Wired Ivy

In Episode 40, “globetrotters.edu,” Sandy Strick and Karen Edwards at the University of South Carolina, described how they created virtual study abroad trips for their Hospitality and Marketing students.   Initially, they needed an alternative when the pandemic stopped international travel, but they discovered they had created a valuable format to use for learners who couldn't travel for myriad reasons.They got Dan thinking about his own work in global education,  so he challenged himself to rethink his approach and to design a virtual trip as an integral component of the complete global experience. At the end of Episode 40, Dan offered to report on the results, and now this episode is his chance to make good on that promise and tell us what he learned this summer.

By now, practically everyone who has a connection to academia has heard that the traditional audience for higher education is headed for a demographic cliff. In response, colleges and universities are exploring ways to attract an older audience of degree completers and life-long learners to bridge the gap. But who counts as an adult learner, and how do we retain them once we have their attention?School isn't the central hub of a non-traditional student's life; rather, school is one of many spokes on a very full wheel.  To attract and retain this audience of students requires a willingness to stop expecting that, once admitted and formally welcomed, they will adjust to meet the campus status quo.  True inclusiveness means designing and delivering courses, programs, and services that fit into their lives, instead of expecting them to rearrange their lives and schedules to fit the rhythms of a campus they may never visit.But how do we tailor educational offerings so they are not one-size-fits-all?

It's especially appropriate that we're taking a deeper dive into the topic of virtual field experiences on this Wired Ivy Footnotes episode because as I'm speaking, early in May 2022, Dan is in Europe having just completed a study abroad experience with a group of our students in Finland and Estonia, and he's just started to working with a second group of students in Switzerland and Italy.  As he mentioned in the previous episode, which featured his interview with Karen Edwards and Sandy Strick of University of South Carolina, and Tori Ellenberger of Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, Dan was so anxious to use some of their ideas for virtual study abroad content that he re-wrote his pre-departure lessons immediately following that conversation. He'll report on how that new approach landed with students, and whether he was able to observe any immediate benefits compared to previous trips he's lead, in an upcoming Summer Shorts episode. But before Dan left, he and I made some time to discuss what we see as a few potential long-term opportunities and benefits that could result from continuing to blur the line between in-person and virtual experiential learning.

As the world reopens, in fits and starts, higher ed is attempting to speed away from the pandemic as quickly as possible. But the end of the academic year is now on the horizon and, for academics, that means it's time for an assessment.  A glance in the rear-view mirror, a review of the virtual content and activities created to address a specific, limited-term situation, and consider whether some of those tools might be more durable than intended.Such is the experience of today's guests. Faced with university travel bans and course rosters full of students who were counting on study abroad programming and credit hours, Karen Edwards and Sandy Strick of the University of South Carolina, and Tori Ellenberger of Australia's Deakin University, shifted gears from globetrotting to web surfing with barely a tap on the clutch pedal.  In the process, they discovered a fleet of readily available digital resources that addressed their immediate needs, allowing students to meet the same personal, cultural, academic, and professional learning outcomes established for in-person educational travel. But wait, there's more!  The resulting instructional strategies will be used to augment upcoming board-a-physical-airplane excursions, a new intentionally virtual study abroad course has been approved at University of South Carolina to be offered each summer going forward, and Wired Ivy's own Dan Marcucci has revised his approach to leading global study after hearing Tori, Sandy, and Karen describe their experiences and insights. Trust us, you'll want to take notes!

Educators who are engaged in online teaching are, at some point, going to hear the words "quality matters."  At first mentioned, this seems self-evident. As educators, we understand that the quality of our course design content and delivery is important for learners to have a productive and hopefully optimal learning experience. No one would argue with that. But that is small case quality matters; the myriad initiatives we take upon ourselves to continuously improve outcomes.  There's also capital letter Quality Matters™, which is often abbreviated to the trademarked QM™. This Quality Matters™ refers to a very specific certification process for online and hybrid courses. In this Wired Ivy Office Hours explainer, Dan takes listeners through some of the history, ambitions, and critiques of this standard rubric for online course design.

