All posts by Lori Zalivansky

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About Lori Zalivansky

Lori is a native to Northern Illinois, having moved here from Buffalo, New York, at eleven months old. She is the first family member that was born in America, as her whole family is from Belarus, Russia. Although she understands Russian she can only say a few words. Lori got her B.S. from Western Illinois University. She started her college career as an accounting major, but due to a lack of interest, she changed her focus to computer science. This also was not the flame to her candle, so she changed her major to what she got her degree in, instructional design and technology. Lori has been a member of the FITS team for 6 years and counting.

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SLATE 2019 Takeaways

Something I like to do for this blog is to post a review of any conferences I attend. My hope is that anyone who is struggling to find the right conference can look at my reviews as a guide to help find the “right fit” for them. 

This year I attended the SLATE conference in Naperville, IL. This was my second time attending and it had been several years since I last attended SLATE. The first time I went, the focus and content within the conference was very BlackBoard heavy. DePaul uses D2L, so the focus on BlackBoard really limited the sessions I could pick from.

I decided to give SLATE another chance this year to see if they broadened their learning management system (LMS) coverage. Sadly, for me, even though it wasn’t as Blackboard-centric, the only other LMS included was Canvas. I found myself with a limited amount of sessions to choose from, again, because the sessions were heavily based around LMS offerings that DePaul does not use. Despite the limited options, however, I did find some sessions that proved to have useful takeaways.

There also seemed to be a focus on new products, rather than new concepts, this year. Which I should preface with at this point, factoring the amount of conferences I have gone to and what I have already learned by working with my knowledgeable colleagues at DePaul, it’s getting harder to go to conferences and have those “eureka” moments. Continue reading →

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Augmented Reality, Korean Dramas, and Higher Education

You probably asking yourself what do augmented reality (AR)and Korean dramas have to do with each other? Well, in December 2018 Korea debuted a new drama on Netflix, Memories of Alhambra, which revolved around a groundbreaking AR game based on medieval battles in Alhambra. The main character of the drama, Yoo Jin Woo, is a CEO of an investment company that specializes in optical devices. One optical device he creates was a contact lens that allows users to interact with AR content. For Jin Woo, getting his hands on the next big AR game was imperative. This leads to a late night phone call from an AR game creator, Jung Se Joo, telling him they need to meet ASAP otherwise he might sell his game to Jin Woo’s competitor. This gets Jin Woo on plane to Granada, Spain, and thus begins his AR journey.

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Takeaways from UBTech 2018

UBTech 2018This year for my conference choice I picked UBTech. The conference was held at The Mirage hotel in Las Vegas, baby, and it was during June so you can imagine how the weather was. But as everyone likes to say, “at least it’s dry heat!”

As the name suggests, UBTech is very tech heavy. If you are on a mission to find new technology for your classroom/school, this is the conference to go to. As I am an instructional designer, I did struggle to find topics more geared towards online learning but I still feel I came away with some useful knowledge!

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Crowdsourcing: Good or Bad?

The first episode of Wisdom of the Crowd premiered on October 1st and I had to check it out. Being a lover of crime procedurals and someone who works to bring content to the masses through the use of online platforms, I thought this show would be right up my alley.

The main concept of the show is that a Steve Jobs-like character (Jeffrey Tanner played by Jeremy Piven) has decided to take crowdsourcing to the next level by creating an app, called SOPHIE, where people around the world can share and evaluate evidence to help solve crimes—more specifically to help solve his own daughter Mia’s murder. Everyone has a phone these days, and everyone wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves, so why not create a platform where people can connect with each other and help solve murders without leaving the comfort of their homes?

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Personalized Learning: Thoughts from EdMedia 2017

I recently attended EdMedia in Washington DC. I was excited for this conference because this was the first conference that I was attending completely on my own. There’s this tendency when you go to a conference with someone—at least for me—to follow their itinerary rather than come up with your own, so this was a true test for me to see how I could experience a conference completely by myself.

