» [Spring Workshop 2014] Summary Feedback

As is our practice post-event, we are sharing the feedback of the ETUG Spring 2014 with you. We’ve received 30 responses so far. If you did not get a chance to provide your feedback yet, please feel free to submit your comments now. And if you have additional comments or ideas for ETUG, please send a note to [see etug.ca for contact info]/. We appreciate all your input in helping us to continuously improve our workshops and member activities.

How many years have you attended ETUG Workshops?

What did you think of the theme for this workshop? “20/20: Reflecting on the Past and Looking to the Future”

On average, were the sessions too short, too long or the right length?

What did you think of the food at the workshop?

Please provide a comment or two on the workshop sessions. What stood out for you? What could be improved?

What stood out for you?

ETUG has been a very useful venue for sharing best practices in Ed Tech. One thing that sets apart ETUG from other conferences is the fact that participants are all practitioners in their field so it’s a valuable venue for exchanging lessons learned and getting support.

Excellent presenters, well prepared, smart! Keynote was amazing
The variety in the sessions was really good this time around–a good mix of practical and theoretical stuff.
Lots of expert this year
Loved the workshop by Brian and Jason. However, sadly I couldn’t attend another workshop at the same time. But nothing you can do…that’s just how conference work.
The workshop sessions were excellent – Lots of sharing between peers. Interesting topics, and people excited about sharing their knowledge.
Every session I attended was pretty great!
All of the workshops I attended were of value. Every presenter was well prepared and brought the right blend of personal experience with sharing of ideas.
I really enjoyed the teaching stuff, many new ideas to try!
The ones I happened to attend were mostly just presentations with little interaction except some questions at the end. I like ones that involve more activity on the part of the audience. But a mix of both is just fine too!
They all appeared to be well attended, which is nice for the presenters
Well organized, a good variety of sessions.
Friendly, relaxed tone.
Practical element combined with theory–good.
I know it’s a good workshop when I can’t decide between two, and often all three, of the sessions!
I thought there were some creative and inspirational sessions this year. It seemed like many of them had put some thought into the ‘flair’ and presentation of the talk. I blame Paul Stacey for raising the bar so high! 🙂

What could be improved?

Most workshops were great! hands-on, reflective, engaging. One was a lecture format which quite frankly does not interest me at all anymore. However it made me realize why the lecture/PPT presentation format is dead and should be abandoned.

I really liked the Maker Culture theme as a lens to view many elements of our practice (teaching, technology, theory and practice). There were some great ideas generated and I hope the facilitators who were trying to capture this stuff can aggregate. For example, at Esther Tiessen’s session there were many good ideas generated about “post-LMS” functions and features that we might want to build on.
I find some of the facilitators had technical problems (esp with Mac ) so double checking with the technical equipment can help
The other presenters told me that they felt that any session by Brian Lamb will always be a popularity contest and the other sessions would be poorly attended.
The sessions were really good. I guess a few more seats for some of them.
The rooms were a little over-capacity and much too warm most of the time.
Sessions were very good. There were a lot of long breaks which was good given the distance to travel at times, but I’m not sure I needed 40 minutes after the keynote.
I found that the “think” sessions were my favourite. But, the session times were a little short to delve into the subjects to get a discussion going as much as I would’ve liked.
I so wish I would have attended the session on Privacy. I was disappointed to find out that it wasn’t recorded.
It would be great if some of the younger presenters received some type of mentorship before the conference. Seasoned presenters were clear, concise and moved material in a thoughtful engaging manner. One, obviously new presenter, could have used some support before the session. Just a dry run with feedback could have helped immensely.
Other than a slight technology glitch in one of my sessions (at SoilX session), everything went smoothly.
It would have been helpful to have abstracts of each of the workshops; some of the titles were not descriptive enough.
Somewhere there were longer descriptions, but somehow I didn’t find them in the schedule.

What was your favorite thing(s) about the workshop?

It was good there were a lot of faculty attending the first day – isn’t this our dream? To have meaningful engagement, not just with our peers, but with faculty!
ETUG workshops are like family reunions… love them!

