Speakers

Kyle Bowen

Keynote Title: New Ideas for New Learning Experiences

Today’s students have an ever expanding set of options for how they choose to pursue learning. In a "choose your own adventure" style, students self-select the technologies and experiences that will help them get the most from their education. New technologies range from mobile devices that engage people sharing in the same experiences to media development tools that enable creativity in ways that border on science fiction. All of these ideas can be recognized by credentials, like digital badges, that offer a new common currency for learning. As our students naturally apply new ideas to collaborate and learn, it’s important to explore emerging technologies that enhance learning in all of its forms and drive us to ask: what’s next?

Kyle Bowen is Director of Education Technology Services at Penn State University, where he leads a group focused on creating and cultivating innovative uses of technology for teaching and learning. Formerly the Director of Informatics at Purdue University, he lead Purdue's Studio Projects Initiative - overseeing the development of a comprehensive suite of learning tools that seek to address academic challenges experienced by faculty and students, inside and outside the classroom. A relentless pursuer of technologies that hack the classroom, Mr. Bowen is also a regular speaker on educational technology - publishing presentation art that editorializes the latest educational technology trends at classhack.com. In addition to his administrative responsibilities, Mr. Bowen has taught undergraduate courses on public speaking and science writing in Purdue's Brian Lamb School of Communication. He has co-authored and edited more than 20 books on Web design, development, and usability and recently co-founded Skyepack, a startup company that provides learning technologies that engage students and reduce course material costs. Mr. Bowen has a broad range of experience with learning technology, and his work has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, TIME, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Linda Nilson

Endnote Title:  Self-Regulated Learning: Way Beyond Study Skills

Why is it that most students have difficulty retaining what they read and hear, find it challenging to complete basic tasks, and often don’t seem to learn from their mistakes? Because they aren’t self-regulated learners. That is, they don’t routinely plan, monitor, evaluate, and take control of their learning. Put another way, they don’t know how to learn. In this keynote, you will hear about research that shows how incorporating some of the many proven self-regulated learning activities and assignments into your courses and tutoring sessions can improve your students’ products, problem-solving skills, and overall academic performance. These modest additions can also enhance student motivation and reduce the overconfidence that students often feel about their skills and content mastery. Find out what self-regulated learning is, how it goes beyond metacognition, how students benefit from practicing it, and how to induce them to do it. By the end, you will be able to implement some self-regulated learning assignments and activities that you can adapt and integrate into your own teaching or tutoring context. You will experience a few of these yourself! 

Linda B. Nilson is founding director of the Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation (OTEI) at Clemson University and author of Teaching at Its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors, now in its third edition (Jossey-Bass, 2010; fourth edition under contract), The Graphic Syllabus and the Outcomes Map: Communicating Your Course (Jossey-Bass, 2007), Creating Self-Regulated Learners: Strategies to Strengthen Students’ Self-Awareness and Learning Skills (Stylus, 2013), and Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time (Stylus, 2015). She also co-edited Enhancing Learning with Laptops in the Classroom (Jossey-Bass, 2005) and Volumes 25 through 28 of To Improve the Academy: Resources for Faculty, Instructional, and Organizational Development (Anker, 2007, 2008; Jossey-Bass, 2009, 2010). To Improve the Academy is the major publication of the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network in Higher Education.

Dr. Nilson’s career as a full-time faculty development director spans over 25 years. In this time, she has published many articles and book chapters and has given well over 500 keynotes, webinars, and live workshops at conferences, colleges, and universities both nationally and internationally. She has spoken on dozens of topics related to course design, best teaching practices, assessment, scholarly productivity, and academic career matters. In her recent articles, she documents the instability of faculty development careers, raises serious questions about the validity of student ratings, and describes instructor-friendly ways to measure learning at the course level. Before coming to Clemson University, Dr. Nilson directed teaching centers at Vanderbilt University and the University of California, Riverside. She has also taught graduate seminars on college teaching. She entered the area of educational development while she was on the sociology faculty at UCLA. After distinguishing herself as an excellent instructor, her department selected her to establish and supervise its Teaching Assistant Training Program. In sociology, her research focused on occupations and work, social stratification, political sociology, and disaster behavior.

Dr. Nilson has held leadership positions in the POD Network, Toastmasters International, Mensa, and the Southern Regional Faculty and Instructional Development Consortium. She was a National Science Foundation Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in sociology. She completed her undergraduate work in three years at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.