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Prof. Joy Kutaka-Kennedy

National University, USA

 

Before entering higher education Dr. Joy Kutaka-Kennedy spent over twenty years teaching students from pre-school through high school in regular education, gifted education, at-risk education, and special education. She has taught over fifteen years at the university level, emphasizing special education teacher preparation in academic course work and clinical practice supervision. Having extensive experience with online education, course development and program evaluation, she won Quality Matters recognition for innovative course design and student engagement. She has given numerous national and international presentations on creativity and collaboration in the online venue; individual accountability in online group work; emerging technological trends in higher education; implications of generational differences and technological innovation in higher education; and the future of Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and deep learning in education. Her university faculty responsibilities include course design and oversight, field work supervision, and mentoring new faculty in higher education. Dr. Joy Kutaka-Kennedy serves as an officer of the California Association of Professors of Special Education, mentors prospective grant writers, completes program reviews for state and national accreditation, and performs editorial reviews for professional publications. She currently is working on designing new curricula to align with new state credentialing standards.

 

 

Topic: Coming Alive Online: High Quality Engagement and Assessment

 

Abstract: With the recent, often precipitous migration to fully online education, it’s more important than ever to deliver high quality, engaging, and relevant teaching and learning experiences online. Once we figure out how to reformat the content of our lectures, assignments, and grading to an online, virtual format, how do we ensure that we capture students’ hearts and minds to make learning more real and memorable? What can we do to upgrade our teaching practices so that we can make authentic and lasting impact on our learners? We can start by developing online communities of practice for our learners by promoting socialization activities to humanize ourselves and our students to each other. We can make our lectures more interesting, compelling, and interactive through our pacing, modalities of delivery, and use of breakout rooms. We can plan for dynamic presentations with high levels of interaction. If we design assignments to capture the content from the sessions, what would the rubrics look like? How do we assess students’ learning? What are effective ways to deliver feedback that is most useful to students? Learn about the +, -, and * (plus, minus and star) system to maximize feedback’s utility to students along with varied modes of delivery from print, voice to text, audio recording, and video recording.  

 

 

 

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Todd Inouye
University of Hawaii at Hilo, USA

 

Dr. Todd Inouye is an associate professor of management at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. His research interests are two-fold: in teaching methods, and in examining how contextual boundary conditions like diversity, gender, or public policy affect the strategies of small business managers and owners.
“While my passion is, and always will be teaching, I have found that research and service can be equally as fulfilling when centered around student and community engagement,” says Inouye, who started at the UH Hilo College of Business and Economics in the fall of 2019. Previously, Inouye was an assistant professor of management at Niagara University, New York. “I enjoy developing and testing new experiential learning techniques and uncovering novel ways to cocreate value for students and our surrounding communities.

 

 

Topic: “Experiential & Gamified Course Design: The Psychological Foundations”

Abstract: Everyone understands there is value in experiential and gamified course design. However, the difference between courses which include proper psychological underpinnings and those without can mean the difference between excellent and average student learning, engagement, and instructor ratings. Oftentimes, instructors look to add in experiential activities using a “bolt on” approach while others implement pre-packaged experiential activities curated by textbook companies. These course design methods hope and promise to provide impactful experiential activities for students, but in reality, they often fall short. In this keynote, I will share a proven framework for experiential and gamified course design along with examples from my own courses with accompanying student remarks. The concepts of uncertainty and risk will be discussed along with the psychology behind how students and instructors alike deal with these factors. My hope is that participants will not just learn about what works, but also identify clear examples to follow, and gain the courage to thoughtfully make their courses more experiential and gamified over time. Students in these courses will benefit from the scaffolded design approach which will improve student learning and engagement resulting in better teacher evaluations and more fruitful classroom discussions.