Jump into Brightspace Tutorials & More During NDLW: Nov. 7-11

National Distance Learning Week

National Distance Learning Week – November 7-11, 2022
SUNY Online is pleased to host and showcase the following dynamic presentations in celebration of National Distance Learning Week (NDLW) 2022. National Distance Learning Week, sponsored by the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA), is hosted annually with a virtual, week-long series of webinars meant to:

  • generate greater awareness and appreciation for distance learning;
  • discuss current issues and emerging trends;
  • highlight best practices;
  • recognize leaders in the field.

Webinar slides and recordings will be listed below each session. Registration is open! Click here for details: https://sunycpd.eventsair.com/so-ndlw-22/reg

Monday – November 7, 2022 
Time: 11:00-11:45AM
Title: Student Perspective in Brightspace
Presenter: Dan Barrancotta, Genesee Community College
Description: A presentation to help instructors learn more about the student experience in Brightspace to help improve instructional design.

See Brightspace through the eyes of a student!  Learn about:

  •       Brightspace student navigation
  •       Brightspace features for students
  •       Student view of feedback and grades
  •       Barriers to successful completion of online courses for students
  •       What are students looking for from online courses and instructor

Monday – November 7, 2022
Time: 12:00-12:45PM
Title: Success Course for GCC Students
Presenter: Loy Gross, Genesee Community College
Description: Discover how one campus leveraged content on the best practices of successful college students as a vehicle to explore the Brightspace student environment with dramatic results. The Success Course for GCC Students launched in May 2022 along with our full slate of summer courses in Brightspace, introducing the LMS, best practices, student supports, and college resources to our learners. This virtual presentation includes a breakdown of the course map, brief tour of the course, and Q&A session to give attendees an opportunity to further explore aspects of the course relevant to their needs.


Tuesday – November 8, 2022
Time: 10:00-10:45AM
Title: Quick Ways to Enhance Enjoyment and Create a Personal Connection to Online Students
Presenter: Jennifer Shloming, Fashion Institute of Technology
Description: A brief look at quick and free tools I utilize to better connect to online students and create a fun, learning environment. I believe instructors will enjoy themselves while students will feel welcomed and supported by their teachers who go a step further to incorporate a piece of themselves into their course(s).


Tuesday – November 8, 2022
Time: 11:00-11:45AM
Title: Learner collaborations in the classroom and beyond: Voyant and Perusall
Presenter: Lisa Unangst – Empire State College
Description: As course instructors and mentors consider ways to engage learners with class material and research activities, two tools may be especially helpful: Perusall, an interactive annotation tool, and Voyant, an open access platform that has facilitated many digital humanities projects through data visualization. This presentation offers examples of how these tools may be employed and space for participants to consider together how cross-campus collaboration could be engaged.


Tuesday – November 8, 2022
Time: 12:00-12:45PM
Title: Supporting Online Course Quality Through a LMS Conversion Process
Presenter: Jennifer Nettleton, Empire State College
Description: Come learn about SUNY Empire’s Learning Management System (LMS) Conversion process from Moodle to Brightspace. The conversion process was an evolutionary task that encompassed the expertise and assistance from several college departments. Attendees will learn about SUNY Empire’s process through the conversion and receive helpful documents to make the process simplified.


Tuesday – November 8, 2022
Time: 1:00-1:45PM
Title: Introducing Digital Humanities and OER Tools and Models for Local and Global Narrative Mapping for use in the Online or Blended Classrooms
Presenter: Jean Amato, Fashion Institute of Technology
Description: With a focus on collaborative online pedagogical materials, templates and assignments, this presentation introduces simple digital tools, map-based methodologies, and community-based or global OER resources, that are easily integrated and adapted across disciplines. My goal is to put digital tools directly into the hands of students as they collaborate to create open-source materials and class content by drawing on ways to easily integrate practices already use in our classrooms, such as simple, map-based tools like students’ own cell phones; and widely available mapping technologies like Padlet and Google Earth. Students can create and share intertextual stories, easily embedded into curriculum while helping them visualize their own biases, context, under-examined layers of affiliations, and intersectional relationships. I will demonstrate sample OL assignments, resources, activities, and OER map-based classroom templates that can be shared, and easily replicated. I will also briefly provide a list of suggested resources that include:

  1. The community-based, digital radical mapping projects that subvert conventional notions of cartography such as:  the Laundromat Project; Indigenous Mapping Workshop.
  2. The international, place-based, OER story mapping project, Stories In Place and MOMI (Maps Of Myth and Imagination)
  3. Global, curated digital-mapping journalistic projects, The Maps that Made You, and How 2020 Remapped Your Worlds and Your Year in Trauma, where readers submitted homemade maps to share perspectives and stories of homes and communities transformed by Covid-19.
  4. NYC online museum resources such as The Tenement Museum, Urban Archive, Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), Brownsville Heritage House and Museum at Eldridge Street, to share educational activities that center around digital walking tours, curated digital archives of oral histories, digital walking tours, or historic photos.
  5. OER projects such the Tenement Museum’s, Your Story Our Story (an OER archive of crowd-sourced stories of everyday objects, where instructors can design individual assignments for specific classes or encourage students to eventually contribute content directly to the OER web project.

