Participants from around IU and beyond gathered at the School of Education last week for the 20^thInstructional Systems Technology Conference. The conference is a free, student-run event that offers graduate students a safe venue to gain experience in presenting, organizing and attending professional conferences.

About 145 participants attended this year’s conference in person, with more joining in remotely. Presenters included School of Education graduate students, faculty members, professionals in the field and graduate students from other universities, including Purdue University.

After two decades of holding the event, conference leaders are very proud of keeping alive a great opportunity for the IST community to collaborate together and bring people in the field together. The conference gave students opportunities to showcase their work, and lets practitioners demonstrate their best practices at work while making the connections between the practitioners and the academics in the field.

Since the event is funded by the IU Funding Board, students begin work on it months before by laying out a budget in the fall semester and preparing a brief presentation.

“Planning the event makes IST students gain various skills in the planning phases, ranging from proposing a conference, presenting in front of a board, budget management, peer-review of conference proposals, advertising, yearly logo design, room arrangements, securing keynotes, to preparing conference day schedules and catering. As the Graduates in Instructional Systems Technology advisor I am very proud that we keep this tradition of the IST Conference going strong and reaching its 20thyear, and that we are able to keep it free,” said Gamze Ozogul, Associate Professor in Instructional Systems Technology and faculty advisor for the conference.

“It is weeks of hard work, but it pays off when you see the various presentation options, joy and gathering on the conference day,” Ozogul added. “You see online and residential graduate students, IST Faculty and alumni and friends from other departments and schools connected in one space that is the School of Education.”