A faculty member recently asked us if we could work with her in finding a resource for conferences concerning higher education. During our search, we cam across Conferencealerts.com, which we thought could be helpful for many faculty members and TAs.
Conferencealerts.com is a huge website dedicated to marketing higher education conferences across all disciplines and topics. The site also has a database that helps you find a conference, add an event, or promote their event with email.Users can find professional conferences for everything from Islamic Studies to Teaching and Learning. Moreover, the workshops that are advertised on the Conferencealerts.com are from all over the world.
Here’s a little more information from their website:
“Conference Alerts brings together two groups of people – conference organizers, and academics who need to stay informed about conferences. We work with both small first-time conference organizers and established professional societies to ensure that notification of their conferences reach specifically interested parties. Both individual academics and a wide range of ‘knowledge brokers’ – such as journal editors, web site administrators and discussion list moderators – rely on our searchable online database and on Conference Alerts Monthly to remain informed about upcoming academic and professional events.”
Take a visit to Conferencealerts.com and see if you can find a conference somewhere in the world that you would like to attend or inquire about.
This presentation, “Disruptive Technologies or New Pedagogical Possibilities” by Grainne Conole was delivered at the Eduserv Foundation Symposium 2008, in London, England. In this video, Conole discusses how Web 2.0 has changing our learning and teaching paradigms. She discusses how we need to develop new models to understand the relationship between pedagogy and technology.
In order to understand the pedagogical implications of Web 2.0 tools, she explores three case studies: Learning Design, Openlearn and SocialLearn.
To read a related article by Grainne Conole please click here.
After watching this video, do you think we must develop new pedagogies that involve Web 2.0 tools?
Here are just a few pictures from the Third Annual BGSU Teaching and Learning Fair, held on Friday, February 6, 2009 in the Bowen-Thompson Student Union. Barbara Millis, from the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Teaching and Learning Center, presented the keynote, Persisting with Passion: A Summary in Break-throughs in Teaching and Learning. For more information on presenters or the keynote, visit the CTL Fair site.
A recent string of ideas came across the Lilly Conference on College Teaching listserv recently. Here is a sampling of some ideas you can try in your large lecture class to remember students’ names:
From L. Dee Fink (author of a great book – Creating Significant Learning Experiences): …(L)earning names is extremely helpful but challenging in large classes. Here are two ideas that have worked for some:
1. This worked for me in classes of nearly 100, N=75. I used small groups extensively in the course. So, after forming the groups on the first day of class, I took a Polaroid picture of each group and as it “came up”, they wrote their names by their individual picture. I then posted these pictures by my desk in my office and worked on learning the names within each group. After learning the names in the first group, I would learn a new group and review the names in the previous groups, and so on.. I took a week or two to get them all done, but I eventually did. What seemed to work for me was: it was a lot easier to memorize 12 groups of 6 students, than it was to memorize 72 students. And students really appreciated it.
2. A math professor I knew had a very large class, over 100, and knew it would be valuable to learn their names. So he used assigned seating, made a chart, and then each day of class, worked on memorizing a block of 6 students (3 in front and 3 behind). Then each day when he came to class, he made a point of visiting with students in each new block and in the ones he had already learned -in addition to the class in general.
In took awhile, but again by working continuously at it, he eventually got their names all down so that even if he met them while walking across campus, he would recognize them and be able to address them by name.
The point seems to be: You have to commit to doing this because you know it makes a difference in how students respond. If you commit to doing it, you can do it even if it takes some time. To read more about L. Dee Fink’s book, please click here.
Here are some more ideas from the listserv and other faculty suggestions:
Index card w/ name/contact info and 2-5 questions about them; review these early & often, especially during class discussions (call name and associate w/ their face
Students create/use name tents each class session; some faculty have students take/bring these each class, while others collect them and use this as an attendance check (but this requires space to lay out the cards, usually alphabetical or clustered, and time to collect/organize them at the end of class). If the name tent IS collected, combine with the index card suggestion, having students answer questions on the inside for you to review.
When handing back papers, call their name and personally hand it to each student
Mandatory brief office visits (2-5 min.) are requested by some instructors during the first 1-3 weeks of class (which may be unmanageable for very large classes)
Just “good ol’ memorization” of the roll sheets and then associate with faces during first classes
Take pictures of groups of students and write their names out (be careful of the legalities of this at your school); study these groups with names/faces frequently; helps if they sit near each other in class
Do you have any creative ideas to learn the names of your students?