Wednesday – November 9, 2022
Time: 11:00-11:45AM
Title: Naked Teaching Online: Embracing Low-tech High-touch RSI
Presenter: Andrea Nikischer, Buffalo State College
Description: Building on the work of Jose Bowen (2012) and to meet the federal requirements for Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI), an argument will be made for smaller, slower online courses, which focus on low-tech high-touch instructor-student interactions, deep critical reflection, and high-level writing skills. Examples of “naked” RSI will be provided.


Wednesday – November 9, 2022
Time: 1:00-1:45PM
Title: SUNY Exploring Emerging Technologies for Lifelong Learning and Success (#EmTechMOOC)
Presenters: Roberta (Robin) Sullivan, University at Buffalo and EmTech Team
Description: The State University of New York (SUNY) has launched “Exploring Emerging Technologies for Lifelong Learning and Success” (#EmTechMOOC) is an online learning opportunity to enhance 21st-century skills, including communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. Participants in this free online learning opportunity explore established and emerging technology tools for career and personal advancement. Attend this session to learn how this voluntary learning opportunity has impacted learners from across the globe.

Since January 2018, 33,000 learners from across 150+ countries have participated to learn about the value and implications of using emerging technologies. Come to this session to learn about what’s new in #EmTechMOOC. Learn more and enroll: http://suny.edu/emtech


Wednesday – November 9, 2022
Time:  2:00-2:45PM
Title: Brightspace Quick Course Review
Presenters: Dan Barrancotta, Genesee Community College
Description: With the migration to Brightspace there may not be time for every course to receive a full course review.  At SUNY GCC we have implemented an abbreviated course review that highlights 10 essential items to ensure each course is ready for instruction in Brightspace.


Thursday – November 10, 2022
Time: 10:00-10:45AM
Title: Teaching Hyflex History for Social Justice and Civic Engagement
Presenter: Nicole Childrose, Columbia-Greene Community College
Description: This interactive presentation will explore how select history courses migrated to Hyflex modality to increase student engagement, diversify curricular offerings, and enrich the student learning experience at Columbia-Greene Community College. As an early adopter of the Hyflex modality, Associate Professor of History Dr. Childrose will explore how challenges were navigated using limited resources, innovative technology, and teamwork to deliver history courses intentionally designed to engage diverse students.

Course artifacts, examples of activities, assessments, and comparisons between other modalities will be part of the dialogue and conversation in this session that emphasizes the importance of student-centered source design and achievement of learning outcomes.


Thursday – November 10, 2022
Time: 11:00-11:45AM
Title: Easy & Hidden things to Spice up your Brightspace Course!
Presenter: Dave Ghidiu, Finger Lakes Community College
Description: A quick showcase of some cool things Computing Science faculty at FLCC are doing in Brightspace. If you have something novel or cool that you’re doing, bring it to show!


Thursday – November 10, 2022
Time: 1:00-1:45PM
Title: Leveraging Panopto (Screen Recorder) for Feedback and Reflection
Presenter: Rachel Rigolino, SUNY New Paltz
Description: Many faculty use Panopto—or other screen casting tools—to create lectures for their online students and/or require students to create their own videos for specific projects. While leveraging Panopto in this way goes far to foster regular and substantive interaction, the software can also be used to provide meaningful feedback in both online and seated classes. In this presentation, a writing instructor demonstrates how she uses Panopto in all her classes, across modalities. She will focus on how to insert Panopto into Brightspace and share student reactions to this type of feedback.


Friday – November 11, 2022
Time:  11:00-11:45AM
Title: Reframing Remote Course Delivery in a Get-Back-to-the-Classroom World
Presenters: Mária I. Cipriani, SUNY Old Westbury
Description: A Shakespeare play produced in a theater is much differently scripted and produced than a Shakespearean play on film. Students deserve the best possible learning environment, and trying to mimic a “theater” environment on a screen does not produce the best learning environment. Online classes, which were being introduced and debated before the Covid pandemic, were set back during Covid. This talk invites rethinking the idea of online classes in a get-back-to-the-campus environment.


Follow the NDLW hashtag on Twitter for other terrific learning engagements from institutions and organizations around the globe, such as events hosted by USDLA.

We hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to learn from each other and support your peers!

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