Keynote Presentation
The Innovation is Coming from Inside the House
9:15 to 10:30 AM ET | Newcomb Ballroom
The last two years of pandemic pedagogy have laid bare many of the structural barriers and inequities that shape the enterprises of teaching and learning in higher education. Yet, even more so than before, we’ve been bombarded with outside voices—from politicians to edtech vendors—telling us how we might "innovate" our way out of these difficulties. The language of innovation is seductive, and it can obscure as much as it reveals. Often, it steers us away from genuine solutions in favor of the novel, the new-to-the-institution, or the expensive and flashy toy.
This session will critically unpack the ways in which "innovation" is deployed in higher education, and make the case that meaningful, successful innovation re-centers essential pedagogical praxis: cultivating community, fostering a sense of belonging with our students, and re-orienting the ways in which we as faculty and staff approach "student success."
Kevin Gannon
About Our Keynote Speaker
Kevin Gannon is Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and Professor of History at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa. He is the author of Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto (West Virginia University Press, 2020), and his work has also appeared in such outlets as The Chronicle of Higher Education, CNN, Vox, and The Washington Post. In 2016, he appeared in the Oscar-nominated documentary 13th, directed by Ava DuVernay.
