COLTT 2024 Announces Keynote Speaker Dr. Deborah Keyek-Franssen

The Colorado Learning and Teaching with Technology (COLTT) conference is thrilled, to announce Dr. Deborah Keyek-Franssen, Ph.D., Associate Vice President and Dean of University Connected Learning (UCL) at the University of Utah as the keynote speaker for COLTT 2024.

There Should Have Been Hoverboards. We Got AI Instead.

It's hard not to be nostalgic for a future that never materialized when we are living a present defined by technological disruption occurring at a rate that feels beyond human scale. While AI unleashes exponentially increasing impacts on higher education, not to mention siphons energy and threatens dystopic sentience, cruising into the sunset on that eminently cool hoverboard increases in allure.

Instead of indulging in this fantasy, together we will step forward into this choose-your-own-adventure keynote to explore the impacts of AI, teasing out their corollaries in our past. We will probe use cases from the lived experience of seismic technological shifts that touch on topics including academic integrity, the speed of change, and technology-induced distance to remember how we adapted, and to remember that disruption always again offers new opportunities. We will recognize motifs, analyze past successes, and prepare to apply techniques—both coping and generative—to the challenges facing us today.

Our past predictions are not our current reality – that realization can help us replace the effort of prediction-making to one of preparation. Let’s call on the past to hoverboard smoothly forward. Real-world examples from past technological shifts will come alive. How did we adapt during seismic changes? What lessons can we apply today?

With over two decades of experience at the intersection of technology and higher education, Dr. Keyek-Franssen brings unparalleled expertise to this year’s conference. Her journey began at the University of Colorado, where she served as director of academic technology; oversaw strategy and research in the use, implementation, and evaluation of educational technologies; and managed a team of consultants and technologists. Working across the CU System as the AVP for Digital Education and Engagement, she was instrumental in furthering CU campuses' implementation of digital and online education solutions, including MOOCs, and served as the director of the Colorado Learning and Teaching with Technology (COLTT) Conference. She has served on the advisory boards for the NASH Institute for Systems Innovation and Improvement and the New Leadership Academy. Deborah previously served as the vice-chair of the statewide Colorado Open Educational Resources (OER) Council, faculty director of the EDUCAUSE Management Institute, member of the Coursera Advisory Council, and is incredibly proud to have received the EDUCAUSE’s 2020 DEI Leadership Award. 

She supported the National Center for Women & IT (NCWIT) for nearly two decades, participated in research and program development to increase the number of girls, women, and underrepresented minorities in IT education and work, and founded the EDUCAUSE Women in IT Community Group. Deborah is a graduate of Dartmouth College and completed her Ph.D. in German Literature at the University of Michigan, where she also earned a master's degree in Higher Education Administration from the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education and a graduate certificate in Women's Studies.

Join Us: Don’t miss this chance to hoverboard smoothly into the future with Dr. Deborah Keyek-Franssen. Reserve your spot at COLTT today!