Submitted by the Active and Engaging Learning Strategies Community of Practice
Our Community of Practice, Active and Engaging Learning Strategies, was eager to learn that our proposal was accepted. We would be attending the Lilly Evidence-Based Teaching and Learning Conference in Austin, Texas from January 8-11, 2020 as presenters for the first time! This meant our group would finally be able to share this new technique we’d been raving about: IF-AT (Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique) scratch cards.
Though we were excited to attend, the process of preparing for the conference proved to be just as beneficial to our growth as instructors.
Like the Reflective Educator Graduate Equivalency Course that many of our members have completed, practicing for the Lilly Conference allowed our group to reflect on many aspects of our teaching methods and determine their effectiveness in engaging our students. For example, since the IF-AT cards can be used in a variety of assessment techniques, each member provided an outline of how they used the cards and other pertinent information. This activity allowed the group to consider whether our intentions were consistent with our applications. We then used this information to create a handout for our workshop participants, further honing our skills for presenting our data in a meaningful way that our audience could receive.
In addition, the benefits of participating in the Lilly Conference were twofold: not only did we reflect and become more effective teachers as a result, we also received so many other fruitful ideas from the other teachers that attended. We were able to share these new ideas with our colleagues, such as other authentic learning strategies applicable to all disciplines. As adjunct instructors, this experience has been pivotal in our growth, and we would recommend all instructors present at a conference.