WISE Workshop: Designing Online Courses for Diverse Communities of Learners

Today I'm participating in a workshop being given at the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Annual Conference. The 10th annual WISE (Web-based Information Science Education) workshop is an opportunity for online educators to share the knowledge with others. This year, the workshop is being moderated by Nicole Cooke (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and includes presentations from myself (Syracuse University), Lilia Pavlovsky (Rutgers University), and Michael Stephens (San Jose State University). The workshop description is:

As LIS programs become more entrepreneurial, reaching more diverse groups of learners, LIS educators are challenged to design their courses for diverse communities. There are many possible dimensions of diversity—different learner work contexts with different value structures (e.g., library vs. business), different cultural contexts when courses have a global reach, differences in learner demographics (age, gender, ethnicity), and differences in technology use outside of class, including social media. How does online course design take into account this diversity? This panel of experienced online educators will provide examples of how they have worked to address diverse communities of learners in their course designs and encourage interaction with members of the audience.

I've been teaching online since January 2001 and find it very enjoyable. I have grown into using various types of media in my classes and finding ways of engaging the students. I also know that learning how to teach online is a never-ending process, and so I not only look forward to giving this presentation, but also hearing what my co-presenters have to say. Below are the slides that I'll be using.

WISE Workshop: Designing Online Courses for Diverse Communities of Learners from Jill Hurst-Wahl

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Update (Feb. 4):  Links to all of the presentations from this workshop are available on the WISE web site (bottom of page).