‘Successfully Facilitating an Online or Hybrid Course’ Is Topic for ‘Provost’s Conversations’ Series

Shana Pribesh

The Provost's Conversations on Teaching and Learning, a brown bag lunch series, resumes this semester on Thursday, Jan. 23, with a discussion led by Shana Pribesh, associate professor of educational foundations and leadership.

Presented by the Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT), the Office of Distance Learning and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Carol Simpson, these conversations are open to all faculty members, and offer the opportunity to reflect and share about the teaching and learning process. CLT will provide light refreshments.

Pribesh will speak on "Successfully Facilitating an Online or Hybrid Course" from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in the Learning Commons Conference Room at Perry Library.

Pribesh is interested in the structural aspects of educational inequality, and she has worked on studies of student/teacher racial matching, as well as on the consequences of residential and school moving on educational performance. Pribesh has more than two decades of educational research experience, having worked with the American Institutes for Research, RAND, the Center for Research in Educational Policy and the University of Michigan.

She teaches distance courses in various formats and reports that she experiences "flop-sweat terror before each one." Pribesh adds: "Teaching distance courses is scary. Now imagine how it feels to take a distance course - super scary. In this Conversation, we will explore how to facilitate online and hybrid distance courses in the midst of this apprehension. Be prepared to chime in - since that is what we expect of our students, after all."

For more information about the Provost's Conversations on Teaching and Learning series, including highlights from past years' Conversations and a calendar of upcoming dates, visit the Conversations website at http://clt.odu.edu/pctl.