» [Fall Workshop 2019] ETUG Webinars

Contributed by Emily Schudel, Chair, ETUG Stewardship Committee

It’s been a little over a month, but the ETUG Stewardship Committee has been spending a lot of time reflecting on our first-ever ETUG Webinar—Include-Ed—which took place November 1. So, finally we wanted to put together a post sharing some reflections from our presenters, as well as some thoughts from participants, and finally ask you, our ETUG members, for some ideas for future webinars.

We had five amazing presentations for our inaugural webinar, with six presenters in total. Here is what some of them had to say about their experience:

Paul Hibbits, sessional instructor in the SFU School of Computing Science and founder of Hibbitts Design (https://hibbittsdesign.org/), spoke about “Student-Generated Assessment Questions: The Journey so Far.” Paul reflected that he “found the experience of doing a session for Include-Ed very enjoyable, especially being able to do a test session with Keith beforehand to minimize unwanted surprises. I’d totally be up for doing this type of thing again – I really valued the meaningful questions that were asked by participants (keeps one on their toes!) during several breaks in my presentation. I would certainly recommend ETUG Webinars for both presenters and participants.”

Matt Stranach, Thompson Rivers University, spoke about “Minding the Gap: Lessons Learned From a K-12 – Higher Ed Collaboration in STEAM.” Matt says “Great experience! Awesome format. Possibly [add] asynchronous (i.e., Moodle or WP area) for follow up; additional engagement; resources, etc. Strongly recommend pairing this kind of event with each ETUG going forward, or possibly hold one in-person event each year and one robust, multimodal virtual session each year. Shoutout to Keith Webster for doing such a great job with logistics and generally making the whole experience as enjoyable and relatively stress-free as it was.”

Jason Toal, Simon Fraser University, and Ian Linkletter, University of British Columbia, spoke about the “Open EdTech Collaborative” (Open ETC). Ian reflects: “I had a positive experience presenting at Includ-ed. I had never collaborated with somebody from another institution on a professional presentation, and it was a good opportunity to network and learn from one another. ETUG is an amazing community and I love to share. I thought the single-track all-day format was interesting, and I know some groups (like SFU) set it up in a conference room for people to come in and out. I was only able to catch some of another presentations but am happy they were recorded.”

Sally Stewart, UBC-Okanagan, spoke about Experiential Learning Tasks, and has this to say: “I thought the idea of the webinar was excellent as it allows faculty to get great CE without having to leave and travel – time and $$ is always a roadblock and this helped tremendously!! For both presenters and attendees. The interaction available with the technology is super. I was impressed too with the help to ensure presenters were ready and familiar with the format. I would absolutely do it again. I think the one hour time slots were effective as it allowed people to choose 1 or many during the day. Having a strong theme threaded for all presentations is effective as well.”

During and after the webinar, we sent a quick survey out to participants who offered some great feedback which has been recorded on the You Asked for it and We Delivered! post. Some of the recommendations participants made in the survey, and in other conversations, reflected the following:

Overall satisfaction with the topics, the format, the time of day and time of year.
If it is more than a half-day, add in a real lunch break.
Make sure there is more time between presentations for presenters to load slides and check equipment, and for participants to take quick breaks.
Do it again!
Presenters could encourage more participation/engagement from the audience.

And finally, folks have suggested that we distribute a survey to ETUG members asking for suggestions for potential future webinar topics, so here you go! This Webinar Survey asks for your ideas and suggestions for topics we could explore in future webinars. The survey will remain open until January 15, 2020.

If you missed our webinar, don’t fret! We have the links to all the recordings on the Include-Ed Webinar Recordings page.