Educause 2006 – day 3

The final day started out with another speaker’s breakfast since I was actually speaking. Breakfast is always tricky at Educause. Things start so early and there isn’t a breakfast provided but there is usually snack break mid-morning. The snack break on the last day tends to just be a coffee break which can leave people hungry.

I skipped the first session to review my material for my session, From Pencils to Pixels: Course Evaluations Go from Online Pilot to Production. I was a bit nervous of course! The session came (it was the last session of the conference before the final large general session) and I was surprised by the turnout. The room was about as far away from the main conference area (it was in section D of the center and most things were in A or B). But I had many people there, probably around 50 judging by how many handouts were left. I think I was a bit boring sounding and not as dynamic as I felt about the material. I was overly-concerned with people be able to understand me with the microphone (lapel clip-on). I’m not used to microphones so it was awkward. I was also tethered to the PA system so I didn’t feel that I could roam so well — I didn’t want to trip! But my slides went fast – 30 minutes – leaving much time for questions. There were A LOT of questions which was great and some people asked questions of other audience members. There was talk of a support group for people building their course eval systems instead of buying a package.

After that I did my podcast interview — still waiting for that to come online. I loved the podcasts last year. With that Educause 2006 was over and we headed to the airport to fly back to 30-40 degree weather from this sunny 70-80 degree weather!