Every spring, theCentre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) offers Walls Optional, a one-day conference for faculty and staff focused on teaching, learning, and technology.
Walls Optional 2024: Thursday, April 25
This year's theme: Teaching and Learning in a World of Complexity
REGISTRATION FOR WALLS OPTIONAL 2024 IS NOW CLOSED
This year's keynote speaker: Vanessa Andreotti, Dean of Education, University of Victoria
Dr. Andreotti is a former Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change and has held academic positions in the UK, Republic of Ireland, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Finland. She has worked extensively across disciplines and communities offering alternatives to commonapproaches to social change that reproduce simplistic solutions to complex problems. She is one of the co-founders of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures ()Arts/Research Collective.Dr. Andreotti is also a member of the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada. Her mandate at UVic is to advance decolonization, Indigenization, equity, justice and climate resilience efforts. Here is a video sample of what she will talk with us about:
Call for Proposals - CLOSED
Every year the world seems to be getting more and more complex, and post-secondary institutions are facing more than their share of complexity within all this change. Rising costs of living, continuing health and wellness concerns, rise of Generative AI, accommodation requests, global issues, changing student demographics, funding challenges, and so on.
How do we support ourselves and our students with these increasingly complex demands on us? How can our teaching strategies and relationships with students continue to evolve as students’ needs change? How do we respond to the complexity of the world, our lives, and our experience as instructors in the classroom and maintain our own mental health? How can we work together as a community as we struggle individually with fatigue, technology, and learner engagement?
This year, with the challenges we are facing in our ever-changing world of teaching and learning, Walls Optional invites you to share how you have responded to complexity in or through your teaching practice. For example,
- Blended, hybrid, and HyFlex learning
- Authentic assessments
- Applied learning
- Embracing diverse student voices
- Open Education
- Working with our broader communities (Indigenous nations, industry partners, school districts, etc.)
- Finding space with the earth and all living things in it to help us deal with complexity
- The complexity of our institutional processes
- Rapid changes in technology
- Supporting students, each other, and engaging in self-care
- Engaging in difficult or polarizing conversations and discourse with students and colleagues
- Rapidly changing curriculum geared toward upskilling and reskilling (i.e. microcredentials)
- Whatever has been complex for you!
Note: We encourage you to incorporate principles in your presentation.
Questions?
Contact a member of the organizing committee or email cetl@camosun.ca
- Erin Howard
- Patricia Larose
- Martha McAlister
- Derek Murray
- Pat Parker
- Rae Parkinson
- Natasha Parrish
- Bob Preston
- Emily Schudel
- Charlotte Sheldrake
Past keynote speakers
2024 - Teaching and Learning in a World of Complexity - Vanessa Andreotti
2023 - CANCELLED
2022 - Regrounding and Reconnecting: What's next and how do we prepare? Issues facing post-secondary education - with Cynthia Smith, Derek Murray and Amanda Garner
2021 -Responding to COVID -
2020 -CANCELLED
2019 -Universal Design for Learning -,, Sue Doner,Sheryl Haynes
2018 -Learning Spaces,
2017 -Resilience -
2016 -Creativity and Design Thinking -,
2015 -Communities of Practice -
2014 -Education technology from a CEO perspective-
2013,Open Education -
2012 -Democratization of teaching and learning -Blended delivery -,
2011-Scholarship of Teaching and Learning -
2010 -Information Literacy,
2009 -Social media and education -
2008 -Trends in educational technology: reflections on the Horizon Report -,