General Education and Assessment: Maintaining Momentum, Achieving New Priorities
Network for Academic Renewal Conference
February 18-20, 2010 Seattle, Washington
About the Conference
Colleges and universities are making tough decisions about budget cuts, hiring freezes, and reduction or elimination of programs. General education and assessment initiatives, in particular, can be vulnerable to cuts or to inattention as college and university leaders work to preserve enrollments, meet shortfalls, and maintain basic operations. Yet issues that existed long before the current economic crisis remain—fragmentation and incoherence, a lack of “ownership” of general education among many faculty members, and a desire among students to “get it out of the way.” What also remains is the need, through general education, to prepare all graduates with essential knowledge and skills, including global knowledge, scientific and quantitative literacy, intercultural skills, and ethical competencies.
The good news is that out of earlier periods of challenge and change, campus leaders have coalesced around more contemporary goals for student learning and new and creative curricula and pedagogy. They have also embarked upon meaningful assessment that was keyed to these new designs and utilized to strengthen learning.
As we now face another period of intense scrutiny and challenge, robust designs and persuasive information about the impact and value of general education are especially needed. This conference asks, what can institutions do to support and improve general education and assessment in the face of epic budget cuts? How can leaders continue to value general education and assessment, and express this value, as they make tough choices? How can institutions avoid, either explicitly or inadvertently, sacrificing important progress made in strengthening general education and assessment over the last decade? Most importantly, how can strong general education and assessment initiatives help institutions attract new students, better align scarce resources with vision and mission, and otherwise contribute to educational excellence and overall institutional vitality?
General Education and Assessment: Maintaining Momentum, Achieving New Priorities invites fresh thinking and new approaches to help faculty, staff, and administrators maintain momentum in general education and assessment during tough times, and reaffirms a commitment to engaged liberal education as the guiding principle for campus action. The conference will draw on AAC&U’s long-standing projects and publications on general education reform including work to bring diversity, global, and civic learning into general education and models for advancing scientific and quantitative literacy through real-world curricula and problem-based pedagogies.
Conference themes include:
vision, goals, and designs of general education; faculty engagement and collaboration, including with student affairs; assessment and alignment; and maintaining momentum, related to navigating change politically, structurally, and in a time of restricted resources.
Special Features of the 2010 Conference
Realizing that campuses have scarce resources for professional development and travel to meetings, AAC&U is including several special features in the 2010 conference:
general education designs that address global learning themes (e.g., sustainability and global citizenship) to promote integrative learning;
in partnership with AAC&U’s Shared Futures initiative and Project Kaleidoscope, sessions on scientific and quantitative literacy and science and global learning;
workshops on navigating transition points—from goals to design, and from design to implementation and assessment;
hands-on practice using rubrics to assess student work;
"problem-solving” roundtable discussions based on participant needs; and
a “local issues forum” highlighting regional trends, political issues, and other topics influencing general education and assessment.
Sponsors
Please contact the Development Office at (202) 884-7421 (202) 884-7421 or e-mail Development@aacu.org for information about sponsorship opportunities for this conference.
9th Annual TBLC Meeting - New Orleans, LA
Team Based Learning Collaborative
March 3rd-5th 2010
The 2010 TBL Conference will be historic! Join us as we continue to celebrate the expansion of the TBL Collaborative to include all postsecondary disciplines and an invigorated focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning in TBL.
Now in its ninth year, the Team Based Learning Meeting is a two day event focusing on best practices and recent innovations for Team-Based Learning classrooms.
This year's conference continues the tradition of providing both a Fundamentals track and an Innovations track.
Fundamentals Track
If you are just getting started, the Fundamentals track will get you grounded in the basics and set you up for success. Fundamentals workshops are scheduled sequentially, so you need not choose between them, and they will include:
•Writing Effective Multiple-Choice Questions
•Writing Effective Application Assignments
•Designing Effective Peer-Evaluations
•Facilitating Effectively in the TBL Classroom
Innovations Track
If you are familiar with TBL, the Innovations track will extend your thinking about TBL in many different directions.
This year our Innovations workshops will include:
•The Solution-Problem-Solution Sequence: Integrating Courses in Computer Programming and Communication
•From Lost in a "Pit" to Connected by the Team
•Developing Research Questions and Designing Studies for Your TBLC Activities
•Wow, that was a great workshop – but I am not sure how to get started with my course?
Pre-Conference Workshops
This year we are pleased to offer two pre-conference workshops to address the needs of both those new to Team-Based Learning as well as those who are looking for more advanced training.
"Train the Trainer - Advanced Course Outline"
"TBL - 101"
SoTL Commons: "A Conference for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning"
Georgia Southern University - Statesboro, GA
March 10-12, 2010
The Center for Excellence in Teaching (CET) will host the 3rd annual “The SoTL Commons” conference on the campus of Georgia Southern University. The conference brings together people engaging in SoTL and anyone wanting to improve student learning outcomes in higher education today. The conference epitomizes that college teaching is intellectual work that is enhanced both by disciplinary scholarship and the scholarship on teaching the disciplines (SoTL). The SoTL Commons Conference is a catalyst for learning, conversations and collaborations about SoTL as a key, evidence-based way to improve student learning.
Keynote and Featured Speakers
The keynote speakers will be Dr. Carolin Kreber (University of Edinburgh), Dr. Kathleen McKinney (Illinois State University), and Dr. Gary Pooler (University of British Columbia).
The SoTL Commons Logo: The Nautilus
The logo for the conference is the chambered nautilus shell. The self-propelling nautilus grows chamber by chamber, each one larger than the previous one, in an unfolding spiral as it develops steadily over time. The shell's elegant trajectory opens outward and its dynamic design is like the persevering, quiet movement of SoTL through the currents of teaching and learning. The SoTL Commons Conference aspires to be a growing, spiraling, lively catalyst for the international momentum of SoTL, encouraging the opening up and opening out of teaching and how students best learn into public conversations and collaborations. The spiraling pattern of the nautilus is found throughout nature. The conference is simply, but importantly, one swirl in the overall SoTL spiraling transformation of the nature of teaching and academic culture.
Companion to the SoTL Commons Conference: IJSoTL
A SoTL companion to “The SoTL Commons Conference” is the open access, peer-reviewed eJournal, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, published by the CET at Georgia Southern University. http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/index.htm
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