It's time for Wired Ivy Office Hours!  A quick but deep dive into an online higher ed term or concept to cultivate effective communication and weed out confusion. Prior to 2014, academic institutions in couldn't legally give non-resident students access to their online courses without going through a costly and lengthy case-by-case approval process for their classes and degree programs, and negotiating reciprocity agreements with the states their prospective students called home. That's how a non-profit organization known as NC-SARA got its start, as you'll learn in this quick explainer episode! 

Listeners who've followed Wired Ivy for a while now will know Dan and Kieran are firm believers that course design needs to begin with the learning objectives, regardless of academic level and mode of delivery.  And yet, when we listened to the previous episode, Made to Measure, we couldn't help but notice it doesn't include any guidance on how to develop those all-important learning objectives.  This Footnotes is a first installment in that long-overdue conversation.

High-stakes academic assessments create conditions that motivate students to cheat.  At the same time everyone wants a laudable level of academic integrity in higher learning.  Fair or not, for many years there has been a dismissive accusation that online learning was particularly vulnerable to massive cheating.  Then, when universities made the wholesale emergency pivot from in-person to virtual classrooms in March 2020, there was a corresponding and predictable uptick in anxiety over how to prevent cheating when the instructor wasn't even in the same physical location as the learners. This all conveniently ignores the fact that ensuring academic integrity has been a perennial goal and challenge in all forms of education, regardless of the mode of delivery.Test proctoring software and plagiarism checkers are offered as high-tech solutions to what has been framed as a problem created by technology.  We will set aside, for the moment, legitimate apprehensions raised by these software solutions – collection of bio-metric data, spyware and privacy, promoting a surveillance culture, malware vulnerabilities, to name but a few. The important point is this focus on technology is a distraction from the underlying problem.  High-tech fixes only encourage an arms race where  students improve their methods, and educators increase their policing tactics.  It doesn't mitigate the reason for cheating – we included in the show notes links to research about this. But academic integrity shouldn't begin with Crime and Punishment, it should start with Sense and Sensibility.   What if, rather than trying to win an academic integrity skirmish, we make assessment activities that promote the original learning objectives? 

A popular perception, especially in the Age of Covid, is that online instruction consists solely of delivering lectures via Zoom to a Hollywood Squares screen of boxed faces and, therefore, doesn't allow for personal connections to form between instructor and instructed or between learners.  Tell that to students who have taken online classes from Wired Ivy co-host Dan Marcucci!  As Dan explained in Episode 23 - Anatomy of a Lesson, the virtual classroom is an excellent venue for fostering a dynamic, engaged community of learners… as long as you're willing to apply a little creativity to your concept of a lesson. 

In Episode 30 - Ocean Onliners, our guest Elizabeth Sanli offered perspectives from both sides of the virtual podium – she teaches online courses for Memorial University - Newfoundland and Labrador's University and she's currently an online student, pursuing a Bachelor of Education to go along with her PhD in Kinesiology. Returning to class as a student has raised Elizabeth's awareness of the ways in which instructor expectations may not align with learner preparedness, and she offered an idea for how to address this.

The classic structure of formal education is built on a one-way flow of information, from teacher to student. Since most educators' experiences as learners followed this conventional format, from K through 12 and beyond, it's no wonder we often fall back on habit, stuck in that same transmit-only configuration even after we've transitioned from a traditional to a virtual classroom. In Episode 18 - Virtual Speaks Volumes, our guest Rebecca Hutchinson of UMass Dartmouth shared a wonderfully multi-directional approach to teaching and screen sharing in her synchronous online sculpture classes. Both Dan and Kieran found her example inspiring.

Welcome to Wired Ivy Footnotes!  Clippings from a previous episode, mulched with commentary from Dan and Kieran, to help your online course design and delivery skills grow. Now that the majority of higher education faculty have had at least some experience with virtual instruction, returning to a physical campus has caused many academics to ponder how to apply the lessons we learned online to our non-virtual courses – in other words, are there benefits to using some combination of synchronous and asynchronous content and, if so, how do you decide what needs to be done in real-time?Carey Borkoski, our guest from Episode 29 – Activist Educators, shared some insights on this dilemma.

