A call for proposals is open for a mighty little online conference you may not have every heard of, Teaching, Colleges & Community Worldwide Online Conference (TCC).
TCC has an emphasis on students with the 2024 theme of Trends, Engagement, and Student Voices in Online Learning and also in the large number of student researchers who present.
In our post-pandemic world with the rapid movement to online learning, educators, staff, and students are faced with new challenges and diverse social obstacles. What are these challenges, and what trends and issues have emerged, especially for sustaining quality online learning?
How are students feeling? How might their voices be elevated in the ever-evolving landscape of online learning? What new trends and challenges have emerged? How sustainable are these emerging practices? How might students be supported in an AI-driven world?
TCC Hawaii invites faculty, support professionals, librarians, counselors, student affairs professionals, graduate students, administrators, and consultants from around the world interested in evolving technologies and learning practices to submit proposals for online presentations.
Woah, this fully online conference has been running for 29 years! And it’s roots are in the community colleges.
In 1996, Dr. James Shimabukuro, Language Arts Professor at Kapi’olani Community College in Honolulu, Hawai’i, founded this conference. Professor Shimabukuro envisioned creating a global network of faculty to share expertise, research results and teaching experiences with one other. Professor Shimabukuro named this virtual conference; “Teaching in the Community Colleges,” after his email discussion list TCC-L.
That was the conference as I came to know it in the mid 1990s while I was doing instructional technology at the Maricopa Community Colleges. I met conference organizer Bert Kimura at a conference and he enticed me to get Maricopa onboard as a system registrant, so for one fee we could make it so all faculty and staff in the system could attend an online conference originating in Hawaii.
I presented for TCC several times and got to know Bert as a friend too (visited him in Japan and Hawaii) – he and his colleague Curtis Ho are still at the help of organizing TCC.
As I came to know, in the first years, the conference was run first over an email listserv, then used a MOO/MUD, and just about every online system invented since then (TCC 2024 is being hosted in Gather Town). I was fortunate to be invited to speak at the 20th TCC, where part of it was in person at the University of Hawaii, where I played a little time travel by speaking and presenting as if I was in 1996 telling that first conference about the future 20 years hence (a shtiick I copied from Brett Victor).
Sorry to wax on with my memories, but here in 2023 I would say it’s remarkable that an online conference is running its 29th iteration. It’s a conference with sessions sprinkled around the globe and has a warm feel to it.
Either consider submitting a presentation or maybe participating April 16-18, 2024.