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The Value of Timely Feedback
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler “It’s a challenge to try and be flexible… If we can’t do something when it needs to happen, then its timeliness is gone and we’ve missed the opportunity.” – Gordon Knoble* When the outcomes and assessment strategy for assignments have been plotted and we know what feedback students will receive, there still remains the question of “when.” When will students receive feedback? And why does timing matter? Timing of feedback is one of the predictors of students learning as outlined by Grant P. Wiggins’s 1998 book, Educative assessment: Designing assessments to inform and improve student performance, and summarized by David Wees in 2010 post The…
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The Complexity of Meaningful Learning Outcomes
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler I was reminded this week of the similarity between designing a research question and writing a learning outcome. In undergraduate research the most common challenge is determining the appropriate scope for a research question. Not too broad, such as what causes addiction or what is the role of kings? Yet not too specific or too shallow that one struggles to find sufficient data or literature. There is an art to writing research questions that is informed by prior experience, colleagues, as well as a good dose of trial and error; similarly for learning outcomes. In addition to feedback from colleagues and personal reflection, there are…
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The Recipe of Adult Education in Today’s Reality
[social-bio] Is there just one essential ingredient in the field of adult education or should it be considered as one essential process of adult education? Can a recipe be perfected with just one ingredient, or is it a mixture of many: social movements, history, lifelong learning, technological impact, diversity, the recognition of differing learning styles and the role of the adult educator? My opinion is that there are many ingredients in the field of adult education but without ‘respect’ the recipe may not be as appetizing. Respect is required as the foundation to build a learning society. Simultaneously to achieve a learning society, lifeworlds must be provided with the right…
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Learning to Teach “My Way”
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler Every so often I return to the question I first thought about when I started teaching my first lab: Who am I as an educator? I remember attending a workshop early in my career about using humour in the classroom. With a sense of humour tending towards puns and irony that might be misunderstood, I remember watching the amusing presenter but quickly realizing that this particular approach was not quite for me. I did take away the importance of enthusiasm that was an element I could embed in my own teaching. “You have to…develop your own style”, Dr. Patrick Winston shared, because what works for…
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Questions to Ask When Assessing Our Own Teaching
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler Solving a puzzle involves selecting, viewing, planning, and placing many pieces in order to see the full image. Answering questions of how well do I teach, how is this activity going, or what should I do differently next time, entails a similar set of four phases. As each instructor is unique, the questions embedded within each phase allows us to customize the feedback process to our own needs. So what might we want to think about to make evaluating our teaching a rewarding experience? Planning and gathering insights: What? Preconditions: demographics, prior experience, knowledge, location of class Plans: course goals (e.g., How clear are course…
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Do We Give Them Fish, Teach Them to Bait a Hook, or Teach Them Ways of Deciding When, Where, and How to Fish?
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler Reading articles and books is a regular part of my academic life, however I haven’t been reading them forever so at some point I must have learned how. The strategies such as skimming, selecting specific sections, quick annotation, and others improve my effectiveness. But it is not these skills alone, rather it is my ability to decide whether to skim or read in depth, to choose which paragraph to read next, and to identify what information to annotate. In short, my ability to think about how I’m thinking matters, not the mindless enactment of routinized skills. When our students learn strategies, it can be frustrating…
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Reducing Confusion and Improving Teaching by Sharing Who We Are as a Discipline
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler The Book: The University and its Disciplines: Teaching and Learning Within and Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries. Edited by Carolin Kreber (2009). Routledge, Taylor and Francis* Each time I meet with individuals from across campus I am reminded how disciplines are not just collections of faculty, rather they encompass specific ways of knowing: What constitutes evidence? What questions do we ask? What ways do we conduct research and to what end? Such answers form the epistemological foundation guiding our scholarly activities. However, this foundation is often implicit, not explicit, and thus a mystery for students. The result? The encounter of student and instructor can degenerate into an…
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An Open Letter to Canadian Universities
Guest Author, George Siemens The following post was written by George Siemens from the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University. It is reprinted here with his permission. An Open Letter to Canadian Universities Dear Canadian Universities, You are, as the cool 4chan/Reddit kids say, about to get pwned. The dramatic entrance of elite US universities into online learning will change the education landscape globally. Where we, as Canadian higher education institutions, should be leading, we are laggards. The geography and distributed sparse population of Canada lends itself well to technology-enhanced learning. Remote northern communities can benefit substantially from being able to join classes on subjects where local expertise…
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Surface or Deep Learning?
[social-bio] While I was reading Taking Stock: Research on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Executive by Lindblom-Ylänne, I found myself reflecting on my own learning and asking which of my experiences and courses led me to deep learning? Conversely, what types of activities that I as an instructor have employed have led to deep learning for my students? Surface approach to learning is described as adopting minimal effort in the learning process. One example of this approach is when reading a text as an exercise the student concentrates on reading the text itself. A deep approach to learning is based on a genuine interest in the subject matter and…
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Naming Assessments by Our Intentions
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet” (William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet) If what determines the nature of a flower is its smell and not its name, then what determines the nature of an assessment tool is its use and not its form or label. The same identical test can be used for formative, summative or mixed purposes. What determines if an assessment is “Formative” or “Summative” is who has access to the resulting evaluative information and what is the subsequent use of such information. When the purpose of assessment is to provide information…