There were many interesting presentations and discussions; I'll highlight just a few.

Karen Huffman's session, on how to have more "memorable moments" in teaching, was especially exciting to me. In essence, she showed that having both teacher and student emotionally and personally invested in the topic leads to fulfilling moments in class. But how does one get emotionally invested? She suggested evaluating your own goals, not just as an instructor, but as a human being. Decide what you care deeply about, and bring these values into your teaching (assuming that you care about teaching!).

Robert Sternberg's session on thinking and teaching styles was useful to help me think about how my courses might fit or not fit different types of students (and even how my courses fit my own thinking and teaching styles). Some students do well with lots of structure, other students do better with more ill-defined tasks. There's a good summary of Sternberg's ideas in the November 1994 issue of "Educational Leadership".

Carol Tavris gave a tremendously engaging lecture on gender, culture and biology. She didn't talk about lecturing techniques; instead she gave a wonderful example of good technique. The topic was personally engaging, she used humor to illustrate specific points, she used visual aids, she had an explicit point-by-point structure without being cramped by it, and she spoke clearly and dramatically. And she made some interesting points that kept you thinking after the lecture. (If only every topic in my own courses lent itself so well to this sort of presentation. Somehow I think it's more engaging to talk about sex than to talk about, say, short-term memory scanning.)

There were, of course, many other interesting presentations, and failure to mention one here does not indicate that I have a negative opinion of it. See the conference program for more info (via the web, click on the conference title at the top of this page).