>> Good morning, everyone. Welcome and thanks for coming to innovate 2021. This year's theme, transformed, will prompt us to reflect on how we have all evolved in response to the global pandemic and other social, political and economic changes. I have a few quick things before we get started, including our land acknowledgement.

The land that the Ohio State University occupies is the ancestral and contemporary territory of the Shawnee, Pottawatomie, Delaware, Miami Peoria, Seneca, Wyandotte, Ojibwe and Cherokee peoples. Specifically, the University resides on land seated in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville and the forced removal of tribes to the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

I wanna honor the resiliency of these tribal nations and recognize the historical context that has and continues to affect the indigenous peoples of this land. Thanks go out to the Academy of Teaching, and in particular to Ben McCorkle and Laura Cordon for coordinating the Academy's breakout sessions today.

Thanks to both of you. A special thank you goes to the committee who have worked so hard to transform this conference from in person to virtual. Our conference chair Amanda Postle, our co-chair Queenie Chao, committee members Amber Sherman, Joel Nielsen, Justin Troyer, Lena King, Kylie Ponte and Hilary Morton.

Thank you all so very much. I know how important it is for our community to be able to take time to reflect, connect and learn from each other. I hope today generates many fruitful conversations and transformations. And now I'd like to turn it over to Bruce McFerrin, our university provost and leave our Associate Vice President for the office of distance education, and eLearning.


>> Hi, I'm Bruce McFerrin, Ohio State's executive vice president and provost. So happy to be joining you for the virtual innovate conference this year. It's been inspiring to see how the university community has rallied together over the past year to stay safe and to adapt our traditional methods to continue teaching and learning during the pandemic.

And that's what today's conference is all about. How we were able to transform in the face of the COVID pandemic. First and foremost, I'd like to extend my sincere thanks to all of you for your innovative teaching and learning efforts over this past year. And for the compassion and caring you brought to those efforts.

In the spring of 2020, our ability to quickly pivot and to teach fully online was made possible by the extraordinary commitment and creativity of our instructional and supporting personnel, and by the resilience and flexibility of our students. The continued work this academic year to offer in person online and blended learning has been similarly impressive.

We've continued to learn from the crisis and adapt, and that's at the heart of the scholarship of teaching and learning. It's also important to note that our success was possible largely, because of the foundation that we built in the years leading up to the pandemic. Here I'm thinking of our progress, and elevating the scholarship of teaching and learning, through the Drake Institute and the office of distance, education and eLearning.

In developing one of the nation's best online bachelors programs and in launching our digital Flagship initiative. Our response to the pandemic was the tangible outcome of a long series of intentional choices. Equally important, our response was a direct consequence of a culture that prizes collaboration, creative thinking, and collective responsibility.

This was evident for example in the rapid development of the keep teaching, keep learning and keep working websites, which offered best practices in remote education and guidance to support faculty and student success. It was evident too in ODEE's Herculean efforts to transform more than 450 classrooms and learning spaces to meet physical distancing guidelines, and to install technology for recording in class proceedings.

Likewise, the University went to great lengths to ensure equitable access to technology by distributing laptops, iPads and internet hotspots to faculty, staff and students in need. It's not been an easy year. But without question, we have evolved as a university by accepting the challenges that confronted us. And by embracing the learning opportunities that those challenges presented.

My sincere thanks to the innovate team and the academy of teaching for hosting today's conference. Events such as these reflect Ohio State's commitment to use every tool that we have. And to lead the way in developing new strategies and new pathways to connect with, and learn from each other to ensure the success of our students and faculty.

I'm confident that the work you put in today will bear fruit in future innovations for teaching and learning.
>> I'd like to take a moment to thank you, Bruce, for your leadership. For supporting our work, promoting innovation and connecting with colleagues across the university at all levels. In every interaction, you make it clear how much you value the work we do every day to make Ohio State better.

Thank you for recognizing us these past five years, now, it's our turn to recognize you. It has been an honor to serve alongside you. And I hope you know how much you have influenced our community for the better. I know, you will continue to support the mission of the Land-grant university.

