Past Conferences
CATLR has offered an annual conference on innovation in teaching and learning since 2015. Each year, we bring together Northeastern educators to connect with each other and share the research and new models we’re exploring in and out of the classroom. To learn more about the upcoming conference, go to our CATLR conference page.
Explore some of our past CATLR conferences below to learn more about the themes, speakers, and in recent years, presenters and their research topics.
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2022
Conference for Advancing Evidence-Based Learning
Building Community and Equity Through Teaching and Learning
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Anneliese Singh
This year’s virtual conference focused on building equity and community across all learning opportunities at Northeastern. In teaching and learning, equity and community intersect in powerful ways. Equity draws our attention to the need for opportunities and support that make the achievement of learning outcomes possible for every learner. Community draws our attention to how we create these opportunities and provide this support, recognizing the importance of diverse perspectives and fostering connection and belonging with each other.
The ways in which we build equity and community can take many forms. Possible aspects of teaching and learning that conference presenters addressed include, but are not limited to:
- Building community in different contexts, at different scales, and in various modalities
- Building equity into the access, design, and assessment of learning
- Co-creating learning experiences with all stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff, and community and industry partners
- Making connections across contexts, from academia and industry to campus and community
- Sustaining our commitment to building equity and community when we encounter challenges
2021
Conference for Advancing Evidence-Based Learning
Fostering Equity and Inclusion Across Learning Environments
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Mays Imad
This year’s virtual conference focused on fostering equity and inclusion across Northeastern’s rich constellation of learning opportunities. Respecting, validating, and welcoming all learners’ experiences is the foundation for creating inclusive, equitable learning environments. We strive to support all learners in developing the necessary knowledge and skills to thrive, now and in the future.
The ways in which we engage in fostering equity and inclusion can take many forms, including:
- Exploring the role of social identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, age, gender identity and expression, disability status) and the impact of educator and learner positionality in teaching and learning
- Designing flexible learning environments to address the needs of all learners
- Creating and fostering community in hybrid and virtual environments
- Integrating trauma-informed pedagogy and practices
- mbodying and implementing antiracist pedagogy and practices
- Using curriculum- and program-level frameworks for equity and inclusion
- Engaging in pedagogical partnership in curricular and co-curricular contexts
- Advancing from critical inquiry and reflection to action
2020
Conference for Advancing Evidence-Based Learning (CAEBL)
This iteration of the annual conference hosted by CATLR was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the presenters that had planned to participate in this conference were added to the 2021 CAEBL conference schedule.
2019
Conference for Advancing Evidence-Based Learning (CAEBL)
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Alison Cook-Sather
The Conference for Advancing Evidence-Based Learning showcases Northeastern faculty and staff/co-curricular educators who engage in research and collaborate on evidence-based practice in teaching and learning.
In educational contexts, the term “evidence-based” means both designing educational experiences based on findings from research on learning, student development, and other related fields and carrying out structured inquiries that collect and analyze evidence to further understand learning.
Northeastern’s holistic, lifelong approach to learning recognizes that everyone involved in a student’s educational experience is an educator. In addition to inviting faculty presenters, this year’s conference includes staff/co-curricular educators and students presenting their work through the lens of the theoretical frameworks that inform it. Sessions also include faculty, staff/co-curricular educators, and students presenting on the ways in which they are collaborating with each other and with students to design robust learning experiences.
2018
Exploring SAIL
A Full-Day Immersion Experience
Engage, explore, and envision the next generation of experiential learning with the Self-Authored Integrated Learning (SAIL) initiative at Northeastern. New to SAIL? Already exploring? Whatever your experience is with SAIL, this event offers something for all audiences. Connect and collaborate with colleagues across Northeastern and create and explore models that will shape the Northeastern ecosystem.
[SAIL was a learning platform developed at Northeastern University. The platform and initiative was retired in October, 2021.]
2017
Conference for Advancing Evidence-Based Teaching (CAET)
Connecting Experiences: Integration for Deeper Learning
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Randy Bass
Learning is strengthened and more enduring when students have an opportunity to seek connections and integrate their informal, formal, and professional learning experiences. Student growth can be amplified when we create environments that help them integrate the knowledge they have gained from their collective experiences.
How can we help students make connections across their learning experiences? What does the research tell us about teaching practices that support connected learning?
2016
Conference for Advancing Evidence-Based Teaching (CAET)
Building Knowledge Through Transfer
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Jeanette Norden
The theme of this year’s conference was “building knowledge through transfer.” Transfer of learning—also referred to as “application”—is the ability to use something you’ve learned in a different context from where you learned it. Transfer is a primary goal of instruction, as our purpose is to equip our students with knowledge, skills and insights they can use for the rest of their lives. Learning scientists have developed a Detect > Elect > Connect model to describe aspects of the transfer process and help investigate “what works” in supporting transfer (Perkins & Saloman, 2012):
- Detect – We must recognize a potential relationship between the current moment and our own prior learning.
- Elect – We must be motivated and choose to pursue this potential connection.
- Connect – We must perform the creative act of constructing a new understanding of both the current moment and our prior learning.
2015
Conference for Advancing Evidence-Based Teaching (CAET)
Building A Learning Science Network
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Dan Simons
The theme of this year’s conference was “building a learning science network.” This year’s conference also featured an unveiling of Northeastern’s Learning Science Network. Over the year, the Center worked to build the network by identifying and connecting members of the Northeastern community currently engaged in learning science and evidence-based teaching practice.