The sheer number of great presentations that included the audience.
Nice balance of topics and interesting keynote.
collegiality
Schmoozing, Paul’s Jeopardy, examples of facilitating active ideation in many of the workshops.
awesome facilitators!
Reconnecting with ex-clients and colleagues from other institutions to share and learn
I appreciate ETUG workshops because they have the spirit of peers sharing with each other. People are approachable and helpful, and eager to share what they’ve learned with others.
I liked everything about it – the size, the topics, the interactivity, the timing (good amount of break time to talk to colleagues etc.)
Usually I’m not a plenary session fan, but this year’s was great!! 🙂
Friendly, welcoming peers.
The keynote, ETUG jeopardy and the sessions.
Networking/connecting with fellow ETUGers.
the keynote speaker.
chatting with others doing distance (work in far north…)
No favorite workshop, variety was really important!
I enjoyed meeting people from other institutions that are passionate about online learning.
I love eTug, the passion of the presenters and the participants, and the chance to reconnect. It’s my tribe.
I enjoyed the boldness of the presentation style of Brian Lamb.
workshop content
Topics were varied, which gave me exposure to new areas of edtech.
The networking
Meeting great people doing interesting things, getting new ideas for what I might do in my teaching.
the people and the time to chat with colleagues
Meeting new people.
Meeting other EdTech folks from around the province.
That it was welcoming and that the sessions were worthwhile (that is, I was learning something I could apply). But, really it was the friendly atmosphere before/during/after that I found most striking.
The variety and quality of sessions, the Jeopardy game, and the final song!
I’m slightly biased here but I enjoyed the closing plenary. It ended things off with a bang! and was impressed by the participatory nature of the activity.

What was your favorite session and why?

No favorite workshop, variety was really important!

Fostering a Culture of innovation through a faculty learning community was excellent!
Keynote, because it was way over my head and it was great to feel challenged
Paul Hibbit’s session on developing in the open was inspiring — his enthusiasm is contagious. Liked hearing about the BCOER group and their great work.
Really enjoyed the Dr. Maker – opened my eyes to thinks I had not considered
Paul Hibbit’s Hibbitts Design (Developing a Course in the Open) – He comes from User Experience/Interface + Teaching background, which is very rare. He was very inspiring + lots of energy in his presentation.
Michael Minions, Okanagan College (Model Technology Enhanced Classrooms) – His use of humor in the presentation is awesome + His presentation was nice and concise.
Hands on session –> toolbox. Got lots of new apps to play with and investigate. Great sharing!!
oh gosh, I liked them all. Brian Lamb made me think, Kelly Warnock helped us get our hands on some cool tools, and Michael Minions was very engaging!
The keynote was great. I really liked all of the sessions I attended. Good topics, good presenters, good amount of interaction.
Brian Lamb and Jason Toal – great presentation and great content.
I loved Michael Minions classroom of the future – I love the format of case study presentations – it’s great to see what other people have done and how you could learn from their mistakes.
keynote plus Michael Minions: Awesome presenters with innovative ideas and innovations to play with.
Hard to choose – Paul Hibbits session on open course design was great. I also really enjoyed Capilano College’s session on Faculty Learning Communities. Jentery Sayers’ keynote was also very interesting as was his breakout session.
I had a few favourites: Brian Lamb’s session, Jessica Motherwell’s and the Keynote. All were engaging and made gave me inspiration for the future…
the first session in room 215
Digital Toolbox, as it was an opportunity to share and play.
I liked the interactivity of the Faculty Learning Circles.
FIPPA in a Big Data Post-privacy world
SoilX was interesting. It showed (hands-on) how a learning tool is used.
Paul Hibbitts presentation not only for his approach to an open process but also his presentation style!
i got something out of all of them
The one by Paul Hibbits about doing course planning in the open, because it just makes so much sense and I never thought about it before. Why not make the planning as well as the teaching open? I just plan by myself, in my office, but there’s no need for me to toil away without feedback!
Michael Minions’ session, since there were lots of great tips to apply to my practice.
Brian’s presentation was a very important and timely subject that we all need to understand and consider in our work and life.
Social Media in the Classroom: Talk about Learning!
Brian Lamb’s FIPPa session – it was engaging, creative, and delivered information all in one package
Too close to call … I guess Ken Jeffrey’s session may have edged my other favourites because of the discussion it prompted from some of the ed-tech “heavyweights” in attendance (no, I’m not making fun of Brian’s weight).
Sadly, biased here again. The one I was in was my fav because it was loud. Brian was on fire that day, and having a chance to “perform” this talk with him was a great experience.

