2027
June 28-30, 2027
Anaheim, CA

OTC’26 Archives

Click here to download a pdf of the schedule
Presentation slides are available to conference attendees through the conference app until December 15, 2026.

Keynotes

headshot, Flower DarbyFLOWER DARBY
Joyful Online Teaching: Find Your Fizz to Boost Learning and Success

Let’s face it. Teaching these days is tough. We’re exhausted, burned out, and frustrated by societal challenges like politics and AI. Yet our work is important, mea  ningful, and worthwhile. We’re changing lives and helping dreams come true. The best way to meet the threat posed by AI to meaningful learning is to center the people in our classes -- both ourselves and our students -- and focus on fostering collective well-being. Based on Flower’s new book, The Joyful Online Teacher: Finding Our Fizz in Asynchronous Classes, this talk will help us see how to promote flourishing and rediscover the joy inherent in transformational teaching and learning.

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CCC Vice Chancellor Craig Hayward
Craig Hayward

From Classroom to Career: Mobilizing a Human-First AI Ecosystem

Facilitated by CRAIG HAYWARD, CCC Vice Chancellor of AI Strategy and Digital Transformation

The intersection of online education and the modern workforce is being redefined by the paradox of artificial intelligence; it is both a challenge to traditional modes of ensuring academic integrity and a massive opportunity for equity and economic mobility. In this final session, system leaders pull back the curtain on the Vision 2030 workplans to explore the California Community Colleges’ ground game for 2.2 million students and 90,000 committed professionals. Facilitated by Vice Chancellor Craig Hayward, the panel, including Vice Chancellors Anthony Cordova, Vice Chancellor of Workforce and Economic Development, Siria Martinez, Vice Chancellor of Equity, Innovation & Institutional Effectiveness, and Executive in Residence, Strategic Technology Initiatives, Jory Hadsell, will move beyond theory into the lived realities of implementation.

The panelists will share key accomplishments from the past year while addressing a vital question: How do we ensure AI projects deliver on the promise of student success without compromising educational depth? We will explore how the system is leveraging partnerships with Google, IBM, Coursera, Microsoft and others to build high-demand skills, while simultaneously evaluating whether our implementations are fostering human agency or creating new digital divides. Join us for a grounded yet hopeful look at how the California community colleges are navigating the technical and ethical details to ensure AI remains a human-centered force for good in California.

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Conference Sessions

Engage Like a YouTuber: Transforming Online Teaching with Video
Peter Esperanza, PhD

This 50-minute, hands-on session invites faculty and instructional staff to explore the value of creating their own instructional videos to enhance student engagement across multiple teaching modalities—in-person, hybrid, synchronous, and asynchronous online learning. Designed especially for educators with little to no experience in video production, this session provides a supportive introduction to the fundamentals of content creation for teaching and learning.

Building upon the 2025 session “Engage Like a YouTuber: Transforming Online Teaching with Video,” this workshop focuses on practical strategies for designing short, authentic videos using accessible tools such as smartphones, laptops, and built-in cameras. Participants will gain experience in recording short clips and explore how AI-assisted features can improve accessibility and streamline production without compromising authenticity or ethical standards.

The session emphasizes the human element in digital instruction—how instructor-created videos can build presence, strengthen connection, and foster a more engaging and inclusive learning experience. Through guided activities, participants will experiment with scripting, recording, and sharing short video messages that can be integrated into their teaching practice immediately.

By the end of the session, attendees will have a clearer understanding of how to integrate video into their courses effectively and ethically. They will leave with practical approaches to producing meaningful, personalized content that supports student engagement and learning across all teaching modalities.
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Testing AI Prompts Before Students Do: A Practical Framework
Julie Gamberg
Anna Mills

Interested in offering students AI feedback tailored to your assignments, but not sure where to start? Maybe you've heard about custom AI tools like PlayLab or seen colleagues sharing prompts, and you're wondering: would this actually help my students? How would I know if it's any good?  This session reveals what our multi-institutional research team learned from months of iterative prompt testing and shows you how you can create and test effective AI prompts for your online students, across disciplines.   Drawing from our experience refining AI feedback prompts across multiple ChatGPT models (GPT 4.1, 4o, and 5.2) and testing them against diverse student work, we'll share a practical framework for prompt validation that doesn't require a research team.  We'll explain what makes a prompt effective, including techniques like "chain-of-thought" scaffolding (telling the AI to brainstorm before responding) and reader-response framing (centering how human audiences experience writing). We'll show side-by-side examples of generic AI feedback versus equity-minded, pedagogically-designed feedback, so you can see how instructions shape outcomes.  You'll also learn how to evaluate whether a prompt is ready for your students: what to look for, what red flags to avoid, and how much testing is realistic. Whether you're just AI-curious or already experimenting with tools like PlayLab in your LMS, you'll leave with a prompt evaluation checklist, example prompts you can adapt, and realistic expectations for integrating AI prompts in your online course.
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Empowering Education with CCC TechConnect: Tools to Enhance Learning and Collaboration
Najib Manea
Candace Robertson
Heather Schmidt