Time is the raw material of our days.  On the one hand it is precise and predictable. The clock chimes hours into equal measures.  But on the other hand it is pliable and easily warped. We write the syllabi, we schedule assignments, we set grading schemes.  If we are careless, time can unravel and spin out of control.   In online education we have intentionally loosened some of the time threads.  We empower faculty and learners with greater control over their schedules.  But there is a wrinkle in online learning that anytime, anywhere easily slips into all-the-time, everywhere.  As educators, we need to manage our time commitments and create effective experiences for learners.  This is even more important in the covid pandemic, when work and life schedules for many of us became fully unstrung.   Kieran and Dan have been discussing the importance of efficient use of time and energy in online education.  If we are Teaching in a Time Warp, how can we be sure to optimize our own time and effort -- and improve the efficiency and efficacy of activities for learners?  This is a question we will return to periodically on Wired Ivy, starting with this episode's guests, professors Sarah Heath and Beau Shine of Indiana University Kokomo.

As universities attempt to turn away from the remote emergency instruction of 2020 and return to seat-based classes, here at Wired Ivy we're taking a decidedly contrarian approach. Since everyone else seems to be talking about a return to campus, we're trading the Ivory Tower and for the deep blue sea.The Marine Institute at Memorial University - Newfoundland and Labrador's University offers undergraduate and graduate Maritime Studies programs intentionally designed to serve working adults who are far from any of the institution's five land-based campuses. Online courses don't get much more remote than a ship in the middle of an ocean. But as our guest, Dr. Elizabeth Sanli, explains, geographically distant doesn't have to mean students are learning in isolation. Liz is more than qualified to make that claim… she's a self-identified learning geek who has experienced both sides of the online education experience, as an instructor AND as a student. 

September is a great time to look at our syllabi, course designs, our delivery strategies, and our degree programs with fresh eyes.  Often, when we undertake this kind of review, we tend to focus on what's missing, what doesn't work.Carey Borkoski of Johns Hopkins University and Brianne Roos of Loyola University - Maryland make the case for a different approach in a recent paper, published in Impacting Education, entitled “Listening to and Crafting Stories:  Cultivating Activism in Online Doctoral Students.” By using what Carey and Brianne call “deficit-free language,” teachers can see what is actually happening in their classroom, school or college, campus or district, rather than focusing on lack. As a result, these educators can advocate for change.In this episode, conversation, Dan and Kieran learn how their guests have applied this strategic lens to academic advocacy as a key component of the online Doctor of Education program at Johns Hopkins, how it has been received by their students and colleagues, and how they plan to build on what they've learned along the way.We also want to learn from our listeners! If you have an innovative online program, or a creative approach to teaching in a virtual classroom, we'd love to hear about it. And if you have questions about teaching online we want to hear those, too.  Leave a voice message at speakpipe.com/wiredivyor send an email to wiredivypodcast@gmail.com.

Teaching is fundamental in academic life, and faculty put a lot of work into creating original lessons and courses.  U.S. copyright law generally states that employers owns the rights to work produced by employees while on the job, but in higher ed, there are categories of intellectual property that are typical exempted from this work-for-hire doctrine -- textbooks are a classic example.  This practice, which has served both institutions and faculty well, is more custom than contract, though, and technology has a way of disrupting business as usual.  The culture and customs of the university are now bumping against the culture and power of the Internet.   This issue of control and access to course content is imminently important to online education and broadly important to all higher education in the 21st century.   At Wired Ivy, we're working on a series of upcoming episodes exploring this issue and the impact on faculty, and we're asking listeners to share their experiences and perspectives on intellectual property policies!

