Planning is well underway for the next installment in the IDEAS Seminar Series, and I’m pretty excited about where this one is headed.
In April, we’ll be going live with a topic that’s both timely and foundational: active learning in online environments. The conversation is shaping up to explore not just why active learning matters — but how we can actually make it work in the ever-evolving digital classroom.
Online courses can so easily default to passive formats: watch a video, take a quiz, repeat. But active learning asks more of both the educator and the student — it invites participation, ownership, and deeper thinking. The challenge, of course, is figuring out how to design and facilitate those moments of engagement in an environment that doesn’t naturally lend itself to them.
So right now, I’m working with my team and collaborators to shape a session that goes beyond theory and offers practical, discipline-agnostic strategies for bringing active learning online.
Here’s a peek at the kinds of questions we’re currently exploring with our (soon-to-be-finalized) panel of speakers:
- Why does active learning matter? What happens when it’s missing?
- Where should a faculty member new to this start?
- What mistakes have seasoned instructors made — and what did they learn?
- Which tools or technologies are actually helping deepen engagement?
- How do you know it’s working? What does success look like?
We’re also planning to move toward a more conversational panel format — less formal presentation, more shared insight. That balance between structure and spontaneity feels important for a topic like this.
Like our February event, this one will stream live on YouTube and be fully recorded for asynchronous access. And yes — there’ll be polls, Q&A, and all the good stuff we’ve started to build into our signature format.
As always, my goal with these seminars is to create a space where instructional design doesn’t feel abstract or out of reach — but instead becomes actionable, collaborative, and (dare I say?) energizing.
Stay tuned for the official title and speaker announcement. It’s going to be a good one.