Join us to explore how TechConnect's suite of services can revolutionize your institution's approach to digital education. Learn how TechConnect provides cutting-edge tools such as Zoom for e-conferencing, cloud-based video on demand, and integrations with Canvas, all designed to enhance learning engagement, collaboration, and accessibility. Discover how to leverage these tools at no cost to improve student success, streamline digital communication, and simplify media management, while also connecting with live support tailored for the California Community Colleges system​.
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Design Once, Benefit All: Building Flexible Access into Online Learning with UDL
Amanda Taintor

Providing access in online courses is often treated as reactive work—adding accommodations after students request them. This workshop reframes equitable access as a proactive design opportunity that benefits all learners while reducing last-minute faculty workload. Using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a framework, participants will explore practical strategies for building flexibility and multiple pathways into online courses from the start. Online environments present unique opportunities for UDL implementation: asynchronous learning naturally allows for varied pacing, multiple content formats, and diverse ways to demonstrate knowledge.

This session will focus on simple, technology-agnostic strategies to provide options for how students engage with course material (video, text, interactive elements), demonstrate their learning (varied assessment formats), and maintain motivation (choice, relevance, flexible deadlines). We'll discuss how proactive design through UDL principles reduces barriers to learning, creates more equitable experiences, and actually saves faculty time in the long run. Participants will see concrete examples applicable across disciplines and learning management systems, with attention to California's new UDL requirements for course outlines of record.

This session is designed for online faculty at any experience level who want practical, implementable strategies to support diverse learners—including students with disabilities, multilingual learners, working adults, and anyone navigating the challenges of asynchronous learning. Equitable access isn't about doing more work; it's about designing thoughtfully from the beginning.
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Extreme Makeover: Online Education Edition
Fabiola Torres
Scotty James
Jim Julius

Let’s be honest. Online education has been in need of a makeover for a while. Regulations, rubrics, and reviews might help with minor remodels. But now that generative and agentic AI are on the scene, the conventional wisdom for making online classes meaningful places for authentic learning is clearly insufficient. Does this mean AI is the enemy of online education?

Generative AI chatbots and agentic AI tools amplify longstanding concerns about academic integrity. They even call into question the efficacy of our most tried-and-true approaches to authentic, equity-minded, and humanized online course design and teaching. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have options in our efforts to make online education a meaningful venue for transformative teaching and learning.

In this session, you’ll hear from online education and AI leaders from three colleges who will describe not just design ideas for online course makeovers, but also leadership strategies to help our colleagues and colleges to undertake this work together. Participants will be able to access resources shared by the presenters, as well as to contribute their own ideas and resources to help develop a collective toolkit for us to advance this work on our campuses.
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Humanizing AI: Navigating 10 Ethical Pillars for Student Success
Alison Gurganus

The "Human Element" is our most vital asset as AI transforms the digital landscape. For faculty teaching online, navigating the ethics of Generative AI is no longer optional, it is a pedagogical necessity. This interactive workshop moves beyond the "how-to" of tools to explore the "should-we" of instruction. We will navigate ten critical ethical pillars, from Data Privacy (FERPA) and Accessibility to Labor Exploitation and Environmental Impact.  Participants will engage in a "Case Study Carousel," analyzing real-world ethical dilemmas tailored to the diverse California Community College student population. We will bridge the gap between innovation and integrity, focusing on how AI can support student empowerment rather than replace human connection. Attendees will walk away with a Practitioner’s Toolkit, including an "Ethical Vetting Checklist" and a modular syllabus statement. Join us to design an online future where technology serves the human experience without compromising our core values.  This  is presented in two back-to-back fast  paced, 50-minute, interactive, sessions.
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Balancing AI Innovation and Academic Integrity: A Human-Centered Policy Approach for Online/Hybrid Course
Parvaneh Mohammadian
Suha Al Juboori

