TLC 2021

17th Annual Teaching & Learning Conference at Elon University, #elontlc21

Elon University welcomes university and college educators to the 17th Annual Teaching & Learning Conference on Thursday, June 10th, 2021 (please note the new early summer date to allow for conference ideas to percolate all summer long). This free, fully-virtual conference is sponsored jointly by Elon’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL) and Teaching and Learning Technologies (TLT). Registration was available until June 7, 2021 at 11:59pm EST.

Conference Theme: Teaching & Learning Beyond the Pandemic

As we look beyond the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our institutions and classrooms, we envision a world that has both changed in radical ways and also still retains many longstanding challenges. Our collective and personal experiences during this past year and a half, as educators and human beings, may leave us better positioned to reimagine that future world together. In what ways might we and our students cultivate meaning, purpose, and connection that reignite our passion for teaching and learning after the widespread burnout of COVID? How can we leverage the momentum of 2020 toward racial equity to continue to iterate toward more welcoming and just courses in which historically underrepresented or otherwise disadvantaged students can truly excel? And, as climate-related disruptions become increasingly frequent, how can we leverage our recent experience to create more resilient and more sustainable courses and institutions?

Plenary Speaker: Dr. James Lang

James M. Lang is a Professor of English and the Director of the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College in Worcester, MA. He is the author of five books, the most recent of which are Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning (Jossey-Bass, 2016) Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty (Harvard University Press, 2013), and On Course: A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching (Harvard UP, 2008). His latest book, Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It, was published by Basic Books in late 2020.

Lang writes a monthly column on teaching and learning for The Chronicle of Higher Education; his work has been appearing in the Chronicle since 1999.  His book reviews and public scholarship on higher education have appeared in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, including the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, and Time.  He edits a series of books on teaching and learning in higher education for West Virginia University Press; he co-edited the second book in the series, Teaching the Literature Survey Course: New Strategies for College Faculty (2018).  He has conducted workshops on teaching for faculty at more than 100 colleges or universities in the US and abroad, and consulted for the United Nations on the development of teaching materials in ethics and integrity for college faculty.  In September of 2016 he received a Fulbright Specialist grant to work with three universities in Colombia on the creation of a MOOC on teaching and learning in STEM education.  He has a BA in English and Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, an MA in English from St. Louis University, and a Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University.