Presented at OLC Accelerate, Orlando, FL, November 9-20, 2020.

In these challenging COVID-19 times, presidents and provosts look to their chief online education officer (COEO) more than ever to provide leadership and assure quality in the administration of online and remote programmatic efforts. Join this session to discuss how higher-ed senior leadership can best empower and support their COEO.

The chief online education officer (COEO) umbrella term encompasses a variety of job titles, such as [coordinator, director, dean, vice president, provost, or chief officer] of [online education, eLearning, or distance learning]. The year 2020 marks a decade since most higher-education institutions in the United States adopted this role. Sadly, it also marks the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the unprecedented year when all institutions scrambled to switch face-to-face programming to an emergency remote-delivery format. The longer the pandemic lasts, the more dilemmas arise, particularly in the administration of remote instruction. Now more than ever, presidents and provosts look to their COEO to provide institutional leadership. But what do COEOs need in order to be successful during the pandemic and beyond? And how can presidents and provosts empower their COEO? A recent research shed light on how senior leadership can best calibrate the COEO’s authority such as to maximize this professional’s ability to influence quality in the administration of online programs. Join this session for an exclusive look at the study and to discuss its relevance and application in various institutional contexts. Most importantly, take this opportunity to engage in exploratory dialog with fellow administrators about how best to support the COEO professional in your organization during these uncertain COVID-19 times.

Presented at the Conference on Meaningful Living and Learning in a Digital World 2022, Savannah, GA, March 1, 2022.

Is it me, or does the world seem to be revolving around its axis faster and faster as technology evolves? How can we slow that down when we are in a chief online education officer (or fill-in-the-blank executive leadership) role? How can we ensure that we give out of our abundance and not out of our sustenance? We'll take this exploratory journey together as equals, following brief presentation segments with robust discussion through which we co-create solutions to the stressed-out executive problem and also take some moments of self-reflection. To stay in our high-tech element and make this session more interactive, please bring your own device; a smartphone will do but a tablet or laptop would be ideal, as we’ll be collaborating in an electronic document (don't forget to bring a charger and maybe also an extension cord that others sitting around you could share ^__^).

For the collaborative part of this session, you'll leave with an electronic resources and strategies list partly created by me and partly co-created by all of us during the session. For the self-reflection portion of this session, you will begin creating a personal health and wellness plan customized to your needs, revolving around three resolutions that can help you stay well and foster not just so-so, but flourishing health! Time permitting, we'll end with a meditation.

Presented at the Online Learning Consortium Innovate: Education Reimagined, Dallas, TX, April 13, 2022.

Join this presentation to learn about a recently published study uncovering essential elements that can help you (re)calibrate your higher-education institution’s chief online education officer (COEO) role – the highest role on the organization chart to focus on online education. During the last decade, we witnessed the rise of the chief online education officer (COEO) role in American higher-education institutions. A recently published empirical study puts an end to the dearth of research pertaining to guidelines for conceptualizing the COEO role.

Using bureaucracy and contingency as theoretical framework, this quantitative, correlative, non-experimental study invited COEOs from all over the U.S. to share their perceptions of the quality of their institution’s online program, along with their ability to influence quality based on their legitimate power and environmental factors that could potentially impact their legitimate power. More specifically, the research questions looked for the presence of a statistically significant correlation between COEOs’ overall legitimate power and overall online program quality (as self-assessed by COEOs using the OLC Quality Scorecard for the Administration of Online Programs), as well as between COEOs’ perceived overall legitimate power and COEO-reported environmental factors. Absent a list of all COEO-type professionals in American higher education, this study used non-probability sampling combined with convenience and snowball sampling. The results pointed to a strong, positive correlation between overall legitimate power and overall quality, as well as between overall legitimate power and the hierarchy of COEO job titles. Additional environmental factors significantly correlated with legitimate power categories included the number of units making a full report to the COEO and the breadth of COEO’s current portfolio of responsibilities, among others, while the hardest quality category to influence was technical support.
Knowing overall power has a strong positive effect on overall quality, it would be advisable for senior leaders to consider crafting their COEO’s job description such that power levels are commensurate with the desired quality levels for which the hired COEO will be responsible. In other words, for one thing, the more critical the online program is to the institution, the higher the COEO would need to be placed within the organizational chart. Although gaps in the literature still remain—particularly regarding what enables a COEO to successfully drive quality in online education—there are promising activities both in practice and inquiry that can maximize the impact of COEOs in American online higher education. Join this session to learn more!

Format wise, this session will alternate presentation and discussion segments. The interactive Q&A and partner exercises aim to personalize the implications of this study on your institution’s existing or future COEO role. During this session you’ll also obtain a copy of the publication, along to a handout guiding you and your team through the process of (re)calibrating your institution’s COEO role.

This session is primarily intended for senior higher-education leaders/administrators as well as researchers focused on further investigating the chief online education officer role in the United States and what enables COEOs to successfully drive quality in online education.

Presented at the United States Distance Learning Association National Conference, 35th Anniversary Edition, Nashville, TN, July 20, 2022.

Research shows trust is a key factor in team performance, and by extension, in organizational performance. As COVID-19 brought about a sudden shift to remote collaboration, a need for trust-building tools among online teams has arisen. Join this session to learn how you can foster trust within your virtual team. Since the onset of the pandemic, you have no doubt wondered how you can more effectively lead (or participate on) virtual teams in your organization.

