History

The first annual Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium was held in 1993, hosted by the Center for Academic Computing, the predecessor of Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT). That pre-Web event featured demonstrations of the Macintosh, IBM, and Unix platforms, as well as a session on using multimedia in instruction. The keynote speaker discussed the use of hypertext and class-specific bulletin boards.

The following two years’ events added learning with simulations, presentation tools, accessing and using Internet resources, and electronic mail use to the discussion.

Of course, the advent and exponential growth of the Web changed the landscape of teaching and learning with technology, and that was reflected in Symposium sessions. In the late ’90s, there began to be sessions focusing on having students collaborate to edit digital video and to design Web sites. Discussions of distance education came to the forefront.

Keynote addresses during that period touched on creating a community of learners beyond the classroom, learning models for large enrollment courses, resources to enhance collaborative learning and teaching, new knowledge about learning that will transform instruction, and the painful transformation of moving from known models and practices to new ones.

During 2001-02, the ANGEL course management system was implemented University-wide for the first time. To allow faculty to focus on using the new system, no symposium was held in 2002. In 2003, TLT resumed hosting an event, called ANGEL Day, focused on faculty use of ANGEL for teaching and learning. ANGEL Day was held again in 2004 and 2005.

In 2006, around the time that the “social Web” was burgeoning, the Symposium began in its current format, and was held at the Thomas Building at University Park. Since then, the event has outgrown that venue and has been held at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel. In 2014, the event expanded to cover two floors of the Penn Stater and there was a record 488 attendees.