Lisa Becksford, left, and Naomi Hall-Byers collaborate.
The project is the brainchild of Jesse Stommel, UMW’s executive director of teaching and learning technology, and Sean Michael Morris, director of the UMW Digital Pedagogy Lab (DPL).
Though the event at the Hurley Convergence Center draws highly regarded speakers and attendees from all over the world, it didn’t start out as a “big idea,” Morris told participants in the 2018 event in July and August.
“It began with a desire to help teachers who were faced with teaching in an increasingly digital world get their feet under them,” Morris said in the conference’s opening remarks.
“I am thrilled to be able to make official the relationship between Mary Washington and DPL,” UMW Chief of Staff Jeffrey McClurken ’94 said. “This internationally recognized series of events, which supports innovative, thoughtful, and empathetic teaching, is a natural fit for UMW with our faculty’s strengths in digitally enhanced, student-centered teaching and learning.”
About 200 people attended the 2018 Digital Pedagogy Lab. Besides the annual event, smaller ones pop up in places like Cairo and Canada. And other schools, like Virginia Tech and the University of Colorado, are taking what they discover at DPL to their own institutions.
“They’ve come, they’ve learned something they hadn’t thought of before, and it’s changed the direction of their careers,” Morris said. “What that says about UMW is that UMW is a center for teaching and learning that other people want to be able to model.”