As AI tools rapidly reshape online and hybrid teaching, higher education faces new governance challenges: How do we preserve academic integrity, maintain faculty agency, and protect student trust while still encouraging responsible innovation? This session presents a human-centered governance framework that helps institutions navigate generative AI, automated feedback systems, and AI-enabled proctoring.
The session begins by grounding participants in what is truly at stake, not only concerns about cheating, but also deeper issues of critical thinking, student dignity, faculty autonomy, and equity. Through brief, relatable case scenarios and a short participant poll, attendees surface current challenges and shared tensions across their institutions. The presentation then introduces a practical human-centered governance framework, highlighting flexible institutional guidelines, faculty training strategies, assignment-specific expectations, and transparent communication practices that reinforce trust and academic values.
Real-world examples illustrate effective course-level policies, privacy-respecting verification methods, and inclusive practices that support diverse learners. The session concludes with actionable implementation strategies, including starting with small pilots, designing authentic assessments, and revisiting policies as AI evolves. Participants leave with a digital resource packet containing sample policies, templates, and governance tools to support ongoing campus implementation.

Building Structure, Shaping Vision: Creating Framework for Student Success in Online Higher Education
Dr. Hussam Kashou
Laura Rantala

Student success in online education requires more than strong technology and course design, it also depends on intentional structure, clear vision, and meaningful human connection. This session explores how organizational leadership can shape student outcomes by creating purposeful frameworks and student-centered roles, with a focus on the development of an Online Learning Program Manager (at Long Beach City College) dedicated to supporting online learners. Participants will learn how clearly defined support structures strengthen engagement, foster belonging, and increase awareness of resources for online students. The session will also showcase online learning readiness resources and support systems designed to help students prepare for and succeed in the online environment, including orientation tools, skill-building resources, and proactive outreach strategies that promote confidence and readiness from the start. Through reflection and practical discussion, attendees will assess their current online support models, identifying existing strengths, gaps, and challenges. The session concludes with actionable next steps to help institutions envision, design, or refine a role focused on online student success, aligned with institutional priorities and scalable across programs.
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Cultivating Structured Inclusion in Online Courses
Amanda Hardman

Equitable and inclusive online learning environments do not emerge from good intentions alone. Even courses that meet recognized quality standards can unintentionally create barriers for first-generation learners, neurodivergent learners, and others who benefit from greater clarity, flexibility, and relational support.

This session introduces structured inclusion as an equity-minded approach that centers the human side of online learning by intentionally pairing transparent course structures with empathic instructor presence. Grounded in Quality Matters General Standard 5 and informed by Universal Design for Learning (UDL) 3.0, this interactive session invites participants to examine how structure, which is often perceived as rigid or limiting, can instead function as a powerful tool for accessibility, motivation, and belonging.

Participants will engage in guided reflection and collaborative exploration to surface assumptions about inclusion, analyze examples of structured learning interactions, and consider how intentional design choices can make expectations explicit while honoring learner variability. Through structured protocols and discussion, participants will explore practical strategies that advance equity and accessibility, including humanized module introductions, scaffolded discussion prompts with choice, assignment templates and checklists, multiple means of engagement and expression, and built-in relational checkpoints. Particular attention will be given to how instructor presence can be deliberately embedded within course structures to communicate care, transparency, and trust.

Participants will leave with concrete strategies they can apply to cultivate inclusive online learning environments where students feel supported, motivated, and valued.
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CVC Town Hall: Unveiling the Revised Online Course Design Rubric
Marina Aminy
Garrick Grace

Join your CVC colleagues for a fast-paced update on what the CVC and CVC/@ONE accomplished this year and what’s coming next. Hear highlights on cross‑enrollment, professional development, and the unveiling of the revised Online Course Design Rubric! This town‑hall style session invites faculty, distance‑education coordinators, and administrators to bring questions, share feedback, and help shape the roadmap for the months ahead. Don’t miss this chance to recap the year, learn practical next steps, and engage directly with leadership.

