June 2-4 I attended the SE Regional Educause conference in Jacksonville, FL. I had been accepted for a poster session along with Roz Veltenaar (the UCF Regional Campus Technology Training Specialist- yes, that’s ONE person for all ELEVEN Regional Campuses) and Donnie Merritt (Coordinator for Interactive Television and Videoconferencing - Office of Information Resources) on the distance learning solutions we’ve been developing for faculty training at our regional campuses.

This was rather a learning experience- I was asked if I could submit a proposal at the 11th hour. Luckily, I had already been considering presenting this topic, so it was just trying to write something cohesive at 6:30 pm on a Thursday to get it in before the deadline so I could go home. (This last-minute submission, by the way, is what I blame the less-than-ideal title on: “Successfully Distributing Faculty Training Among Multiple Campuses”. We may be submitting this session again to another conference, in which case I’d like to call it something more along the lines of “Distance Training Solutions for Regional Faculty”, which I feel is slightly more accurate, and much less wordy.)

We put our heads together to create our poster text, but I foolishly took responsibility for coordinating, and then when things became hectic let planning slide. Thanks to the Digital Media team, they took my sorry poster outline in Publisher and made it very slick. Next time around, however, I want to pare down the poster, which was very text-heavy, so it’s easier to read at a distance, and have a flyer with the full text available (this was part of the original plan that I didn’t pull together in time). In addition, by the time we presented the poster we had already moved to using Adobe Connect to provide online training. All said, it was well-received and we made some valuable contacts, and I have a much better idea what I would do with this sort of proposal in the future.

As for the rest of the conference, I want to just run over a few of the highlights:

• The opening speaker was Michael J. Bolger, the CIO of NASA. He talked about their current Information Technology Challenges: the restructuring and how they are improving security on their networks and consolidating resources. I knew most of it from when Drew worked for United Space Alliance (NASA’s largest contractor) but it was still interesting. It helps put into perspective our challenges in coordinating tech, training, and support across our campus network.
• How Agnes Scott College is using iTunesU. There have been some rumbling around campus about interest in iTunesU vs. YouTubeU, so seeing it in action and how other campuses are using it was helpful.
• UCF Shakespeare class that used Wikis for student projects. It almost made me wish that I had a regular class again, but since faculty are coming to me and asking about how to use these tools in their classrooms, it’s almost as good.
• Comparative study East Carolina University did of three course managements systems (obviously very interesting to me, since we’re in the midst of a migration and looking at possible future alternatives).
• Lunch Roundtable on New Helpdesk Methods was a great networking opportunity and gave me a chance to do some comparative shopping, so to speak.
• Discussion Session on Transforming Difficult Customer Situations into Positive Experiences was mildly amusing (we’ve all been there) but also very interesting and I wish we’d had more time to keep probing and comparing solutions.
• The final general session of the conference, Supporting Faculty Adoption of Emerging Technologies, was terrific. It was a five-person panel talking about how and whether to support faculty innovation in the classroom. Chatting with Jim Groom afterwards was probably the most useful personal/ professional development contact I made, and really inspired me.

Overall, the conference was more fun than last year, mainly because I actually knew a few folks already, and did a better job of networking.

Oh, and the scenery? Fabulous! It was my first visit to Jax and walking along the river at night with all the bridges and downtown buildings lit up was lovely. Monday night a coworker and I explored a bit, first finding Jacksonville Landing which is an open area of shops, restaurants and live music, and then a path onto a bridge that put us next to the Jacksonville Maritime Museum (closed, unfortunately) and Friendship Park which has a huge fountain and light show. We tried to come back on the other side of the bridge and got a little lost. Luckily, some kind folks pointed us in the right direction and we were able to get back on the bridge. We caught up to them and it turns out they were attending the conference as well, so we all walked back together. While there were lots of walkways, they weren’t very well-marked or lighted. I later checked our route using Google GPS- we walked 2.5 miles in all, heh.