Keynote Speakers

Diana Oblinger

Diana Oblinger

Uncommon Thinking for the Common Good
Thursday 10:00-11:30am

Technology catalyzes new ideas, new processes, and new business models. This “uncommon thinking” can be used to address some of higher education—and society’s—greatest challenges. This presentation looks at several shifts catalyzed by technology that are ushering in new challenges and opportunities for higher education, and its impact upon our students.

Dr. Diana Oblinger
President and CEO, EDUCAUSE

Diana Oblinger, president and CEO of EDUCAUSE, formerly served as EDUCAUSE vice president responsible for the association’s teaching and learning activities and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. She is also an Adjunct Professor of Adult and Higher Education at North Carolina State University. Previously, Oblinger held positions in academia and business: Vice President for Information Resources and the Chief Information Officer for the University of North Carolina system, Executive Director of Higher Education for Microsoft, and IBM Director of the Institute for Academic Technology. She was on the faculty at the University of Missouri-Columbia and at Michigan State University and an associate dean at the University of Missouri.

Oblinger serves on a variety of boards such as the National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee on Cyberinfrastructure. Dr. Oblinger has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Employment, Safety, and Training and the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Technology.
A frequent keynote speaker, Oblinger is also the co-author of the award winning What Business Wants from Higher Education. She is co-editor of seven books: The Learning Revolution, The Future Compatible Campus, Renewing Administration, E is for Everything, Best Practices in Student Services, Educating the Net Generation, and Learning Spaces. She is the author or co-author of dozens of monographs and articles on higher education and technology.

Gardner Campbell

Gardner Campbell

School as a Poetic Technology: Web 2.0 and the Dynamics of Learning
Thursday 4:00-5:00pm

Brian Arthur’s recent book, The Nature of Technology reminds us that technologies exist to serve a human purpose, and they are built to make use of naturally occurring phenomena. These phenomena, Arthur argues, “may have to be coaxed and tuned” through technology “to operate satisfactorily.” What if we think of learning as the naturally occurring phenomenon and school as the technology that “coaxes and tunes” learning to operate not only satisfactorily but wonderfully well?  Most importantly, how can we use information and communications technologies in a Web 2.0 world to “coax and tune” our students’ learning—and empower them to continue to “coax and tune” their own learning for the rest of their lives? This session explores these questions and offers some specific examples of how the artful technologies of Web 2.0 can help static classrooms become dynamic learning communities.

Dr. W. Gardner Campbell
Associate Professor of Literature and Media
Director, Academy for Teaching and Learning
Baylor University

W. Gardner Campbell is Director of the Academy for Teaching and Learning at Baylor University, where he also serves as Assoc. Prof. of Literature and Media in the Honors College. Before coming to Baylor, he was Professor of English at the University of Mary Washington, where from 2003-2006 he also served as Assistant Vice-President for Teaching and Learning Technologies. He has been involved in teaching and learning technologies for nearly two decades, including work at the University of San Diego and the University of Richmond, where in the fall of 2006 he was Director of the Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology. Gardner received his B.A. in English from Wake Forest University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Frye Leadership Institute (2005), was chair of the Electronic Campus of Virginia from 2006 to 2008, and has served on program committees for both EDUCAUSE and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. He currently serves on the ELI Advisory Board (2007-2010) and on the Board of Directors for the New Media Consortium.

Gardner is a life member of the Milton Society of America (Executive Committee, 2004-2007), a former secretary of the Literature/Film Association, and a contributing editor for Literature/Film Quarterly. He has presented at numerous national and international conferences on Renaissance literature, film, and teaching and learning technologies. Gardner is an invited speaker in many keynote and plenary sessions at Educational Technology conferences. He is also a frequent contributer to publications such as Educause Reviews and many others. You can read Gardner’s blog, “Gardner Writes,” at http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1.

Aaron Brower

Aaron Brower

Teaching and Learning and Technology
Friday 11:00-Noon

We live in the Google world, yet our universities -- and particularly our educational enterprises -- are stuck in the card catalogue world. How do we bridge this gap, and particularly to enhance student learning? What will classrooms of the future look like? How will we afford them? And what are we leaving behind? From the perspective of how UW-Madison is charting its future, we will discuss lots of examples of existing learning-rich educational environments here at UW-Madison that can give us a glimpse into the classrooms of the future. 

Dr. Aaron Brower
Professor of Social Work
Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Aaron M. Brower is Vice Provost for Teaching & Learning, and Professor of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his B.A., M.A., MSW, and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Psychology and Social Work. His scholarship and teaching focuses on the transition from high school to college, and on a variety of issues related to college student life and “integrative learning” innovations in college education. In August 2006, he completed a 10-year project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation addressing high-risk college student drinking.  Brower was also the co-Principal Investigator for a $10 million, NSF-funded national higher education center that is infusing learning community principles into the training of graduate student in the sciences. At UW-Madison, he created the Bradley Learning Community in 1995 (the first residential learning community at Madison since Alexander Meiklejohn's Experimental College ended in 1932), helped create all subsequent living-learning communities at UW-Madison, and helped create URS and FIGs.  He is co-Principal Investigator for the National Study of Living/Learning Programs (funded by NSF, ACUHO-I, NASPA, and ACPA), the first ever national study of living-learning programs. He has written and presented widely on student life issues. In 2001, he was the recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, and in 2006 was named one of the nation’s Outstanding First-Year Student Advocates by Houghton Mifflin and the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience.