[social-bio] My title here at the Gwenna Moss Centre is officially “Instructional Design Specialist”; I apply my instructional design background to help faculty and instructors develop and improve their skills and abilities as teachers and course designers. However, I think of my “real” work as being more fluid and less prescriptive than the title suggests; I think my ultimate role is to be a “professional learner”.  A philosopher at heart, I am prone to reflecting on ideas such as “What is learning? What is teaching? Is it truly possible to have one without the other?” and hoping that I can inspire others who are also on their own teaching and…

[social-bio] I blush as I confess that I’ve been guilty of it myself—I’ve promoted the notion of learning styles in my graduate teaching courses. In my defense, it has been with the purpose encouraging future faculty to consider employing teaching strategies beyond a (poor) lecture. Thinking back to my own days as a student, classes that included discussion, multi-media, collaboration, problem-solving, etc., were few and far between, and perhaps this is why as an educator of educators I clung to a theory that’s corollary was that teaching styles should be multi-modal. Cedar Reiner and Daniel Willingham, in “The Myth of Learning Styles” (Change magazine) argue that educators are mistakenly focused…