NERCOMP Annual Conference is one of my most favorite conferences. It provides an excellent way to meet colleagues and network and exchange ideas. The number of attendees is just right for you to be able to touch base with a fair amount of colleagues during the two days the conference is held.

I will discuss a few things related to the conference here, but I encourage you to read my tweets during the conference.

I participated in a preconference panel “Cloud Transformation: Before and After” along with colleagues from Bentley College, Smith College, Barnard College and Simmons University. Most conversations revolved around our experiences implementing Workday and most attendees are in the process of implementing or are on the verge of making a decision. It was fun, but based on what I heard from some of the attendees, it was a bit too long. I agree, 4 hours is kind of long though we had a break in between. We need a half time show like Superbowl to wake people up 🙂

The conference began on Tuesday and I attended several presentations while finding time during break and lunch to catch up with friends and colleagues. The first session I attended was on “Research Data Management for Open Science” . Data management plans have become a key requirement for grant submission to NSF and NIH where the researchers have to agree to discuss how they plan to share the data relating to these federally funded research widely. Given the amount of data that are being generated, this is non trivial task. I learned a lot from this. Most importantly, NSF and NIH are now allowing the researchers to request funding for properly cataloging the data published so that they can be easily searched and found. Secondly, IEEE has a portal called IEEE Dataport that allows researchers to load their data so that others can access them. We will follow up on some of these.

The keynote address was delivered by Karen Catlin – “The Better Allies® Approach: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive Workplaces”. This is an important and relevant topic for all of us these days. It was a very engaging talk. Karen has a book on this subject, if you are interested – Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces 

She provided some examples in the workplace where implicitly or explicitly some employees feel excluded or marginalized and how best to handle them. You can see my tweets for notes on this session. One of the things Karen mentioned was the importance of inclusive language. We, in LTS, are trying hard to follow this. This guide from UC Irvine is an excellent guide for anyone interested in getting started.

There were few other sessions that I attended on cybersecurity etc. But the best one was a session where presenters from Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) discussed their extended reality lab (XR Lab) and a presenter from Endicott College discussed Promoting Immersive Learning with Common Devices.  CCSU received funding to set up their lab and  it is now flourishing after a slow start. They discussed strategies for bringing in faculty to see the lab, discuss some possible ways in which it can be helpful in teaching and learning. This has made a big difference in increased use. One of the biggest use of the facilities is by their nursing program. They also have collaborations with some of the local businesses.

Endicott presentation pointed to a list of extended reality resources that are commonly available that can be used on common devices such as your mobile phones or tablet devices such as iPad. The presenter did a live demo of some of these! It was great.

I was able to meet several colleagues to exchange notes on how we are doing various things, what are our challenges and hearing what they are up to and what are the challenges they are facing. In short, we are doing really well in comparison, thanks to our fantastic staff! However, I did pick up a few things where we can learn from others and improve what we do.

My only regret – we did not submit any presentations to the conference (other than my panel participation). We have a lot to share! We will get on it for the next year’s conference.