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SUNY Online Summit 2025

The 6th annual SUNY Online Summit was held as an in-person & virtual event from February 26 – 28, 2025. This was the 26th annual gathering of the SUNY online teaching and learning community of practice.

Links to the recordings and materials from all the presentations are available: https://online.suny.edu/summit/live-recordings/

Getting to Know Lin – Graduate Student Intern

I’m thrilled to introduce myself as the newest graduate student intern here at SUNY Online. My name is Lin Lin, and I’m currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Communication at the University at Albany, specializing in Organizational Communication. I’m especially interested in the communicative constitution of reality—how communication shapes organizations, power dynamics, identities, as well as work-life interfaces, etc.

Get OSCQR Certified!

Would an OSCQR certification help you with your online course quality initiatives? Are you an online instructional designer (ID)? Are you new at it, or do you have years of experience? Are you an online instructor? Are you new at it, or do you have years of experience teaching online?

Motivational Strategies in Online Learning

Adding motivational messages is one pedagogical device used in well-designed self-paced instructional environments to keep learners engaged. I would say that these types of devices are typical in some MOOC platforms and high end corporate training.

Adapting Lecture-Based Courses

In an online lecture-based course (synchronous or asynchronous), the online instructor will typically record and post voice over lecture slides in the LMS, and a handful of check-in activities with learners to ensure that everyone is making sense of the concepts and content.

COIL+OSCQR Standards

Online Engineering & Computer Science

I was recently asked for resources and suggestions related to online engineering/computer science courses.

I have put together some discipline specific resources – this one is for Science, Math and STEM. It is a collaborative doc, so if you have anything to add – feel free. ☺

a “Fred” by any other name is a “Template”

Close to 30 years ago, I designed the first SUNY Learning Network online course template.We called it a “template” because, as I explained to new online faculty at the time, calling it “Fred,” just didn’t have enough contextual detail to make sense. 🙂

The SUNY DLE Course Templates

SUNY Online has developed a set of course templates for 8 distinct use cases and instructional modalities that have been optimized specifically for the SUNY DLE Brightspace environment. Course templates are an important tool for faculty, instructional designers, and learners in digital learning environments. Embedding research-based effective practices and quality standards into course templates have been shown to positively influence:

Interested in teaching online?

A good online course starts with well-articulated learning objectives. Content and activities are then designed to target those objectives specifically, and optimized to leverage the online environment to foster deep engagement, interaction, collaboration and ways that online learners can make their thinking and

DEI4All Project Recognized

SUNY Online national DEI project selected for the EDUCAUSE Horizon Report 2024

The SUNY DEI for All (#DEI4All) project has been selected as an exemplar to be highlighted in the Educause 2024 HorizonReport | Teaching & Learning Edition. Exemplar projects are the heart of the Horizon Report.

SUNY Online Summit 2024

The 5th annual SUNY Online Summit was held as an in-person & virtual event from February 28 – 29, 2024. This was the 25th annual gathering of the SUNY online teaching and learning community of practice & the 30th anniversary of Online Education at SUNY.

Open Education Week 2024!

Open Education Week is an annual celebration and opportunity for those working in Open Education across SUNY to actively share their achievements and learn about what others are achieving worldwide. 

Addressing Online Interaction

I was asked recently about what kinds of activities we at SUNY Online recommend for online instructors to use to support successful online engagement, interaction, and more specifically peer-to-peer online interaction?

Using OSCQR to address RSI

 The SUNY Online course quality rubric – OSCQR, can assist you in understanding RSI and how to address it.

Celebrate NDLW 2023 with SUNY Online!

National Distance Learning Week – November 6-10, 2023
National Distance Learning Week, sponsored by the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA), is hosted annually with a virtual, week-long series of webinars meant to:

What do you mean by “Online Learning?”

It may be that you equate asynchronous online teaching and learning (rich, engaging, interactive cohorts of learners guided by a “present” instructor) with self-paced online learning (individual, no interaction, no instructor presence, summative feedback that may or may not be automated, or timely) – that is an assumption to check, and NOT necessarily the case.

Back-to-School with Brightspace

If you are teaching at a SUNY then chances are you are using Brightspace or are about to switch to this new LMS. I will show you a few options for your Brightspace courses that I use (a lot) and hope it benefits you and your students!

First from an instructor perspective it is handy to know ways to input due dates for your assignments. There is more than one method to enter due dates in Brightspace but one of my favorite features of this LMS is how quickly I can manage the dates of all assignments.

The Value of Rubrics

The Value of Rubrics: Closing the Loop on Expectations and Learner Performance

Online learners consistently point to a recurring theme in successful learning experiences … clearly understanding an instructor’s expectations improves their performance. Clarity of expectations in online teaching is a universal best practice in online teaching and learning. We (ID’s and instructors) strive to communicate to students as clearly as possible in regard to instructions, grading policies, course navigation, course resources, etc. 

The Opportunities of Artificial Intelligence

Our colleagues at the University of Central Florida have recently posted to TOPkit an article on AI opportunities in education that presents considerations for approaching AI as a tool that can be leveraged for learner engagement.

