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"Using Grading Strategies to Understand and Improve Student Learning Workshop October 12-13, 2012 Cambridge, MA Good grading and good teaching go hand in hand. If you haven't taken a fresh look at your assessment strategies recently, it's likely that you're missing some powerful ways to improve your courses and deepen the caliber of learning that takes place in your classroom. The purpose of this exclusive two-day event is to help you create purposeful, meaningful opportunities for students to learn exactly what you want them to learn. This workshop is designed to give you the freedom to think in new and innovative ways about how you teach and how you assess student learning. The dual presenters have prepared a full menu of engaging activities for reflecting deliberately and developing the types of assessments that will improve the learning experience in your courses. In Using Grading Strategies to Understand and Improve Student Learning, a pair of leading experts in classroom assessment will lead you through a concentrated two-day workshop designed to provide you with new tools and insights for redesigning your assessment strategies. At the end of this event, you will understand how and why improving the quality of the assessments you use in your college courses can raise the level of learning in your classroom."

"Emergent Dialogues in Assessment"   In the last decade, the higher education sector has been confronted with increasing skepticism about its effectiveness and quality from government agencies and employers, as well as from prospective students and their families. In the face of such criticism, higher education's response has been very weak, as illustrated by the inclusion of assertions that these skeptics should trust us; the production of weak and misleading reports on institutional quality; and accreditation-based assertions of quality based on criteria that miss the point of the skeptics' criticism. While we assert quality in many ways, we rarely do it in a way that answers the central, critical question these skeptics want answered: will graduates be able to function and succeed in the world after graduation?  Colleges and universities can no longer avoid answering that question, nor can they try to answer it with surrogate measures.   The demand answers that are both rigorous and practical is being exacerbated by fundamental changes in student demographics and the way higher education institutions "do business."  Growing adult/returning student populations, more diverse student bodies with more diverse needs, and an increasingly challenging economic environment  will force higher education to be more flexible and accountable, but with fewer resources. In this environment assessment practitioners can play a major role in evaluating and developing response strategies like translating learning into credit (e.g. prior learning assessment), "direct assessment programs" ( e.g. competency-based education), and emergent learning environments (e.g. adaptive learning).  

Educators are searching for tools that can help them assess and evaluate their students' achievement of defined learning outcomes in fields as diverse as engineering, business, health professions, math, science and technology (to name a few). These assessments and evaluations are part of a national trend toward transparency and accountability regarding the value added in education. The RosEvaluation Conference 2012 will bring together those who are developing assessment and evaluation tools to share information and their expertise. The conference will emphasize concrete, effective, and efficient solutions to assessment and evaluation challenges!

Faculty, staff, and administrators throughout higher education are employing contemplative practices for many reasons. These include sharpening attention; creating environments that enhance the well-being of all; addressing inclusion and access for all in support of the vibrant diversity of our institutions; deepening engagement and learning of subject matter; reflecting on and supporting meaning-making; considering the wider impacts of our actions; and ultimately supporting the development of a more just and compassionate society. Given the breadth and depth of these many intentions, the types of practices used are extremely diverse, and their assessment needs to be approached with great sensitivity. Assessment of practices designed to develop attention, for example, will be different from assessment of those practices designed to increase conceptual understanding or develop compassion and creativity.

This Institute gives instructional faculty an intensive experience in teaching and learning to support deep learning in post-secondary students. The institute is developed around core teaching strategies from planning for deep learning experiences, connecting learning objectives to rich assessment and evaluation methods, building in active learning activities into the class, obtaining feedback and formative assessment from students to planning a lesson and incorporating reflective practice into being a professional educator.

Moving Beyond "One-Size-Fits-All" by Targeting Three Strategic and Transformative Approaches: Evidence-Based Learning; Personalized Learning and Holistic Outcomes Assessment Hynes Convention Center  Boston, MA  July 27-30, 2015

From teaching to assessment to technical support, gain new insight around how mobile learning can transform your institution.

Teachers with a passion for excellence have been flocking to The Teaching Professor Conference since 2003. There's simply no better place to explore and celebrate the art and science of teaching. Join roughly 1,000 of your colleagues from around the country for three days of learning, debate, and collaboration. Together, you'll explore: Recent pedagogical research Innovative classroom techniques The latest technology tools Emerging challenges of a global classroom Proven best practices in teaching Content rich and far ranging As always, the conference will delve deep into the subjects that matter most. Come gain important insights in areas such as: Course creation Student engagement Outcome improvement Classroom technology Assessment and feedback Closing skills gaps With multiple tracks during each session, you'll be sure to find something that interests you.

