NACTA/SERD 2010 Call for Abstracts

Call for Abstracts

Abstracts for the NACTA/SERD Annual Conference at Penn State are due March 20, 2010.

Abstracts must be submitted through this website:  http://abstracts.nacta.expressacademic.org/login.php

The 2010 NACTA conference will be held at Penn State University, June 22 – 25. This conference will be a joint meeting with National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Science and Education Resources Development (SERD) unit. The theme for the 2010 NACTA/SERD Conference is “Collaborate, Communicate, Celebrate.”

Accepted abstracts that address the theme will be given first priority for oral presentations. This year we can schedule approximately 80 oral presentations and 84 poster presentations. Authors will be given the option to request oral presentation, but it will be up to the host committee to select the 84 oral presentations from those who requested oral presentation format. All others will be poster presentations.

The 2010 NACTA Conference will serve as a venue for faculty in the agricultural, environmental, natural, and life sciences to share their information on the theme of Collaborate, Communicate, Celebrate, as well as to share innovative teaching or advising ideas, scholarship of teaching, and other pertinent information.

Innovative Teaching Approaches – Teaching that facilitates learner-centeredness, shared power, deep processing, student engagement, empowerment, and responsibility. New creative teaching ideas may include interdisciplinary learning, problem-based learning, service-learning, and technology-enhanced learning.

Learning Outcomes – Scholarly assessment of students, courses, curricula, and programs. Empirical evidence of impact can be documented through an array of dependent variables because learning develops human capital in a variety of forms, such as knowledge, problem-solving skills, attitudes, motivation, responsibility, communication skills, personal development, teamwork, and interpersonal skills.

Scholarly Research Approaches – The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is grounded in how professors systematically investigate the teaching-learning process. Challenges, critical reflections, and effective applications of action research methods and procedures can be highlighted regarding the use of interviews, observations, journals, content analyses of student work, achievement or performance measures, and questionnaires.

Abstract Format: The abstract should be a concise summary of factual information and not simply a general description of what the author plans to present. A high-quality abstract contains the following key elements (without designating them as such): (1) a brief introduction, including objectives of the presentation; (2) relevant experimental conditions indicating the scope of study or survey (authors of predominately philosophical works may substitute other appropriate criteria); (3) observations, results, or data (however, data should be in summary form and not presented in tables or graphs) - philosophical abstracts must demonstrate application of said philosophy; and (4) a concise summary.

Guidelines for NACTA/SERD Abstracts

• Abstracts are limited to one paragraph of 250 words, not including title and by-lines.
• Title of abstract should be brief and precise.
• Indicate if the abstract is being submitted as a NACTA or SERD submission.
• Use single space.
• Do not include illustrations or bibliographical references in the abstract.
• Indicate if you would like to be considered for an oral presentation.
• If an author submits multiple proposals, the topic and content of each must differ substantially.
• The abstract should stand alone and contain valuable information for both those in attendance as well as those who read it in the NACTA Journal. Abstracts are subject to editing before publication.

An abstract is unacceptable if it:

• Contains significant grammatical errors and (or) meaningless statements such as: "The results will be presented."
• Includes no results or statements relating to the objective(s).
• Fails to comply with submission requirements.
• Presents opinion/speculation with no demonstrated use in a teaching or advising experience.

All abstracts must be submitted at this website: http://abstracts.nacta.expressacademic.org/login.php

If you have any questions contact the NACTA Journal Editor, Rick Parker, at CLOAKING .

Deadline: March 20, 2010. The author submitting the abstract will be notified of its status within three weeks of its submission.