Can you believe who made a special appearance on SmitCast?
One of the most important departments at Pace University – The Career Services
Let me tell you, it was an absolute game-changer for anyone navigating the job market, especially for us international students.
In this dynamic podcast episode, Jane and Mahindra served up a plethora of invaluable insights and tips to help us elevate our job search game. From crafting killer resumes to mastering the art of networking at career fairs, they left no stone unturned in guiding us toward our dream career paths.
One of the standout insights from the podcast centered around the power of networking at career fairs. Jane and Mahindra underscored the significance of making meaningful connections with recruiters and industry professionals in person. They emphasized the importance of leveraging these opportunities to showcase our unique skills and experiences, positioning ourselves as valuable assets to potential employers.
If you’re ready to unlock the secrets to career success, I highly recommend tuning in to this podcast – trust me, you won’t regret it
Get ready for an inspiring tale of a Mumbai Boy with SmitCast, making waves in the Big Apple!
Currently pursuing his MS in Social Media and Mobile Marketing at Pace University, Kaushal Krishnan is not just a student; he’s a rising force in the world of digital marketing.
Amidst the iconic skyline of New York City, Kaushal also holds a Junior Sales and Marketing Manager position at The Pierre New York, A Taj Hotel
But that’s not all! Kaushal is also an aspiring entrepreneur, carving his path in the competitive fashion industry with his streetwear brand, Pineapple Express. Uncover the behind-the-scenes of his entrepreneurial journey, from ideation to the streets of NYC.
From the colorful streets of India to the concrete jungle of NYC, Kaushal shares his triumphs, setbacks, and the invaluable lessons learned along the way.
If you have an inspiring story to share, reach out to us at olc@pace.edu and be a part of my podcast.
Lara and I have been working at the Online Learning Center since December 2022 and it has been an absolute pleasure. Lara has a rich background in production and film making and personally, I have learned a lot about video editing on Premiere Pro from her. Her expertise in this field has helped her bag some kickass internships with renowned companies like Fox Studios, and NBC Universal to name a few.
In the podcast, Lara shares her unique perspective and experiences as a New Yorker. She delves into the vibrancy and diversity of New York City, discussing how being a part of this dynamic environment has shaped her identity and influenced her worldview.
Lara also reflects on her time as an undergrad, highlighting the enriching experiences and opportunities she encountered during this period. She discusses academic achievements, extracurricular activities, and the valuable lessons learned along the way. These experiences contribute to her personal and professional growth.
What part of our work in the OLC should we share with others? That’s the question that prompted me to submit a presentation proposal for the next SXSW EDU.
SXSW EDU is organized around similar themes as SXSW: innovation, multimedia, and networking. In short, it’s “a celebration of innovation and learning.” I’ve attended virtually for two years, and I find it to be an exciting mix of viewpoints and formats.
This year, I’ve submitted a proposal for the first time. I chose the format of a 30-minute solo presentation for my talk titled:
“The Collaborative and Transmedia Future of Higher Education.”
Session description:
The lecture is dead; long live the lecture! Today, instructors face a daunting task of teaching across face-to-face, online, and hyflex modalities where the traditional lecture is often deprecated as an outmoded method of instruction. But expert narratives can and should be reimagined in and across new media and new learning spaces. What I call a “collaborative transmedia lecture” is a framework for evolving lectures with new technologies. With an eye on video production and diverse learning platforms, this session highlights new opportunities for engagement and learning.
Here’s the teaser video:
This talk has evolved out of my reflection on the models I use to help faculty build exciting and engaging course experiences for our students here at Pace. This fall, for example, I’ll be teaching Introduction to Podcasting in the Communications and Media Studies program. As a production-focused course (re: “experiential education”), there is an emphasis on student-centered learning. This is a great excuse for me to demonstrate using instructor-created video in creative ways.
Some ideas that I plan to define and feature:
– Transmedia storytelling
– Post-pandemic hyflex teaching
– The instructor as DJ (and copyleft media)
– Student-led content curation
– TikTok edits and glam-casting
With some luck–and your support via PanelPicker voting from August 8 – 20–I’ll have a platform to share this work with the SXSW community in 2024.
I’ll be sharing this framework on this blog and in OLC workshops in the near future. Are you a Pace instructor looking to enhance your lectures? Let’s collaborate! Reach me at OLC@Pace.edu.
I’ve always been a people person and an extrovert by nature; I could even talk to the most quiet person in the room.
