Hartmut Rastalsky has attended each of the Enriching Scholarship conferences since the events began and continues to benefit from ideas shared at the two-week event.

“The workshops as a whole and especially the showcase of faculty projects have [helped] me to come up with new ideas for using technology in instruction,” says Rastalsky, assistant professor in the Germanic Languages and Literatures Department. “The workshops have also allowed me to meet some very helpful people from the various units involved with technology support across campus.”

The event, now in its sixth year and presented by the U-M Teaching and Technology Collaborative, is being held April 28-May 9. It includes faculty roundtables, conferences, a keynote speech and demonstrations that draw on the expertise of faculty and instructional technology specialists across the University to support other faculty in the effective use of technology in higher education.

Kalli Federhofer attended his first Enriching Scholarship conference three years ago, with a “modicum of knowledge” in the field of student-exchange forms between Germany and America.

“The conference not only helped me see a larger specter of ideas how an intercontinental exchange can be attained but also saw me concretize a sophisticated yet practical teaching plan that I tried the following year in one of my classes,” says Federhofer, a lecturer in the Germanic Languages and Literatures Department and undergraduate advisor for new German majors. “With the commitment and expertise of the staff involved, I lost any apprehension about potential deficiencies of the exchange scenario.”

Dennis Pollard, a lecturer and course coordinator in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, has attended all the conferences. He has demonstrated some of his IT projects, including media-rich PowerPoint applications.

The most valuable sessions he has attended were those, such as the tour of the Media Union CAVE, “which gave me the inspiration to undertake more IT projects and those which taught me specific usable skills, like the Photoshop workshop,” he says. “This conference is one of the principal reasons why more and more language instructors in my department use instructional and information technology in their classes.”

The event includes faculty roundtables at locations throughout campus, April 28-May 1; conference sessions in topics such as course development, foreign language, information management, multimedia tools and Web authoring, May 5-9; and a keynote speech about “Teaching at the University of Michigan: Inspiration and Challenges,” by Carl Berger, professor of science and technology education and advisor in science and instructional technology, and a presentation by the CRLT Players, 9 a.m. May 5 at the School of Education’s Schorling Auditorium.

The College of Engineering’s U-M Instructional Technology EXPO (UMITE), at which vendors will demonstrate leading-edge technology to potential customers, will be at the Michigan League 10 a.m.-5 p.m. May 6.

For more information about registration and schedules of events, visit http://www.umich.edu/~teachtec/ES2003/. For information about UMITE, visit http://www.engin.umich.edu/teaching/tech/umite/.