On Thursday, April 21st, 2016, one hundred and fifteen faculty students and staff gathered in Fairchild Martindale Library for Lehigh's annual Symposium on Teaching and Learning.
"We were especially pleased with the scope of participation this year," said Greg Reihman, Associate Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning and organizer of the annual symposium. "Faculty from all four colleges, staff and graduate students from across the campus came out to learn more about the great things happening in Lehigh's classrooms."
This year's Symposium featured twenty-four presentations by faculty who described innovative and effective approaches to teaching they had implemented in the past year. Presentations in these first two session featured faculty who received course development support from the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning, the Mellon Digital Humanities Initiative, and/or the Baker Institute's KEEN program.
The first session, "Projects that Engage and Instruct," featured faculty who had created student projects that deepened student understanding of course material. The second session, "New Roles for Image and Voice in Student Learning," featured ways that faculty are making educational uses of student-produced digital scholarship. Attendees also heard from keynote speaker Bill Shewbridge (University of Maryland Baltimore County) who discussed similar projects being undertaken in the UMBC New Media Studio.
The third and final "Lightning Round" session featured a diverse range of innovative instructional approaches being used by faculty across campus. Participants ended the day by gathering for a reception and open house in the recently renovated Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning in FairMart.
After the Symposium, one faculty participant noted, "The quality of the teaching work being done at Lehigh is always so impressive and energizing. The organization of the symposium was quite professional."
Reihman summed up the day with nicely with an observation: " It was great to see the wonderful learning experiences that are created when faculty and CITL / LTS staff work together. When teachers bring energy and pedagogical imagination to their classes, students respond by engaging more deeply with the material and getting more out of their coursework. "
Videos of the talks and the full day's program are available at http://citl.lehigh.edu/symposium2016
If you are interested in learning more about the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CITL), contact Greg Reihman, Associate Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning at grr3@lehigh.edu.