FridayLive! Jan. 20 Lilly Directors Roundtable

The 5 annual Lilly Conferences on College & University Teaching have long earned their reputation for providing excellent resources for understanding and improving teaching and learning in higher education.   For over thirty years, teacher-scholars from across the U.S. and internationally have gathered  to share insights and recommendations in these events.  Each conference provides a balance of scholarly research, practical guidance, collegial support.  The directors shape each conference to provide a context of long-term goals, long-standing truths, and new research in which presenters and participants discuss the most pressing teaching/learning questions and challenges of the day.  Most featured speakers and other session presenters participate in these conferences from start to finish - extending their relations with colleagues they know well and building new connections.

Join Steve Gilbert in a discussion with the current Directors about their perspective on teaching and learning in higher education as shaped by their interactions with conference presenters and participants.  We’ll explore the Lilly Directors’ views on how participants can make the most of these conferences - the value of attendance by teams, achieving effective mixtures of research scholarship and community building.  

We’ll ask the TLT Group’s Fundamental Questions.

With respect to the Lilly Conference that you have been directing, as you consider recent pressures and opportunities to change them:

And we’ll address the these questions that have become more pressing than ever:  

• What makes these conferences different?  How would you prefer that most participants describe on the following Monday their own experience in your conference?  3 months later?
• In what ways are these 5 annual events similar to and different from each other?  Which other conferences are most similar and how are these conferences especially different from them?
• In what ways do these conferences “walk the walk”?  i.e., demonstrate the principles they advocate and the insights they share in how these conferences are planned, run, followed-up?
• What was/is the connection with the Lilly Endowment?  http://www.lillyendowment.org/   

  What are some common misconceptions about the Lilly Conferences?

• In what ways do you see your role at a Lilly Conference Director as providing guidance and support to presenters?  Past presenters?  Potential presenters? [e.g., working with those who submit proposals to make revisions]   In what ways do you and these conferences intentionally provide developmental support for faculty at various stages of their careers as teachers?  How do you view the development of faculty as teachers as similar to, for example, Perry’s Forms of Ethical and Intellectual Development in the College Years: A Scheme?  
• What good is a conference on teaching?  
• In what ways can/do these conferences support campus “faculty sharing days”?  And vice versa:  in what ways can/do campus “faculty sharing days” support Lilly Conferences?  
• Who usually attends these conferences?  Who else should?  
• What are the intended and/or frequent consequences of the Lilly Conferences?  On individual faculty development?  Team building?  Student learning?  Institutional change?
• When budgets are being slashed, why is it worth the costs of sending several people to these events? In what ways can new technology be used to enhance these conferences and extend some of the benefits - beyond the venues and between the events?  
• In what ways might current economic conditions and new technologies dilute or undermine these conferences?
• What do you mean by describing the likely consequences of recent reductions in staff and budget for faculty development and professional development as similar to the consequences of “humanistic deferred maintenance”?
• How have the Lilly Conferences influenced the development of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning?  And vice versa:  how has the recent development of SoTL influenced the Lilly Conferences?
• How have the Lilly Conferences helped faculty to identify and share evidence that what they do is valuable?