2012 CIT/EdTech Conference Overview

This year’s combined CIT (Center for Innovative Teaching) and Educational Technology Conference was held on Thursday, May 10, 2012, and 161 faculty and staff from UMass Boston and area institutions attended.

The conference included a wide range of offerings, reflecting a number of topics of current interest to faculty, including the following:

• new resources for teaching and scholarship available through the Healey Library
• teaching writing and providing student support in writing centers
• redesigning course syllabi and curricula
• developing accessible service learning projects
• addressing issues of identity, race, culture and religion in the classroom
• various ways of supporting student engagement, discussion and collaboration in the classroom and online
• using particular technology tools such as Camtasia Lecture Capture, Wikispaces and Voicethreads
• exploring ebooks options from Pearson and Follett

In addition, the Composition Program which often holds its own conference in May, joined in this conference, where several of its faculty were already scheduled to present.

This issue of the newsletter will highlight both larger conference themes and some specific presentations.  You can check out full conference program or go to the conference proceedings to see videos of the introductory remarks (by Anne Agee, CIO and Vice Provost, Vivian Zamel, Director of CIT, Winston Langley, Provost, and Keith Motley, Chancellor) and the keynote by Professor Shirley Tang (Asian-American Studies) and her students, a video of the presentation of teaching awards to Ellen Birchander (Gerontology), Felicia Sullivan (CCT and Political Science), Tracy Brown (ESL), and Lynnell Thomas (American Studies) or to listen to recordings of many individual conference sessions.

Other posts in this issue of the newsletter will provide more detail about the keynote, the awards, some “conference gleanings” from several different sessions, and a more detailed look at the a collaboration between the library and an American Studies faculty member to support students’ “doing” of history research and writing.