Mary L Kish, 11/13/2008 · 0 comments
(Briskin, Hathaway, and Walsh presenting at AECT)
"AECT was my first professional academic convention," said Hathaway. "It certainly exceeded my expectations. Being able to attend sessions in our areas of interest, present to an audience of professors, and meet professionals in the field of instructional design was a unique and beneficial experience for Jessica, Kira and me. We were three of the only undergraduates in attendance."
Assistant professors Dennis Charsky and Mary Lou Kish of the Department of Strategic Communication, along with associate professor and chair of the communications graduate program, Howard Kalman, recently attended the annual international convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) where they presented a research study entitled, "A Student Perspective: Laptops in the College Classroom."
Charsky and Kish co-presented another session with communication management and design (CMD) seniors Jessica Briskin, Sarah Hathaway, and Kira Walsh. The presentation, "Re-designing a Course Management System to Enhance a Course Simulation," was based on a project the students completed, along with CMD alumnus Nicolas Barajas '08, while taking Charsky’s E-Learning course last spring, with Kish as their client.
"The students designed and executed web tools to support group work, including a mock company intranet and client web site, that are adding authenticity to a simulation which my students in the Human Communication in Organizations course participate in every semester," explained Kish. "Their work for me is professional in both design and functionality, and it was quite exciting to see it on display at an international convention."
Briskin commented on the value of the event. "Being an attendee and a presenter at the AECT conference was an extremely rewarding experience. It provided me with many networking opportunities with those in the instructional design and E-Learning fields, in which I aspire to build a career. It was amazing to see all of the presentations and meet the authors of books I have read in my classes."
Walsh concurred, saying, "Presenting at the conference was an amazing opportunity. Just being able to talk with the people there was worth the trip. It was also cool getting to hang out with our professors outside of the classroom; instead of them teaching us, they were learning right along with us."
"I was especially proud of our students’ participation," commented Kalman. "This conference is generally a place where professors and doctoral students present, and our students represented both Ithaca College and themselves professionally and with style. Sometimes they were even mistaken for graduate students!"
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