Hitting the Road: CFT Sessions at the 2010 POD Network Conference
The Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network is the professional association to which CFT senior staff belong. The 2010 POD Network conference will be held next month in St. Louis, November 3-7. Several CFT staff members and one graduate student are attending the conference and leading sessions there. These sessions reflect several recent CFT initiatives that we hope our colleagues in educational development find interesting.
Publicity 2.0: Creating an Efficient Publicity Machine
Rhett McDaniel and Derek Bruff, Vanderbilt University
For anyone wanting to improve publicity efforts by developing a systematic and consistent mechanism, this session explores the use of social media for publicity purposes. Participants will get a behind-the-scenes look at how to configure applications to automate many publicity tasks. By the end of the session, participants will be able to:
- create attention-grabbing blog entries even when you think you don’t have anything interesting to blog about,
- implement timesaving tips for increasing exposure,
- appreciate why incorporating social media into your publicity plan is important, and
- recognize how a strategic process can improve efficiency in marketing efforts.
Growing Sustainability in the Ecologies of Academe
Allison Pingree, Joe Bandy, and John Morrell, Vanderbilt University
While many colleges and universities have begun to re-evaluate their operations according to sustainability principles, these principles and practices have been slower to enter the classroom. Sustainability education presents an important opportunity for educational developers to enhance the services that they offer to faculty and to pursue their mission to promote teaching that matters. This interactive session will present a model and a work-in-progress, describing how our teaching center has worked to strengthen and catalyze sustainability education initiatives within the university. We will discuss strategies for growing sustainability programming sustainably, within the specific contexts of participants’ home institutions.
Revolution or Evolution? Social Technologies and Pedagogical Change
Derek Bruff, Vanderbilt University; Dwayne Harapnuik, Abilene Christian University; Jim
Julius, San Diego State University
Social technologies such as wikis, blogs, Twitter, and smart phones open up avenues for learning and collaboration that hold great promise for transforming education. Do these technologies, along with the easy access to information that the Web provides, call for a revolution in education, one that rejects what some call the Industrial Model commonly practiced? Such a revolution sounds exciting, but is revolution possible or even appropriate in an environment where evolution—in fact, slow evolution—seems the norm? This session will explore the forces for and against revolution, as well as practical strategies for encouraging change in educational technology use.
Former CFT graduate student and current assistant professor of the practice in the HOD department, Leigh Gilchrist, is leading a session, too!
Layering Curricular Strategies: Integrating Service-learning and Small Group Dynamics
Leigh Gilchrist, Vanderbilt University; Suzanne Pratt, Columbia University
Today in higher education, service-learning is seen as a viable tool to enhance student learning. As faculty incorporate design components of service-learning into their courses, they should be thinking about the role that small groups play in this process. This presentation will model the nature of layering service-learning and small group dynamics. Participants will be divided into small groups and asked to participate in activities that explore specific elements of this integrated teaching strategy. In each section of the presentation, there will be an interplay between instructional and interactive components.
Image: “Suitcase” by Flickr user EssjayNZ, Creative Commons licensed.
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