The HETS Consortium highlighted and celebrated the outstanding work of its member institutions in making the best out of technology to achieve student success and institutional efficiencies. HETS invited faculty members, instructional designers, student support administrators and staff, distance learning personnel and other academic and support leaders from its constituencies and other relevant organizations to submit, showcase, and share their best practices in the use of technology with colleagues from other institutions to support higher education effectiveness and promote student success. HETS defined a best practice as an innovative approach or strategy that, with the effective use of technology, has proven to promote student success and improve student retention and completion.
In particular, this celebration of innovative technology strategies in higher education, focused on impacting the Hispanic student population by enhancing retention, college completion, and successful learning outcomes. Certainly, HETS confirmed that its member institutions are experts in dealing with the Hispanic population and finding ways to provide them with opportunities to succeed, and this event opened a space for them to share this expertise.
Attendees not only learned from the showcased works, but also found solutions to many common issues and even establish new possibilities for collaboration with other institutions and potential partners.
What: Best Practices Showcases, International Speakers, Academic Fair and Networking Opportunities
The Conference initiated its activities with an expert panel discussion from HETS member institutions, to discuss the importance of the integration of new technologies and infrastructure in the learning process, and in the development of faculty development tools, and support services for students.
In addition, this event had more than 30 concurrent conferences presenting topics related to new classroom technologies, innovative learning support tools for the traditional student and distance students as well, collaboration tools, technologies to enhance studentsu2019 learning experiences, and the integration of social networks to the learning process, among others.
The Conference closed with the main speaker of the event: Mr. Juan Sepúlveda, appointed last May by the U.S. Secretary of Education, as Director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. Mr. Sepúlvedau2019s presentation took place on Thursday, January 15th at 3:30PM at the Sheraton Hotel.
The HETS Consortium would like to highlight and celebrate the outstanding work of its partners in making the best out of technology to achieve student success and institutional efficiencies. HETS is inviting faculty members, instructional designers, student support administrators and staff, distance learning personnel and other academic and support leaders from its member institutions and other relevant organizations to submit, showcase, and share their best practices in the use of technology with colleagues from other institutions to support higher education effectiveness and promote student success. HETS has defined a best practice as an innovative approach or strategy that, with the effective use of technology, has proven to promote student success and improve student retention and completion.
Keynote Speaker
Juan Sepúlveda was appointed by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on May 19, 2009, to the position of director of The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. In this capacity, he is responsible for directing the efforts of The White House Initiative in engaging Hispanic students, parents, families, organizations, and anyone working in or with the education system in communities nationwide as active participants on improving the academic achievement of Hispanic Americans.
For the last 20 years, Sepúlveda has been a senior executive, strategist, and advocate in the nonprofit and philanthropic communities, with a focus in community development, capacity building, and transformational management. Prior to assuming his current position at the Department, Sepúlveda was president of The Common Enterprise (TCE), which he founded in 1995 as an outgrowth of a national Rockefeller Foundation initiative to help build stronger communities across America by making nonprofits, philanthropic organizations, governments, businesses, and communities more effective as they tackled significant critical social issues in more than 35 states and nationally.
Who Attended: Academic leaders, staff administrators, faculty, technology staff, investigators, corporate representatives related to technology and education, students and general public
Juan Sepúlveda