OLC, Campus Tech, and GaETC Fall Conference Tour

It sure has been a fun few weeks here at ProctorFree! The Fall Conference Circuit has treated us well and we’ve had an absolute ball meeting so many inspiring educators. Most recently we went on a whirlwind 2-week tour. From Orlando to Chicago to Atlanta, from University Vice-Presidents to elementary school teachers, from OLC to Campus Tech to GaETC, from taquerias to Shake Shack, we have seen our fair share in just two weeks.

Online Learning Consortium (former the conference known as Sloan-C)

Most recently we exhibited and presented at OLC’s 20^th Annual Conference. OLC is kind of like the 800-pound gorilla of conferences. OLC is kind of like a “Who’s Who” for online learning. OLC is kind of like if Mickey Mouse and Halloween teamed up to host an online education conference – because that actually happened! What made this so cool was that not only was the conference during Halloween, but it was also at Disney World! This brings such a fun vibe to this conference; everyone is generally happier – full of that Disney Magic. Jeff Kaplan, our Director of Partner Relations, presented “one of my more entertaining presentations”, in his own words. The title of this presentation is Reducing Stress for Test Success.

“I like presenting on this topic because I personally had lots of test anxiety as a student. In this presentation I talk about my personal coping mechanisms and discuss how they can be implemented class-wide through test design. The tie-in for this conference is that through intentional product development the proctoring software can also reduce the stress of the online test taker, allowing them to perform better on their exam. We showcase this primarily through design followed by messaging and infographics.”

Campus Technology Fall Forum

Next, Jeff jetted off to Chicago for Campus Tech’s Fall Forum. This was Campus Tech’s first ever Fall Forum and we were honored to be included in the speaker line-up. This presentation is a hybrid talk about hybrids. In Jeff’s previous career he was a social media marketer, so when he was a teaching assistant at the University of Florida he (along with the instructional team) incorporated social media marketing practices into the course to build a cohesive culture in a hybrid course. The benefits of having a strong classroom culture are numerous; primarily they include higher engagement and students find the content personally meaningful. Social media can positively impact the class culture and unify students who only engage with each other solely in an LMS for required posts and mandatory discussions. It turns the content into something they can find enrichment in, on their own terms and in their own time.

GaETC

The last stop on the tour was Atlanta, Georgia for GaETC (The Georgia Educational Technology Conference). OK, I won’t lie to you. The best part of the trip was going to The Original Dwarf House A.K.A. the first ever Chick-Fil-A! The conference was great…but these Chicken and Waffles, whoa momma.

This was the largest regionally based conference the ProctorFree team has exhibited and presented at this year. The exhibit hall alone was bonkers. And Jeff’s presentation was a blast! This presentation is based on a blog post we wrote on the POLE Method to increase engagement for online students by destroying lectures. This is a highly interactive workshop – and the attendees really delivered. A big part of this session is demonstrating how to redesign courses for the online space. Instead of just recording lectures and posting them online with required postings periodically – this session forces you to destroy this structure.

The season cools off from here. We’ll be at the SACSOC conference in December in Nashville so if you want to chat, look us up. You can always follow along where we travel because we live tweet all of our sessions we attend and always add some fun commentary from the conferences themselves. Hope to see you at a session soon!

P.S. You can view the slides from Jeff’s presentation at LinkedIn.com/In/Jeffdude.