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Call for Proposals

Dialogue Across Disciplines: Active Learning, Meaningful Connection, and Teaching in a Changing World
April 6-8, 2027
Indiana University Capital Campus | Washington, DC

The International Society for Exploring Teaching and Learning (ISETL) invites educators, researchers, educational developers, instructional designers, administrators, graduate students, and others committed to improving postsecondary education to submit proposals for the 2027 ISETL Conference.

Higher education is changing rapidly. Emerging technologies, evolving student expectations, and expanding understandings of access are reshaping how we teach and learn. Yet curiosity, dialogue, connection, reflection, and the willingness to learn together remain at the heart of meaningful educational experiences. 

Dialogue Across Disciplines invites us to explore that intersection of change and connection. How can we create learning environments where students actively engage? How can we strengthen relationships and presence? How should we respond thoughtfully to artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies? And what can we discover when educators across disciplines, institutions, roles, and countries bring their experiences into conversation?

ISETL is intentionally interdisciplinary. We invite you to bring your research, practice, questions, experiments, successes, and lessons learned to Washington, DC, and add your perspective to the dialogue.

What Might You Explore?

We welcome proposals addressing teaching and learning across disciplines, institutional types, educational contexts, and career stages. Possible topics include:

• Active, experiential, and high-impact learning
• Student participation, engagement, motivation, and persistence
• Presence, connection, belonging, and relationship-building
• Artificial intelligence and emerging technologies
• Assessment, authorship, and student learning in an AI-rich environment
• Authentic and alternative assessment
• Evidence-based teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning
• Inclusive and accessible pedagogy
• Interdisciplinary teaching and learning
• Faculty development, mentoring, and professional learning
• Teaching across modalities
• Innovative course, curriculum, or program design
• Approaches that did not work as expected—and what was learned
• International and cross-cultural perspectives on teaching and learning

These topics are intended to spark ideas, not limit them. Proposals do not need to address every aspect of the conference theme. ISETL 2027 will feature three proposal formats: Share, Do, and Poster. Choose the format that best reflects what you want participants to learn, experience, or discuss.

	“Share” (20 Minutes)	“Do” (40 Minutes)	“Poster”
Best fit if you want to…	Communicate ideas, findings, practices, innovations, or lessons learned	Engage participants in actively experiencing, practicing, exploring, or creating something	Share work visually through informal, one-on-one, or small-group conversation
What might you share?	Research findings; teaching innovations; case studies; programs or initiatives; conceptual perspectives; evidence-informed practices; lessons learned	Active-learning strategies; assignment or assessment redesign; teaching dilemmas; tools; facilitation strategies; collaborative problem-solving; action planning	Research; teaching innovations; works in progress; program initiatives; emerging questions; exploratory projects
What will participants do?	Learn about your work, consider its implications, and engage in dialogue	Participate actively, practice a strategy, analyze, design, create, discuss, or solve a problem	View your work, ask questions, exchange ideas, and engage in conversation
Interaction Style	Presentation and dialogue	Highly participatory and hands-on	Informal and conversational
Research required?	No. Research, scholarly, evidence-informed, reflective, and practice-based contributions are welcome	No. Sessions may be grounded in research, practice, experience, or a combination	No. Completed, emerging, exploratory, and practice-based works are welcome
A good choice when…	You have something others could learn from or apply to their own context	The experience of doing is central to what you want participants to learn	Your work benefits from visual presentation and individual discussion
Think…	I have something important to share that can inform how others understand or approach teaching and learning	I want participants to leave having experienced, practiced, explored, or created something, not simply having heard about it.	I want to share my work through conversation and visual presentation in a flexible, informal setting.

Scholarship and Practice Are Both Welcome

ISETL values rigorous scholarship and thoughtful educational practice. Proposals may be drawn from empirical research, scholarly literature, evidence-informed or reflective practice, classroom experience, program development, emerging work, or a combination of approaches. You do not need to have completed a formal research study or be an established scholar of teaching and learning to make a meaningful contribution. We especially encourage perspectives that broaden dialogue across disciplines, institution types, professional roles, career stages, countries, cultures, and educational systems. 

How Proposals Will Be Reviewed

Proposals will be considered based on:

• Relevance to higher education teaching and learning
• Clarity of purpose
• Quality of the scholarship, evidence, practice, or reflection appropriate to the proposal
• Potential usefulness to participants
• Contribution to dialogue across disciplines, institutions, or contexts
• Alignment with the selected Share, Do, or Poster format
• Clear participant takeaways
• For Do sessions, intentional and meaningful participant engagement

Reviewers will consider proposals according to the type of contribution being made. Practice-based work will not be expected to meet criteria designed for empirical research, and research proposals will be considered according to the rigor appropriate to the work described.

Join the Dialogue! The challenges facing higher education are too complex, and the possibilities endless, to explore within disciplinary or institutional boundaries alone. ISETL welcomes educators across disciplines and around the world to bring their questions, discoveries, successes, uncertainties, and experiments into the conversation. Join us in Washington, DC, prepared to share, prepared to do, and prepared to learn from each other. We take pride in designing a conference where participants leave energized, informed, and connected –  with practical ideas to take back to their learning communities, new questions to pursue, and colleagues with whom the dialogue can continue!