Demystifying Generative AI: Skills Every Student Needs Now
Liz Hickok

As generative AI tools rapidly reshape academic research and learning, teaching students how to engage with these technologies responsibly has become an essential component of digital literacy. This presentation explores a practical, classroom-tested framework for AI literacy instruction that equips students with foundational knowledge of how generative AI systems work, including training data sources, the limits of current models, and privacy concerns. Attendees will learn strategies for introducing students to effective prompt engineering: focusing on clarity, context, bias reduction, and iterative refinement to support their ethical and intentional use of AI tools rather than passively accepting default outputs.
The session also covers best practices for citing AI-generated content across major citation styles, including when citation is required, how to evaluate the appropriateness of AI assistance in academic work, and how to help students distinguish original thinking from AI-suggested language. In addition, the presentation addresses machine learning bias and the structural inequities embedded in training data, offering examples that help students critically evaluate AI output for inaccuracies, hallucinations, and cultural or demographic bias.
Finally, the session provides guidance on cultivating AI awareness among faculty colleagues, especially those who feel uncertain, skeptical, or overwhelmed by emerging technologies. Participants will leave with adaptable lesson plans, discussion prompts, and practical strategies for building a shared culture of responsible AI integration across departments. This session is designed for educators seeking actionable techniques to prepare students for a future in which AI literacy is not optional, but essential.
Joyful Online Teaching: Find Your Fizz to Boost Learning and Success
Flower Darby
Let’s face it. Teaching these days is tough. We’re exhausted, burned out, and frustrated by societal challenges like politics and AI. Yet our work is important, meaningful, and worthwhile. We’re changing lives and helping dreams come true. The best way to meet the threat posed by AI to meaningful learning is to center the people in our classes — both ourselves and our students — and focus on fostering collective well-being. Based on Flower’s new book,The Joyful Online Teacher: Finding Our Fizz in Asynchronous Classes, this talk will help us see how to promote flourishing and rediscover the joy inherent in transformational teaching and learning.
View recording
From Control to Purpose: Designing Learning for Integrity in the Age of AI
Kas Metzler
Lynn Dickinson
As generative AI reshapes how students approach learning, many educators are re-examining long-held assumptions about academic integrity, assessment, and instructional control. This session invites faculty to shift the conversation from detection and enforcement toward intentional, purpose-driven course design. Grounded in classroom experience and research-informed pedagogy, the discussion will explore how transparency, authentic assessment, and clearly articulated “why” statements can reduce misuse of AI while increasing student engagement, equity, and ownership of learning.
Designed as a Birds of a Feather conversation, this session prioritizes dialogue over presentation. Participants will engage in facilitated discussion around shared challenges and emerging practices, drawing from diverse disciplines and institutional contexts. Rather than focusing on tools, the session centers pedagogy: how course structure, assignment design, and feedback practices signal what we truly value and shape how students choose to engage with AI.
Anchoring discussion questions will include:
  • What are students telling us, directly or indirectly, about why they turn to AI in our courses?
  • How do our current assignments and assessments either invite or discourage meaningful learning in an AI-rich environment?
  • What would it look like to design for integrity through purpose, reflection, and process rather than surveillance or restriction?

Implementing UDL with Generative AI: Practical Prompts for Inclusive, Learner-Centered Design
Amanda Hardman

A common response to instructors’ initial introduction to standards and frameworks such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is that of feeling overwhelmed. The intersection of an empathetic commitment to improve course design and the anxiety of feeling underprepared to effectively select and implement changes to best address diverse learner needs has, in our experience of working with faculty, left too many instructors feeling frustrated. In their book Enhancing Inclusive Instruction (2024), though, Addy, Dube, and Mitchell remind us that “It is important to recognize that even the most inclusive instructor might not have familiarity with every student demographic.” Pair this insight with Tobin and Behling’s “plus one” approach from their 2018 text Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone, and we are positioned to reframe UDL implementation in terms of curiosity and iteration for ongoing growth and continuous improvement.

Today, as generative AI continues to improve and more of us are becoming familiar with prompting techniques, we have a thinking and planning partner that can extend our own capabilities. By working with AI as a centaur or a cyborg (Mollick, Co-Intelligence, 2024), recognizing what we don't yet know but are curious to discover becomes a ripe opportunity to nurture joy and play in ourselves (UDL consideration 7.3) while ideating concrete benefits for our learner-centered course designs. This is an active learning session, and participants will gain the most by working with their personal devices or with partners to emulate and extend the presenters' prompts.