When students take their first online class they usually don't know what to expect.  It can come as quite a surprise to find out that learning at a distance isn't all that different from learning on campus.  That's because faculty tend to choose from the same basic menu options -- lectures, readings, discussion, homework, papers, and exams -- when designing their courses, regardless of whether they'll be teaching from campus or from the cloud, and whether the content will be delivered live, pre-recorded, or some combination of the two.  In this Summer Shorts episode, Kieran thinks the new academic year seems like an opportune time to ask… are online, asynchronous, and hybrid really strange new teaching strategies, or are we simply using new terminology to describe familiar techniques?What do you think?  Send us your comments, questions, and suggestions!  You can record a voice message at speakpipe.com/wiredivy or sending an email to wiredivypodcast@gmail.com.  And help Wired Ivy grow by sharing, subscribing, rating, and reviewing us on your favorite podcast app. .

There are many reasons to create academic programs that can reach students who are unable to travel to campus. Maybe you'd like to expand the audience for an existing in-person degree, or create an entirely new online offering.  But before you begin this journey there's something you need to know — when geography is no longer a barrier to access it changes the map.So how does an program director chart a course from in-person to online?  In this episode, Dan and Kieran discuss what needs to be on the packing list before you set sail.  Mixing our travel metaphors, we kept the altitude of this conversation at about 10,000 feet, soaring over 5 broad topics — goals, audience, faculty, marketing, and institutional support. But if you'd like to hear an in-depth exploration of any of these topics, please let us know so we can plan future episodes!Even better, if you have an online learning project you'd like to workshop with us on air, we would love to have you on Wired Ivy.  Leave a voice message at speakpipe.com/wiredivyor by sending an email to wiredivypodcast@gmail.com.

It's summertime, and the living is… well, easier than last year, at least.  With the start of a new academic year on the horizon, a mere two months and change away, we decided this is the perfect season for an episode that begins to explore the choreography of moving from learning objectives to lessons to assignments that will resonate with an online audience.  And since our very own Dan Marcucci consistently garners standing ovations from students for his innovative approach to online course design and delivery, I convinced him to sit for an interview with me about his creative process.  It's one thing to encourage faculty to stretch out and take full advantage of the virtual classroom, and another thing entirely to actually waltz on the walls, cha-cha on the ceiling, and boogie in the balcony.  So Dan's going to help us trip the light fantastic.  In no time at all you'll be dancing like everyone is watching their smartphone!But before you buckle up your tap shoes, please take a moment to share your online teaching stories with us. Leave a voice message at speakpipe.com/wiredivyor by sending an email to wiredivypodcast@gmail.com.

One would have to assume that if ever there were academic subjects, and student audiences, that lend themselves to at least a flipped classroom approach to teaching, that list would have to include mathematics and computer science.  After all, math and computer science provide the infrastructure that make virtual classrooms feasible.  And yet, as we learned during a lively conversation with  Gunes Ercal of Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville and Stacey Levine of Duquesne University, both of whom teach these subjects, the pivot to online hasn’t always led to a slam dunk. 

As higher learning moved into the Fall 2020 academic term, it became clear the Covid-19 pandemic would continue to impact all professors, whether they were seasoned veterans or newly minted. Educators who had honed classroom techniques over decades had no choice but to adapt to new techniques and technology at the start of the school year, even those in disciplines with highly specialized learning environments — the creative writing workshop, for example. One experienced classroom professor whom we followed over the year was Liza Wieland of East Carolina University, who not only shared details of her own online experience after decades of teaching creative writing in a physical classroom, but also offered her perspective as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Development. Kieran and Dan first sat down with Liza in September 2020 to learn about Liza's classroom experiences — online and in-person — to that point. Then we dove deep into adjusting to synchronous Zoom classes, student Internet access issues, and making the best of available technology to serve ECU students from a distance. We also got a picture of how the pandemic impacted the other faculty in Liza's college.As you’ll hear, the job got done but it wasn’t always sunshine and flowers. 

