Learning Spaces & Communities

The evidence of the impact of the environments in which students learn and instructors teach has been growing considerably over the past decade. The places and spaces of learning and teaching – whether physical, virtual, or blended, formal or informal, fixed or mobile – create both affordances and limitations on the cognitive, affective, creative, and procedural aspects of our educational endeavors. This track welcomes submissions that explore the impact of learning environments, broadly construed, on teaching practices and student learning outcomes using a range of research methodologies (e.g. case study, longitudinal comparisons, within group comparisons, quasi-experimental, etc.) and employ rigorous approaches to the analysis of supporting data, qualitative or quantitative. Suggestions include:

• What are the most important features of learning spaces and environments for enhancing and improving student learning? How do the spaces improve or hinder learning, facilitate or disrupt the learning process, and strengthen or weaken student interaction?
• Are some pedagogical approaches and learning activities more conducive to some learning environments and not others?
• What learning objects, exercises, and approaches work best in different types of learning spaces?
• How do students and instructors navigate and manage their learning experiences between learning digital learning environments and physical classroom spaces?
• Is it important to alter one’s pedagogical approach to accommodate the space or environment in which it is being taught? Why or why not?

Open and Accessible Learning

This track will explore three key issues in online and blended learning: openness, accessibility, and affordability. It invites papers which share evidence and practice through discussion of these issues in relation to Open Educational Resources, OpenCourseWare, Open Textbooks, MOOCs, Open Practice or relevant topics of your choice. This year a focus on the impact of these issues and topics on the learner’s experience is encouraged. Suggestions include:

• Which emerging open practices work in everyday instruction? How open is open?
• What evidence-based practices exist concerning the inventive uses of open content or open content adoption to improve outcomes in learning, accessibility, affordability, faculty satisfaction, or student satisfaction?
• What tools do we have to evaluate the sustainable impact of emerging trends in openness, accessibility, and affordability?
• What benefits, risks, and costs are there for an institution in using open content?
• What emerging practices or technologies can make credentialed education more affordable today?

Please note, it is the intent of this track to have a balanced program to promote the discussion of how these three issues intersect.

Evidence-based Learning

• How can analytics be woven into the fabric of student and course assessment to provide holistic views of student learning? How can analytics assist learning in technical disciplines? What are ways to best teach the use of analytics online?
• What examples do we have of effective electronic portfolio practices? Performance assessment practices? How are electronic portfolios best integrated into learning and institutional practices?
• What technologies best support “evidence-based learning” and what significance does this hold for the future of education?
• How can institutions use analytics culled from learning platforms to enhance learning and teaching practices? What role do MOOCs play in informing and changing the culture of learning and assessment?
• How can we effectively and holistically analyze student learning data? What is the role of our analyses in decision-making and in the design of learning experiences? How might our analyses change the structures and roles within our institutions?

• How have the myriad new applications and technologies affected student, faculty and staff support systems and models?
• How do we know what technology to adopted?
• What best practices exist in the development and support of faculty in STEM fields including mathematics, engineering, technology and science topics?
• What type of instructional delivery works best for faculty? for students? How should faculty development efforts be evaluated?
• What are creative and cost effective applications of technology for student, staff and faculty development and training, library, academic and student support services?

This track is especially for practitioners to share information about using media and tools for specific learning objectives, to explain results of media studies, and to describe inventive approaches.  Suggestions include:

• Which emerging technologies make sense for use in everyday instruction?
• Which emerging technologies make sense for use in STEM instruction?
• What is the evidence that inventive uses of media and tools really improve outcomes in learning, accessibility, affordability, faculty satisfaction, or student satisfaction?
• How can we use mobile learning to reinforce what we teach? How can social networking tools be used in your classes?
• What types of tools do we have for valid student assessment?