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Featured instructor: Martin Gaal
Course Innovation Community CIC 2019 Martin Gaal, Lecturer Faculty Member in Political Studies Martin teaches Political Studies 112, Justice and Injustice in Politics and Law to 100 students. He participated in CIC to help address his concerns regarding how to link learning outcomes to active learning strategies that ladder-in formative and summative assessments. Martin has noticed that student support for success is much more difficult with 100+ students than it is when he has smaller classes of 30 students. He continues to look for ways to tighten the course structure with technology and teaching strategies that increase student engagement and maintain a personal connection with students while seeking to maintain…
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Featured Instructor : Colleen Bell
Course Innovation Community CIC 2019 Colleen Bell, Assistant Professor Faculty Member in Political Studies Colleen teaches International Studies 110, Global Studies, to a class of over 80 students. By participating in CIC, Colleen was able to gather new ideas on structuring student debates, improve her use of rubrics, and better able to select and sequence the content necessary to engage students (which sometimes felt like a sacrifice!). She used some of her CIC funding to support grading and coaching and another part to have a team-based competition in class. The competition motivated students to watch and evaluate videos made by their classmates. Colleen’s concerns with large class teaching were that…
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Featured Instructor: Derek Postnikoff
Course Innovation Community CIC 2019 Derek Postnikoff, Lecturer Faculty Member in Mathematics & Statistics Sessional Lecturer in Philosophy Derek teaches Math 100, Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers, to a class of 85 students. By participating in CIC, he was able to attend two math education conferences: First Year Math and Stats in Canada in May 2019 and Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group in June 2019. Both of these events provided him with many specific ideas for themes and activities to incorporate in MATH 100. He is planning to use what remains of his CIC funding to attend both of these conferences again this year. Some of his struggles were that…
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Aligning assessment and experiential learning
I didn’t know what to expect as I rode the elevator up the Arts tower to interview for a research assistant position for a SOTL group. I certainly didn’t expect the wave of information and Dr. McBeth’s joyful energy. She, Harold Bull, and Sandy Bonny explained the project in a unique dialect; a mix of English and their shared academic speak. I hope they didn’t catch onto my confusion when they were throwing around the term MCQ, or multiple choice question, (which refers to the Medical Council exam in my former profession). I realized that I had quite a lot to learn if I was going to succeed in this…
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Internationalization of Teaching & Learning : Featured Instructor
Dr Lucy R. Hinnie Postdoctoral Fellow Lucy is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of English and completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. In her work, she looks at written text through the frame of intersectionality, interrogating the accepted ‘canon’ of white male scholars and looking to find relevance to every student, regardless of their background. She has a desire to strengthen her teaching practice and do better by all of her students. She took the internationalization short course because she has a desire to strengthen her teaching practice and do better by all of her students, especially those who face difficulties in what is perceived to…
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Internationalization of Teaching and Learning : Featured Instructor
Jocelyn Peltier-Huntley, M. Sc., P. Eng. Lecturer, College of Engineering Jocelyn is a professional mechanical engineer. Her research is around understanding the gender gap in the Canadian mining industry. At a personal level, she wants to see positive change happen to move towards equity within our society. As an instructor of engineering design and communications, and as a professional, she feels it is vitally important to know how to understand and work with stakeholders who may be from a variety of backgrounds and have different ways of knowing. Successful internationalization allows for all people to be fully included and empowered… She took the internationalization short course to improve her teaching…
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How do I internationalize my course?
Self-reflection Step 1: Know my position and privilege. Who am I as a teacher? (This idea isn’t new, check out this article from 1958: Teacher, Know Thyself) Step 2: Does the way I design my course plan for access and diversity? Step 3: Do I want to “add-on”, “infuse”, or “transform” my course through internationalization? Some direction If you are working on step 3, there is an excellent resource of teaching tips here: Strategies for Course Internationalization. Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo. A simple way to start internationalization is to add assigned readings from international perspectives. This can be a way to start conversations and look for similarities and…
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From Modelling to Designing Intercultural Curricula
Summary: Intercultural curricula can enrich learning. Discover practical steps and strategies to effectively design inclusive and diverse educational programs. Date of publishing: November 18, 2019 You are on this page because you believe that you have pretty decent intercultural teaching capacities. This is evidenced by your continued commitment to developing an awareness of your own identity and modelling perspective-taking. Students in your course have the opportunity to interact with different worldviews because you know that makes them smarter. You actively create opportunities to build relationships between ‘others’ and can recognize barriers to student participation – you’ve essentially applied using your intercultural capacity to inform teaching practices. So now you must…
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How Might Intercultural Capacity inform our Teaching?
Once we develop the capacity for intercultural competence, we can start to infuse the associated skills into our teaching practice. This can take many forms but all the elements connect to the group of knowledge and skills we associate with facilitation. Pedogogy is the study of leading learners and facilitators make a process easier. So, facilitation is the process we use to make the learning possible. In adult education, we know that our learners come with valuable prior knowledge, skill, and experience. We can draw on these to enhance the learning experience for both instructor-facilitator and student. How do we start facilitating? As an instructor, or facilitator, you may wish…
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What is Intercultural Teaching Capacity?
Intercultural teaching capacity is the ability to engage and support learners through difference in learning activities. Instructors who have intercultural capacity are able to bridge difference in the classroom and foster meaningful relationships with and among students. This is also called intercultural competency, but we like to think of it as a continual process instead of a checkbox. Instead of being just ‘competent’, we need the capacity to work with intercultural relations effectively, and those skills change and grow with each experience as we nurture them. Hence we can be capable or have the capacity to be interculturally competent. Reasons why instructors may wish to develop their intercultural capacity is…