What did you think of the workshop venue?

Awesome
It was great to have a chance to visit Langara –it’s a great campus. I enjoyed the tour of the learning commons.
Rooms were a bit small and no air, but heh, it still worked. Too bad about all the noise frequently coming from the other side of the black curtains.
Langara College is a very nice venue. It’s also close to Skytrain so it’s very convenient.
Location wise, it was convenient for me. It was “ok” not great not bad.
Venue was good. I appreciated the free parking.
It was okay. There were a lot of distracting background noises during the keynote.
Good
It was terrific! I liked that the two areas were a bit of a walk apart – got to get outside and get a bit of a stretch!
The venue was disappointing. The room for the plenary sessions – being a curtained-off portion of a busy cafeteria – just didn’t work, especially for the first morning keynote/plenary. Room L215 especially was stuffy and airless. Thank goodness you put up signs because I would have been completely lost the first day trying to find the right room!
It was just okay. Having the food in a different building was a bit inconvenient but understandable. Strangely, the washroom smelled like an outhouse one day and I found it a weird kind of campus in ways.
The venue was great.
I enjoyed seeing a new campus.
Great!
I liked it!
Worked just fine, except the breakout rooms were a little small for some of the sessions I attended.
Great! It worked well and it was central.
Perhaps the entire workshop could be held at one location (i.e. Riverrock conference centre)? Langara’s facilities were adequate, but it seemed that there wasn’t an actual conference centre or boardroom. We may have intruded on the students’ space!
Nice venue– even enjoyed walking to and fro library to get exercise.
Fine
great!
Good!
The venue for individual sessions were great but the Cafeteria was a bit noisy for the planetary sessions. Having said I think the organizers did a great job in using available resources.
Great venue – centrally located, nice facilities.
Langara has a very nice campus.
Convenient for me as I live in Vancouver.
Langara did an admirable job for a small urban campus. Food was a bit cafeteria-style, but the campus was great. I had a student stop me and ask about the 20/20 logo and several students answered my questions. A welcoming atmosphere!
Langara is a gorgeous campus, and we lucked out with decent weather.

If you attended the ETUG pub on Wednesday at Lulu’s Lounge and/or the Thursday posters & dinner in the River Rock, what did you think of the food, venue and overall experience?

Very good food. would have liked the poster room to be in same room as drinks and appies to create a more social vibe. the poster room was a bit unwieldy.

The River Rock was a good venue – I really liked the poster session. But the fact it was such a different venue from the main event I think was problematic. Also it should have started earlier? I think we lost some people who had to clear out their stuff from Langara, went home, and then didn’t return to the River Rock.
River Rock was excellent, poster session, set up, food and overall fabulous!
Sorry, couldn’t attend the social.
well, a $9 beer really puts constraint on whooping it up.
The food was really great.
Posters are very inspiring too.
The venue is pretty good, it’s close to skytrain.
Dinner was great. Best food of the whole conference.
The food at the river rock was better than at Langara, although nothing to complain about. The evening sessions were a great opportunity to network with others, and socialize a bit. I liked the dinner on Thursday, because it felt like we had our own space.
River Rock… food was good… drinks were too expensive… staff were meh.
River Rock was a much better venue than I thought it would be!! Food was great, service was great, facility was great.
good ambience at the River Rock. I could not eat the food (nearly every item had dairy and/or wheat)
Great venue! The poster sessions were very lively and the dinner was great.
the poster session was not situated well – it was separated from the food which I think prevented some people from wandering through…
Dinner at the River Rock was great.
food was very good at RR, did not attend pub
It was unfortunate the poster’s were not at the conference venue, you loose people in transit.
River rock was great the drinks were a bit steep though.
Could of had more posters/exhibits at the Riverrock on Thur night. River Rock was an amazing venue and the food was spectacular. Lulu Lounge was a wonderful, casual environment to “break the ice”.
Food was very good at the dinner. The pub night at Lulu’s Lounge was a bit surreal, walking through all those machines, the lights and sounds, etc. Once there it was basically fine, even though the drinks were pretty expensive!
having food was great however the dinner food at the buffet could have been better.
It was all good, although not a lot of opportunity to mingle at the pub night.
Could not attend. 🙁
Quality of food on Thursday was AMAZING, outstanding, delicious, fabulous. Poster session was good–lots of time to chat with presenters. Again, good atmosphere.
The good: the posters and dinner in the conference facilities!
The bad: the food and noise (other than us) at pub night!
The ugly: being in a casino … that was just weird!

