LILLY ARCTIC INSTITUTE
Innovations and Excellence in Teaching
Seventh annual Lilly Arctic Institute
Celebrating the Soul and Passion of Teaching (& Learning)
Primary Themes:
- Distance Education aka Extended Access
- Health and Behavioral Training and Education
- Adult Teaching and Learning
Location
- March 1-3 2012,
- Kodiak College Campus, University of Alaska Anchorage
- Kodiak, Alaska
It is again with pleasure that I welcome you to another Lilly Arctic Institute on Innovations & Excellence in Teaching. This 7th annual event is already developing into its own unique and inviting experience. This year’s theme, Celebrating the Soul and Passion of Teaching (& Learning) perhaps captures the heart of all of our Lilly Arctic Institutes to-date and reflects the spirit and unwritten mission of why we gather together each year.
Our annual Lilly Arctic Institute on Innovations & Excellence in Teaching is a proud member of the national network of Lilly Conferences and Institutes. This Lilly network has provided opportunities for the presentation of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning for over 30 years. Participants come from a multitude of disciplines and from throughout the US and from abroad. Since 2006, Alaska now has its own annual Lilly institute that takes place in early March of each year.
The Lilly Arctic Institute on Innovations & Excellence in Teaching is unique in its focus on teaching and learning within the contexts of Alaska Native, rural, and other northern environs while at the same time offering an opportunity for Alaskans and others to learn from evidence-based practice in higher education and training from other United States and world institutions and educators. The Lilly Arctic is unique in its celebration of adult learning theory and practice, authentic learning, transformative learning, place-based learning while also drawing on the best practices of distance education and classroom instructional practice. The Lilly Arctic is unique and its active guidance from Alaska Native Elder/teachers and mentors. It is unique, too, because of its definition of traditional education as that being from the learner’s perspective and not necessarily that of the instructor or institution’s perspective. Finally, the Lilly Arctic offers an opportunity for Alaskan educators and trainers to build and strengthen connections to the community of adult learners worldwide.
This year we are again benefitting from adult educators and trainers who reside within Alaska, as well as a number of special guest presenters who join us from “outside”. We are also continuing our three distinct and sometimes interwoven tracts. One track on distance education is also known as extended access (and a variety of emerging terms and categories) but it does include on-line learning, asynchronous learning, two-way video instruction, traditional audio conferencing, correspondence study, and an array of hybrid models and approaches. Who knows that else this category and tract will include next year?
A second track emphasizes health and behavioral health education and instruction and learning. One of the motivations for setting up our own statewide institute on adult learning and teaching was to offer in-state the highest level of faculty and staff development for those dedicated people working in health workforce development in Alaska.
Our third track, the best and promising practices of adult learning and teaching, might actually be called our overall or all-encompassing tract as it truly reflects our belief and practice of working with people as adult learners across all academic and vocational fields, across all teaching approaches and modalities, and as its own respected set of theories and strategies.
Please come and join us this year in Kodiak, Alaska! Please return or become one of our learning community members and spend time with other dedicated colleagues and friends in our ever growing network of adult educators and trainers. Please join us each morning for the morning blessing circle and each afternoon drumming session. Take time to meet our honored Elders, and finally, join us for our annual evening awards and “quick teach” banquet on Friday night.
Sincerely,
Larry Roberts
Lilly Arctic Institute Director.