2011 Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy
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Faculty are, on a daily basis and in very unassuming ways, demonstrating a renewed energy and focus toward the scholarship of teaching and learning. This is further evidenced by our attention to academic assessment, the integration of technology and learning, and even in the change in our teaching lexicon as we incorporate active engagement and reflective practices into instruction to encourage authentic learning. Join us as we showcase and share our collective growth, innovation, and achievement in teaching and learning.

The third annual Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy is focused on Scholarly Teaching and showcases the best pedagogical research and practice in higher education today. Sessions will address disciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and inter-disciplinary challenges facing teachers and students in higher education and will disseminate the latest research aimed at improving the quality of undergraduate and graduate education.

General Information:

Keynote Presenters:

Terry Doyle: The goal of this presentation is to share with faculty ways to enhance their students' learning by adopting a pedagogy based on the most current research on how the human brain learns. It is my hope that faculty will use this information to construct learning activities and environments that are in harmony with how their students' brains learn. The presentation topics will include: the role of exercise and movement in enhancing learning, the brain as a pattern seeking device, teaching to enhance students long term recall and transference of information and the importance of using a multisensory approach when teaching.

Terry Doyle is a professor of reading at Ferris State University and Senior Instructor for Faculty Development and Coordinator of the New to Ferris Faculty Transition Program for the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. Terry has presented over sixty workshops on teaching and learning topics at national and international conferences since 2000. He has also worked with faculty on forty five different colleges and universities across the country on ways to develop a learner centered teaching practice in the past five years.

He is the author of the book Helping Students Learn in a Learner Center Environment: A Guide to Teaching in Higher Education, published by Stylus, 2008. He is the co-author of the book New Faculty Professional Development: An Ideal Program published in 2004. His most recent article on Learner Centered Teaching appeared in the NEA's Advocate Magazine October, 2008. He is currently working on a new book Helping Teachers Teach in a Learner Centered Environment to be published by Stylus.

Carolin Kreber: Clearly, there is no one best way to teach. If we were to take snapshots of all our observations of ‘good college teaching’ and arranged them side by side, what might strike us is the countless versions of what it is to be a good teacher. And yet, the diversity that can be observed among good teachers does not mean that they do not have anything in common. What they seem to share is a capacity to make good professional judgements. But how have they learned to do that? And how might we understand ‘good’? In this presentation I will explore the role of educational research in informing the professional judgements of college teachers. I will argue that educational research is a critically important but not sufficient basis for good teaching. The best teachers are likely those whose educational practice is characterised by a series of good judgements they make, which are informed, on the one hand, by knowledge obtained through educational research, but also ideals, and importantly, their attentiveness and reflectivity regarding the particularity of the contexts in which they attempt to promote the learning of their students

Dr. Carolin Kreber is presently Professor of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where until recently she also directed the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment. From 1997 to 2004 she was a faculty member at the University of Alberta where she taught courses in adult learning and developmental theory, instructional design, research methodology and the administration of higher education. She obtained her Ph.D. degree from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto). She is the editor of several edited volumes including Revisiting Scholarship: Perspectives on the Scholarship of Teaching (2001) and The University and its Disciplines: Teaching and Learning Within and Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries (2009) and has authored numerous articles on the scholarship of teaching and learning including "Charting a Critical Course on the Scholarship of Teaching Movement" (Studies in Higher Education, August, 2005) and "The Scholarship of Teaching as an Authentic Practice" (International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2007). Other research interests revolve around the values guiding higher education and the role of reflection in teaching and learning. She is particularly interested in the different kinds of questions that can be asked as part of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and the linkages between theoretical, instrumental and ethical deliberation on university teaching and learning.

Schedule:

Contact Information:

111 Hillcrest Hall (0453), Blacksburg, VA 24061
(540) 231-6823  |  cider@vt.edu