Planning My Schedule For OLC Accelerate

U T A with star in the center, used when staff photo is unavailable

by Martin Wallace
November 13 2016

It took me hours to figure out a schedule for the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Accelerate Conference coming up next week in Orlando. This is without a doubt the most daunting and frustrating conference schedule I’ve ever seen. They are cramming in way too many concurrent sessions making it impossible to attend all the sessions that I want. For example, there are over 40 concurrent session on the 16th between 12:00-12:45! Four of those are sessions that I would love to be able to attend, but I can only chose one. I am exasperated by the idea that they are providing over 540 sessions in a two and a half day conference.

Anyway, after hours and hours of slogging through the seemingly endless schedule I finally opted to stick to the Technology Test Kitchen track with only one exception. The TTK sessions will all be held in the same location, so I won’t have to rush around trying to find rooms and wearing myself out. But more than just a matter of convenience, it seems the TTK sessions provide a diverse range of session types, including presentations, hands-on activities, tinkering with new technologies, networking, brainstorming, and design sessions. From this mix I will get many little glimpses into a wide range of things.

I’ll also be attending the session: “Using the 4C/ID Model in CBE: Designing Based on Learning Tasks” which provides a framework for designing competencies-based courses that scaffold domain knowledge, professional communication, leadership and decision making into the learning activities. This is relevant to the work I am conducting as the Maker Literacies Librarian at UT Arlington Libraries, which is all about competencies-based curriculum design. I hope to gain ideas and understanding about effective curriculum design for incorporating those four important competencies in a variety of domains.

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