The 13th annual learning conference explores how we can design, assess, and facilitate learning that engages every learner, allowing each student to build their own knowledge and contribute their own strengths to their learning and the learning of their classmates and instructors. Together, we'll explore questions that reach through and beyond content and pedagogical content knowledge, like How can one instructor engage every student in a large class? How do instructors recognize and celebrate their students' diversity without risking microaggressions? What can instructors do before, during, and after class, face-to-face and online, to support each student? How does an instructor create and maintain an environment where every student feels welcome to contribute? What critical pedagogies empower each student's unique voice? What technologies enhance a student's ability to engage and contribute? What are the promising practices in your discipline? Can they be adapted to other disciplines? Keynote address by Dr.Sarah L.Eddy, "End of Lecture?  Active learning increases student achievement".

The annual conference brings together people from small colleges and universities in an informal setting to present on and discuss topics related to assessment, institutional research, and institutional effectiveness. We welcome participants from all colleges and universities-you do not have to be from a HEDS institution or an institutional researcher to attend this conference.

The central theme of this year's Institute is transformation. Transformation is expressed throughout several facets of our work this year, from the continued progress in our SENCER, SENCER-ISE and Engaging Mathematics projects to our pursuit of opportunities emerging from new partnerships and initiatives, and our organization being profiled in a recent USC monograph by Adrianna Kezar and Sean Gehrke as a Community of Transformation in STEM reform. The major aims for this year's program include conversations about the STEM reform ecosystem, examples of SENCER work on campus and of the SENCER approach in real-world problems, and assessment of SENCER work. Other topics that will be covered in this year's program include: Civic Intersections of STEM and Humanities Communities of Transformation: Maximizing Impact Public Engagement with Science Foregrounding Quantitative Literacy in Civic Life Science and Technology for Social Good Leading Change: Aligning Institutional and Personal Priorities

In exploring the conceptions of our profession and how institutional directions shape our practice in diverse landscapes, we invite you to explore the following questions: How do the strategic priorities of our institutions shape our approach to educational development? What are our roles in shaping institutional priorities? What should they be? How do we position ourselves in our institutions to influence strategic decision-making about teaching and learning? On the spectrum of responsibilities from meeting the learning needs of individual teachers to facilitating institutional change, how do we reconcile the tensions that the expanding roles of educational development specialists can create? As institutional directions move to a greater focus on assessment of teaching performance, institutional accountability, e-learning and m-learning, how are the roles of educational developers, instructional designers, and curriculum specialists changing? To what degree to we want to harness these trends to shape how our profession is conceptualized?

"We cordially invite you to participate in the 36th Annual POD Conference to be held in Atlanta, Georgia on October 26-30, 2011. This year's conference is a collaborative endeavor between POD and the Historically Black Colleges & Universities Faculty Development Network (HBCUFDN). This partnership-enriched by each organization's long-standing traditions and thoughtful, dedicated members-signifies our commitment to diversity and recognizes its central role in faculty, professional, and organizational development. With this year's conference theme-Create * Collaborate * Engage-we both invite and challenge our POD and HBCUFDN colleagues to work side-by-side to create new ideas and ways of thinking, to collaborate innovatively across traditional boundaries, and to engage each other and the broader higher education community in meaningful and sustainable dialogues and activities. The questions we explore may not be new, but they are questions worth reconsidering through a new, composite lens: How can we rethink our organizational structures so we work smarter in tough economic times, meet the needs of a rapidly changing student body, and keep our faculty colleagues up to speed-all without sacrificing those aspects of the academy we hold most dear? How do we create, assess, and disseminate world-class faculty and organizational development programs? How can we foster collaboration at a nationwide level, as well as in our own departments and across professional organizations? How do we best teach, develop, and support the next generation of faculty and faculty developers? How can we help faculty members engage their students and institutions, and, maybe more importantly, how do we engage with the myriad stakeholders who influence and affect the work we do, including students, faculty, administr"

Moving Beyond "One-Size-Fits-All" by Targeting Three Strategic and Transformative Approaches: Evidence-Based Learning; Personalized Learning and Holistic Outcomes Assessment

The Summer Institutes model the scientific teaching principles they teach. We invite college and university faculty, instructional staff, and future faculty to develop teaching skills at multi-day workshops to transform the undergraduate STEM classroom. Summer Institutes draw on the expertise of both presenters and participants. Current research, active learning, assessment, and inclusive teaching are woven into the program, creating a forum to share ideas and develop innovative instructional materials to be implemented upon returning home.

Join roughly 1,000 of your colleagues from around the country for three days of learning, debate, and collaboration. Together, you'll explore: Recent pedagogical research Innovative classroom techniques The latest technology tools Emerging challenges of a global classroom Proven best practices in teaching Content rich and far ranging As always, the conference will delve deep into the subjects that matter most. Come gain important insights in areas such as: Course creation Student engagement Outcome improvement Classroom technology Assessment and feedback Closing skills gaps With multiple tracks during each session, you'll be sure to find something that interests you.