Consider Badging for Community Building

Are you thinking about badging for your unit, organization, or community of practice?

  • To support aspects and activities within your your community.
  • Improve engagement.
  • Promote roles and identity within the community.
  • Recognize and reward contributions.
  • Acknowledge achievements and accomplishments.
  • Incentivize behaviors

What drives adoption?

SUNY institutions have been innovating, developing, and delivering courses and programs online for more than 25 years.

SUNY Online Summit 2023

The 4th annual SUNY Online Summit was held as an in-person & virtual event from March 8 – March 10, 2023. This was the 24th annual gathering of the SUNY online teaching and learning community of practice.

Links to the recordings and materials from all the presentations are available: https://online.suny.edu/summit/live-recordings/

Event photos are available: http://bit.ly/SUNYonlinesummit.

chatGPT – learn more

I feel excited about chatGPT and figuring out how to leverage it for academic, professional, instructional and personal purposes.

Post-Pandemic Remote Learning

Looking back on the COVID-19 pandemic period, it seems clear that while we made a valiant attempt at remote learning, our attempts were met with limited success.

Celebrate NDLW 2022 with SUNY Online!

National Distance Learning Week – November 7-11, 2022
SUNY Online was pleased to host and showcase the following dynamic presentations in celebration of National Distance Learning Week (NDLW) 2022. National Distance Learning Week, sponsored by the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA), is hosted annually with a virtual, week-long series of webinars meant to:

Collaborating to Infuse DEI into Online Course Quality For All

SUNY Online has partnered with the Cal State Los Angeles (LA), Center for Effective Teaching and Learning (Cal State LA CETL) and the CSU Chancellor’s Office, and the California Community College Virtual Campus, to infuse DEI into Online Course Quality for all.

SUNY Online Teaching: OSCQR

SUNY Online Teaching develops tools, services, and resources all openly licensed to help SUNY campus leaders, IDs, faculty, and others, do their jobs a little more efficiently, effectively and better.

Celebrating Diane Hamilton

The SUNY Online Community celebrates the life and contributions of our friend and colleague,
Diane Hamilton (1965-2022)

 

Weak link?

I often hear concerns (and complaints) from online instructional designers and distance learning leaders about “getting faculty to do their part while teaching.” That faculty often “do not respond to questions, don’t post appropriate announcements, don’t engage in discussions, and don’t give substantial, personalized feedback to their online students.”

Adobe Express Pages

You may be thinking that you have enough to worry about right now so why start creating with a new tool?! Well, this tool is worth it, at least in my opinion. 

Do you want to add some spark to the way your students view your course content?

A series of unfortunate online events

This is a parody/tongue-in-cheek look at effective online teaching practices, tips, and suggestions based on the SUNY Learning Network’s experiences in effective online teaching and learning, online faculty development, and online course design. Published originally February 9, 2007.

Using Social Media for Professional Development

Using the Medium Effectively

Knowing how to effectively use social media is a desired skill set for those who work in online education.

Using social media tools one can:

SUNY Online Summit 2022

The 3rd annual SUNY Online Summit was held as an exclusively virtual event for the second time from February 28 – March 4, 2022. This was the 23rd annual gathering of the SUNY online teaching and learning community of practice.

SUNY Celebrates Open Ed Week 2022

Open Education Week is an annual celebration of achievements in Open Education and an opportunity for  sharing and learning about open initiatives across our SUNY campuses and globally through Open Education Global.

Environmental Scan 2021

What will impact us in 2022? At the end of a year, it is a good practice to reflect and scan your environment to see what is happening, or what might be on the horizon, that might impact your work. SUNY Online is doing some strategic planning, and here is what I can see as possibly having some import, or impact on online teaching and learning in the new year and beyond.

State of Higher Education – End of Year Reflections

If you haven’t seen this, I wanted to share it and thought the report might be of interest.

It is a report on global trends and insights in online student supports from Instructure. But the report findings are good/interesting.

Calculating Time on Task

How much is too much? How much is enough? Do I have a course and a half? What about studio and lab courses? How do I know?

These are questions that online faculty and online instructional designers grapple with when designing online instruction.

OSCQR 4.0!

SUNY Online is  Pleased to Announce the Release of OSCQR 4.0!

A new version of OSCQR has been released. OSCQR 4.0 has been updated to reflect and support the regarding requirements for Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) in all online/distance education courses for financial aid purposes that went into effect on July 1. This updated version of OSCQR is the first online course quality rubric that specifically addresses the new ED  regulation requirements for “Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI)” in the design of online courses.

Openly Licensed Tools and Resources

I would like to share with you all our openly licensed tools and resources that you can find here: https://online.suny.edu/onlineteaching/online-competency-development/self-paced-and-self-serve-training/

    SUNY Online Fellows

    2,100+

    community engagement

    Credly Badges Issued

    9,000+

    OSCQR logo

    OSCQR Campuses

    53

    Meet the Team

    The Online Teaching Team leads support initiatives for SUNY’s online teaching faculty and instructional designers through the delivery of high quality professional development, creation and curation of exemplar resources, and networking of online professionals across the SUNY system.

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