In keeping with a tradition started in Season One, Dan spoke with a panel of alums from programs featured in some of our Fall 2020 episodes  -- North Carolina A&T’s Online Master of Science in Agricultural Education from Episode 19, Growth Edge; Virginia Tech’s Online Master of Natural Resources from Episode 17, Field & Screen, and the Online Program in Digital Content Strategy at University of Kansas, from Episode 16, Role Rehearsal. As educators, we try to create a learning environment that is inspiring, efficient, and above all meets a course’s stated learning objectives.  Online learning is, by its very nature, conducive to innovative techniques. But, as with any creative endeavor, there will be hits and misses. So… how are we doing? What can we do to make learning outcomes even better? Following Dan’s conversation with our guests, I’ll join him for a debrief and a preview of Season Three’s topics.

Look past the equipment in an academic wet lab classroom -- pipettes, test tubes and flasks, microscopes, DNA sequencer, gel and blot imaging station -- and what’s left? When the University of California system moved to all-remote instruction, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, UC Irvine Associate Teaching Professor Pavan Kadandale had to ask himself that very question. Pavan shifted the focus of his upper-level undergraduate molecular biology lab away from development of hands-on skills Instead, he asked students to design laboratory experiments based on the computational techniques that have become such an important component of modern biology research. Pavan has strong ties to his institution’s first-gen student programs, and his research centers on how to get students excited about Biology and improve learning outcomes, so equity and inclusion were top-of-mind as he set out to design an online lab course. His take on re-calibrating the standard approach to biology laboratory experiences is a breath of fresh air, and we found his ambition to live up to his students’ expectations inspiring. We’re betting you will, too.

Artists are trained to look, to examine the world from different perspectives, to notice the smallest detail and appreciate the big picture. Maybe that’s why sculptor, installation artist, and Professor of Art and Design, Rebecca Hutchinson, saw that it was entirely possible to teach studio arts, including ceramics, in a virtual classroom… and to recognize this opportunity for expanding her learner audience a decade before a global pandemic demanded higher ed faculty see online instruction through a different lens. Rebecca teaches using a collage of instructional formats and technologies that allow her to connect with learners, and facilitates their connection to each other. By combining asynchronous communication and sharing, real-time activities to build observation and resourcefulness skills, virtual co-working periods for project development, and one-on-one weekly mentoring sessions, students in Rebecca’s class may be geographically distributed but they’re not creating in isolation.

Our guest this week, Chastity Warren-English of North Carolina A&T State University, is uniquely qualified to cultivate an online graduate program. That’s partly due to her training in agricultural education, a career she chose early in life. Shortly after the germination of her own graduate studies, she was chosen for an internship that helped her to blossom as an online instructor. Ag Ed has historically been an early adopters of educational technologies, including virtual instruction in its many forms. Online learning is particularly well-suited to an Ag Ed audience at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.Drawing on her own experiences as a student, and a teacher, Chastity is always looking for new ways to meet her students’ needs while also encouraging them to suggest solutions to the obstacles they face as adult learners juggling family responsibilities, the demands of travel-dependent jobs, financial hurdles, equipment limitations, and spotty access to broadband. It’s this talent for collaborative problem solving, and nurturing the same in her students, that allows Chastity to provide them with the professional edge they need to grow their careers.

Whether the subject matter is undergraduate poetry or graduate creative nonfiction, a writing class would appear, at first glance, to be almost perfectly suited to the virtual classroom. We’ve all read the novel and seen the film adaptation’s opening scene of an author, a libation for company, the muse for inspiration, and a laptop to capture the experience. Everyone knows writing is a reclusive endeavor, right? Yes, because at some point it’s just you and the pen and the page… or perhaps you and pixels on a screen. And also no. Few writers always take their solitude neat. In most cases they’ll add at least a shot or two of social now and again... over coffee, or at happy hour, maybe while attending a weekend workshop. But in the real virtual world of higher ed, how can an educator compose a course that allows both full-time students, right out of high school, and part-time adult learners, juggling work and family, to partake in the benefits of a creative community? Our guest, Daniel Stanford, will share the abridged story of his life as Composition Coordinator at Pitt Community College in North Carolina. Dan’s taught hybrid and asynchronous online courses since pre-LMS days, and he continues to try new tools and strategies for meeting learning objectives, engaging students, and encouraging collaboration. Listeners, this one’s sure to be a page-turner!

