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Meeting Report: UNC System Quality Matters Council Summit, January 31, 2020

Feb 14, 2020 | Meeting Report, News & Insights

The UNC System Quality Matters Council Summit met Friday, January 31, 2020, on the UNC Charlotte Center City Campus. With representatives from most of the UNC System institutions, themes ranged from campus implementation to course design strategies.

The day opened with a warm welcome delivered by UNC Charlotte’s Dr. Garvey Pyke, Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning. He used the city of Charlotte’s recent tremendous growth as a metaphor for the Summit.

Birds of a Feather kicked off the sessions, allowing members to gather and discuss, in an unconference format, issues at their respective institutions. This was followed by two breakout sessions of five sets of presentations each, demonstrating the wealth of knowledge and interest in a variety of topics related to Quality Matters. During lunch, participants were treated to a keynote by Mr. Steve Kaufman, Quality Matters Ohio Consortium, detailing the success of Ohio’s programs. Highlights included the inter-institutional bartering system and incentives created to foster state-wide collaboration.

Recorded archive of keynote: https://tinyurl.com/UNCSystem-QMSummit2020-Keynote

After lunch, an additional breakout session offered another six presentations. Drs. Racheal Brooks and Enoch Park, co-chairs of the Council gave a few brief concluding remarks along with upcoming events. The full program and links to the presenters’ slideshow and additional resources are available at this link: https://teaching.uncc.edu/eventsworkshops/events-workshops/unc-system-quality-matters-council-annual-summit

Pictures from the Summit are available here: https://tinyurl.com/UNCSystem-QMSummit2020-Picture

(Photo Credit: Jules Keith-Le, UNC Charlotte)

Anne Ogg, UNC System QM Council Communication Coordinator

Fall 2018 DLI Working Meeting Outcomes

Nov 28, 2018 | Campus Spotlight, Meeting Report, News & Insights

On October 25th, the UNC System Office hosted a Digital Learning Working Meeting at the Carolina Club in Chapel Hill. Sixteen UNC institutions were present, with more than 60 campus faculty and staff participating, including representatives from each institution’s faculty development center, faculty assembly, and provost offices.

Dr. Joan Lorden, UNC Charlotte Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, led off with an inspiring presentation on The Association of Chief Academic Officers’ (ACAO) Digital Provosts Program.  This was followed by a presentation by Gates Bryant, Partner at Tyton Partners, on the business case research they are conducting for the System.  Dr. Jim Ptaszynski, Vice President for Digital Learning, facilitated group activities related to the development of new faculty roles, professional development and value propositions to support innovations in online learning.  Wrapping up the day was John Falchi, Director of Special Projects, who facilitated a group activity on brainstorming a framework for a two-day Digital Learning Program planned for March 26 and 27, 2019.

The outcomes of this meeting have led to a deeper understanding of adaptive courseware and the implications for System-wide adoption. The spring 2019 DLI Conference will feature follow-up demonstrations and labs related to adaptive learning systems. In addition, a UNC System Working Group will be established to continue to investigate these issues during the second phase of its DLI planning as part of the group’s charge to explore emerging learning technologies and pedagogy.

Participants at the meeting created an instructional, technological, and support services framework for faculty teaching online that will be used to guide the System-wide digital learning initiative and focus on serving the North Carolina underserved student personas. We are currently fleshing-out the  DRAFT faculty persona framework and will post it to the DLI Blog shortly.

Working in small groups, participants identified many great ideas for the Spring 2019 DLI Conference tracks, demonstrations, labs, and topics, with an emphasis on interactive sessions that highlight emerging learning technology case studies and hands-on (“petting zoo”) experiences. This input will be used by the DLI Conference Committee to design a request for presentation proposals (System-wide and vendor) and associated requirements. 

-John

Meeting Students' Needs at WSSU

by Eli Collins-Brown, Ed.D.

Quality Matters at NCCSU

by Rachael Brooks, Ph.D.

Microsoft HoloLens Team – AR\VR\Mixed Reality – Creating the University of the Future

Oct 31, 2018 | Meeting Report

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had a very interesting, and promising, meeting with the HoloLens team at Microsoft last week. Parenthetically, it was a nostalgic visit for me, as the meeting was in Building #6…the first of about a dozen buildings that were my home away from home during my 20 years at Microsoft.

I must admit, up until this point in time, I had been rather dubious about the value of augmented and virtual reality.  This has mostly been caused by a lack of pedagogical content available for use on HoloLens or any of the other mainstream VR platforms that I’ve experimented with.

My meeting with the HoloLens team gave me my first real glimpse of how VR might soon be a viable tool in education. While it still may not be ready for prime time today, I do believe it has turned a corner and should be considered for our Digital Learning Initiative.

Here are some education videos that Microsoft shared with me.  I think that they are very compelling, especially, the healthcare videos.  They are well worth a watch.

-Jim