The 10th Annual Teaching Professor Conference

Plenary Sessions

Opening Plenary Session

Friday, May 31, 2013 | 5:15 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.

Higher Education in Five Years (or Sooner)

Presenter: Richard M. Felder, North Carolina State University

Chronic business and industry complaints about skill deficiencies in college graduates have led to calls for major reforms in how college curricula should be structured, how courses should be taught and assessed, the role technology should play, who should teach, and how instructors should be prepared. Many faculty members and administrators are less than enthusiastic about the proposed changes, arguing that the existing system functions well and needs no radical revision. This provocative talk outlines the opposing positions in this debate and offers predictions about the outcomes.

Luncheon Plenary Session

Saturday, June 1, 2013 | 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Dead Ideas and Other Tyrannies: How They Limit Teaching and Learning

Presenter: Diane Pike, Augsburg College

Public historian James Burke argues, “We are what we know… and when what we know changes, we change.” If what we think we know about teaching and learning is dead, then we have a serious problem. The unintended consequences of oppressive ideas can greatly limit our teaching effectiveness. In the middle of a national conversation that ranges from arguing that being a college dropout is a good thing to claiming that traditional institutions can be replaced with MOOCs, this keynote identifies three tyrannical ideas in teaching and learning and examines how we might respond.