Keynote Presentation at the Teaching & Learning Summer Conference 2022 | The Teaching & Learning Centre | Seneca Polytechnic

Join us for only the keynote presentation at the Teaching & Learning Summer Conference 2022. This year's keynote speaker is Thomas J. Tobin. His keynote presentation is titled "Belonging in and beyond the Classroom with Universal Design for Learning."

About Thomas J. Tobin

Thomas J. Tobin is a founding member of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Teaching, Learning, & Mentoring (CTLM), as well as an internationally recognized scholar, author, and speaker on quality in technology-mediated education, especially copyright, teaching evaluation, academic integrity, and accessibility/universal design for learning.

He holds master’s and Ph.D. degrees in English literature, a master’s degree in information science, and certifications in project management (PMP), online teaching (MOT), Quality Matters (QM), and accessibility (CPACC). He recently completed the Penn State Academic Leadership Academy.

Named to Ed Tech Magazine’s 2020 “Dean’s List” of Educational Technology Influencers, Tom serves on the editorial boards of InSight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching and the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration.

About the Keynote Presentation

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we moved our face-to-face courses to remote instruction—in a hurry and with “good enough” as our benchmark.

Now that we’re prioritizing both flexible instruction and a return-to-campus ethos, we have to learn how best to balance how we support learners in the classroom as well as when they are beyond formal spaces and times with us, ideally in a considered and intentional way.

We must now find ways to be ready to re-open for in-person learning that are safe, provide choices for instructors and students, and make students want to be back in the classroom—while also keeping the affordances and flexibility that fully remote instruction gave our students.

This keynote will share three low-effort do-them-right-now design techniques that reduce student anxiety and pressure, reduce your own instructor frustrations, and allow you to focus on the interactions that you want to have with your students. We will discuss three new-normal practices for

• access to materials, interactions, and people (in the course and beyond);
• assessment techniques: testing, grades, and feedback; and
• engagement strategies that make students want to come to the classroom.

All of the techniques and strategies that we will examine in each of these focus areas are backed by neuroscience research that shows us how—and why—we can lower barriers for our students and for ourselves. Are you under a mountain of grading? Learn how to shrink it. Are your students anxious and worried about access to materials or big exams? Learn how to help them see ahead and plan well. Do your students feel like they can just watch your videos and skip the classroom all together? Learn how to make them feel “a part of” instead of “apart from.”

This session will provide multiple ways to keep participants engaged, multiple ways to present information, and multiple ways to join the conversation and show skills.

A few promises: this session will not add to your already stretched resources. In fact, our conversation will help you to decide what you can profitably not pay attention to as you develop and hold class sessions with your students, either in the socially-distanced classroom or remotely. We will also focus on things that you can do with existing equipment, staff support, and development time. Finally, we’ll frame our discussion around ways to honor the various commitments in our students’ and our own lives, in order to find good balance, address systemic inequity, and interact in a supportive way with one another.

Bring your questions and ideas, too: a portion of the workshop time will be devoted to an open ask-the-expert format where you can get help and support for your own specific challenges and plans.

Register in MyPD*.
Registration closes at 11:59 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, August 24, 2022.

*If you cannot access MyPD, email teaching@senecacollege.ca and we can manually register you.

If you'd like to join us for the full two-day synchronous conference and participate in Micro-teaching Sessions, please register for the Teaching & Learning Summer Conference 2022.