The session plan is to volley between content and active experimentation within three key areas: using AI to (1) discover assets of learner diversity and generate learner profiles; (2) review course design elements through neurodiverse lenses to improve existing structures; and (3) generate learner resources that align to UDL guidelines. Note: Shorter session possible, longer allows more hands-on.
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Oh Joy: Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) Mentorship Program
Christopher Collins
Kim Saccio

Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) often enters our institutions’ lexicon through policy language: standards, regulations, accreditation, compliance. It is framed as a requirement and mandate. But in community colleges, online teaching and learning is shaped by far more than policy. It is shaped by emotional labor, relational work, invisible mentoring, unpaid design hours, and equity-centered pedagogical care that rarely appears on workload charts or institutional metrics. When RSI becomes another mandate layered onto already full lives of faculty, it risks becoming forced performative compliance rather than intrinsic practice that generates connection and joy in online spaces.
In Fall 2025, the Skyline College Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning (CTTL) launched the RSI Mentorship Program to respond to this tension. This year-long pilot reframed RSI not as an external demand, but as a relational practice supported through mentorship, reflective inquiry, and consultative coaching. Rather than positioning faculty as implementers of policy, the program centered them as co-designers of interaction and reflective practitioners engaged in iterative pedagogical growth.
Ten faculty members were recruited, each selecting an asynchronous online course to focus on for the duration of the program (AY 2025–26). Participants engaged in structured mentorship meetings that included goal setting, analysis of student success, course design reviews, and guided coaching conversations for intentional implementation of RSI-informed interventions. At the end of the semester the faculty participated in an in-depth interview to share their reflections on the experience.
This session will share the design and development of the RSI Mentorship Program, the coaching model utilized, lessons learned as facilitators, and data from the pilot, including faculty narratives.

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CVC Plug and Play
Ryan Hitch
Garrick Grace
Sharon Oxford
Xochitl Tirado
Maria Elena Fernandez

This session focuses on the new CVC@ONE Plug and Play Adoptable Courses, developed by faculty from across the California Community Colleges system. In this session, you will learn what Plug and Play courses are, how you can adopt one, and which courses are developed or in development. We will also share how colleges are funding adoption of these courses. Come learn more about adoptable courses that will serve to assist you in creating an excellent experience for your students!
What Students Want from AI
Amy Leonard
As artificial intelligence tools become increasingly embedded in online and hybrid learning environments, educators are challenged to integrate AI in ways that deepen engagement, strengthen human connection, and support inclusive learning. Student perspectives are essential to this work, yet are often underrepresented in decisions about AI-supported course design, feedback, and instructor presence in digital spaces.
This session presents findings from a mixed-methods analysis of 299 composition students at De Anza College, surveyed during the Fall 2025 and Winter 2026 quarters. Students were asked how they use AI in daily life, how they navigate AI in academic work, their comfort with instructor use of AI, and their expectations for ethical, transparent learning environments—particularly in online courses. The results highlight a constructive and forward-looking student stance. Students express strong interest in AI literacy, including guidance on appropriate use, critical evaluation of AI-generated content, and clear expectations. Many students also support faculty use of AI to enhance feedback, especially when AI is used to improve clarity, timeliness, and accessibility while instructors retain oversight and relational presence. These preferences align closely with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles by expanding multiple means of representation, engagement, and action through feedback.
Grounded in composition pedagogy but broadly applicable across disciplines, this session will share key data trends, student quotes, and practical examples of human-AI collaboration in online course design. Participants will leave with concrete strategies for designing engaging, UDL-aligned online learning experiences where AI supports—not replaces—human connection.

You Say You’re My A11y, But Then UX Me
Saša Stojić-Ito

This session unpacks the often-overlooked disconnect between accessibility and usability in higher ed. Just because content meets technical standards doesn’t mean it’s usable or inclusive. If students are lost, frustrated, or can’t engage meaningfully, we’ve missed the mark. We’ll explore what happens when accessibility stops at compliance, why usability must be part of the conversation, and how to design digital experiences that truly work for all learners. Through real examples, a dash of humor, and practical strategies, you’ll learn how to shift from accessible enough to actually inclusive. Because when UX (usability) fails, a11y (accessibility) falls with it. Whether you’re building Canvas pages or choosing tools for engagement, you'll learn how to make accessibility a shared, intentional practice–because usable is accessible, and everyone has a role to play.

