Overview

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The NIST National Meeting aims to build community among STEM educators in higher education and provide a forum for disseminating evidence-based strategies to improve the practice of teaching science. We welcome proposals to share ideas and approaches that promote student engagement, including regular graded and ungraded feedback, in a learning environment where all students can succeed. Approaches may be based inside the classroom, outside of the classroom, or at a broader scale — such as departmental or institutional transformation.  

 

We look forward to your active participation throughout the meeting! The conference is designed to allow you to forge meaningful connections and learn with your colleagues. Many attendees will elect to formally present their ideas by giving a presentation, facilitating a workshop, or sharing a poster; all attendees will have opportunities to engage with colleagues and provide feedback to each other throughout the conference. 

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Proposals Due Date: February 21, 2025

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Interested in helping to review proposals - fill out this survey - and the organizing team will be in touch.

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Session Types

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Incubate

• Incubate sessions are a place to share your nascent ideas about teaching and learning and benefit from feedback from colleagues. Are you interested in incorporating a new type of assignment or activity but haven’t solidified your ideas yet? Have you tried a new teaching strategy and it didn’t work as you expected? Are you excited by a concept from the literature but not sure how to apply it in your own teaching? Are you looking for advice on how to collect data about an intervention to improve student learning? In this session, you will succinctly share your ideas or questions, followed by discussion with colleagues. An assigned notetaker will provide a summary of feedback to each presenter after the session.

• Time: 5 minute presentation of one slide; 10 minutes for discussion and feedback.

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Report

• Report sessions are a place to share your teaching or institutional change interventions and outcomes. If you have collected data to answer a question about the effectiveness of teaching practices, student learning, or another reform effort, we invite you to share your approach and your findings. What have you implemented, and what did you learn? All levels of experimentation and analysis are welcome - from integrating a new technology into a course and collecting student feedback, to more formal studies that might be classified as discipline based education research or scholarship of teaching and learning. Preliminary findings are welcome. 

• Time: 15 minute presentation, 5 minutes for questions and answers

 

Teach

• Teach sessions are an opportunity to model a short activity that you have developed and taught with your own students. Audience members will participate in your interactive lesson as if they were students, and will provide feedback at its conclusion. The goal is to model creative approaches for student engagement; please ensure that the audience does not need expertise in your area of specialty to appreciate the activity. 

• Time: 15 minutes to lead the activity, 10 minutes for feedback

 

Workshops

• Workshops are interactive sessions that provide an opportunity to take a deep dive into a topic. We welcome proposals on a range of topics that provide professional development opportunities for attendees. Is there an approach to your teaching practice that has worked well for your students that you would like to share? Did you read about a classroom intervention in the literature that was easier to understand when modeled and practiced first? Would you like to lead a refresher workshop on any of the pillars of Scientific Teaching or expand on a FALCON or ACT presentation?  Include 3-5 learner-centered outcomes and an outline of how the workshop will align with these outcomes.    

• Time: 90 minutes

 

Posters

• Posters are a less formal way to share work that advances and supports the goals of NIST. Poster topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • A teaching/learning practice or activity

  • Development of ideas related to teaching and learning

  • Scholarship of teaching and learning or discipline-based education research

  • Strategies for departmental or institutional change

  • An area of challenge that could benefit from feedback

• Posters should include: What problem/challenge were you trying to solve? What is your approach? How did it go/what did you learn/what are you hoping to learn? What should other educators know? What questions do you have for the community?

• Posters should be 3 feet by 4 feet and printed on paper or fabric. At the time of the conference, please submit a PDF of your poster that can be shared with attendees after the conference concludes.

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