One thing that was really great about this conference was how it wasn’t that large attendee wise. There was a decent amount of people from different areas of the education field but there wasn’t an overwhelming amount of people everywhere, which I felt was a true benefit as it was easier to meet people.

Since this was my first time attending EdMedia, I attended the Newcomer Welcome meeting and they had us do something similar to speed dating where we had 3 minutes to talk to a person and get to know them. This was a great ice breaker, especially for someone who is typically more reserved and has a hard time approaching people.

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Is There an Age Limit on Technology?

About a year ago, my father came up to my mother and me during breakfast, saying he wanted to upgrade his very old Nokia phone to a smartphone. Our reactions to this confession weren’t kind. My father—who was 61—had almost zero experience with technology at the time. Also, my parents are both from Minsk, Belarus, so English is a second language for them. Going from an old Nokia phone to something that many consider to be a pocket computer was a big leap. I hate to admit that although I’m in the business of introducing new technology to everyone, when my father asked for my help I told him he was too old to be diving into technology. Continue reading →

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Stress: The Good, The Bad, and The Downright Ugly

I think it is safe to say we have all experienced some form of stress in our life–whether it be in our personal life or at work. Stress isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes stress, in small doses, can help you perform better and keep you safe when in dangerous situations.

This week we had several interviews and one of the questions we always ask candidates is how are you under pressure and can you manage stress? Working in our field can be very stressful. Employers should understand an intimidating work environment to be able to avoid their workplace becoming one. There is a lot of customer support involved with instructional design. As Sharon Guan likes to say, we are free therapy. Whenever an instructor is struggling, they come to us with the hope that we can ease their worries and their stress. Which means a lot of the time we are not only dealing with our own personal stress but also taking on the stress of our faculty. Stress is only good if you keep it in a comfortable zone, so how do you make sure to not let yourself get overwhelmed? As one of the candidates said during the interview, you don’t want to get to the point where you are seconds away from throwing your computer out the window. It’s a long way down.

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How to Give a Kahoot!

This year I decided to attend the OLC (Online Learning Consortium) Innovate conference in New Orleans. The conference was a great experience in part for getting to hear from others in the same field on what their doing to improve online learning and I also had the opportunity to immerse myself in the culture, music, and food of New Orleans; the chance ended up being very fulfilling.

Of the sessions I attended, two in particular really stuck with me. One session, as the title “Don’t Put Your Phone Away” suggests, demonstrated how instructors can incorporate students’ phones into their classrooms. One tool in particular that really intrigued me was Kahoot!. Kahoot! is free tool that allows you to create fun learning games made up of multiple choice questions. You can add images, videos, and diagrams to your questions to enhance them. Kahoot!s are meant for an in-class setting as they are not embeddable in web content. You’ll also want to make sure you are using a classroom that has a projector, as the answer choices will only appear on the screen with a corresponding symbol. This symbol is what students see on their devices. Once they see these symbols, they must select the symbol that corresponds with the answer they want to select.

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Walking a Fine Line Between Support and Too Much Support

As an eLearning Content Developer (ECD) at DePaul University, one of my roles is to provide faculty support for all courses using Desire2Learn. Whether that is providing D2L training sessions, building content, or answering any D2L technical questions. One of the biggest challenges that I face as an ECD is figuring out when I might be providing “too much support.” I’m sure any faculty reading this at this point are thinking how could there ever be too much support? But I believe there needs to be a balance between providing the support faculty need and also giving them the right amount of encouragement to be able to eventually answer their own questions. Continue reading →

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Review: Applying the QM Rubric Course

I have been working as a content developer at DePaul for nearly 5 years. In these 5 years, I have heard rumblings about Quality Matters and Quality Matters Reviews, but never really understood what “QM’ing” a course really meant. When asked what I would like to focus on for professional development, becoming a certified peer reviewer was the first thing that popped in my head. I have quality assured many courses and wondered, “how much different is that from doing a quality matters review?” I was in for an awakening.

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