Into the fall: upcoming video conversations
This spring and summer the Future Trends Forum explored many issues surrounding the upcoming academic year in an extraordinary time.
Now it’s still summer, but the fall term is drawing closer, and we have a whole series of guests and programs lined up to explore how that could play out, and what we can do.
(You can sign up for weekly announcements right here)
July 30, 2–3 pm EDT: How can we improve our online teaching? We’ll meet with professor James Lang, author of Small Teaching (publisher; our bookstore) and co-author of Small Teaching Online (publisher; bookstore). Lang focuses on “small, manageable changes we could make to our teaching that would have a significant positive impact on student learning.”
August 6, 2–3 pm EDT: How can we facilitate the best possible videoconference experience? I’m delighted to host Nancy White, one of the world’s greatest gurus on holding awesome webinars and synchronous classes.
August 13, 2–3 pm EDT: What are the best ways to balance academic work and life for faculty, students, and staff? Our guest will be Rebecca Pope-Ruark, of Agile Faculty. She will explore her research and practice.
August 20, 2–3 pm EDT: when and how can we rethink and reshape liberal education? We’ll meet with some editors of and contributors to the new book Redesigning Liberal Education: Innovative Design for a Twenty-First-Century Undergraduate Education (ed. William Moner, Phillip Motley, and Rebecca Pope-Ruark)
August 27, 2–3 EDT: How can American higher education succeed, given its sprawling disorganization? The new book A Perfect Mess makes the case that this chaos is precisely the strength of United States colleges and universities. We are unusually free to experiment, innovate, fail, and advance. We’ll meet with its author, David F. Labaree, the Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emeritus, at Stanford University.
September 3, 2–3 pm EDT: What role do accrediting agencies play in shaping the future of higher education? What can these underappreciated groups accomplish? We will meet with Sonny Ramaswamy, president of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, to learn.
September 10, 2–3 pm EDT: How are Asian American women scholars changing higher education? How will they shape the future of colleges and universities, research and teaching? We will address these questions with Kieu Linh, Caroline Valverde, and Wei Ming Dariotis, creators and editors of the new book Fight The Tower.
September 24, 2–3 pm EDT: What is the HyFlex method of teaching online and in person at the same time? How are or might colleges and universities apply it this fall? We will meet with professor Brian Beatty, the inventor of HyFlex, to learn and explore. We’d also love to hear your stories of using HyFlex as an instructor, students, or staff member!
Speaking of HyFlex, In June we welcomed professor Beatty to our most widely attended Forum so far, and are delighted to host him once more.
Who else appeared on the Forum this summer? As always, we post just about every recording to our YouTube playlist.
My thanks to these great guests and the awesome Forum community for building up fine conversation together.
