Annual Conference (ITL) - Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning

13th Annual Innovations In Teaching & Learning conference

Theme: Fostering Inclusive Excellence

September 20 - September 24, 2021

10:00am-4:30pm

Online (via Zoom--make sure your GMU Zoom account is active; see ITS page for help.)

Dear Mason Community,

In the spirit of this year’s conference theme, “Fostering Inclusive Excellence,” we encourage you to engage with conference sessions through a filter of scholarly inquiry: how can we deliver a top-rate education in a more welcoming, inclusive environment? This Equity in Action Guide is meant to help you think through some questions and take notes about how we as educators can better help all of our students thrive to the best of their abilities. Using this guide will enable you to participate fully in the final session, Equity by Design: An Invitation to Action, where you can brainstorm with colleagues about how to apply your idea individually and scale up your ideas to make institutional change.

We hope that you, your family, and your friends are staying safe and well during this difficult time. All of us in the Stearns Center are working to ensure that instructors of all levels are supported through and after the COVID-19 crisis.

The Innovations in Teaching & Learning (ITL) conference has always been a unique space for Mason instructors, GTAs, administrators, and staff to forge a sense of community around teaching and learning. As the future remains uncertain, we need to foster such connections now more than ever. For the second time, Mason’s (13th) annual Innovations in Teaching & Learning (ITL) conference will be held online with sessions scheduled across the last week in September 20-24.

Our goal is to serve and support as many people teaching at Mason as possible with an online event that embraces the generative community spirit and interactive nature of the face-to-face ITL experience. We are including value-added online features that we hope make online participation well worth your time.

Going virtual has additional benefits—it reduces program cost, so that with the help of our sponsors we can offer FREE registration for the conference this year. It also affords us an opportunity to be more inclusive and accessible than ever to our instructors across campuses.

We invite you to join us for a week of 20+ inspiring live conference sessions via Zoom (interactive workshops, our keynote speaker events, interactive panels or lightning talks with roundtable discussions, Teaching Squares/Social Lunches, Q&A sessions) and 30+ On-Demand pre-recorded sessions (annotated teaching & learning artifacts (new), video presentations, and digital posters) that showcase strategies and tips to support student learning in and out of the classroom.

Faculty from all ranks/disciplines, graduate students, and members of support offices are welcome. We also welcome non-Mason colleagues as well.

We sincerely appreciate your commitment to teaching excellence and flexibility during these challenging times.

In solidarity,

2021 ITL Conference Director Katie Skipper

and (outgoing) 2021 Conference Director Laura Lukes, Ph.D.

On behalf of the entire Innovations in Teaching & Learning Conference Planning Team

SPECIAL CO-LOCATED PARTNER EVENTS

We are delighted to announce that this year, the ITL conference is hosting a few ITL-related workshops, that are organized by other groups on campus. These workshops are open to ITL attendees and are included in the conference program, but are also open to those in the Mason community not attending the conference.

Curious what ITL is all about? Watch our short videos:

2019 Innovations in Teaching & Learning Conference

from GMU-TV.

Innovations in Teaching and Learning 2019