Employee Development Day

Join Dr. Dowden for a conversation with faculty and academic leaders discussing the best practices in quality assurance for online course design and delivery. Learn how the School for Online Learning is partnering across the District to address recent findings from an online student survey indicating a need to improve the quality and consistency of online learning across the colleges.

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Presenter: 

Luke Dowden, E.d.D.
Vice Chancellor of Digital Learning and Transformation

The Alamo Colleges District's districtwide Online Teaching Certification (OTC) provides faculty with a consistent, supportive pathway for teaching online, synchronous online, and hybrid courses. The OTC aligns faculty development, online teaching competencies, and Quality Matters standards across all five colleges. In this informational session, faculty will learn what to expect throughout the OTC experience, including the six-week course structure, required course design deliverables, certification timeline, and instructional design support available along the way. Participants will also see how the OTC connects professional development with direct application in their own courses to support aligned, accessible, engaging, and student-centered online learning experiences.

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Presenter:

Rudolph Lopez
Director of Online Learning

Jerryl Lowe
Instructional Designer, St. Philip's College

The School for Online Learning will take a deep dive into the data. Who are our learners? What do we know about them? What are they telling us? Stories from our online learners will be shared.

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Presenter:

Luke Dowden, E.d.D
Vice Chancellor of Digital Learning and Transformation

In February 2026, the landscape of artificial intelligence changed further. The era of using AI merely to save time (Efficiency AI) is over; the era of using AI to expand human expertise (Opportunity AI) has escalated. This workshop navigates the massive shift from chatbots to agents and provides 10 actionable strategies for faculty and staff.

Registration Closed

Presenter:

Can Cui
Instructional Designer Team Lead

This session will provide an overview of the district's micro-credential ecosystem, including how digital badges, professional certificates, and marketable skills pathways are being designed and implemented across multiple colleges and programs. It will also highlight ACD's Grow with Google initiative, which gives students, alumni, and employees free access to Google Professional Certificates. Presenters will share how faculty and staff are engaged through practitioner training and professional development, and how students are benefiting from flexible skills and competency recognition.

Registration Closed

Presenters:

Amber O'Casey
Director of Micro-Credentials

Diana Rademaker
Coordinator of Student Success

Online learning is more than delivering course content. It is creating opportunities for students to connect, participate, seek support, and learn with others. This session explores how Alamo Online Communities can complement Canvas by creating spaces that foster student engagement, belonging, peer learning, and Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI). The focus is not on adding another technology but on intentionally using community to help students connect, ask questions, support one another, and learn together.

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Presenters:

Monica Rogers
Director of AlamoONLINE Student Support

Tamela Edens
Instructional Designer