Call for Proposals

We are no longer accepting proposals.

When you think of yourself teaching, what images and residues of feelings appear in your mind’s eye? It’s probably not a bulleted list of assigned texts or syllabus policies. Maybe you smell your coffee quickly cooling on the podium, feel the knot in your stomach as you turn to 300 expectant faces in an auditorium. Or imagine the relief of seeing “Completed” in the gradebook, and the tingly warmth from reading a well-crafted sentence nestled in the Canvas discussion board. Maybe it’s the energy rising from a room full of curiosity. Or a thud of silence when a student’s question forces you to reconsider your lesson for the day, and everyone (especially you) knows it. Teaching and learning at UVA is an embodied human experience.

This year’s Innovations in Pedagogy Summit encourages you to notice, support, and celebrate the uniquely human sides of your teaching and students’ learning. We invite proposals from across UVA as well as from other institutions for two session types: interactive sessions and short presentations. Proposals should highlight concrete, equity-oriented innovations for creating learning environments for all students. Educational innovation need not be disruptive to make a difference—small, sustained changes matter. We invite proposals on examples of humans teaching and learning, large and small, whether a new application of strong fundamentals or a complete departure from tradition. We encourage session presenters to model different approaches to teaching.

You might consider the following as you develop your proposal:

• What strategies have you used to design and teach courses for students as embodied learners, and how do you know if the strategies are effective?

• What does it take to build trust in the classroom, and how do you know when it is there?

• What are the roles of empathy, wellbeing, and relationships in teaching, and how do they affect students’ learning? 

• How do we equip human students to learn with and around artificial intelligence?

• When and where does humanity show up in coursework, examples, policies, and other aspects of teaching? 

• Is it possible to build a learning environment that intentionally blurs cognitive and affective learning? How can we assess students’ learning progress in these spaces?

• What are the affordances and limitations of showing up as a whole person for your teaching?

• How are any of the above questions shaped by enrollment, disciplinary norms, accessibility, and other contexts?

Presenters should consider the ways in which their presentations will address inclusion and accessibility; for example, awareness and acknowledgement of social and historical context, language and design choices that acknowledge (and work to address) power and difference, limiting the amount of text on slides, inclusive color palettes for figures, large text on visuals, and use of live captioning where possible (a feature in both PowerPoint and Google Slides). You will be asked for a general description of your inclusive approaches in your proposal submission, and reviewers will provide additional suggestions as warranted.