This session will begin with welcoming remarks from the SUNY Provost. Highlights from digital innovation initiatives across the SUNY Provost’s Office will be provided. Specific updates will be shared from SUNY Online, including the state of online education in SUNY, how services are evolving to support the new Digital Learning Environment, accomplishments of the past year, and plans for the coming year.
DAY 1: Wednesday, February 26, 2025 Opening Remarks – Special Guest 10:00 – 10:30AM
DAY 1: Wednesday, February 26, 2025
1:30PM – 2:30PM
The intention of a “community of practice” is to share what you know for the benefit of all in the community. The SUNY Effective Online Practices Award Program collects, shares, and showcases the online best practices, strategies, and innovative online teaching and learning activities of exemplary SUNY online practitioners from across the SUNY system.
All online effective practices submitted are made available to the community for review and consideration.
The community of online practitioners has the opportunity to vote on their favorite online effective practices.
Those online effective practices that earn the most votes from the community are recognized with an award and become part of our effective practices repository, with ties to the Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository (TOPR) and the OSCQR rubric .
Step into the enchanting world of Brightspace with the master wizard, Steve Race. In this spellbinding session, Steve will reveal his arcane secrets and powerful incantations to help you unlock the full potential of Brightspace from both an administrative and instructional perspective.
Learn how to magically craft dynamic course content and cast advanced features to enchant student engagement. Dive into the mystical arts of utilizing widgets, replacement strings, and other administrative tools to streamline your workflow and enhance the overall Brightspace environment. Steve will also demonstrate custom widgets conjured specifically for campuses, designed to magically handle tasks of drudgery and free up your time for slaying dragons.
Whether you’re weaving spells to manage user roles, customizing the interface with a flick of your wand, automating tasks with magical precision, or configuring the organizational structure, this session will equip you with the tools and knowledge to become a true Brightspace wizard.
Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your digital learning environment and transform your practices with a touch of magic!
Join us for an interactive workshop where we explore the methods, approaches, and strategies for online teaching and learning with accessibility in mind.
Workshop Presenter:
Kelly Herman, Vice President, Accessibility, Equity & Inclusion, University of Phoenix
Neurodivergent learners have unique skills and abilities that set them apart from neurotypical learners. If supported effectively, neurodivergent learners tend to excel, especially in the STEAM fields, and their unique skills can lead to significant contributions in these areas. In fact, companies are actively seeking out neurodiverse talent. In 2017, The Harvard Business Review published an article titled “Neurodiversity as a Competitive Advantage”. Yet neurodiverse learners are often ‘high risk’ regarding completion of a degree. Which makes it even more important for educators to provide methods for accommodating these individuals who will play a critical role in our future society.
A major factor for the high-risk classification of neurodivergent learners is due to their unique learning needs not being met. Providing adequate accommodations is not straightforward because many neurodivergent learners do not have an official diagnosis. In fact, there are many cases in which people haven’t recognized they are neurodivergent until adulthood (Polyzoi, Ahnemark, Medin, & Ginsberg, 2018; Happe & Frith, 2020). This makes it even more critical that we as educators take the necessary steps to ensure their time in academia truly does accommodate every learner.
While there are some small actions that can be taken to accommodate neurodivergent learners such as replacing multiple choice exams with other formats such as essays that allow neurodivergent learners to explain their viewpoint, these are only a small step in the overall learning process. But we need to create a dynamic in which neurodivergent learners are supported throughout the learning process rather than simply making small adjustments along the way.
In this session, attendees will gain an understanding of what neurodivergence is, explore case studies to gain insights into the neurodivergent students’ experience, and learn valuable strategies for fostering neuro-inclusive learning environments.
Megan Kohler, Learning Designer & Lecturer John A. Dutton e-Education Institute, Penn State.
DAY 2: Thursday, Februray 27, 2025 1:30PM – 2:30PM
Share a mini presentation! Show, demo, or talk about your own innovation, best practice, cool tool, project, program, initiative, or idea (in online course design, instructional technology, online faculty development) in 3-minutes, or less.
Please add your name and a bulleted list/summary of what you plan to share, including links if any 🙂 http://bit.ly/unsession2025
Day 2: Thursday, February 27, 2025 2:30PM – 3:30PM
SUNY Online Teaching Ambassadors have been nominated by their campus for this recognition as exemplary online educators, who are both enthusiastic and effective in online teaching, and honored for their positive contributions to the field of online teaching in SUNY.
This recognition session at the Summit includes a reading of the names of the 2025 Ambassadors, the campus they are affiliated with campus, and their nominator.
Those Ambassadors able to attend in person and virtually will be acknowledged and highlighted.
Kelly Herman, Vice President, Accessibility, Equity & Inclusion, University of Phoenix
