The WVU Teaching and Learning Center and the Office of the Provost will host their first Scholarly Teaching Conference at WVU from May 13-14.
The two-day event provides faculty, instructors, staff and students across all WVU campuses with an opportunity to showcase their teaching practices and to learn from others. In addition, 30 peer-reviewed conference papers will be published as open-access scholarship in conference proceedings.
Wednesday, May 13
The conference officially kicks off at 1 p.m. May 13, as WVU Potomac State College in Keyser, WVU Institute of Technology in Beckley and WVU in Morgantown each host catered receptions and poster sessions highlighting effective teaching practices and research on teaching and learning.
From 3-5 p.m., the conference will feature keynote speaker Nancy Ruzycki, followed by a moderated panel discussion.
Ruzycki, an instructional professor at the University of Florida, will deliver her address, “Beyond the Prompt: Building critical thinking in students with AI.” She teaches experiential learning and researches the teaching and learning of complex domain content. Ruzycki has received over $14 million in funding for her work, which includes curriculum design and K-12 outreach for artificial intelligence and machine learning.
A panel discussion titled “What Will be AI’s Impact on College Teaching?” will follow the keynote address. Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education Evan Widders and Associate Provost for Curriculum and Assessment Louis Slimak will serve as moderators.
Interested attendees should visit the conference website and detailed schedule for their respective campus locations for Wednesday events. Pre-conference workshops are also available upon registration.
Thursday, May 14
The three WVU campuses will come together virtually via Zoom for concurrent conference sessions.
The day will kick off with a 9 a.m. plenary session featuring Lisa Clark, associate vice president of academic transformation at Blackboard and a recognized thought leader on the future of learning in the AI era.
Clark’s virtual presentation, “Reframing Bloom’s for the Age of AI: Designing learning for human judgement and insight,” will introduce a reframed version of Bloom’s Taxonomy, updated for the age of AI, that emphasizes identity formation, interdisciplinary synthesis and real-world impact
A second virtual plenary session at noon will be hosted by Greg Kessler, a professor of innovative learning design and technology at Ohio University. In “AI and the Future of Education,” Kessler will share his experience working with AI, as well as thoughts about the role it plays in education.
Virtual sessions throughout the day offer opportunities to hear from colleagues on such topics as building AI literacy, integrating antithetical thinking and writing practices, inclusive teaching strategies, designing custom AI bots and more.
The conference is supported, in part, by a grant from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation. Funds are managed by the WVU Foundation, the nonprofit organization that receives and administers private donations on behalf of the University.