And advocate for food security in your role with Feeding America, I hope you will have more time with more grandchildren in your future. And hope you will continue serving all members of the global community. In your work at the molecular genetic level, to conquer the tiny, the mighty, one of the world's most destructive fruit pass.

The Mediterranean fruit fly, with which many of us are probably most familiar through your Twitter handle, medflygenes. Bruce, thank you, and we will miss you in this role. To our conference participants, again, welcome to the first virtual Innovate. In 2019, we held our tenth annual conference with nearly 1000 registrants.

You participated in dozens of featured in breakout sessions, and each year after the conference, you provide us with a delightful tour de force reading experience of your evaluations. Letting us know with unparalleled candor, just how you feel. You loved the keynotes and breakouts and the opportunity to connect informally and learn from each other.

Well, you didn't love as much the overzealous AC hard boiled eggs at breakfast, not enough flavors a pie at lunch. So this year, we invite you to take full control of your own physical conference experience. Eat what you want, where you want, skip the boiled eggs. And we invite you to focus on the things that matter most, each other, what we've learned this year, and how we can move forward together.

It's hard to know what to say about a year like this. When we celebrated the 10th anniversary of innovate, you filled the entire ballroom at The Ohio union. And I would have never guessed that would be the last face to face conference we'd have for years. 14 months into this pandemic, most of us have lived in ways that are radically different from life as we knew it prior to the first months of 2020.

We have lost loved ones, cared for children and parents at home, supported those who have been sick. Many of us have been sick ourselves. We have struggled to balance the demands of life at work, at home and in school. We have faced at a new scale, the ongoing history of racism in America, and have so much work to do.

Today, I want to welcome you to an event designed to create a moment to pause. A time to step away from the rush of life that we've lived for the past 14 months. The chance to recognize that with all of its ups and downs, and the way this year has left us tired and sometimes overwhelmed.

It has also connected us to each other, and to what matters most in our lives. Our communities, our education and our work. It has brought us to a place of unprecedented opportunity to bring meaningful transformation to our teaching, our community, our commitments to justice, and our care for each other.

Before we dive into a day of conversations about where we struggled, what we learned. And what we now think is possible and necessary to lift up, I wanna start by looking back at where we've come. Over the past year, all of those who teach and learn, and who support teaching and learning here and across the globe faced uncertainty again and again.

We were asked to do some of the most difficult work of our careers. And we dove in and conquered this head on, facing new challenges and learning new skills. We were asked not just to deliver in totally new ways, but to iterate and improve at every step of the way.

What we accomplished is something to be celebrated. And the work that each individual gave to these efforts cannot be understated. During last year Spring Break, Ohio State faculty, staff and graduate students transition 12,165 courses online for virtual delivery. Ohio States keep teaching, keep learning and keep working web sites were set up in days to support our transition.

After spring break, Canvas log ons grew 333%, and zoom meetings grew 2,350% from 2000 meetings to 47,000 meetings per week. The Office of distance education and eLearning conducted more than 40 virtual. And recorded workshops with more than 20,000 Digital views. We created safely distance drawings for 480 learning spaces.

Coordinated the move of 10,000 pieces of furniture, applied over 20,000 safety stickers. And equipped all classrooms with cameras and microphones. Last spring semester, the Affordable Learning exchange secured free access to digital content for all students from most major textbook publishers. They launched the racial justice impact grant. And continued to grow their Affordable Learning model, netting 20 million in savings on student course content.

We distributed iPads, laptops and mobile hotspots free of charge to students, faculty and staff in need. We expanded online support hours from 40 to nearly 85 hours per week. We launched two digital flagship virtual tech tutors, low contact in-person iPad pickup, direct to home shipping. Curbside tech support, along with the office of the CIO's herculean efforts to coordinate data.

And deliver the campus wide COVID dashboard, and Ohio State Health reporting app. In the wellness in Ohio State apps, we authored COVID-19 mental health and wellness content. Including information about student emergency financial and support resources, along with racial justice and anti racist education, voting, safety information and more.

