The conference is jointly sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, and Teaching and Learning Technologies.
Faculty and staff from Elon and nearly three dozen colleges and universities turned into “mythbusters” on Thursday at Elon’s annual Teaching and Learning Conference.
A wide variety of workshops under the theme of “Busting the Myths about Teaching and Learning” offered the 260-plus participants the opportunity to learn about the latest in pedagogy and course design, how innovation is playing out in the classroom and the role that technology is playing in how students learn and how professors teach. Now in its 15th year, Elon’s Teaching and Learning Conference is jointly organized by the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning and Teaching and Learning Technologies at Elon.
“This year, we wanted to focus on the recurring myths or misconceptions that we as faculty have in the classroom,” said Deandra Little, director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning. “We also want to explore some of the misperceptions our students might have about what’s happening in the classroom, and exploring how new research might debunk them.”
Hundreds of faculty and staff members from Elon and nearly three dozen other colleges and universities gathered on campus Thursday to “bust the myths” within higher education in what marks the 15th year of Elon’s Teaching and Learning Conference. The annual conference began as an opportunity to share new scholarship about teaching and learning with Elon’s own faculty, but has expanded through the years to include attendees from other colleges and universities, even from international institutions. “It was originally Elon-focused, largely for faculty members who were returning to campus to help get them re-energized for the start of the academic year,” Little said.
More than two dozen Elon professors led sessions this year, and the number of faculty from other institutions or organizations leading workshops has grown, with nearly two-thirds of the presenters from other schools.
During the morning plenary session in Schar Hall’s Turner Theatre, Bryan Dewsbury, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Rhode Island offered a talk on “Teaching for Meaning and Purpose” that looked at active learning and how pedagogy can function as a form of liberation for student and teacher. An afternoon plenary saw Cheryl Ball, the director of the Digital Publishing Initiative at Wayne State University, discuss some of the myths that scholars and non-scholars alike confront about the writing and publication processes.
During a morning workshop led by Michael Vaughn, instructional technologist, and Carmen Monico, assistant professor of human service studies, participants were transported to Ukraine, South Sudan and Lebanon, using virtual reality. The session titled “Going Global: Benefits and challenges in the use of virtual reality in the classroom” focused on how Vaughn and Monico had worked together to help Monico’s students learn more about the refugee experience using virtual reality headsets.
Vaughn explained that virtual reality is allowing students to experience something that is either very difficult or impossible to experience. “It’s about immersing people into a compelling digital environment,” Vaughn said. “That is its key purpose.”
Use of virtual and augmented reality technologies is growing at Elon, Vaughn explained, such as shooting 360-degree video for dance classes in the Department of Performing Arts that offers instructors and students a more comprehensive way to assess their work. In the School of Health Sciences, augmented reality is allowing students to tap into interactive digital resources using smartphone programs that complement items in the real world.
Monico explained that the virtual reality headsets and the 360-degree video “The Displaced” by the New York Times provide students in her class the opportunity to more fully understand the complex issues of international migration. “By viewing these videos toward the end of the course, they are able to bring to bear the context and what they’ve learned in an immersive experience,” Monico said.
During a session in McEwen Hall, more than two dozen participants assessed a scenario presented by Chayla Haynes Davison, an assistant professor of higher education at Texas A&M University and an Elon alumna, that looked at how racial bias can play out in the curricula and classrooms of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) courses. The dominant narrative is that STEM education has a curriculum that’s race-neutral, but Haynes Davison offered an instance taken from real life from a video-game design course that centered around the creation of avatars that showed the disconnect that can exist between instructors and students from minority backgrounds.
Haynes Davison explained that often faculty “assume that everyone enters with the same set of lived experiences. They’ve just accepted that we’ve all gotten here the same way, when that’s not the case.”