I was one of seven thousand participants that descended upon the Anaheim convention center last week for the three-day EDUCAUSE annual conference. The conference attracts educators, administrators and Information technology leaders from higher education institutions from near and afar; there were 52 countries represented. The conference is by no means limited to Information Technology topics. This year the conference featured 300 sessions within five categories —the majority of sessions I attended were within the teaching and learning track, and a handful in the leadership and management category. Though I usually attend conferences virtually, I chose the face-to-face option given that Anaheim is slightly more than a stone’s throw from where I live. I’m glad I did. I was able to experience the vibe of the conference, pick up on the buzz from other participants at lunch, in the exhibit hall, and impromptu meetings. I also was able to meet a handful of fellow bloggers, an added bonus.
Conference Themes in Teaching and Learning
There are several good articles on the web summarizing key events and talks from the conference—I’ve included respective links at the end of this post. I prepared a summary of the conference via Slideshare [below], and included three themes from the teaching and learning track. Themes that I believe will be significant in higher education over the next few months, 1) competency-based learning, 2) personalized learning, and 3) disaggregation. In the Slideshare I also provide key takeaways associated with each. Fortunately, MOOCs are NOT on the table. In fact, of the 300 hundred sessions offered at the conference there were only seven or eight about MOOCs. I attended two of those sessions. Between the sessions, listening to other educators over the three days, I get the sense that MOOCs are not the disruptive force that the media has made them out to be. However, they have been catalyst for conversations about face-to-face and online learning, and the role of technology in higher education.
Keynote Speakers
The conference featured three first-rate keynote speakers, Sir Ken Robinson, Jane McGonigal author of Reality is Broken, and Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University. Though all were good, my favorite session was Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on ‘Leading a Culture of Innovation’. Being a Canadian I love British humour and Sir Ken Robinson, a Brit himself, infused his dry wit throughout the talk. It was not recorded, though I wrote a post about it here, and Tara Buck of EDTECH wrote a good summary here.
Exhibit Hall
The exhibit hall was very large. There were rows and rows of exhibitors featuring vendors and providers servicing the education market, from LMS platforms, to lecture capture solutions to analytics software providers and more. There were over 270 vendors. Some of the platinum and gold sponsors had mini classrooms, seating areas with mod furniture and giant screens featuring demos of their product. Walking the hall I realized the amount of money committed to the higher education market—it is vast…and disturbing.
Slideshare: Highlights, Themes and Takeaways
Related Resources:
- EDUCAUSE 2013 Review, EDTECH online magazine
- Sir Ken Robinson: Innovation Is Essential to Higher Education, by Tara Buck
- For Upstart Learning-Management Company, an Educause Moment, Steve Kolowich
- Flickr Creative Commons, edu13
Online Learning Insights 