As a Student Assistant at the Online Learning Center, I made every effort to reach out to as many students and faculty members as possible via digital media and talk to them about their experiences, Pace University, and living in New York. I subscribed to a YouTube channel called Beer Biceps, which is managed by Ranveer Allahbadia, a young man who interviews VVIPs and stars from all across India and wonderfully constructs the entire conversation for his audience. I was enthralled!
“Hey, let’s start a podcast?” I approached Brian one day while sipping my beloved Dunkin’ Donuts cappuccino. Which he said, “Let’s do this!”
I began by customizing the podcast’s structure and launched the International Student Edition series, in which I invited outstanding students to discuss their journey, concerns, challenges, and accomplishments in the city.
The goal of these podcasts is to teach and convey real-time information on how things function for each student confronting unique challenges. Furthermore, I want to set a good example for incoming international students and prepare them for life in New York.
Here’s my most recent interview with Kelly on how she got a full-time job offer one and a half years before graduating.
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The Pace Online team has recently produced and published a spotlight video about Alphur “Slim” Willock’s educational journey at Pace.
Background
In May 2023, Alphur “Slim” Willock graduated with a Master of Science degree in Information Technology from Pace University. He connected to his bachelor’s and master’s programs through the NACTEL (National Alliance for Communications Technology Education and Learning) and CAEL (Council for Adult and Experiential Learning). NACTEL is a CAEL-led partnership of industry employers and unions working with quality educators to create and sponsor online education programs that meet the needs of current and future telecommunications professionals.
Production
To highlight Slim’s experience at Pace, OLC staff conducted a 1-hour studio interview and captured his family celebrating at graduation in May 2023. With additional footage provided by Slim, we were able to illustrate his home life and work ethic. The video was edited in Adobe Premiere Pro, and also features music from our copyright-free library.
Credits:
– Camera: Brian Hughes
– Editing: Lara Gedeon (lead), Brian Hughes (supporting)
An image of a future learner as imagined by the Ed3DAO group, titled “Ed3 Educators NFT mock up with compass & holo glasses.”
I attended many virtual sessions of the “Accelerate 2022” conference hosted by the Online Learning Consortium (another “OLC!”) – my first time attending any OLC conference. The OLC is a non-profit organization that supports a range of professional development and quasi-academic (more white-paper than full research) offerings. In its own words:
OLC is a collaborative community of higher education leaders and innovators, dedicated to advancing quality digital teaching and learning experiences designed to reach and engage the modern learner – anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Below are the top themes I took away from the conference, with an emphasis on how educational leaders can continue to evolve university services.
Connect Learning to Employment
This was a major theme of Amelia Parnell’s keynote talk on “How Online and Blended Learning Can Accelerate Student Success.” She highlighted the continuing focus on the future of the “Learning and Employment Record” (digital portfolios, badges, etc.). She also noted the importance of Prior Learning Assessments (“PLAs”) for attracting and graduating students (students using PLAs completed their credentials at a 20+% higher rate).
Support Faculty Video Development
OK, we’re preaching to the choir here, but it’s still important. Not unexpected from a conference about online learning, but several sessions highlighted the importance of adding original video to courses. A session on “Building Hyflex Programs through Cross-functional Collaboration” looked at how faculty were more successful at deploying multimedia with university staff support. A session on “The Influence of Instructor-Generated Video Content” highlighted how using videos to communicate class expectations led to better a faculty experience with students throughout the semester.
Teach with Confidence
I enjoyed learning some public speaking and performance tips from Jory Basso (founder of Hybrid Health and Fitness, an integrative health clinic in downtown Toronto). Here are his “9 tips for public speaking:
Change with The Internet
In a “Technology and Future Trends” session, speakers discussed structural changes to the web (i.e., “Web3”, “Web 3.0,” etc.) and possibly implications and possibilities for educational institutions and learners. I’ll let this one speak for itself:
The internet is changing and online learning will necessarily change with it. Terms like “crypto,” “blockchain,” “NFT,” “DAO,” and “Web3” are possibly not entirely new to you, but do you know what to expect when these stop being theoretical and become infused into the very bedrock of online learning? Join our panel of experts and educators to help answer questions like “What problem does this solve?,” “What value does this add?,” “How does it work?,” and “What does it even do?”
The panel was comprised of 4 people who are all involved in a “decentralized, autonomous organization” called Ed3DAO. While they were certainly selling their Koolaid, they also had some interesting ideas about the future of credentialing using blockchain technology.
The future-leaning agenda for the session. I appreciated the AI-generated art that the presenters used to illustrate their slides.
