Non-Technical Presentations: Double Speaking Duty at UBTech 2013
Posted 4 June 2013
As much as I love giving talks on Web development at conferences like cf.Objective() and NCDevCon, I also talk at numerous educational technology conferences throughout the year. I’ve been asked to speak at the always-interesting UBTech 2013 conference this year — and not to speak just once, but on two different topics!
I’ve had the privilege of speaking at this conference for the past two years, but this year I’m taking on double duty by giving two separate talks. They are:
From Media Hype to Reality: One University’s Experience with Coursera: My team has been offering Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on the Coursera platform for a year now. There’s a huge amount of hype and concern about MOOCs and how they will affect (save? destroy?) higher education across the globe. My colleague, Ira Gooding, and I will be talking about our direct experience offering MOOCs and how that differers from the sometimes exaggerated stories being pushed out in the education and technology media. MOOCs are really interesting, and are a serious pressure point on most colleges and universities, so we expect good discussion at the end of this session.
Unleash Your Inner Spielberg: The Director’s Cut of Online Lectures: This is another variation on the very popular talk that I’ve given at a number of conferences over the past few years, and a talk that I’ve given in long workshop form as well as an annual talk to students where I work. This talk is all about using techniques from the worlds of film and theater to create more engaging lectures that result in greater learner information retention. I really enjoy giving this talk, and this year there’s new stuff on how cognitive science is telling us to focus, edit, and sharpen our information delivery in order for people to actual retain the information they are given.
If you happen to be at the conference, please come check out these sessions!