Hitting the Road: Conference Season for the CFT

Posted by Derek Bruff on Friday, October 21, 2011 in News.

Four members of the CFT staff are attending conferences across the country over the next three weeks.

This week, CFT educational consultant Milt Cox is participating in the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) conference in Milwaukee. Milt’s on a panel titled “Transforming Educational Development of SoTL by Engaging in, Leading, and Publishing about Communities of Practice,” drawing on his experience leading faculty learning communities at Miami University and as editor-in-chief of the Learning Communities Journal.
Also this week, CFT educational technologist Rhett McDaniel is attending the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference in Philadelphia. This conference has had a particularly robust backchannel on Twitter, under the hashtag #edu11. Also, Vanderbilt’s ITS has been streaming selected sessions from the conference in Hill Center 221.
Next week, Milt Cox and CFT acting director Derek Bruff are heading to Atlanta for the 2011 Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network conference. The POD Network is a professional association for educational developers, and most teaching centers in the US are members. Derek is serving on POD’s board of directors (the “Core Committee”) from 2010 to 2013, so he’s going to Atlanta early for those meetings. He’s also co-presenting a session titled “Everyone’s a Visual Learner: Using Visual Thinking in the Classroom” with Jose Vazquez of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Derek’s also on a panel titled “TA Certification Programs: Key Questions for Design and Implementation.” Milt’s on the program, too, co-presenting a session called “Engaging and Publishing about Communities of Practice for Faculty Development.”
The week after that, CFT assistant director Joe Bandy is going to Chicago for the annual conference of the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE). Joe’s not presenting, but several Vanderbilt colleagues are, including Leigh Gilchrist (HOD), Sharon Shields (HOD), Ravi Patel (Medicine), Joanna Geller (HOD), and Linda Norman (Nursing).