Session Format Descriptions

Pre-Conference Session Formats

Focused Workshops - In-person or Virtual (2.5 hours; 1-3 presenters)

Focused Workshops engage participants in cultivating new skills, identifying alternative approaches to their own work, and connecting with previously unexplored resources, such as new practices, theories, frameworks, and/or research.

Strategy Sessions - In-person or Virtual (2.5 hours; 1-3 presenters)

Strategy Sessions are designed to guide participants as they develop plans of action for significant work aligned with one of the conference’s tracks. Presenters should provide resources and templates to help participants structure their planning.

Conference Session Formats

Poster Session—In-person Only (60 minutes; 1–3 presenters)

Poster presenters share visual models of research findings; general education course, program, and curricular or cocurricular designs; concept maps; assessment rubrics and feedback loops; faculty development, support, and reward programs and policies; frameworks for design thinking and strategic planning; and high-impact practices. The poster session provides an opportunity for presenters to talk with attendees about how to apply findings to their own work.

Pecha Kucha—In-person Only (6 minutes; 1 presenter recommended)

Pecha Kucha (“chit chat” in Japanese) sessions combine visual and oral presentations to convey a creative endeavor, research finding, or other interesting activity related to a particular conference track. A Pecha Kucha presentation, which consists of 20 slides running for 20 seconds each, is carefully orchestrated to articulate key elements featured in each slide. Two Pecha Kucha presentations will be combined with 30 minutes of discussion time to create one roughly 45-minute-long session. The following link provides an overview and guidelines for designing a Pecha Kucha presentation: http://avoision.com/pechakucha.

Theory to Practice—In-person Only (75 minutes each; 2–4 facilitators)

Workshops provide opportunities for participants to bridge theory and practice. Facilitators should guide participants in examining critical theories and scholarly evidence that support the mechanics of how to develop purposeful general education courses, curricula, pedagogies, practices, pathways, or strategies that integrate learning with the majors in the context of real-world issues. Facilitators should provide scholarship and evidence related to the topic and engage participants in reflection, discussion, and design work.

Design Thinking in Real Time—In-person Only (1-4 facilitators) BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!

This is an exploratory effort to design a space for participants to share their iterative thinking and learning. Facilitators will be available during three specific, hour-long time slots (Thursday afternoon, Friday afternoon, and Saturday morning) to engage participants in iterative thinking to develop new approaches to key aspects of general education, pedagogy, and assessment in “real time.” Participants are invited to visit the session tables at any time (whether facilitators are present or not) to share and examine their own evolving ideas with and problem-solve questions posed by colleagues. In the last time frame of the conference, participants will gain the latest thinking on these key issues and action steps, and strategies will be made available to all conference participants on the conference platform.

The facilitators will be provided with resources/tools that will enable participants to share ideas and theories throughout the conference, collectively developing new approaches to any and all aspects of the three pillars of the conference—general education, pedagogy, and assessment.

Dialogue for Learning—In-person or Virtual (45 minutes; 1–4 facilitators)

Dialogue for Learning sessions provide time for colleagues to examine timely and potentially provocative topics of similar interest through the iterative sharing of expertise and experiences. They provide an opportunity to work through issues, ideas, and challenges from multiple perspectives. The facilitators’ job is to kickstart small group conversations through a brief presentation based upon their own work/research/praxis that then feeds into a collective discussion of the question at hand, dedicating at least 20–25 minutes to discussion. Proposals for Dialogue for Learning sessions should briefly set the context for the conversation related to one of the conference tracks and should clearly articulate the intended audience in terms of institutional type, position, or area of practice. Facilitators assist the group in examining new ways of thinking about the topic and strategies for moving forward given the professional reality and expertise of everyone in the room.

Critical Thinking through Case Studies—In-person or Virtual (45 minutes each, 1–3 facilitators). NEW SESSION FORMAT!

This session format is designed to stimulate conversation and help participants engage in creative problem-solving using a case-study approach. Facilitators will create a case study (no more than three pages) problematizing a specific incident/issue related to general education, pedagogy, and assessment (re)design, one grounded in the actual experiences and/or expertise of the authors/presenters (institutions/individuals in the case study should be de-identified). The case study will be posted to the conference platform one week in advance of the start of the 2024 GEPA Conference. Participants will be given time to read the case study in the live session before collaborating in small groups to “solve” the case study by:

• Identifying the key problems/focusing on the right questions
• Examining assumptions and addressing contextual factors
• Exploring multiple solutions, including naming advantages and disadvantages for each
• Selecting the best, most appropriate solution
• Discussing implications, including possible limitations.

After groups present their proposed solutions, facilitators will help the group synthesize the information shared, reveal—if appropriate—what transpired, and discuss the actual “lessons learned” from the event that inspired the case study. The following link to the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching provides a clear, concise description of case studies as well as guidance on what makes a good case study that may be helpful: https://bit.ly/casestudy_guidance

Crowdsourced Conversations—In-person or Virtual (45 minutes each; 1–3 facilitators). NEW SESSION FORMAT! 

Less formal and less scripted than Dialogue for Learning sessions, this session format is designed for colleagues to connect over emergent and pressing issues, through which smaller groups of participants meet new colleagues, build connections, and potentially lay the foundation for future collaboration. Borrowing from the more traditional “roundtable” format, facilitators are assigned a table for the duration of the session. Participants may move among tables. Facilitators should provide a brief description of the proposed topic for conversation, along with a brief rationale for its inclusion at the conference. Facilitators must plan to the context for the conversation related to one of the conference tracks. Contexts may reflect institutional type, position, or a particular area of practice. Please clearly state any defining contexts to clarify your intended audience. Facilitators will assist the group in examining new ways of thinking about the topic and strategies for moving forward given the complications associated with the professional reality and expertise of everyone around the table. Facilitators are expected to provide a summary of the conversation for posting in the conference platform and suggest mechanisms for making future connections throughout the conference based on the outcomes of the conversation.

Please Note: For Crowdsourced Conversations there will be no A/V provided.

Innovation/Ideation-—In-person and Virtual (15 minutes; 1–4 facilitators).

These moderated sessions will feature cutting-edge advances in general education; equity-focused, design-thinking frameworks; courses, programs, curricula, and/or high-impact practices; faculty development, support, and reward approaches; teaching and learning research; and assessment models and feedback loops that are still exploratory in nature. Presentations with promising, yet minimal, outcomes data are encouraged. Sessions should describe the institutional context and guiding theories, and they should offer the opportunity for audience questions and discussion. Two sessions will be included time for discussion in each 45-minute time slot.