Over the past few weeks I have been fortunate to attend and present at two conferences—both supported in some way by the Office of Instructional Development (OID). The first, The Collaboration for the Advancement of College Teaching and Learning was held February 13th and 14th in Bloomington, Minneapolis and was entitled, “The Learning Educator: Fostering our own Development for Better Practice and Results.” The second conference was the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education 20th International Conference held in Charleston, South Carolina. The Collaboration conference focused on the scholarship of teaching. It allowed attendees to step away from the busyness that comes with responsibilities to a program and to a university and focus on our teaching. While SITE’s focus is primarily on the use of technology in teacher education, key note speakers called us to consider ways of engaging learners at all levels.

For over a year, four of us (P. Stonehouse, EdL, B. Gourneau, T&L, K. Smart, T&L & C. Shabb, T&L) in the College of Education and Human Development have collaborated on a project exploring the use of blogs to assess student’s learning. When we decided to incorporate blogs into our own courses we began to ask ourselves, “How will we know if our students are learning?” This led to our research project, first deciding how to implement blogs in our classes and then considering ways to interact with our students about the purposes of blogs. To analyze the blogs, we used HyperRESEARCH, a qualitative software product available in the College of Education and Human Development, to help code the blog entries.

I am grateful for the opportunity to attend and present at conferences where the focus is on how to improve teaching. The collaborative research project continues to inform my teaching. I have three main “take away” ideas that I have been considering since attending these conferences. First, one should continually look for ways to engage learners in authentic learning activities that are culturally appropriate. When I consider the learning outcomes from my courses, I try to offer enough flexibility in assignments and projects that should in some way be helpful to students as professionals in their fields. Second, it is important to explore the use of technology as a tool to enhance student engagement and of utmost importance to ensure that learning occurs. This is why we are analyzing the blogs. We are trying to determine whether asking students to blog meet our goals. Each of us might have different course goals, but we all wish students to be reflective within a community of learners. Third, collaborative projects can enhance our teaching. Working with three people offered an opportunity to hear different perspectives. I know that my teaching has benefitted from bouncing ideas off of others, whether with my colleagues who are directly related to the research we are doing, or with others at these conferences.