Nearly all of online instructional research focuses on students and teachers. Research from the perspective of administrators is virtually non-existent. Yet especially with the required migration of instruction to the virtual classroom due to the pandemic, effective leadership of online programs is even more crucial. The purpose of this study was to understand and explore administrative perceptions of leadership effectiveness in a higher education online instructional environment. Individual in-depth interviews were conducted with a former provost, one current college of education dean, and five current or former department chairs in the college of education of a four-year higher education institution. Results suggest specific recommendations in the areas of support of online faculty; ensuring adequacy of instructional design, library, and technology support; evaluation of online faculty performance; and supervising ongoing formative improvements in online learning. Maximizing leadership support of effective online instructional initiatives also maximizes the chances of successful student learning in the virtual environment.

Guampedia is a community project that highlights the unique Chamorro heritage and history of Guam and the Mariana Islands. It includes an Educator's Portal with resources connecting past to present and future, and a bank of lesson plans for culturally sustaining education. Guampedia's Micronesia and World Milestones Timeline details the region's important historical events into the context of world events. This interactive timeline helps students see the bigger picture and develop a context for historical thinking.

Many instructors needed to teach online because of the pandemic in 2020. For many instructors, it was the first time to teach online.

When the online instructions first started about 20 years ago, it was normal to have web pages only in texts. The technology has advanced enough so that it’s easy to produce and make videos available to online students. Making videos available to students makes it possible to recreate the environment close to the classroom to students. The main method of communication is auditory, not the reading which heavily depends on the ability of each student.

One important factor for videos to online courses is closed captions (subtitles). Having closed caption on videos for online courses is required by federal law to be ADA compliant.

In this presentation, the presenter will show an easy way to add subtitles to videos. The presenter will show how to produce closed captions by using freely available resources online. By utilizing various resources, it’s possible to make closed captions without spending hours transcribing every sentence by oneself. By using various tools (some are AI tools), adding closed captions is not as time-consuming as some people think. It can be done without relying on manpower to transcribe each sentence.

The method I’m going to share with the participants makes it possible to add captions of not only English, but various major languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc.

In response to the current pandemic, Library Services at Delaware County Community College had to quickly pivot to meet the needs of students and faculty members during the transition to remote learning. With an information literacy instructional program designed primarily to meet the needs of students taking classes on campus, Library Services increased the number of synchronous workshops offered and offered additional synchronous and asynchronous instructional options to support remote learning. This presentation will discuss what we have learned during the spring, summer, and fall semesters in terms of what virtual instructional models meet the needs of faculty to ensure students gain information literacy instruction. Specifically, this presentation will examine the new instructional models and review the data from the information literacy program to determine what best met the needs of students and faculty.

 E-leadership is a term that continues to emerge despite being around since the late 1990s (Garcia, 2020). With the pandemic, programs in higher education have been confronted with transitioning from a traditional format to online. Counseling programs, notably high touch in skills development are no different in mediating this transition at a distance. There can be an added complexity of having many specializations of counseling to mediate. While the logistics of this can be challenging for faculty and students to transition to e-learning in highly interactive subjects like counseling, often overlooked are the vital considerations for counseling leaders trying to develop virtual teams with efficacy.  According to Kupa (2020) the key characteristics of virtual teams from a leadership standpoint draw attention to two primary functions: performance management and team development. This paper's focus is how has E-leadership evolved and what do Counselor Educator's embarking on E- leadership benefit from knowing in mediating this role with efficacy?  This paper seeks to explore the intersection of e-leadership in higher education, specifically counseling programs, with a focus on implications for best practices for establishing a culture of wellness, high performance, and efficacy of departmental teams newly working at a distance.