Digital flagship also opened the swift coding and app development certificate program to the world. This is an important strategy for workforce development nationally as those impacted by the pandemic look for new opportunities. The program is free to all OSU students, faculty, staff and alumni, and it's now also free for unemployed and business sponsored participants.

Through Ohio's TechCred and iMap Workforce Development Programs. The Office of Distance Education and E-learning launched a new Teaching and Learning Resource Center. Together with these partners from across the university, designed to help educators enhance their teaching skills, and support student success. This rich holistic site features thoughtful, evidence-based material to support pedagogical best practice, and includes extensive Ohio State-specific documentation on our e-learning tool set.

Our distance education programs have also thrived this year, with OSU's online Bachelor's programs ranking among the top five in the nation for 2021, according to US News & World Report, and the Masters of Nursing program also in the top five. Our distance-ed portfolio has more than 50 programs approved for online delivery, and these programs have generated $37 million in revenue this fiscal year alone.

This is just a small window into the work that was done. These herculean efforts were made across every unit of the university and the Medical Center, and in institutions and organizations across the state and the nation. It has been a year of unprecedented innovation and growth. So what's next for us right now?

We know that we will face tighter budgets, both for institutions and families across America. We've seen that learning and work can happen remotely at a much greater scale than we previously knew possible. But while we can operate remotely, we have also seen the value of connection with each other.

Now more than ever before, we know that high-quality remote learning and work demand investment. We need to distinguish what kinds of learning and work can happen well virtually, and what's best delivered in person. How can we maximize the distinct opportunities each of these environments provide? How can we expand the communities we serve, and the kinds of degrees and certifications we offer, to create more opportunities for more diverse learners and promote greater workforce development?

We know that students at OSU and nationally have struggled to feel a sense of belonging, and maintain a positive self-image when they have felt isolated, overburdened, and frustrated, and have at times interpreted this as failures on their part. How do we understand what our students need most, and support them going forward?

How do we create sustainable workloads for our teams who have worked so hard, and are being asked to imagine a new future while we're still struggling to make it through this year? And finally, how do we address the real issues of inequity and uneven access that this pandemic made more visible than ever before?

And how can we work together to create a more just, inclusive, and anti-racist institution? All of this leads to our Innovate 2021 theme, Transformed. How do we identify our greatest opportunities, where we can truly transform right now to leverage disruption and build a better, more equitable, affordable, and powerful model for 21st century education?

How do we converge upon the highest-impact opportunities to drive us further forward, and not bury us further under our growing work? That's what we'll discuss today in partnership with the Academy for Teaching, whom I'd like to sincerely thank for their collaboration on this event. And thanks to you for everything you have done this year, and for taking the time to step back, reflect, and imagine a better future going forward.


>> Good morning again, everyone, I'm Amanda Postle, and I am the chair for today's Innovate Conference. We're just about to get started for the day, and I'm gonna give you a few tips to orient you to this year's conference. You'll find links to all of our sessions from within Boomset, in addition to our variety of breakout sessions.

I'm super excited for everyone to join me later today for our keynote, Maha Bali, who's joining us virtually all the way from Cairo. Excitingly enough, last year, she was slated to be our first-ever virtual keynote at an in-person event. So we're very excited that she agreed to join us again this year for the 2021 event.

Now, one thing that we miss about our in-person conference is the energy we get from being together in our community. This year for the virtual conference, let's try something new together. Use the chat feature in Boomset to say hello to somebody that you may not know, or find the name of a friend who you've missed talking to at last year's event.

Introduce yourselves and share some thoughts on the session throughout the day. Also on Boomset, you'll find a wonderful section called Community Stories. A collection of personal stories and advice from folks who have found ways to keep teaching and learning in the past year, no small task at all.

Lastly, with help for tech or general conference questions, you can drop into the session called Information Desk throughout the entire day. This is the quickest way to reach us throughout the conference with any technical issues you may be having. You can also email us at innovateu@osu.edu. So with that, I'll invite you to find the best seat in the house, or in your house, or wherever you are today for Innovate Transformed.

Thanks everyone, and enjoy today's event.