Conference Tracks

12 Conference Tracks!

Attend any sessions
in any of the tracks!

Instruction

Preparing Your Course
Assessing Learning
Student Engagement
Technology Tools for Teaching

Student
Learning

Online Teaching and Learning
Teaching Specific Student Populations
Outside the Classroom
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion
Teaching in the Health Sciences

Instructional Growth and Development

Instructional Vitality: Ways to Keep Teaching Fresh and Invigorated
For New Faculty
Faculty Support

Instruction

Topical areas

Topical Area 1: Preparing Your Course
Sessions in this track refer to all aspects of course preparation, such as:

  • Learner-centered course design
  • Backward design
  • Active learning
  • Gamification
  • Designing courses for critical thinking, reflection, collaboration, and motivation
  • Writing goals, objectives, learning outcomes, and their assessments

Sessions promote innovations and strategies that can be applied across a broad range of disciplines and contexts.

Topical Area 2: Assessing Learning

Sessions in this track focus on assignments, assessments, and grading practices, and/or strategies measuring students’ accomplishment of course objectives and learning outcomes, such as:

  • Tests and assignments
  • Grading Systems and Criteria
  • Self and Peer Assessment
  • Rubrics
  • Feedback

Topical Area 3: Student Engagement

Sessions in this track promote one or all of the dimensions of student engagement: behavioral, emotional, or cognitive. Including:

  • Instructional strategies promoting engagement
  • Practices supporting engaging classroom climate
  • Promoting broadly engaged participation and discussion
  • Classroom-based engagement activities

Topical Area 4: Technology Tools for Teaching

Sessions in this track focus on the effective use of teaching and communication technologies including the theoretical underpinnings that drive the use of technology for teaching.

  • The pedagogical research that supports the tool (and/or the pros and cons of the tool)
  • An introduction to using the tool
  • An example of the tool used in an online, hybrid, or traditional class

Student Learning

Topical areas

Topical Area 5: Online Teaching and Learning

Good teaching is good teaching, and much of the conference is devoted to it!  This track is specific to the online environment, which presents unique challenges and opportunities. Sessions in this track typically include, but are not limited to:

  • Course design
  • Student discussion and engagement
  • Feedback and grading
  • Instructor presence

Topical Area 6: Teaching Specific Student Populations

Sessions in this track should focus on topics and issues specific to  unique  student  populations, offering  strategies and innovative ideas  including,  but not limited to:

  • Professional studies (e.g., engineering, law, accounting)
  • Student preparation for high stakes certifications or board exams
  • Applied studies, including technical or vocational programs
  • International students
  • Non-native language speakers
  • First-generation college students
  • Non-traditional students
  • Students with emotional, cognitive, or learning differences
  • Sessions in this track should focus on topics and issues specific to unique student populations, offering strategies and innovative ideas including, but not limited to:
  • Students whose life circumstances challenge persistence, retention, and completion

Topical Area 7: Equity, Diversity, Inclusion
This track focuses on practices and strategies supporting minority and/or marginalized students. Sessions may include, but are  not limited to:

  • Inclusive curricula
  • Inclusive learning climates
  • Inclusive instructional practice
  • Universal Design for Learning

Topical Area 8: Teaching in the Health Sciences
Sessions in this track cover the unique challenges in teaching in the health sciences, in areas such as:

  • Teaching in a clinical setting
  • Simulation-based teaching
  • Teaching professional ethics

Instructional Growth and Development

Topical areas

Topical Area 9: Instructional Vitality: Ways to Keep Teaching Fresh and Invigorated
These sessions focus on concepts and practices for supporting mid- and later-career faculty in making positive changes that will invigorate and refresh their teaching and their relationships with students.  Attendees will have completed more than five years of teaching. Topics of interest for experienced teachers  may include:

  • Reenergizing course material
  • Mentoring new faculty in their teaching role
  • Connecting with a changing student population
  • Feedback that improves instruction

Topical Area 10: For New Faculty
Sessions in this track represent teaching and pedagogy basics. New faculty are accomplished scholars in their disciplines but often have received little training or experience in teaching. Attendees in these sessions will be in their first few years of teaching. Pertinent topics  for new  teachers may include, but  are  not limited to:

  • Effective classroom practices specific for novice teachers
  • Teaching strategies specific to novice teachers
  • Developing a teaching or classroom philosophy
  • Things “I wish I knew…” and/or advice for new teachers
  • Strategies for balancing the competing demands of an academic career

Topical Area 11: Faculty Support
This track is for Faculty Developers, Instructional Designers, and CT&L staff—those attendees who are responsible for or interested in faculty development at their home institutions. It also serves anyone working in faculty instructional mentoring. These sessions will provide advice on doing this job innovatively and effectively.