University of South Alabama Catalog

Among the challenges facing higher education today is serving a diverse population of students while paying attention not only to the applied disciplines that promise immediate employment but also the traditional fields that prepare students with the durable skills of critical thinking, appreciation of different viewpoints, quantitative and qualitative communication, and the ability to tackle complex problems both individually and in teams.

CoTL has traditionally focused on serving our geographic region and is a partnership between USA, Spring Hill College, University of Mobile, and Pathway USA community colleges including Bishop State and Coastal Alabama. As institutions in southwest Alabama, whether we teach in online or traditional environments, our faculty, staff, and students have strong ties across the region. The theme of CoTL 2020 encourages us to think about the ways in which we design, build, and sustain communities of learners. How do we create and maintain a sense of belonging? This factor has been shown in the research on student retention to be a powerful indicator of student progression towards a degree. 

As the University of South Alabama rolls out Canvas as its new LMS (learning management system), there are new opportunities to build online communities, as many of our partner institutions share this same platform. We encourage the sharing of instructional design and curricular innovations that take advantage of the affordances of web-connected technologies including the LMS, video conferencing, lecture capture, and interactive polling tools. 

Keynote Speakers 

Dr. Kathy Takayama, Executive Director,
Teaching, Learning and Transformation Center,
University of Maryland, College Park.

Dr. Katie Linder, Executive Director for Program Development,
Kansas State Global Campus, Manhattan, KS.