Zoom Unpacked
Evic Oropilla
Donna Gustafson

So many options in Zoom, but do you have the time to figure it all out? Come to this session with your list of ‘what if’ and ‘how can I’ and we will get you to where you want to be. Or contact us in advance at support@ccctechconnect.org with your list of Zoom questions so we are ready for you! Even if you don’t know what you want, join us and learn from what others want! Laptops are welcome so you can follow along in your own Zoom account.
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Awakening Superpowers: Human-Centered AI for Teaching, Learning, and Access
Scotty James

AI is often framed as a shortcut—or a threat to academic integrity. This session reframes the conversation: AI can be an ability amplifier—an accessibility engine that helps learners (and faculty) do more of the right cognitive work, with greater independence and higher standards.
Drawing on my recent keynotes and faculty-facing work, I’ll share practical, human-centered “mini superpowers” already available in our classrooms: text-to-speech and speech-to-text that increase reading and writing throughput; tools that reduce executive-function friction (planning, chunking, prioritizing); and accessibility-first workflows that support disabled and neurodiverse learners while benefiting everyone. I’ll connect these practices to a Hidden Figures analogy: when we transition from pencil and paper math to accurate and effortless computer calculations that enable us to focus on advanced thinking, not avoidable friction.
We’ll also explore how AI reduces the fear of getting started. For many learners, the biggest barrier is anticipating being stuck. With supportive AI, they gain a judgment-free, just-in-time partner that helps them begin, try a next step, and keep momentum. This creates space to learn by doing—building, failing safely, reevaluating, and trying again—whether drafting an argument, revising a paragraph, or experimenting with “vibe coding” to prototype ideas and learn through iteration.
Finally, we’ll translate this into equitable grading strategies that still validate college-level learning in an AI-shaped environment—shifting emphasis toward process evidence, transparent criteria, and feedback that rewards cognition, revision moves, and rhetorical decision-making. You’ll leave with a grounded framework for using AI to increase rigor and cognition (not lower it), plus a curated set of ADA-aligned tools and equitable assessment approaches you can adopt immediately—regardless of discipline or modality.

Threading the Needle: Using AI to Support—Not Supplant—Critical Thinking
Dr. Matthew Nelson

As technology-forward educators, most of us have experienced a push to embrace AI tools in our teaching, but many of the recent studies on the relationship between AI use and critical thinking suggests that AI harms instead of supports critical thinking. According to this research, AI leads to cognitive offloading, which in turn has adverse effects on critical thinking development.
While this research might seem to suggest that AI doesn’t belong in education, these studies generally offer a more balanced assessment of AI’s classroom potential. This shouldn’t be surprising. Research on critical thinking before the development of AI tools implies that many of the teaching practices AI seems particularly well-suited for-- think simulations, role playing, dialogue, and stuff like that-- can help students develop critical thinking skills. For our online students, AI in particular has the potential to offer immediate, personalized opportunities for anchored instruction that supports critical thinking and can be difficult for instructors to replicate in a prompt, sustainable manner.
The AI hype feels so tempting sometimes, but so does the doom-saying, too! How do we navigate this whirlpool of AI’s risks and rewards for our students?
This proposed presentation will discuss strategies to use AI in your courses that, in theory, should support instead of hinder your students’ critical thinking development. We’ll briefly review some research on critical thinking and its relationship to AI then build on that discussion to demo ways in which you can use AI to support your students’ learning. This session aims to “thread the needle” and discuss ways to use AI that can support critical thinking development while also resisting these tools’ tendencies to offload cognitive tasks.
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Canvas + AI: Designing Courses for Access, Creativity, and Connection
Samantha St Claire

Join Samantha St. Claire, Distance Education Coordinator at Copper Mountain College, for an interactive session on using AI to enhance accessibility and creativity in Canvas courses that are ADA-compliant and meet Universal Design for Learning (UDL) standards. Through demonstrations and optional hands-on activities, participants will explore real examples of transforming dense text into accessible visuals, captions, and multimedia, and learn strategies for keeping human creativity and empathy at the heart of AI use. Participants will leave with tools, templates, and ethical guidelines to confidently integrate AI into their course design.

Small Changes, Deep Learning: Building AI-Resilient Assignments
James Neal
Ana De La Mora
Joseph Harrington

This presentation articulates a research- and practice-based framework developed in our Community of Practice: Creating AI Resilient Assignments. It focuses on designing or adapting assignments and learning sequences that are AI resilient, restoring authentic, human-centered learning while considering what role AI could play. Practical examples of implementing this framework help ground these ideas as faculty continue to adapt and leverage AI to help students learn deeply. We will explore how simple changes to assignments can guide students in reclaiming their voice in their learning, leaving a space to redefine the role of AI as a tool for enriching their own creativity.

Online Teaching Conference 2027

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