Welcome

On behalf of Georgia Southern University and the Center for Excellence in Teaching, welcome to the portal for "The SoTL Commons: A Conference for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning." As a real companion to the virtual journal that we publish, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, the conference is intended to stimulate pedagogical research in higher education, to advance the momentum of SoTL as a key way to improve teaching effectiveness and student learning outcomes, and to encourage contacts, conversations, and collaboration concerning SoTL.

We welcome your interest in the conference and in SoTL. It is the human connections made, the new insights gleaned, and the applications taken home that endure. Thus, "The SoTL Commons" is both common and uncommon: a seemingly common gathering of uncommon people for an uncommon experience of passionate, practical human learning about the common process of teaching.

"The SoTL Commons" is being born, not only as a conference on the campus of Georgia Southern University, but as a transformative concept and practice in the awareness and work of college and university teachers around the world. And that SoTL Commons is a field of meaning planted with questions, research, evidence, assessment, and openness that yields new knowledge about what is so ancient, the human experience of teaching and learning.

We welcome you to question assumptions about teaching and ask powerful questions about learning for the real purpose of SoTL is to learn how to help students learn in unprecedented, compelling, and enduring ways. Whether you are new to SoTL, acquainted with it, or a SoTL sage, welcome to southeast Georgia for several days in March, 2009.

Stacy Kluge , Conference Coordinator (skluge@georgiasouthern.edu)
Alan Altany, Conference Director (aaltany@georgiasouthern.edu)