What makes the Lilly Conference special?
You may be wondering what good comes from attending a teaching/learning conference? In this era of limited resources—both funding and time—how do you decide where to invest your efforts?
Here is what the Lilly organizers have to say:
- Lilly Conferences are about you, the teaching faculty member, not about “educational stars.” People who participate in a Lilly Conference find a professional, welcoming group of other faculty members from across disciplines and types of institutions who are interested in finding ways to help their students learn.
- Lilly Conferences are a scholarly display of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Presenters and participants alike bring their evidence-based experiences to share and receive considered feedback. For many, this is their first experience with a teaching conference, and at the conference they begin to understand how important their own teaching results can be.
- Lilly Conferences provide energy to the participants. The overworked, stressed faculty members who take their precious time away from campus to participate in a Lilly Conference report going home with renewed enthusiasm for their teaching.
- Lilly Conferences are good investments for institutions that send teams of faculty members. The “ride home” for a team is often when the group members plan to engage in scholarly teaching across their campus. When they get back home, the group members give each other encouragement to continue their teaching improvement plans and to turn their findings into SoTL, possibly to present at the next Lilly Conference and, ultimately, to publish.
- Lilly Conferences are the lowest-cost independent teaching/learning conferences available. With conferences in California, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, and Ohio, there is a Lilly near everyone. But participation is not limited by region—we have attendees from all over the US and many other nations at each conference. You are welcome at whichever location at whatever is the most convenient timing for your participation. Information on all the Lillys is at http://www.lillyconferences.com.
p.s. Lilly Conferences attract a lot of administrators, too, and they are very welcome. Administrators with responsibilities for teaching assessment and faculty development also report going home with lots of good, evidence-based, cost-effective ideas for their campuses.
“I came here as an ‘anti-clickerer,’ heard a plenary on it by Derek Bruff, got a flash of an idea a day later, bounced it off over lunch just now with him, and now I’m going home to work on it with my IT people for my Spring semester classes.“
-Lilly participant
“How attending an interdisciplinary college teaching conference immediately impacted my classroom practices.” more info…
-Lilly Conference featured in PLOS blog