Imagine a traditional college class. Chances are, you'll picture an instructor standing in front of a chalkboard, whiteboard, or projection screen in a room or auditorium of seated students taking notes. At the same time, you know from your own educational experiences that learning isn't limited to to lectures, discussion, lab, or field trips during the scheduled meeting time. For example, readings and homework assignments completed outside of the classroom are included in the time-based calculation of credit hours. Depending on the subject, instructors may also include independent activities designed to move students out into the world as a way of deepening their understanding of the topic at hand.Understandably, faculty teaching for-credit distance education courses have tended to follow the familiar format, with the primary difference being how the instruction time activities are delivered — live-streaming or pre-recorded. Yet, educators often struggle with how to include fieldwork, broadly defined, when the course is delivered in the virtual classroom, if they even recognize this type of assignment as an option.With video conferencing fatigue taking a toll on students and faculty alike, what better time to consider adding some physically active learning assignments to your syllabus? Our guest for this week's episode, Jim Egenrieder of Virginia Tech, provides inspiration and tips for integrating Field & Screen.

The curtain is rising on another academic year — admittedly it's odd one — and another season of Wired Ivy! Now COVID-19 has shoved online teaching in higher ed from backstage to center stage… in university operational plans, in faculty development offerings, in the lives of students and their families, and in the news. Six months in and counting, there’s an expectation building among fans and critics alike that it’s time to move on from the dress rehearsal of emergency remote instruction to professional-level productions… or at least an overture of better things to come.As such, in Season 2 our goal is to provide Innovation Inspiration through conversations with your colleagues… knowledgeable, inventive, courageous educators from diverse disciplines and institutions, sharing ideas that you can try in your own virtual classrooms. We’re opening with Role Rehearsal, an exploration of the Socratic method* for the virtual stage, directed by University of Kansas' Doug Ward, to be performed asynchronously with student-audience participation.*Those of you who have listened to Season 1 might remember that in Episode 7 our guest, University of Florida's Thomas Hawkins, mentioned that he was looking for suggestions on how to use the Socratic method in online courses.

In ages past, information distribution was a problem with few solutions. True, a printing press could be gleaned by a man of means and esteem, but with literacy scant, and paper steep, the dispersal potential, while intensified, remained circumscribed… and not cheap.Which is why the best shot for knowledge dropped by a founding father, or a scholar, to spread a lot farther was to assemble a conclave. Rooms were not prerequisite for compromise and understandings to happen, but they happened with greater haste when meetings took place, so the place to be was in the room.But now we're living in the Information Age and a physical room is just one of many options. You’ll find millions of minds at work in virtual classrooms, and some in inspiration from Kieran (and Lin-Manuel Miranda) for taking a mix-tape approach to course design.

Sometimes you just want to get away. And if you’re teaching online you can! Bouvet Island in the Southern Ocean is the place to go. It’s the most remote land on Earth, with the closest neighbor being the Princess Astrid Coast of Antarctica, 1100 miles to the south. Your company will be elephant seals and macaroni penguins -- and the occasional passing scientist. But even here, bivouacked in a shipping container station, with your satellite-connected laptop, you don’t have to work by yourself.Dan offers 7 tricks for helping online higher ed academics stay connected to the community and resources they need.

Dan wants to know... how long can you hold your breath?Sperm whales broadcast songs of nested digital clicks twice as loud as a rock concert to communicate over thousands of miles of open ocean. With their large-brained, digital, long-range connections, these marine mammals are the original online educators. Plus, they can dive to 7,000 feet and hold their breath for an hour and a half. But even a sperm whale comes up for air, and Dan assures us he has to catch his breath much more often. Teaching online courses can be an all night swim so it’s important to manage your time and not stay underwater too long. You don’t want Anytime, Anywhere to become everywhere, all-the-time.

