The 2025 Virtual Gathering site is ready! Click the button that says "Leading With Our Values" for this year's gathering details.
All times listed in Eastern.
Please note that Zoom links to individual sessions will be shared with all registered attendees about 24 hours in advance.
Facilitator: Cait S. Kirby
We'll open the gathering by setting community norms, goals, and commitments that center equity and accessibility.
Facilitator: Jenae Cohn
Key Takeaways
Develop connections with new colleagues who have identified aligned professional interests.
Name and formulate shared intellectual/professional questions that could form a basis for future projects and/or collaborations.
Create a directory of shared contacts for future community-building and partnership.
Discover ways to form and build sustained, meaningful connections with colleagues across institutions in order to share resources, ideas, and supports for tackling similar problems and challenges in educational development.
Planned Activities
In this session, participants will primarily be in small breakout rooms and will get to know each other through a series of discussion question prompts. In the breakout rooms, there will be a structure that small groups can follow to spur conversation and to give people in each room an opportunity to meet and find common interests in their work. Options for discussion topics and connections will range from helping educational developers problem solve or discuss some common challenges in their work to helping educational developers connect around special areas of interest (e.g., STEM teaching, engaging in educational assessment, etc.). At the very end of the session, the group will briefly come back together and the facilitator will map out some tips and possible ways that the connections or conversations developed in the breakout rooms can be built upon to form meaningful, lasting relationships beyond the conference space (in both asynchronous and synchronous ways). Note that it will be clearly communicated to participants that in the breakout room sessions, they are not under any obligation to join in verbally. There will be a shared Google document for sharing resources and ideas and using the chat and engaging with the chat will be encouraged as ways for participants to join in conversation and be included.
Lightning talks will take place back-to-back in the same Zoom meeting.
Presenter: Carly M. Lesoski
Key Takeaways
Develop an understanding of crip pedagogy and disability justice.
Identify 2-3 practices to apply in your context.
List crip pedagogy and disability justice resources.
Presenter: Mandy Penney
Key Takeaways
Identify the potential implications of adding the language of care to communities of practice.
Imagine the ways that caring pedagogies can embed and embody the work of justice-oriented pedagogies.
Describe characteristics of the COPC model.
Build capacity for community members who want to unpack these ideas in collaboration and solidarity.
Workshops will take place concurrently in different Zoom meetings. Select one:
Facilitator: Mac Crite and Mary Catherine Stoumbos
Key Takeaways
Define access and access friction in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Consider access and access friction when navigating participant, programming, and institutional needs.
Explore strategies to promote access to services within CTLs and more broadly across the university, given the limitations of inaccessible or non-inclusive university policies.
Develop connections with colleagues who are advocating for health consciousness while navigating the shifting needs and demands of their campuses.
Planned Activities
We will start with short introductions and sharing the session goals and discussion guidelines so all participants are on the same page. We will then move into a short presentation on the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic, and some of the research on the effects of repeated COVID-19 infection. One of the presenters holds a PhD in virology and can use their background to develop this information for participants. We will also define access and access friction in the context of the ongoing pandemic.
After the background framing, the majority of our session will be spent on a series of facilitated and open discussions where participants will choose between open discussions in breakout rooms, individual reflective activities, and case study discussions. Selected topics will address health, access friction, programming best practices, and advocacy on campus.
Facilitator: Erin Galyen
Key Takeaways
Share how they currently reflect on their educational development work.
Describe a three-stage process to reflect on educational development work.
Apply this three-stage process to reflect on an aspect of their work to support professional growth.
Share ways to incorporate reflection regularly in their work to support their own growth and the growth of their colleagues.
Planned Activities
Reflective practice is an especially important process in professional development. As educational developers, reflection is also a key practice and process for the development of our own work. Utilizing a three-stage process of reflection, metareflection, and communication informed by Brookfield’s “critical reflection”, Evelein and Korthagen’s “core reflection”, and principles of metacognition, participants will have the opportunity to pause and reflect on an aspect of their educational development work within a supportive community in service of their own professional growth. Following a warm welcome and session invitations/agreements (5 mins), participants will be invited to share how they currently utilize reflection on their educational development work and how this supports their growth (15 mins). Then, a brief introduction to the three-stage process will be shared and questions will be fielded, including links to a reflection toolkit with a variety of prompts (15 mins). Participants will be invited to choose from among these prompts and engage in the reflection process on their own (20 mins) and communicate their learnings to colleagues in breakout groups (15 mins). Upon returning to the main room, participants will share overall learnings and ideas for how they might incorporate reflection regularly to support their own growth and the growth of their colleagues (15 mins). The session will conclude with gratitude and final comments about resources, including an invitation to continue the conversation and sharing of ideas (5 mins).
Workshops will take place concurrently in different Zoom meetings. Select one:
Facilitator: Sondra LoRe
Key Takeaways
To understand ways to collect information about faculty interests and needs to design meaningful professional development.
To engage and explore samples of "long-term, low-intensity, professional development" examples from different programs and institutions.
Leave the session with a tool kit of materials to assist in the needs assessment, design, and implementation phase of a "long-term, low-intensity, professional development" model for your institution.
Planned Activities
The session will begin with an inclusion activity to welcome faculty to the online space and then orient them to the primary goals of the session. Participants will engage in examples of needs assessments (in Zoom breakout rooms) while reflecting and generating ideas for d long-term low-intensity professional development for the people groups they wish to serve at their home institutions. The session will conclude with links to resources.
Facilitators: Peter Newbury and Emily Pitts Donahoe
Key Takeaways
Explain what a scope of practice is and describe how it can guide your role as an educational developer and boost your well-being.
Identify tasks that are within your educational developer scope of practice.
Identify tasks that are outside your educational developer scope of practice.
Adapt the scope of practice framework to your other roles like course instructor, committee member, project lead, researcher, and CTL leader.
Lead scope of practice conversations about teaching/education with course instructors visiting your CTL.
Planned Activities
After introducing the scope of practice framework, we will guide participants to begin developing their own scope of practice, with ample time in the session for writing, sharing, and feedback.
At the end of each day during the virtual gathering, we invite you to join us for a capstone session that will be guided by one of the conference volunteers. Attendees will have the opportunity to reflect on the day’s talks and workshops alongside their colleagues. We will use the community note taking documents from each session as a starting point for the conversation. Participants can expect these capstone sessions to include:
Time for silent reflection on ideas and questions from the day’s presentations
The chance to share their thoughts either in writing or verbally with the group
Brainstorming as a community about emerging topics and questions
Synthesizing primary takeaways from the day
Discussions about possible next steps
The goal of these capstone sessions is that everyone can come away with one or two specific actions they could take to implement what they’ve learned during the gathering in their professional and personal lives. We hope you’ll join us!
Ready to join us?