ISSoTL 2009 - part 2 Apparently the 6th ISSoTL has attracted 650 delegates from 500 campuses representing 15 different countries. There's certainly a buzz about the conference and a few familiar faces who it's good to meet up with. Workshopped all day and felt beetr about the trek over here! Talked about building communities around the scholarship of teaching and learning this morning and found out about some CASTL sponsored projects, you can read all about them in the latest issue of Transformative Dialogues. After lunch we discussed how we can assess "excellent" teaching with a team from Lund University who have been working with the engineering faculty to develop criteria on which to base rewards for teaching. This process includes working with academic staff to produce reflective portfolios which provide some of the evidence for the rewards.
Campus itself is fairly busy, the trees are beautiful in their autumn finery, the chipmunks are finding it difficult to dash across the road and the students are recovering from mid-terms. There are comatose students cluttering up the sofas, lying stretched out, in the reception area of the conference centre and bizzarely, to me anyway, no one seems to think it's weird. Tonight they had a really loud pink (Victoria's Secret?!) party right by the hall where we were listening to the keynote ... and then it began to rain.  ¶ 4:13 am 0 Comments

  ISSoTL 2009 Finally got the marking out of the way and the exam board was on Tuesday, a good set of results!
After a fairly gruelling journey I made it to Bloomington, Indiana (thanks to all those on the flight over who made me doubt myself by pointing out there was also a Bloomington, Illinois!) and following a good nights sleep and a hearty breakfast (well it is lunchtime at home) I'm off to the first day workshops: Building Scholarly Communities and Judging Excellent University Teaching.  ¶ 1:38 pm 0 Comments