Attending the Educause Learning Technology Leadership Institute
This month I got the chance to attend the Educause Learning Technology Leadership Institute (LTL-2016) in Austin Texas. None of my colleagues were familiar with this institute so I got to be the guinea pig. To me it seemed interesting to be in an institute with all people working in the same line of work, coming from different schools or universities (in fact, rule is that only one participant per school is allowed) who will work in a team on a so called ‘culminating’ project.
A couple of weeks prior to the institute a yammer network environment was set up, so everybody could already introduce themselves. During the week that we all would be in Texas, we would share information and have discussions through yammer.
Major goal for this week was networking and sharing experiences in our daily practice. With all of us being in the same line of work, discussions were very interesting and it was rather easy to relate to the problems posed by both faculty and participants. The vast majority of the participants were American, coming from all kinds of schools and universities all over the US. Only three participants from Europe/Middle East: University of Edinburgh, Northwestern University (in Qatar) and TU Delft.
To my surprise there were almost 50 participants divided over 7 round tables. In total 7 members of faculty that would lead the institute. They were typically participants of previous versions of this institute and could tell what participating in this LTL institute had meant for their career and building a network of relations throughout the country.
Each day, coming into the room, you had to go find your name tag on one of the tables, making sure you would talk to as many people as possible and not go for the same group all the time. For the first two days: this worked out fine: The introduction of a specific topic, followed by a small assignment or group discussion, would allow you to get to know a bit more about the people at your table. But since you were supposed to work in a (fixed) team on a joint project (the people from the table you sat at on the second day) this idea got kind of distorted over time: You tend to want to be with your team to discuss the impact of the topics being ‘taught’ by the faculty members, rather than yet another person whom you had to ‘get to know’ first. On top of that most of the topics of the third and fourth day were shaped as lengthy presentations leaving hardly any time for discussion.
Working in the team on our project was great. Our team had good discussions about improving digital literacy for both students and teachers. Going into depth and having to ‘create’ our own school, writing a plan on how to improve digital literacy and finding the right arguments to defend our plans in front of the stakeholders (dean, provost, CIO, CFO, etc.) were quite interesting. It gave me a more profound insight in the differences and similarities between the European and North American universities.
The ‘Flying Armadillos’ from the university of El Dorado
On the last day I spoke to the participant from Edinburgh and we discussed (shortly) whether an European version of this institute could be a good idea for the future. From a networking perspective I believe this could be a very good idea. I would be interested on being involved setting it up, so Who knows….
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