"Higher education change and blended design and delivery: New technology, new pedagogies" - Over the past two decades, pressure to change higher education became part of a global agenda with virtually every jurisdiction or region articulating a new plan. The COVID-19 pandemic emerged in this evolving transition. The required emergency online education, where speed and safety were more important than student and program differences, to make it possible to prepare all students to learn, through all avenues of online, in-person, or a blend of both. This pandemic experience with technology-enabled, remote teaching has opened the door for discussion beyond this attenuated adoption of remote learning. Dr. Cleveland-Innes will share about the history, opportunities, and the possible challenges for implementing online and blended learning. She will share with us how the affordances of blended learning can enable future possibilities in higher education.

Professor Martha Cleveland-Innes is a Professor of Open, Digital, and Distance Education at Athabasca University. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the bilingual Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology and the author of The Guide to Blended Learning. Martha is the instructor, co-designer, and researcher for the open online courses Blended Learning Practice and Leading Change for Teaching and Learning in a Digital World. The 2nd edition of Introduction to Distance Education: Teaching and Learning in a New Era, which she co-edited, was released by Taylor & Francis in 2021. She has an upcoming book she co-edited: The Design of Digital Learning Environments: Online and Blended Applications of the Community of Inquiry. She has held major research grants supporting research on the digital technology-enabled student experience. In 2019 Martha received an Honorary Doctorate from Mid-Sweden University and the Leadership Award from the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education. Her research interest areas include 1) online and blended learning, 2) communities of inquiry, 3) higher education reform and lifelong learning, and 4) leadership in digital education. Martha is currently Visiting Professor of Pedagogy at Mid-Sweden University and the Virtual Educator-in-Residence Scholar, National University of Singapore, Fall 2022.

"Relational feedback as a key to student learning" - It is a well-accepted fact that the quality of student-faculty, student-staff, and student-student interactions are foundational to motivation, learning, belonging, and achievement for all students. Relationships and relational feedback matters. This session shares findings from more than 400 interviews with students, faculty, and staff across U.S. higher education. It may seem that relational feedback is hard to achieve. This session shares how the approach can be flexible, scalable, equitable, and humane. Relational feedback can challenge students to learn within and outside the classroom leading to lifelong learning students The session will elaborate not just on instructor-to-student feedback but also structured peer-to-peer feedback that builds relationships and enhances learning.

Peter Felten is Professor of History, Executive Director of the Center for Engaged Learning, and assistant provost for teaching and learning at Elon University. During the 2022-2023 academic year, he has been named Fulbright Canada Distinguished Chair in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, at Carleton University in Ottawa. Peter has published six books about undergraduate education including (with Leo Lambert), Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020). His next book, a student guide to relationship-rich education, is co-authored with Isis Artze-Vega, Leo Lambert, and Oscar Miranda Tapia, will be published by Johns Hopkins in 2023 (with an open access online version free to all readers). He has served as president of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) and also of the POD Network, the U.S. professional society for educational developers. He is on the advisory board of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and is a fellow of the Gardner Institute, a foundation that works to advance equity, justice, and upward social mobility through higher education.