IISSAM, the premier gathering of teaching and learning scholars, will meet at Loyola Marymount University May 30 – June 2, 2013. This year’s theme, “storytelling”, will focus on the role of stories in teaching.
The 2013 International Institute for SoTL Scholars and Mentors is at the cutting edge of academic research and was developed as a way of exploring teaching modalities and student learning.
During this three-day event, participants will investigate how stories convey meanings and enhance abstract concepts, how courses tell a story and can be constructed like a story, how stories can be used for research purposes, and much more. ?The goal of the institute is to support SoTL scholars at all levels of experience through mentoring so that they examine in a systematic way the effectiveness of their classroom teaching and their students’ learning.
“We are very proud to have the International Institute for SoTL Scholars and Mentors at LMU again this year,” said Paul Zeleza, dean of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts. “Supporting greater understanding of what makes more effective teaching and learning are an important part our mission of educating the whole person.”
Speakers will include Sherry Linkon, director of Writing Curriculum Initiatives and professor of English at Georgetown University, who will explore how to focus and organize narrative in the classroom; Stephen V. Duncan, professor of screenwriting at LMU, who will talk about the role of science, religion and politics in storytelling; and T. Mills Kelly, associate professor of history and art history at George Mason University, who will discuss how teaching students to fabricate stories about the past improves their grasp of scholarly arguments and evidence.
IISSAM is a consortium of scholars from Canisius College, Columbia College Chicago, Creighton University, Loyola Marymount University, Truman State University, and University of Houston-Clear Lake.
