CETE staff Joyce Isler, Greg Nagy, Cara North, and Alicia Willis attended the annual Distance Teaching and Learning conference August 9-11, 2016, in Madison, Wisconsin. This conference brings together distance education and training professionals to share ideas, resources, research, and best practices. Vendors attend to exhibit and present emerging technologies and to show their impact on distance education. The conference keynotes were given by Richard Culatta, Michelle Miller, and Karl Kapp. Culatta, the Chief Innovation Officer for the State of Rhode Island, delivered a keynote encouraging attendees to imagine higher education having a user-experience department. Culatta noted that user experience is prominent in technology but often not in education. Michelle Miller, a cognitive psychologist at Northern Arizona University, spoke about the sociocultural aspects of learners. Kapp, the Director of Institute for Interactive Technologies at Bloomsburg University, is known for his research about gamification and its impact on learning. CETE staff attended multiple sessions on subjects including competency-based education, instructional design best practices, and accessibility considerations.

Contributor: Cara North