Join us for an hour of discussion on best practices for the critical yet sometimes elusive key component of virtual team trust. Through this presentation, you will (1) learn what research shows regarding the role trust plays in building effective and sustainable teams, (2) discuss how COVID-19 precipitated the emergence of virtual teamwork, (3) highlight the issues related to this rapid transition from face-to-face to online collaboration, (4) learn best practices for building trust within your virtual team, as a way to maximize both performance and wellbeing, and (5) discuss potential post-pandemic models for teamwork. This presentation will engage you through discussion and exercises focused on (1) getting to know the members of your virtual team and what energizes them, (2) leveraging the strengths of each team member, (3) using active listening to foster mutual trust, (4) promoting consensus through diplomacy, (5) maintaining process/records transparency, (6) maintaining clear lines of communication, (7) destigmatizing failure, (8) rewarding self-care, and (9) navigating challenges related to personality types, conflicting interests, resistance to innovation, access to technology, and more.

Presented at the United States Distance Learning Association National Conference, 35th Anniversary Edition, Nashville, TN, July 19, 2023 and recipient of the conference’s “Excellent Session” award.

Since the start of COVID-19, cyber crime has intensified, as should public awareness. Join the session to learn about the devastating impact cybercrime can have on the life of an online professional, who is both a researcher and a practitioner; what the literature reflects on the topic; and how to prevent this from happening to you.

Presented at the United States Distance Learning Association’s 15th Anniversary National Distance Learning Week Conference, November 8, 2022.

The quality of an online education program relies on the empowerment of its educational leadership, but how can that be measured and enacted? Join this session to examine how to empower online leaders to administer high-quality online programs.

More specifically, using French and Raven’s Bases of Power and Hofstede’s Power Distance, this presentation will go over how the distribution of power affects organizational traits such as standardization, innovation, communication, and risk-taking. With this information, you’ll be able to accurately calibrate the types of power and the ideal power distance suitable for the online leader operating you’re your unique organizational culture.

The session will engage you in group discussion and will provide you with the first-ever look at a power gap measurement tool you can share with your colleagues.

Invited talk at Texas Lutheran University’s Engaging Pedagogy Conference: Inclusivity and Engagement—Charting the Course Ahead conference, Seguin, TX, May 17, 2023.

Neurodivergent learners face many challenges in higher education, particularly in the attrition-prone online environment. Join this session to explore how instructional design can remove barriers for neurodivergent learners and promote success for all online students.

Presented at the United States Distance Learning Association national conference, Orlando, FL, July 17, 2023.

Want to learn how to design a quality online course? Join this 2.5-hour transformation accelerator workshop to quickly get up to speed with creating your own efficient online training, through a series of hands-on exercises. To make the most of this experience, you are encouraged to bring your own internet-connected computing device, as well as anything you wish to incorporate into your online course.

Over 2.5 hours, Dr. Georgianna Laws will guide you as you transform a training idea into a quality online course. This learning experience will introduce concepts of systematic instructional design and give you practice with them through a series of hands-on exercises. The exercises will include an assessment of the audience for which your training is intended; the robust design and alignment of the course inputs and outputs; development of presentation, practice, and production; assembly of all these parts; followed by a showcase and peer evaluation. For those who want to go the extra mile, there are bonus exercises for building a course orientation and syllabus.

Invited keynote for the 2023 Distance Learning Administration Conference, Jekyll Island, GA, July 26, 2023.

AI's integration into our everyday lives is indisputable, with its role expanding from simple voice assistants to generative AI, capable of autonomous creation. Yet, this rapid evolution brings mixed reactions, concerns about misinformation, and calls for restraint from AI and tech experts. Higher education is not untouched by this disruption. As online education leaders, we face unique challenges around academic integrity, student-data protection, and more, made complex by AI's emergence. This landscape, brimming with potential and pitfalls, is somewhat uncharted territory, a reality that warrants our full attention. As we navigate this evolving dynamic, we must answer a critical question: How can we make informed decisions about a rapidly progressing, and somewhat mysterious, field with an unpredictable future? A solid approach would be seeking guidance from established theoretical frameworks that could offer valuable perspectives.

Join us at the Distance Learning Administration conference keynote, where Dr. Georgianna Laws will draw upon such frameworks, providing us with lenses through which we can better understand, analyze, and respond to AI's influence in higher education. This discourse aims to equip us to make prudent, timely decisions as we grapple with the increasingly prominent role of AI in our academic realm.

Invited presentation at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo (FNCE), Denver, CO, October 8, 2023.

This presentation aims to demystify ChatGPT4 and its transformative role in shaping the education and training of future registered dietitian nutritionists. Speakers will delve into the groundbreaking potential of ChatGPT4 in revolutionizing the education sector and scrutinize its profound impact on student learning and assessment. They will also evaluate the advantages and challenges of ChatGPT in promoting student engagement. Key areas of discussion include an introduction to the burgeoning presence of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education, with a spotlight on why ChatGPT merits attention from educators; insight into how faculty roles might evolve with the increasing incorporation of AI into teaching methodologies; and examination of the potential implications of AI on the quality of education and hands-on training for upcoming clinicians and practitioners in nutrition and dietetics.