The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship (CTLS) will host the 5th annual “The SoTL Commons” conference on the campus of Georgia Southern University. The conference brings together people engaging in SoTL and anyone wanting to improve student learning outcomes in higher education today. The conference epitomizes that college teaching is intellectual work that is enhanced both by disciplinary scholarship and the scholarship on teaching the disciplines (SoTL). The SoTL Commons Conference is a catalyst for learning, conversations and collaborations about SoTL as a key, evidence-based way to improve student learning.

The keynote speakers will be Pat Hutchings (The Carnegie Foundation), Mick Healey (University of Gloucestershire) and Craig Nelson (Indiana University).

The logo for the conference is the chambered nautilus shell. The self-propelling nautilus grows chamber by chamber, each one larger than the previous one, in an unfolding spiral as it develops steadily over time. The shell's elegant trajectory opens outward and its dynamic design is like the persevering, quiet movement of SoTL through the currents of teaching and learning. The SoTL Commons Conference aspires to be a growing, spiraling, lively catalyst for the international momentum of SoTL, encouraging the opening up and opening out of teaching and how students best learn into public conversations and collaborations. The spiraling pattern of the nautilus is found throughout nature. The conference is simply, but importantly, one swirl in the overall SoTL spiraling transformation of the nature of teaching and academic culture.

A SoTL companion to “The SoTL Commons Conference” is the open access, peer-reviewed eJournal, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, published by the CTLS at Georgia Southern University.

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