International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning Annual Conference - Indiana University, Bloomington - October 2009

Indiana University in Bloomington, home of the National Survey of Student Engagement, birthplace of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL), leader in the field of Instructional Systems Design, and member of the Big 10 Conference for Athletics. Finally, I got a chance to visit this institution in order to attend the 5th annual ISSOTL conference. I had contacted Curt Bonk in advance about my visit and he arranged for me to facilitate a workshop on Blended Learning for the Office of Instructional Consulting in the School of Education. I really appreciated the opportunity to have a dialogue with a number of graduate students and faculty about their own experiences and research into blended approaches to learning. In terms of the ISSOTL conference, I must admit that I over extended myself with four presentations: a panel presentation on Canadian Contexts for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, a single paper presentation on Student Engagement and Interactive Learning Technologies, another single paper on Student and Faculty Perceptions of Self, Peer, and Instructor Feedback, and finally another panel presentation on Terms of Engagement: Four Countries, Four Courses, Four Commentaries. All of these sessions were well attended and from my perspective there was a good dialogue about the research topics and issues with the audience. The only issue was that since I was presenting so often - there was minimal opportunities for me to attend other sessions. A couple of highlights for me were a session by Randy Bass and Toru Iyshi about SoTL 2.0: The Next Ten Years of Technology-Enhanced SoTL and a keynote by Richard Baraniuk about Open Access Education and the Textbook of the Future. There were lots of events taking place during our time at IU and I had a chance to attend an outdoor "Pink Concert" to raise awareness of cancer and an NBA pre-season basketball game between the Indianapolis Pacers and San Antonio Spurs. The leaves on the trees were in full autumn colours and I made sure that I took lots of photos and a full set of notes from the conference.