by Janet Gubbins
Each year, folks from all over the US and places as far away as Nigeria gather at our annual Distance Learning Administration conference to learn and share what we know. Most attendees return every year or every other year. At least one DLA 2014 attendee had even been at the conference's inception fifteen years ago. Many friends are made, and collaboration continues virtually. It is a group - a learning community - that I truly love and feel blessed to be a part of.
Whether from a non-profit or for-profit university, a private business, K-12 school, or other organization, we find that we all face many of the same challenges. How do we help provide a quality online educational experience for our students while maintaining top-notch support of both students and faculty and balancing a budget? How do we attract new students and help the ones we have meet their goals? How do we most efficiently meet the growing demands of state and federal regulations, in addition to accreditors' expectations? How can we better serve select populations in need (adult learners, veterans, those with disabilities)? How can we best meet the variety of demands we face each day: project management, exam proctoring, identity authentication, student success (RPG), ADA, copyright, marketing, social media, course design, effective teaching practices, assessment, data analytics, cutting edge technologies, new funding and delivery models, and more?
Though one might think that this group of people would be competitive with one another, the opposite could not be more true. Participants generously share lessons learned, success stories, best practices, and new-found technologies or processes to help one another do our jobs more effectively. Newbies are welcomed into the fold and get more information than they'd probably bargained for, while veterans are well-respected and honored with awards and best paper accolades.
This year's keynote speaker, Dr. Susan Aldridge, senior vice president for Online Learning at Drexel University and president of Drexel University Online, spoke about the need for us (those who support online education and see it's real value) to be more vocal about our success stories and what makes us proudest (view the presentation here). For myself, I am extremely proud of our unique conference - the brainchild of Dr. Melanie Clay and vision of our late Dean, Dr. Donald Wagner. But even more than that, I am proudest to be associated with the wonderful people with whom I share this experience each year - those who work tirelessly to continually improve online education for the benefit of the students whom we serve and who share their secrets of success so generously. It is a true honor to be in their company.
To read the work of some of our DLA attendees, see our Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration. The University of West Georgia's DLA 2015, sponsored by UWG Online and The Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, will begin on June 28 next year on Jekyll Island, Georgia and the call for proposals will be released in October. Watch distance.westga.edu/dla/ for details.
Janet Gubbins is the director of Distance and Distributed Education.