After eight years of providing a facilitated professional development program to provide training and guidance to faculty to design and build asynchronous online classes, it was time to scale up efforts. The existing program could be run only once a year, with a maximum cohort size of 12. In December 2019 the Instructional Technology Support Office launched a digital badging program that is available on-demand (asynchronously online) but also provides feedback and support to all participants. The badging program currently has two certification levels, consisting of 17 badges. In the year that the badging program has been available, we have awarded over 1100 badges and have provided over 120 certifications.

This presentation will provide an overview of our badging program, and describe our process of developing and managing our multi-level digital badging program. A tour of the badging site (Laulima/Sakai LMS) and the badging platform (Acclaim by Credly) will be provided. Challenges and success will also be discussed, as well as advice on starting a badging program.

This session delves into the design and function of quests in online game-based learning. According to Howard (2008), “A quest is a journey across a symbolic, fantastic landscape in which a protagonist or player collects objects and talks to characters in order to overcome challenges and achieve a meaningful goal” (p. xi). Quests are particularly relevant in story-based adventure and MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) as the tasks that players (learners) complete while progressing through the game. Quests offer the potential for integrating choice of tasks and branching pathways through the curriculum within a game-based classroom. Online technologies including common learning management systems, Google Apps, or dedicated quest-based management systems can be leveraged to develop quests as part of a game-based course.

Participants in this session will gain (1) a concise synthesis of what research has to say about quest design for game-based learning (2) an overview of technologies suitable for developing quests in online game-based learning.

Reflection is a critical part of the learning process, included in various learning theories and models (e.g., cognitive apprenticeship). A common approach to class-based reflection is to ask students to write a brief reflection paper at the end of the term. In this presentation, we share a different approach: student-generated diagrams. In a course for pre-service teachers, we asked students to depict their personal learning networks (PLNs) at the start of the course, the end of the course, and to project them out into the future as well. The directions were general, and although a conceptual framework was provided (Krutka, Carpenter & Trust’s 2017 PLN Framework), students were free to use a tool and visual approach of their own choosing.  Most students reported on an end-of-term survey that the act of creating their first diagram helped them reflect on what they already knew, whereas their post-course and future diagram creation processes alternated between active reflection while creating and depicting knowledge they had already reflected on. The diagrams generated richer reflection than similar written reflections in prior terms. We will share the assignment, examples of student diagram progressions, survey findings, and our own reflections on the usefulness of graphics within the reflection process.

Communication between supervisors and subordinates can be challenging, even in traditional face-to-face environments. The asynchronous online environment can exacerbate potential for misunderstanding of intended communications. The required movement to online learning in the pandemic has heightened stresses for online higher education faculty in communicating effectively at a distance with their supervisors. Such misunderstandings can filter down negatively to their students, further exacerbating stresses that online students can experience. Existing research on online communication has focused on student-instructor interaction only. Impact of supervisors (e.g., department chairs) in this communication chain is largely absent from research to date.The purpose of this phenomenology study was to understand in depth the lived experience of online adjunct faculty in communicating at a distance with their supervisors, including particular stresses the faculty have experienced. The objective of this understanding is to streamline accurate and effective communications so that adjunct faculty feel maximally supported and online students' virtual learning experience is maximized.

Online interaction not only includes student-student interaction but also includes student-content, student-instructor, and student-system interaction. These four types of interaction need to be considered when designing online courses. We interviewed 27 graduate students and investigated how their level of participation and interaction were related to online course design in terms of curriculum and content, course structure and technology support, instructor communication, and online activities such as online discussion and group projects. Participants shared  their recommendations about course design factors during the interview. These participants included 11 international students and 10 domestic students. Various nationalities and ethnicities were purposefully sampled to hear about diverse student voices. Many of these participants said course structure and teacher presence were very important. They believed that students would engage more and respect diverse perspectives if instructors care about diversity and inclusion. They also believed that no teacher presence means “confusion” and “feeling unsupported” in online space. Instructors’ regular  communication through various channels, proper accommodation based on students’ needs, explicit guidelines or encouragement to include diverse learners, and timely support and help were greatly valued by online learners.