The UW System Office of Professional & Instructional Development (OPID) has announced the details for their annual spring conference on teaching and learning! The 2023 conference will be held in person in Madison and via Zoom on Apr. 20 & 21, 2023, and the theme for this year is “centering students.” OPID invites you to participate by submitting a proposal about your teaching and learning experiences, ideas, insights, questions, failures, and accomplishments. The call is open to all UW educators, and proposals are due Monday, Jan. 9, 2023.
Theme
Description provided by the OPID 2023 Spring Conference on Teaching & Learning website.
From the classroom to department meetings and from learning management systems to addressing mental health and wellbeing, students are the focus of our professional lives. In the past few years, we have increased our attention to centering our teaching practices around the “whole student.” Re-examining assessment strategies, updating curriculum, exploring teaching methods and modalities while increasing flexibility and compassionate responses to students’ needs are just a few examples.
Centering Students is what we do as educators and is tied to our goals, challenges and the rewards of teaching and learning. As we deal with the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have an opportunity to explore what we have learned, and what we still need to learn, about connecting with and supporting students. How might we consider what we need in terms of self-care and care for colleagues so we can feel a sense of well-being and enable us to better care for others around us? How do we cultivate relationships and create a sense of community with our students? How do we bring student voices into our face-to-face, online, and blended learning environments? What opportunities are there to cultivate connections both within and external to our class environments? How can we meet students where they are, while advising and mentoring them to succeed beyond our learning contexts?
We invite you to contribute to the conversation about centering students by presenting at OPID’s 2023 Spring Conference. Please share your experiences, ideas, insights, questions, failures, and accomplishments so we can collaborate and learn together to explore possibilities for centering students in our teaching/learning contexts.
Read more about the theme and plenary speaker on the OPID 2023 Spring Conference on Teaching & Learning site!
Questions?
Programmatic inquiries may be directed to Fay Akindes, Director of Systemwide Professional and Instructional Development, UW System, fakindes@uwsa.edu, (608) 263-2684.