There’s a new showdown brewing on campus: Team Sync, Team Async, and running as an Independent candidate, Team Self-Paced. Fans of each are sorting themselves out on the sidelines and, I gotta be honest with ya, if Self-Paced wins it will be a Cinderella story for the ages.Like so many conflicts, the adversaries are more similar than different. Look past the uniforms and the grudges and you’ll find the line drawn between them is about as solid as chalk on a playing field.Comparisons of real-time and pre-recorded course delivery options are framed in binary terms, like we do: all together or all on your own. But that’s a false dichotomy. Because, seriously, when was the last time you attended, or taught, a 100% synchronous course, if ever?

Dan's just back from an annual family pilgrimage to Cape Ann on the Massachusetts coast, where spending time with his four-year old grandson means roaming outdoors, digging in the garden, sleeping under the stars, and swimming. Maybe that's why Dan decided this week's topic would be suggestions for swimming in the ocean of online learning.Many faculty, especially those of us who trained in the previous century, have never taken an online course. But it’s never too late to learn to swim, and this summer might be just the time to enroll in an online course as a learner. Dan is thinking about brushing up on his college Italian, or maybe learning how to actually use the expensive digital SLR camera he bought after deciding it was time to transition from film.Regardless of what you'd like to learn, there are plenty of options available for exploring your subject-of-interest, and since becoming an online learner will help you become a better online teacher, you get to call it work while also having some fun!

When you think about it, terminology is a kind of short-hand. Having an established, defined vocabulary allows academic colleagues to discuss their discipline without having to explain what they mean by every technical word they say, every time they say it. So isn’t it odd that,125 years since Wolsey Hall, Oxford, became the first college devoted to the practice, we’re still struggling to agree on what to call teaching and learning that doesn’t take place with everyone together in the same room?

Throughout Season One, our conversations with faculty and program directors have centered on the role of virtual learning communities and our efforts to encourage students to connect with one another. Well, the academic year has ended so you know what that means--time for teacher evaluations! In Wired Ivy’s first ever panel discussion, Dan spoke with a current student and two recent alumni from the online graduate programs we featured this spring: Gonzaga, Johns Hopkins, and University of Florida. During this lively exchange, the learners became the instructors, schooling us with thoughtful suggestions and observations about the online student experience. The panelists were also quick to remind us that for learning communities to thrive, educators need to be active participants, not just spectators observing from the sidelines.The same can be said about the Wired Ivy community. We want to hear your comments, questions, and ideas for future episodes. You can connect with us on LinkedIn, on Twitter @wiredivy, or leave a voice message at speakpipe.com/wiredivy.If you enjoy this podcast, help Wired Ivy grow by sharing, subscribing, rating, and reviewing us on your favorite podcast app. It’s really, truly is the best way to help other online educators find the show and join our virtual salon.

Can a 500-year old teaching philosophy translate to online learning? Saint Ignatius of Loyola articulated a series of spiritual exercises, which became the basis of Jesuit learning. Central to this philosophy are the learner has primary agency in the learning, and the process of discovery and reflection will unsettle old ideas. Isn't unsettling old ideas exactly what innovative online higher education does?Kieran and Dan talk with Michael Carey, chair of the Department of Organizational Leadership in the School of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, from his home in Spokane, Washington. Mike discusses how leadership is learned through an online curriculum. Kieran and Mike also share the importance of communication skills acquired in the online learning process and how they carry over to professional work. And since Mike also served five years as the Dean of the Virtual Campus at Gonzaga, he has plenty of advice about creating online learning communities. If you like this show, if it helps you feel like part of a larger community, please invite friends and colleagues to our virtual salon by sharing, subscribing, rating, and reviewing us on your favorite podcast app. It helps other educators find the show, you are our best ambassadors. We want to hear your comments, questions, and ideas for future episodes. Contact us on LinkedIn, tweet us @wiredivy, or leave a voice message at Speakpipe.com/WiredIvy.

