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Welcome to OpenLearning@MLC

A FREE virtual conference brought to you by Martin Luther College

OpenLearning@MLC is a FREE online virtual conference open to WELS/ELS called workers and hosted by the Office of Continuing Education at Martin Luther College.

  • How can AI transform the way we teach?

  • How can AI transform student assessment?

  • What are we going to do now that Saxon Math is going away?

  • How do we empower parents as family spiritual leaders?

At the 2023 OpenLearning Conference, we’ll be immersed in these and many other timely questions! We’ll explore tools and understandings that will help us reach all our students—to fulfill both the educational mission of our schools and the Great Commission!

Tuesday, June 13

  • Time: 10 – 11 am CDT
  • Presenter: Dr. James Carlovsky
  • AI has the potential to significantly change the face of education by providing personalized learning experiences for each student, improving teacher efficiency, and facilitating the development of new forms of assessment.  It also opens teachers to a myriad of questions.  Explore how AI is already changing education through personalized learning, Intelligent tutoring, automated grading, predictive analytics, or language translation, to name a few areas. Overall, AI has the potential to transform education by making it more personalized, efficient, and accessible to all students.
  • Time: 12 – 1 pm CDT
  • Presenter: Michael Plocher
  • The AI genie is out of the bottle and it’s here to stay. Educators are now asking how best to
    interact with it so they can leverage it to streamline their workload and improve student
    outcomes. We’ll look at some question frameworks to ask AI directly to get the results we want
    and will explore sites where AI can generate ready-made lesson materials with minimal
    guidance.
  • Time: 1:30 – 2:30 pm CDT
  • Presenter: Ryan Kirchoff
  • AI is altering the educational game plan in middle schools, high schools, and colleges around the world. Perhaps no facet of traditional schooling is now more at risk than student assessments, especially student writing assessments. This webinar will help answer 3 key questions every 5th grade-college teacher should be asking:
    1) What assessment practices do I need to change?
    2) What assessment practices should I be implementing instead?
    3) How can I use AI to make these changes?

Wednesday, June 14

  • Time: 10 – 11 am CDT
  • Presenter: Dr. James Carlovsky
  • Many WELS schools are now wondering what curriculum choices should be made for their school after Saxon math.  This sectional will take an in-depth look into a few philosophies that various math curricula take.  It will also present a springboard of questions, answers, and specific curricula to look at with your faculty as we look at various ways to serve your students and their needs.
  • Time: 12 – 1 pm CDT
  • Presenter: Brad Gurgel
  • The number of Americans who don’t practice any form of religion in their homes is growing rapidly, and the percentage of Christians reading scripture regularly is trending downward. Many parents today fully outsource any religious instruction for their children to church leaders or Christian teachers. This means an ever-increasing number of children from Biblically disconnected homes are showing up in our WELS classrooms. God clearly assigns the primary role of spiritual leadership to parents. Since children are most strongly impacted by their parents’ faithfulness to God’s Word, fostering spiritual families must be a goal of our Lutheran schools. Lutheran school teachers have an outstanding opportunity to encourage and empower parents to carry out their role as family spiritual leaders due to how much interaction they have with both students and their parents. This sectional will share how an organization-wide family devotional plan can be one effective way for Lutheran school teachers to assist parents in carrying out this God-given role.
  • Time: 1:30 – 2:30 pm CDT
  • Presenter: Pastor Alex Groth
  • Paul encourages us in Ephesians 5 to be very careful about living wisely because the days are evil. Parents today often express confusion about how to help their kids navigate a world that is so different from what God desires. This presentation will walk through the way a plan of in-home visits, parenting classes, a culture of worship, and intergenerational ministry can help a church seize the opportunity to preach Christ as an answer to their fears.

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