Professors from colleges and universities in three states visited campus on Thursday for the 2010 Elon Teaching and Learning Conference, which brings together faculty to discuss and share ideas on the scholarship of educating students using innovative approaches in the classroom.
More than 240 educators registered for the seventh annual conference. With “Connectivity in Higher Education” serving as the theme for 2010, the event included plenary sessions led by Elon University associate professor Janna Anderson and by Indiana University faculty members David Pace and Joan Middendorf.
Shorter sessions were lead by faculty from Virginia Commonwealth University, UNC Chapel Hill, UNC Pembroke, Roanoke College, N.C. State University and Elon. Attendance included faculty from colleges and universities in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
“The theme really plays out in three ways. One is web-based connectivity, to people, to resources, to experiences you can’t have,” said Peter Felten, director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning. “Another way is face-to-face connections with students, and connecting students with their local community and the world around them. The last is building faculty community. One of the purposes of the conferences is to build community.”
“There’s a great opportunity for faculty at Elon to connect with other faculty, and also to peers at other schools.”
A committee led by professor Katie King and comprised of mostly first-year faculty at Elon helped design and run the conference.
Anderson, an associate professor in the School of Communications at Elon and director of the school’s Imagining the Internet Center, lead the “Digital rEvolution” session on the rapid evolution of knowledge-sharing and acquisition.
Pace is a professor of European history at Indiana University and co-director of the Freshman Learning Project. He is a fellow in the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and the Mack Center for Inquiry on Teaching and Learning and has received the American Historical Association’s Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award.
Pace has published articles on the scholarship of teaching and learning in The American Historical Review, The Journal of American History, Arts and Humanities, National Teaching and Learning Forum, History Teacher, College Teaching, American Historical Association Perspectives, and To Improve the Academy.
Middendorf is associate director of Campus Instructional Consulting Center and an adjunct professor in higher education at Indiana University. Pace and Middendorf are co-editors of Decoding the Disciplines: Helping Students Learn Disciplinary Ways of Thinking.
“Academia can not tolerate bad teaching as an accepted practice,” Pace said in the second plenary session, titled “Connecting with Colleagues to Deepen Student Learning.” “More students are going to college … if we can’t help them through this path, their lives will be less rich.”
The 2010 Elon Teaching and Learning conference organizing committee was made up of the following faculty and staff:
· Joan Barnatt, Education
· Olivia Choplin, French
· Kirstie Doehler, Mathematics
· Jean Eckrich, CATL Visiting Scholar/Colby-Sawyer College
· Sean Giovanello, Political Science
· Katie King, Psychology/CATL
· Ben McFadyen, CATL/TLT
· Phillip Motley, Communications
· Sang Nam, Communications
· Alan Scott, Psychology
· Tonya Train, Biology