IU to host teaching conference

An inaugural conference will be held at the Indiana Memorial Union Oct. 21 through 24, bringing together international scholars to discuss higher education teaching and learning.\nThe newly formed International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is having its first conference at IU to discuss ways to improve post-secondary learning and teaching and to encourage the development of the field.\n"The conference is important because it is focusing the creative energies on how to make learning better," said planning committe member Craig Nelson. Although IU has faculty and staff who lead the country in higher education research, this conference will bring people together from all over the world to improve education and learning in universities, colleges and community colleges.\n"Indiana Univeristy -Bloomington is recognized as a leader in the country in the scholarship of teaching and learning," said conference co-chair Whitney Schlegel. "It brings together not only our researchers, but other people who are researching the same thing that are not from IU."\nThe opening of the conference will feature Keith Trigwell, reader in Higher Education at the University of Oxford's Institute for the Advancement of University Learning, (Keith Trigwell). \nTrigwell will speak about a "conception of the scholarship of teaching/learning that aims to accomodate current teaching/learning thinking while remaining supportive of the aims ventral to the project of developing a scholarship of teaching and learning," in his speech "Students Learning and the Scholarship of Teaching/Learning," according to a statement.\nAlong with Trigwell, other presenters speaking at the conference will include Lee Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; Randall Bass, assistant professor of English from Georgetown University; and Dan Bernstein, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Kansas. \n"The conference is a place to inform because people are coming to share their work and inform about what they're doing and in the classrooms and institutions," Schlegel said. \nThe speakers will focus the conference on three tracks: transforming teaching, learning and scholarship; making scholarship of teaching and learning visible in the disciplines; and campus programs and international perspectives. \nNelson said it is beneficial to IU to be holding this type of conference.\n"It is important because this type of research comes back to enhance the educational experience at universitites such as IUB," Schlegel said. \nIU staff will use topics discussed in the conferenece in classrooms.\n"Sixty faculty and staff will be attending the conference," Nelson said. "They will certainly use what is learned in the conference to the classrooms."\nConference organizers are also offering workshops for attendees who chose to learn more about the issues being discussed at the conference. Volunteers will teach the workshops to help their collegues learn about students' learning.\n"The workshops are not required, but are offered as a toolbox type experience where people can learn different skills about learning and teaching," Schlegel said.\nThe conferences will be held in varioius rooms in the IMU with discussions and debates among scholars.\n"It's a great place to make connections with people and see how your work relates to a bigger frame work," Schlegel said.\n-- Contact staff writer Nellie Summerfield at nsummerf@indiana.edu