Teaching in Focus (TiF) conference

Proposals no longer than 300 words are due by February 28, 2023 at 11:45pm.

TiF 2023 is taking place in person on May 9 and 10 with a theme of Exploring Balance.

We have now seen several consecutive years during which teaching and learning across the post-secondary sector has been destabilized for many, with profound changes to course design and delivery, assessment strategies and teaching practices, and student learning and engagement. The pace of these shifts in the higher education classroom now seems to be slowing, providing us with an opportunity to reflect and consider where we go from here, both collectively and as individual educators. 

York University’s 2023 Teaching in Focus Conference, hosted by the Teaching Commons, invites you to join us in exploring balance at this moment in postsecondary education, through scholarship, accounts of teaching practice, reflections on teaching/learning identities, discussion with colleagues, or engagement with student perspectives.  

To submit a proposal, please fill out this form. The deadline for submission is February 28, 2023.

These additional guiding questions may provide further inspiration: 

• How can we balance the successes and failures we have experienced over the past few years of change and adaptation as we now move forward? Where have we gained insights and growth into our teaching from experiences of imbalance? 
• Can we strike the “right” balance between teaching modalities? What does an effective balance look like when it comes to online, blended, in-person, flipped, or Hy-flex teaching and learning?  
• What approaches and practices can help balance some of the teaching tensions that have moved to the fore over the past few years? For example, the tension between a focus on content delivery versus on student engagement, or the tension between authentic/alternative assessment and grading efficiencies? Can these exist in balance? Should they? 
• How can we create and sustain equitable, inclusive, and accessible communities and environments that balance the needs and voices of all learners and educators? Is this balance always possible or desirable? 

• How can we use our lessons learned to build sustainable and resilient learning spaces, technologies, and communities that can remain in balance during future periods of instability? 
• What might existing frameworks (such as experiential education, critical pedagogy, the community of inquiry model, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, among others) offer to support balance in teaching and learning? How might they disrupt the balance in fruitful and creative ways?  
• How can we learn from Indigenous and other non-Western ways of understanding and knowing the concept of balance to continue the work of decolonization and Indigenization in postsecondary education? How can we balance this work with the institutional contexts in which it takes place?  

All York University faculty, instructors, administrators, staff, librarians, graduate and undergraduate students, and post-doctoral scholars are welcome to submit a proposal to one or more of the session formats described below.  

Session Formats: 

Note that all session formats are in-person.  

1. Individual or Team Presentation (20 minutes) 

This is a 15-minute presentation with 5 minutes reserved for Q&A. Presentations can be made by individuals or by teams, and should address the conference theme, “Exploring Balance”, as outlined above. Please indicate which of the following session foci of A Model for Engaged Teaching at York University: Moving Towards Research-Informed Practice your presentation most connects with: 

• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Share your research into teaching and learning activities that are implemented and assessed systematically in the classroom or the curriculum (e.g., qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods approaches to describing and analysing pedagogical initiatives). 

• Scholarly Teaching: Share the results of implementing teaching and learning activities in the classroom or the curriculum based upon best practices or scholarly literature (e.g., sharing student feedback from classroom assessment techniques or a survey following a teaching activity informed by the literature) 

• Practice of Teaching: Share your classroom or curricular strategies, activities, or reflections based on your teaching experience and/or disciplinary lens (e.g., sharing your favourite teaching tip alongside informal evidence of student learning).  

2. AIF Featured Talks (20 minutes) 

Academic Innovation Fund (AIF) grant recipients are encouraged to submit a proposal for presenting the outcomes of their project. This can be done in a traditional 20-minute presentation unless otherwise specified by the prospective presenters. 

3. New: TiF Reads 

New to TiF this year, we invite you to champion the teaching/learning related read that most inspired and engaged you over the past year(s). This might be a book, a chapter, a journal article, or another resource – if it challenged you to think differently and got you excited about teaching in new ways, we want to hear about it! We will select four champions to introduce their chosen reads via the Teaching Commons blog in the weeks leading up to TiF. During TiF, you will also participate in an in-person panel from which only one champion, and one read, will emerge victorious! 

4.  Roundtable Discussions (30-40 minutes for each discussion)  

Many of you may feel that you have a perspective to share but not necessarily in a presentation format. If you would like to be part of a conversation, consider joining one of our roundtable discussions:  

• Balance and assessment 
• Balance and student engagement 
• Balance and technology 
• Balancing teaching, research, and life 
• Others? Contact teaching@yorku.ca to suggest additional roundtable topics 

No pre-registration or submissions required – you will be able to join roundtable discussions during the conference. 

If you experience any difficulties with the submission process, please reach out to Teaching Commons or our instructional designer, Robert Winkler, and we will be happy to assist you.