Dr. Risa Blair is a passionate leader and trainer with extensive experience in higher education and corporate settings, including project management, curriculum development and delivery for face-to-face and online settings. Exceptional skills in facilitating content delivery to meet the needs of the client. She is a Strong proponent of utilizing real world experience and technology to promote and reinforce learning, as well as to meet required outcomes. Easily able to deliver technical content to non-technical audiences. Quality Matters trained online course reviewer.

With the mix of generations in the classroom, we are facing multiple wins and challenges. The older students are more mature, but many are anxious about returning to school, especially in the online environment. Our younger students are quite tech savvy, yet don't necessarily transfer their tech skills to the online classroom. They also potentially lack identity in terms of their studies and experience.

Many of our students are in a rush! They don't want to read. They prefer to scan content – a few bullet points rather than long paragraphs, or summaries of articles rather than full articles. Although they are tech savvy, they want the personal touch in our classes. They are eager to learn.

Real-world learning – that's the key. Connect the content to their real-world life situations and future opportunities. They want to be highly engaged in the class in our discussions and seminars. Information needs to be relevant. Tap into our learners. Understand their needs and expectations. Deliver and reinforce the content their way! For instance, instead of a long page of text, you can use a video. Be flexible. If a student branches off in a highly relevant area in the discussion about which he or she is passionate, go with it.

Be supportive. Be respectful. Keep the bar high and guide students along the way to reach the bar. Get students excited. Tap into their different learning modalities. Work to reinforce concepts across channels – discussions, emails, voice, video.

This session will focus on the different generations and technology tools to help promote communication in the online classroom. Provide the students of the different generations the technology they appreciate, so they can not only master the content, but also have it their way and master the content. Acknowledge and support their learning styles and preferences.