Proposal Guidelines

When submitting your proposal online, you will be asked to choose a Session Type and an alternate session type. These include panel discussions, roundtable discussions, hands-on workshops, formal presentations, and demonstrations. Session lengths are 90 minutes for workshops, and 30 or 50 minutes for other session types. You will also be required to select one of the Conference Tracks. The tracks help participants find sessions of interest to them.

You will also have the opportunity to select topics on the proposal submission form. The topic list was developed to provide a structure for categorizing and storing TLT resources for easy retrieval by keyword searches.

Please keep in mind that your title can not exceed 120 characters and your abstract can not exceed 150 words.

As you plan your proposal, consider participating in the Collaborative Café. This is a tool to assist you in identifying and establishing connections with others who have similar interests. We strongly encourage prospective presenters to collaborate in developing proposals via the Collaborative Café. You may submit a request for collaboration by entering a session description including types of co-presenters requested and identifying topics that would help others to search for the intended proposal. You may submit a request by entering a session description including types of co-presenters requested and identifying topics that would help others to search for the intended proposal.

Proposal Review Criteria

The following six criteria will be used to evaluate all proposals in our refereed proposal review process. Proposals will be evaluated on how well they:

promote effective and innovative teaching and learning practices
emphasize collaborative approaches
provide useful information, skills, or ideas
demonstrate active TLT leadership
actively engage participants
are consistent with the conference theme, Teaching Towards Tomorrow

A good Proposal will:

describe clearly and accurately the presentation content and format
relate the presentation to the conference theme
describe who would benefit from attending this session
give a clear statement of the outcomes participants may expect of this presentation
list what materials—slides, handouts, web links—will be provided during the presentation, posted on the conference web site, or submitted to the conference proceedings
persuade the proposal evaluators and conference attendees that you are going to present something unique and valuable
use a clear and direct writing style with active voice rather than passive
avoid jargon, generalizations, acronyms and buzz words

Proposal Review Process

Proposals will be reviewed by a committee of UNC faculty, staff, librarians, and administrators with expertise in TLT issues. The proposal review process matches proposals with reviewers with appropriate expertise and not associated with any of the prospective presenters' campuses. Notification of accepted proposals will be provided by mid-December, 2008. Campus affiliations will appear in the conference program; however, to facilitate blind review, please describe your session without identifying yourself, co-presenters, or campus in the title or abstract. Authors of accepted proposals will have the opportunity to update the session title and description to add this information.