2020 Innovations in Teaching & Learning Conference

Dear Mason community,

 We hope that you, your family, and your friends are staying safe and well during this difficult time.  All of us in the Stearns Center are working to ensure that instructors of all levels are supported through and after the COVID-19 crisis.   

The Innovations in Teaching & Learning (ITL) conference has always been a unique space for Mason instructors, GTAs, administrators, and staff to forge a sense of community around teaching and learning.  As the future remains uncertain, we need to foster such connections now more than ever.  For the first time, Mason’s (12th) annual Innovations in Teaching & Learning (ITL) conference will be held online with sessions scheduled across the last week in September.  

 While we are still exploring the details of an online conference model, our goal is to serve and support as many people teaching at Mason as possible with an online event that embraces the generative community spirit and interactive nature of the face-to-face ITL experience. Our keynote speaker, Dr. Bryan Alexander—author of the increasingly relevant new book Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education—is enthusiastic about joining us for both the online conference and an interactive virtual workshop. We plan to include value-added online features that make online participation well worth your time.  

 Going virtual has additional benefits—it reduces program cost, so that with the help of our sponsors we can offer FREE registration for the conference this year.  It also affords us an opportunity to be more inclusive and accessible than ever to our instructors across campuses.

 We will be in touch over the coming months with more details about the format of the online conference and how your participation and engagement will look in this new model.  We will also be reaching out to lead authors of session proposals in the next day or two with a more detailed update about presentation options.  Until then, please visit our website or reach out to Ashley Joiner, our Events Manager, at stearns@gmu.edu to stay informed about the work we are doing to support instructors during these challenging times.

We sincerely appreciate your support and flexibility during this time. 

 In solidarity,

Laura Lukes, Ph.D.

2020 ITL Conference Director

On behalf of the entire Innovations in Teaching & Learning Conference Planning Team