My first experience attending the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) conference in June 2017 was at once overwhelming and inspiring. Being surrounded by colleagues from across the country and the world with a mutual commitment to teaching and learning provided multiple opportunities for dialogue. These conversations offered some unique insight into themes of teaching and learning that reach across contexts, including troubling the methods and means of student engagement, as well as how to better prepare students for the demanding reality of life after graduation.
My favourite part of the STLHE conference was my pre-conference experience kayaking the Northwest Arm. A physical and mental challenge simply to stay afloat and on track mirrored what I'm sure many sometimes feel in our metaphorical rivers and lakes. This experiential opportunity was memorable for the shared learning and deeply personal means of connecting to myself and my reflections on what it truly means to experience the learning process.
In order to better and further immerse myself in the conference experience, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to facilitate a session as well as to act as a reviewer for the TAGSA Award. My session was a challenging concise overview of an initial exploration of NSSE data as a means to develop and promote strategies for student engagement. Preparing a shortened version of several discussions and readings was daunting but the conversation and questions this session inspired were valuable. I was thrilled to see such interest in student engagement, and a willingness from participants to consider what engagement might look like for our increasingly diverse student population. Reviewing for the TAGSA award was equally inspiring. Observing graduate student presentations helped to expand my awareness of key issues in higher education, while also seeing how both students and faculty approach challenges in uniquely innovative ways. My own work in experiential learning, for example, could be informed by sessions that presented ways of engaging students in in-class experiences to develop and reflect on core competencies.
I look forward to future STLHE conferences for new discussions and engaging networking. I tend to feel quite at home among colleagues who share similar values and experiences, but know that this conference was unique in its intentional diversity of sessions and topics. I hope to extend these ideals into my own day to day work in our unique teaching and learning community.