One of Ohio’s more famous conferences involved in higher education is coming soon. The University System of Ohio’s Libraries, Learning & Technology 2009 Conference will be the tenth anniversary of Ohio’s premier higher conference, previously known as the Ohio Digital Commons for Education Conference. This year’s conference will deliver an excellent forum for professional development and networking opportunities, with a focus on:
Teaching and Learning in the 21stCentury
Student Success
Ohio Is Moving Forward
Transforming Technologies
P-20 Education
The conference will also include keynote speakers, vendor exhibits, technology demonstrations at Innovation Island, and more.
The conference will be held March 1-3, 2009. Fees for the conference have been reduced.
Two-day registration:
$195 ($95 for students) One-day registration:
$95 ($55 for students)
Registration Includes:
Keynote sessions
Concurrent sessions
Innovation Island (Monday only)
Lunch
Continental breakfast
Reception with hors d’oeuvres (Monday evening)
Conference tote bag and program
Free wireless access in the conference area
Computer access in the Cyber Café
Free parking at the Hilton Columbus
Please see the conference’s website for more information or registration:
Now would be the time to start checking your calendars and seeing if you can attend the 28th International Lilly Conference. This is a big conference that will feature prominent speakers in higher education. Three of the featured Plenary speakers will be: Ken Bain, Dee Fink and Bill McKeachie. These three speakers alone make the conference worth visiting. This year’s conference is titled, “Millennial Learning: Teaching in the 21st Century.”
The conference has a website where dates, times and more details concerning the conference can be read. This conference is definitely worth the drive out to Miami University.
Would you like to be discuss over 37 thousand topics concerning higher education with more than 22 thousand people around the world? Do you have a strong opinion about some practice in the classroom that you want to share with someone?
The Chronicle for Higher Education has a discussion forum where you can peruse more than 790 thousand posts that concern just about any imaginable topic of higher education. Faculty can go into forums about everything from taking attendance with an iPhone, on up to reforms that would better prepare students for college. The dozens of articles that the Chronicle posts are always being discussed there.
Please visit the forum and see what kind of discussion you get involved in.
In our most recent Center newsletter we featured a short “Visionary” piece on Maryellen Weimer. Dr. Weimer is the editor of the The Teaching Professor online blog and newsletter, which are dedicated to inspiring “educators committed to creating a better learning environment,” as their website indicates.
The staff at The Teaching Professor also have a popular annual conference to further their commitment to higher education. They have recently released details on their 2009 conference. The conference will be held: June 5-7, 2009 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. The themes for next year’s conference are: educate, engage and inspire.
(Forwarded from the Conference Committee:) Greetings,
The call for proposals for the 8th Annual Lilly – Traverse City Conference on College and University Teaching is now open. The conference will be held Thursday, September 18 through Sunday, September 21, 2008. This conference has sold out each of the past four years and participants comment time and again that this is one of the best teaching conferences in the country.
Keynote speakers this year include Denise Green, Bill McKeachie, Laurie Richlin, Debra Rowe, Norman Vaughn, and Todd Zakrajsek.
The conference theme is Millennial Learning: Teaching in the 21st Century, and includes four major tracks: advancing active learning, teaching well with technology, cultural competency, and adult learning in nontraditional formats.
An integral part of the Lilly Conferences on Teaching and Learning is the number of high-quality presentations on improving student learning. Come share what has been successful in your classes and what you have discovered about facilitating student learning.
The following BGSU community members presented last week at the 2008 Ohio Digital Commons for Education Conference (ODCE), which is sponsored by the Ohio Learning Network (OLN), Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), and OhioLINK.
Promote an institution-wide dialogue among faculty, staff and graduate students with an interest in teaching and learning - with or without technology.
Welcome to
INTERACT AT THE CENTER!
The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) @ BGSU looks forward to your engaging comments on issues related to teaching and learning.
If you would like to be a part of the "Interact Community," simply click on the ADD COMMENT link at the bottom of a posting and share your thoughts, experiences, or both.
If you have any suggestions for future discussions, please email ctl@bgsu.edu
A faculty member recently asked us if we could work with her in finding a resource for conferences concerning higher education. During our search, we cam across Conferencealerts.com, which we thought could be helpful for many faculty members and TAs.
This presentation, “Disruptive Technologies or New Pedagogical Possibilities” by Grainne Conole was delivered at the 