For 2014-2015, what sort of activities would you like to see from ETUG?

For 2014-2015, what themes, topics, workshop formats (e.g. online or unconference) would you like to see happen or explored?

There were many workshops that we did at Langara that could form a semi-permanenet theme and continue to build on them (FIPPA progress, post-LMS, learning design-on-the-fly, etc.).
I want to see some of the workshop that I have missed in online.
For example, if it is video-recorded, and uploaded in a private/open URL, I would be able to see the workshops that I missed. I think even ipad recordings will work well.
I would like to see “future trends” in ed tech.
Also, learn more about how to motivate/engage students in tech tools.
Also, more about “attractive” alternatives to the “tempting but inappropriate” use of Facebook in the classroom.
Also, more about voice tools.
Some creative brainstorming and discussion on the ideas behind online learning concepts – and how it could potentially evolve.
moving from F2F to blended, tips and tricks
Online conference on classroom learning tools (i.e in sciences, math, social sciences).
I can’t always make the F2F meetings, so having some online things would be useful to me.
Make or Break (couldn’t resist)
Low budget innovation
Flying by the seat of your pants innovation
Use of merging media and transmedia storytelling in education.
In Kelly Warnock’s session, we all edited her wiki by adding our favourite edtech tool and a brief description for instructors and students at TRU. Harnessing that collaborative power in a workshop-wide wiki next time could create an interesting resource. The backchannel on Twitter was great to follow and contribute to, so sharing those insights in wiki form might work too.
More on performance, creativity, and art.

Do you have any suggestions for a great campus destination for a future ETUG workshop? Venue for a Pub night or Meetup?

The centre for Digital Media at GMW
UBC
Vancouver Science World.
The Beedie School of Business at SFU
Emily Carr
SFU Centre for Digital Media on Great Northern Way
VCC Broadway (in their new building)
NVIT in the old OLA building in Burnaby.
Kelowna up next!

Please use this space to give us ANY feedback about the Spring Workshop. We really want to hear from you!

Well done! I’ll be back.

Excellent ETUG Spring 2014 – congrats to all who worked so hard to pull this off – one of the better ETUGs IMHO.
The catering was awful at Langara. The food was awful, coffee and hot water was always out and not filled up right away. Been to many of these events and it has never been as bad before.
It was confusing where networking breaks were. We went to the cafeteria and no one was around and no one told us it was in another building.
Like the Keynote. Theme was really fun!
Thank you Leva and team for making another successful conference.
Great job, everyone!
I am happy to showcase education-related apps on the iPad if there is an interest.
It was very good.
The kick off speaker was interesting to me, but I do have a PHD and like those abstract concepts… many around my table were lost
Stay awesome!
Great conference. Loved the approachability of the presenter, etc.
Overall, well organized, a job well done!
Very interesting keynote, although some context and application might have helped.
You did an amazing job! Thank you! Let me know if I can help.
We appreciate Leva Lee’s help in our registration. Also, ETUG’s website was easy to use to get the schedule and presenter bios, etc.
It was great! Loved my first ETUG
I missed Brian Lamb’s session but heard it was fabulous. Is there any access to it online?
Had a great time as usual, ETUG is by far my favorite professional community.
Langara’s was just awful even if you had no special preferences or allergies. And sure the River Rock food was good, but I couldn’t eat most of it there or at Langara because I’m dairy-intolerant. Nice job. Appreciate all the hard work that goes into organizing these events.