AECT International Convention

See you in Las Vegas for #AECT19

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Designers for Learning’s participants are excited to report on our work during seven sessions at the Association for Educational Communication and Technology (AECT) the #AECT19 International Convention in Las Vegas. The following is a summary of our AECT-related fall sessions sorted by date and time, including the preview of our accessibility-related sessions from the recording of our AECT Design & Development webinar last month.

1. Webinar Recording from September 18 

  • Designing for All | Free online webinar hosted by the Design and Development division
  • Rieber and Estes (2017, p. 16) argue, “Time has come to bring the best ideas from the instructional technology field to the design challenge of meeting all levels of accessibility.”  This webinar is a response to this call. Join us as we consider ways both researchers and designers can make an impact to address this opportunity. We’ll explore the topic of Designing for All through the lens of universal design for learning and share resources to support more effective design practices.
  • View recording

2. October 22 at 10 am PDT

  • Design Teams in Action | Perspectives from Observers | Panel as part of the Design and Development division
  • Panelists will discuss the outcomes of a recent service-learning project with graduate students from several different instructional design programs. Panelists were observers of an expert design team in action. Observers immersed themselves into the teams’ design process allowing them to reflect on a range of themes related to how design teams should function, who should be part of a design team, how to prepare designers, how designers develop their professional identity, and what expertise design team participants should possess.
  • Add this session to your calendar

3. October 22 at 1 pm PDT

  • Evaluating Open Educational Resources: Results of a Collaborative Evaluation of Crowd-Sourced Lesson Plans | Presentation as part of the Design and Development division
  • In keeping with the convention theme of Inspired Professional Learning, this presentation reports on an evaluation of a service-learning professional development opportunity for instructional design students and volunteers to develop 106 open educational resources (OER) for the benefit of adult basic education. Presenters will discuss the findings of the OER evaluation and consider implications for the design, implementation, and evaluation of OER, as well as service-learning as a professional development opportunity for instructional designers.
  • Add this session to your calendar

4. October 22 at 4 pm PDT

  • Inspired Professional Learning | A Service-Learning Project to Evaluate and Re-Design OER | Design and Development Showcase Concurrent Session as part of the Design and Development Showcase division
  • This showcase highlights the most recent iteration of a multi-year service-learning professional development project involving instructional design students and faculty from several universities to develop high-quality free open educational resources (OER) for adult basic skills education The showcase will feature evaluation and redesign efforts to 1) improve the service-learning design approach, 2) improve the designed OER, and 3) examine expert design teams during iterative design.
  • Add this session to your calendar

5. October 23 at 9 am PDT

6. October 23 at 10 am PDT 

  • Evolving empathy of instructional design students participating in an empathic design process | Presentation as part of the Research & Theory division
  • Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Empathic design increases the likelihood that the services or product designed meets the user’s needs. We report on a qualitative study that explored how empathy evolved in instructional design students engaged in an empathic design process, and how students demonstrated empathy for adult learners with literacy-related knowledge skill gaps. Students worked in teams to reconstruct personas used in a nonprofit’s professional development programs.
  • Add this session to your calendar

7. October 23 at 3 pm PDT

  • Designing for Accessibility | Panel as part of the Graduate Student Assembly
  • A design is only useful if it’s accessible to the learner: any learner, anywhere, anytime. Learners have different backgrounds and are diverse but have the right of equal access to information. Therefore, we as designers need to embrace accessibility in order to meet the diverse learning needs. But how? This session is dedicated to identifying and discussing potential solutions to this question. Panelists will be discussing how to design for accessibility in education, and will be answering questions from the audience.
  • Add this session to your calendar

8. October 25 at 10 am PDT

  • Design in the Open | Professional Learning Strategies to Build your Professional Presence | Inspire! Session as part of the Leadership Development Committee division
  • Simply having the required credentials is not enough to land a job. The goal of this Inspire! session is to help participants take meaningful steps to cultivate their professional presence through an open reflexive process. Within this interactive session, participants will network and complete professional learning challenges aimed at getting out there, learning and working in the open, and finding ways to express your voice so that others can see and understand your work.
  • Add this session to your calendar

Touch base with any comments or questions on our website at designersforlearning.org/contact. Thank you for your support of our nonprofit!