Teaching as an Artform: Redefining Community in the classroom. The Community of Inquiry model (Garrison, 2017) underscores the notion that the educator/instructor plays a key role in creating connections with learners, which leads to long term retention. The Community of Inquiry framework represents the model for teaching to create a deep and meaningful learning experience through the development of social, cognitive, and teaching presence (Garrison, 2017). That said, this presentation will provide some experiences relating to how we, as educators, have applied innovative techniques to help facilitate relationships that support an inclusive learning space, while challenging participants to share some of their best practices. Participants will ponder teaching and learning in a constant state of mindful choices with evaluation and reflection as a means toward constant improvement.

Both telehealth and distance education can benefit from a mission central focus on tele-ethics. Ensuring ethical provider behavior has long been a focus of healthcare. The burgeoning use of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic presented complex challenges for providers and their institutions. This is because the demand for services and advances in technology typically sprints ahead of the development of ethical codes, policies, and regulations. Concurrently, dramatic shifts to online learning in higher education created similar ethical challenges. The ethical similarities between healthcare and online education in telecommunication environments can be categorized as the need to: 1) exercise lawful behavior, 2) uphold the interests of the student, client, or patient as paramount (e.g., ensuring their privacy, security, and safety), and 3) provide accessible online environments that minimize the impact of socio-economic disparities and cultural differences. Both distance education and telehealth can be subject to similar motivations: 1) service to humanity and the “greater good,” 2) profitability, and 3) preservation of the professions and institutions. An overt focus on tele-ethics can inform both endeavors.

The past couple of years have caused education and educators to develop new ways to produce and deliver educational opportunities to students worldwide. One area that may get overlooked for universities is how students can complete internships during a pandemic. In this presentation, we will share an option that Purdue University Global has developed, where students can complete a virtual internship at the undergraduate and/or graduate level in the school of Information Technology.

Despite advances in simulator fidelity and the use of authentic training scenarios, commercial airline pilots continue to commit errors in flight path management. Current training emphasizes adherence to procedure and required verbalizations. While appropriate in many scenarios, these practices do not promote resilient problem-solving behaviors which can prevent monitoring lapses that lead to unsafe flight conditions. Researchers at NASA addressed this issue by studying expert pilot behaviors and cognitive principles to identify human contributions to safety, yielding a set of measurable behaviors thought to improve how pilots solve challenges in flight path management.

Building on this previous work, the current project examines training designed to introduce pilots to these behaviors. The proposed presentation will explain the design of an asynchronous, interactive pilot training module, as well as various design challenges encountered including variations in pilot experience and beliefs about the value of training. In addition, the presentation will share preliminary results of an empirical study, conducted in collaboration with researchers at NASA's Ames Research Center, designed to evaluate the impact of the training on a range of cognitive, affective, and behavioral measures. The presentation will conclude with a summary of the study’s findings along with a discussion of their implications for improving training designed for experts.

Many online students dislike team assignments, and for some fairly good reasons: unresponsive classmates, grades relying on others, misunderstandings about instructions causing arguments, time constraints, and other problems can cause anxiety and apathy that lead to poor performance. Despite faculty's insistence that the workplace often requires teamwork, the connection of student team projects to usefulness is getting lost. The online classroom can still successfully support teamwork, however, with good communication, planning, and use of appropriate tools! Careful curriculum design, techniques in setting up teams, identifying motivation and encouraging diversity, and using ethical grading methods will be explored, along with a focus on evaluating collaborative tools and mitigating problems.

The call to move instruction and support services remotely created an opportunity to be creative while keeping everyone safe. The University of Hawai‘i continues to provide students with opportunities to up their skills in a mode that is relevant to their personal and professional goals. Campus life at Kapi‘olani Community College prior to the pandemic was bustling, especially with campus tours. Campus tour participants have shared in a survey that, “[KapCC] have endless amounts of resources and assistance to help me succeed” and “It’s a warm environment with good student support.”

KapCC recognized the shift everyone had to make through this pandemic therefore offered to the general public an opportunity to learn more about the College. On 10/22 and 10/29, 9:00am to noon, HST, KapCC hosted itʻs first ever Virtual Open House. This free event was fully online and open to the public. Participants explored a variety of topics that include academic programs and support resources available at KapCC.

Interested participants went to tinyurl.com/kapccvirtualopenhouse to explore the list of topics. Participants just had to find the topic of interest and join through the link provided on the specified day and time. It was that simple.

We will share the feedback received from participants. The goal is to build on this online format due to possibly attracting students that are beyond the College’s immediate geographical location.

Many traditional college students have been forced to learn online due to Covid. Others have chosen to learn online as a means of earning a degree. Whether forced or chosen, the student who has previously never learned online can be shocked at the commitment required, the intricacies of learning activities, course expectations, and other facets of learning from the relative comfort of home.

In addition to exploring these issues, there are some actions that the professor can take to help these students acclimate to the new learning mode and ultimately find success. This session will conclude with some helpful links along with recommendations.

Accessibility: it can sometimes seem overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be! Join Drs. Jamie Sickel and Youxin Zhang in this highly interactive session to learn the fundamental principles of digital accessibility. You'll learn not only the "what's" and "why's" of accessibility, but will also come away with practical, easy-to-implement procedures so you can be confident in your ability to create digital content that is accessible for everyone. The essential steps, such as applying useful headings, making descriptive hyperlinks, adding alternative text to an image, formatting tables for greater accessibility, adding captions to videos, and creating sufficient color contrast will be addressed with examples. An invitation will be extended to attendees to enroll in the Kapi‘olani Community College Fundamentals of Digital Accessibility professional development course (fully online, asynchronous, self-paced). Upon registration, participants can access the course for free, either as a rich web-based resource to reference or to complete the competency assessment and earn free digital credentials (i.e., certificate, badge).

Many online instructors struggle to engage students in online discussions. Despite their best intentions, professors often have discussion boards that languish as the semester proceeds, and students often engage just as much as they need to in order to get a grade. Visions of creating vibrant online communities where ideas are traded and understanding is deepened often don't play out how instructors hope, and the day-to-day maintenance of discussion boards (reading, grading, responding to students) can overwhelm even the most dedicated professors.

This session will demonstrate how to re-think online discussion boards and redesign them from the ground up to be much more effective through the use of video. However, it's not just about requiring students to post a video response like what you might see in FlipGrid or other platforms. Rather, this session will show how reconceptualizing discussion boards as fertile ground for student-to-content interaction, rather than the traditional student-to-student interaction in most discussion boards, yields excellent results for both students and faculty.

Organizations with highly engaged employees represent a significant competitive advantage. In general, engaged employees are more productive, remain employed with the organization, experience more positive emotions, and have less absenteeism. Overall, engaged employees contribute to better customer service, quality, profits, productivity, and reduced employee turnover. Likewise, student engagement plays an important role in higher education and benefits the university, students, educational partners, and contributes to forming better relationships with other students. The more students interact with other students and staff, the more likely they are to persist. Student persistence is a desired higher educational goal. Students need a welcoming and inclusive environment to foster engagement and inclusion. Diversity has continued to increase over the past decade. The number of people of color continues to increase in the USA, and by 2050, there will not be a clear racial or ethnic majority. Universities must reflect the changing demographics. Diversity in education improves the cultural and intellectual engagement, self-motivation, academic skills, and citizenship. An organization’s goals, practices, processes, and leadership need to reflect the communities and the organizations that they serve. This presentation will explore how diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices impact student engagement. DEI may be the secret sauce for increasing student engagement.