Moving a lecture from face-to-face classroom to virtual conferencing is a pretty straight-forward conversion. That doesn’t mean the switch is seamless or ideal, but it is feasible. Activities that are inherently welded to synchronous delivery in a physical space, like studio and field trips... that’s a different story. Or is it?While we’re on that topic, are online courses welded to the screen or is it possible to think outside the laptop and tablet to provide high quality active learning experiences while also fostering a sense of community among students? Dan explores these and related subjects in his conversation with Thomas Hawkins, Program Director for University of Florida’s Master of Urban and Regional Planning online. Oh, and Socrates makes a cameo appearance to add his take on instructional design.By the way, if you like this show please share with friends and colleagues, and subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcatcher app. Thanks to everyone who’s done this already. It really does help other educators find the show. Also, we’d love to hear your comments, questions, and ideas for future episodes. Share your thoughts and ideas with us by joining our Wired Ivy LinkedIn Group, tweet us @wiredivy, or look for the bright blue tab on the right side of this screen (your choice of desktop, laptop, or mobile device), and click to leave us a voice message — it’s as easy as raising your hand in class.

Now that many institutions have closed the book on their spring term, educators may finally have some time to catch their breath, reflect on the emergency remote instruction experience, and think about how to prepare for various teaching contingencies in the fall. What better time to talk with an experienced educator on the front line of the sudden switch from brick-and-mortar classroom to digital delivery necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic?Our interview with Elisabeth Hamin Infield was recorded on April 10th, about 3 weeks into UMass Amherst's abrupt transition from classroom to cloud, and with about 3 weeks of class remaining in the term.Elisabeth's experiences will likely sound all too familiar to many new-to-online faculty. a What unique challenges has COVID-19 created for you, as an educator, and how are you addressing, or trying to address, those issues?Share your thoughts and ideas with us by joining our Wired Ivy LinkedIn Group, or by tweeting us @wiredivy.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused nearly all higher ed institutions in the U.S. to switch their campus-based courses to remote delivery, and on very short notice. There’s already been quite a lot of media coverage on the challenges this change poses for instructors and institutions. Later in this season of Wired Ivy, we’ll be talking to a friend and colleague about her experiences making that transition from decades of experience as a face-to-face educator to remote delivery, mid-way through the term, and with very little time to prepare. But we felt it would also be instructive to hear a variation on that story... by speaking to Dr. Olivia Marcucci, a newly minted PhD who accepted a full-time faculty position with an online doctoral program in Fall 2019.

The novel coronavirus pandemic is disrupting families, communities, and workplaces everywhere. Famously, it’s disrupting higher education as well. Because for the foreseeable future we cannot gather in groups like classrooms, professors and students involuntarily had to move online. Emergency remote higher education is just that — a quick pivot. Still, we expect many professors adapting to this new reality will welcome lessons from best online practices. In this episode we’ll hear from Wired Ivy’s own Kieran Lindsey, who has been connected to online higher education as a graduate student, instructor, and program director, has seven questions new-to-online faculty should ask before switching their courses to remote instruction.

Last week, Kieran and Dan talked about the value of virtual learning communities to help students and faculty feel engaged and supported. Now we're shifting from theory to practice, sharing some of the things we’ve tried and continue to use in class to help foster learning communities. Listeners, help us make this a conversation by sharing your hits and your misses, asking for suggestions, and brainstorming solutions to challenges others face on our Wired Ivy LinkedIn Group, or by tweeting us @wiredivy.

Dan and Kieran discuss the contribution of online learning communities to better learning outcomes, their benefits and challenges, as well as creative ways to connect and manage virtual groups.

Dr. Kieran Lindsey and Dr. Dan Marcucci have a combined 18 years of experience in the virtual classroom. Dan lives in Pennsylvania, Kieran lives in Missouri, and their online graduate program is based Virginia, so they're quite aware that online faculty and administrative staff can feel pretty isolated. You may have been teaching online for a long time now or relatively new to it. You may have been thinking about a move to online or suddenly find yourself doing it… regardless, you are all welcome in this virtual salon for real academics whose classes are in the cloud instead of on campus.This introductory episode is a chance to explain the Wired Ivy project and to introduce ourselves. It's also our invitation to you to become part of this community and conversation, so let’s connect!