Build Your Platform
And not just figuratively: a session on the “Barnes Foundation’s Digital Learning Platform” was about designing, engineering, and testing their new learning platform. As they are in the art education space, the Foundation built a unique web-based experience for remote learners to experience art education as taught by Barnes educators. The ability for learners to toggle between “self-exploration” and “instructor-led exploration” was very slick.
A look at the Barnes’ platform design process.
And more!
“Global Online Academy is a nonprofit organization that reimagines learning to empower students and educators to thrive in a globally networked society. Our consortium is composed of member schools from around the world who are committed to preparing their communities for the future… All of our courses are designed to support the development of GOA’s six core competencies.”
That’s what I was able to glean from this experience with the Online Learning Consortium community. After many years of seeing OLC publications, this was my first time attending one of their conferences. In whole, it wasn’t particularly strong on research, theory, or business. It was more like a passing glance at some current issues in the vast field of online education. I’m glad I was able to engage with this content, but based on the overall quality of the conference presentations, I’m not sure I would attend again anytime soon.
The OLC’s primary goal is to integrate multimedia learning effectively into Pace’s curriculum. With the ongoing COVD-19 pandemic, learning online has become a new normal. This blog post will detail the best ways to keep students attentive and engaged while attending classes online.
A 2003 study by Mayer, R. E., & Moreno R shows that humans learn more deeply from combining words and pictures than from words alone. Multimedia instruction is therefore defined as “presenting words and pictures that are intended to foster learning” (Mayer, 2009). The cognitive theory of multimedia learning makes three assumptions about how the mind works: there are two separate channels (auditory and visual) for processing information; channel capacity is minimal and can hold very little information for short periods; and that learning is an active process of filtering, selecting, organizing, and integrating information.
Multimedia content that doesn’t directly contribute to learning can overload and exceed the processing capacity of the cognitive system; this is known as cognitive overload (Sweller, 1988).
To support learning with video, you should be intentional about your design to reduce extraneous processing and manage the necessary processing of the material.
Listed below are methods that reduce the chances of cognitive overload in multimedia learning.
In conclusion, multimedia learning can significantly benefit students if done correctly.
Key takeaways: balance the two separate channels (auditory and visual) by using exciting graphics, music, and sharing helpful information.
Avoid overloading with unessential information that will lull students’ interest/ be easily forgotten.
I had the good fortune of virtually attending SXSW EDU events this week, including sessions on lessons learned from pandemic education, the hybrid university, the science of learning, and accessibility & inclusion. All of these areas touch on the value and possibility of instructional multimedia.
The online “channel.”
The Live Stream
One of the more interesting aspects of attending the conference online was seeing how they used their website(s) to organize, broadcast, and network content. And in what ways they failed.
The image above shows the web-based “channel” view of the conference, and I understand they also published live video and VOD (“videos on demand”) to TV apps (e.g. Amazon Fire, Roku, Apple TV, etc).
Online, they dedicated space on the right for “Chat” and “Q&A,” although in the 6 live sessions I attended, there was not much interaction. In fact, it was mostly used as a space to bring technical issues to the attention of the event staff (and I am certainly guilty of this!), such as:
– Looping ads and schedule issues (running late?)
– No or low audio.
Despite there being ample SXSW website presence, there was no other “channel” for solving these problems. Other attendees reported no response form the virtual Helpdesk.
Virtual Networking
Crickets. A total dud. For most of the week, the “Social Networking” link on any event brought you to a centralized networking website with a searchable A-Z directory. The plug-in that tied this app into the video platform was evidently broken until the last day of the conference. But it’s hard to know if it was used. Here’s an effort I made to say hi to a presenter:
No response.
The Schedule
Overall I found the web experience confusing, with an unclear relationship between the pre-event website and the paid/login-only “SXSW EDU SCHEDULE” platform. However, the web-based tool to create my own conference schedule by “favoriting” sessions was helpful, as it became my go-to starting point each day.
Each event was coded (see below), but it was not always clear how or when a session would be accessible via video (or not):
“Live” events are live-streamed, and also available as video-on-demand (“VOD”).
I still am not sure what “online” means, because nothing about a session with only that code was online except the description. And it was not clear when “VOD” sessions would be made available, or for how long.
Final Thoughts
While claims of “moonshots” and “radical transformations” abounded, the main takeaway from many sessions was that the COVID-19 pandemic caused educators to use increasingly mixed modalities to support student learning outcomes, and that this was a good thing. As a recent meta-analysis shows, adding video elements to any kind of course can enhance learning outcomes.
