economy. We discussed some of the influences on our ability to live in a sustainable, healthy way. I thought the discussion was interesting; however, I was blown away by the definition they provided for what individual sustainability is. I share their definition and discuss it briefly here. It was a good discussion.

Engaging Students in Online Courses

One of the sessions I attended was focused on engaging students in online courses. The  facilitators were passionate and excited about the topic, which was nice. It was discussion-oriented, so I could get a sense from others' comments about how much online education was happening in their schools and universities. I came away from the session with the realization that Franklin University (where I currently teach and work) has done a great job at doing new things in education and embracing new technologies and approaches. I would say that all of the concerns and suggestions by the other participants were something that I and my colleagues at Franklin have already considered and taken advantage of. I ended up leaving the session a early and hope that it was useful for others.

Poster Sessions

One of the sessions for today was a poster session. Barbara Carder put together a great poster describing the instructional design approach she and I and several others used to redesign one of the courses in the IDPT Masters degree program at Franklin. It was fun to share our experiences and we enjoyed talking with others and hearing about what they do.

Barbara Carder and me (Joel Gardner) with out poster at the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy.

 Dr. David Ni also attended the conference and gave a poster presentation entitled Designing Authentic Learning for Higher Education.

Barbara Carder, Joel Gardner and David Ni at the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy.

After today's sessions Amy Vinchesi, David Ni and I went for a short walk on Virginia Tech's campus. It is absolutely stunning - nearly all of the buildings are made of stone and have a very classy look to them. I was impressed with the sheer size and beauty of the campus and really enjoyed being on the campus with the students and faculty.

Me (Joel Gardner) on the Virginia Tech Campus in Blacksburg, Va.

It was a good first day and I was able to reflect and think on my own practice in teaching, so it has been really nice so far. I will continue to write about the experiences here at the conference.

Summary of 2013 Academic Chairpersons Conference

Over the last week, I have been attending the 2013 Academic Chairpersons Conference in San Antonio, Texas. It has been an outstanding experience, and I appreciate that my Dean at Franklin University has supported me in attending the conference.

I thoroughly enjoyed this experience. I usually attend conferences related to instructional design and technology, so the academic administration focus was an entirely new perspective for me. I found it refreshing to meet enthusiastic people from all over the United States who struggled with similar problems and issues. I learned a great deal by simply listening to them describe their situations, and it gave me a broader perspective on my own university and helped me gain clarity on where I want to go in my career as an educator. A great experience.

Below I link to the posts describing my leading up to and at the conference.

Before the Conference

• Looking Forward to the Conference
• Arriving at the Hyatt Regency Hotel

At the Conference

• Day1 - New Chair Alliance Workshop
• Day 2 - Transitions and Progressing as an Administrator
• Day 3- Leadership and Effective Decision-Making
• My Visit to The Alamo