Boulder, Colorado, United States
PROGRAM: Education

In September 2019, I attended The Third Annual Classroom Assessment Conference of the National Council of Measurement of Education (NCME) in Boulder, CO with my advisor, Dr Wilson. It was my first time attending an academic conference and I was very excited that I could meet other professionals who share the same research interests as me. I am grateful that the Professional Development Award provided this precious opportunity to help me improve my career development in educational research.

The two-day conference consisted of three keynote lectures targeting on the overall attendees and four breakout sessions, in which I could choose from several topics the ones that I was the most interested in. It was very impressive to learn about the main theoretical trends and concerns on classroom assessment during the keynote lectures. I even got the networking opportunities to talk with several leading scholars in this field after these sessions. I also benefited a lot from the breakout sessions, in which I learned about the most up-to-date research achievement from other researchers. The breakout sessions allowed more space for me to ask questions directly to the speakers. I really appreciate the conversations and discussions in those sessions because they inspired a lot of new thoughts and research topics that I have never considered in the past. The poster session happened at the end of the first day, where my advisor and I presented our work. I enjoyed the experience of sharing our research results to a variety of audience, which included researchers, administrators from different school districts, current teachers, and other graduate students. I have learned a lot from the feedback from different perspectives.

In short, my journey to Boulder is an unforgettable and beneficial experience for my pursuit of a career in academia.