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Beauty II: Defining the Big, Bold and Beautiful
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler Getting lost in the beauty of our discipline and sharing it with our students raises the challenge of what to cover within the limited time of our course or program. With all that is beautiful about our discipline, what do we focus on? One approach is to focus on the fundamental perspectives and approaches that define a discipline – the building blocks of a field! These building blocks can be identified and prioritized through several lenses: Celebrating what’s Unique: What makes your discipline unique? What are the key premises, approaches, conceptions, or methodologies not found in other disciplines? What is the unique contribution that…
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Adopting ‘Institutional Humility’
By Tereigh Ewert As a U-15 institution, we have a remarkable opportunity before us: we can be leaders in many ways. I would like to suggest that one of these ways might be by adopting and communicating ‘institutional humility.’ The recent draft of “Vision 2025: From Spirit to Action,” provides us with an excellent opportunity to convey this humility. How do I conceptualize ‘institutional humility’? We acknowledge that our teaching, research, and scholarship can be strengthened by opening ourselves to the different ways of knowing, pedagogies, worldviews, histories, dialogues, and being in relationship to one another. Rather than responding to difference as ‘meeting the needs’ of any cultural group (and by…
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Seeing the Beauty
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler There is something exciting, captivating and intriguing when working through an analysis and seeing the ideas crystalize or flip through the writings of colleague and see the connections to other papers, and to other ideas. The experience of excitement, in my case over a well-selected and implemented statistical analysis or assessment, draws us deeper into our fields of study and expertise. There is something intrinsically motivating (Ryan & Deci, 2000) about such exploration and devotion to learning and discovering more. Sure there are moments that seem like struggles when shopping an article or book for publishing, wrestling for time for deep critical thinking, or…
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Being Enthusiastic About So-Called Mundane Stuff
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler My higher education teaching journey began as an upper-year undergraduate student teaching evening sessions about APA formatting: A seemingly dry topic about commas, alphabetical order of last names, single versus double space etc. As a necessity for undergraduate psychology paper, students’ motivation for signing up seemed to be extrinsically connected (Ryan & Deci, 2001) to the 10% of marks tied to correct use of APA formatting in most 3rd year papers. I could have started the session off with just those basic facts and the pressure-filled reminder of that 10%, but talking about why APA is useful set a better tone. Did you know…
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What’s In a Name? Pronouncing Students’ Names Correctly
By Tereigh Ewert What’s in a name? For all of us, I would argue, our name is deeply connected to our very identities. There are often stories around how we came to have the name we do, perhaps we’ve been named after a beloved family member, friend, or important person, perhaps it’s a name we’ve chosen for ourselves (but sometimes, a name that has been foisted upon us, as in the case of many First Nations peoples when dealing with the newcomers). Personally, with a train-wreck of a spelling for my name, I hear my name mispronounced all the time (it’s pronounced “terra”). When I first meet someone, it is…
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Fair Dealing, Contracts With Publishers and Linking to Journals
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Charlene Sorensen The Copyright Act contains a clause that allows for “fair dealing” in formal educational settings. This means that a non-substantial portion of a published work can be re-distributed to students enrolled in a class provided that neither password protection nor digital locks are circumvented. Non-substantial roughly means an article from a journal volume, a chapter of a book, or short excerpt (less than 10% of the overall work). Similarly, “direct linking” or “deep linking” to a particular piece of content within a website (i.e. giving the exact URL of a PDF file containing a paper within a journal) is acceptable provided that neither password protection nor…
- Assessment and Evaluation, Curriculum Development, Instructional / Course Design, Instructional Strategies, Program Evaluation, SoTL
Being More Efficient
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler “efficient |iˈfiSHənt| adjective (esp. of a system or machine) achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense (of a person) working in a well-organized and competent way [ in combination ] preventing the wasteful use of a particular resource” –(New Oxford American Dictionary”, 3rd Edition, 2010, Oxford University Press) Efficiency focuses on the level of relevant output achieved relative to the amount of effort. Perhaps it is like the phrase “Work better, not harder” or “lift smarter, not harder”. So what does being efficient mean for teaching? What does being efficient mean for curriculum renewal? Set your goals: Focus energy on the…
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Recipe for SoTL
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler Many a metaphor is used to make new ideas feel more familiar. I’m an avid baker, so I wanted to share this alternative sweet way of seeing the elements and processes involved in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Let me know if you’ve got something cooking. 1 cup questions, concerns or new possibilities 2 cups curiosity and excitement for your teaching and your students 1/2 cup reading literature inside your discipline about teaching courses and students like yours (see for example the list at http://pod.nku.edu/sotldisc.asp) 1/2 cup reading literature from educators in other disciplines with similar questions or approaches (see the list at…
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When in Doubt, Write it Out!
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler When I mentioned university teaching, a friend of mine told me the story of sitting in a class for many weeks diligently reading the textbook about “z-scores” and listening to the professor talk about “cee-scores”, only to realize a few weeks in that the two terms both referred to the same statistical test. Knowing that there was only one computation made deciding which to use no longer an issue and simplified assignments and tests. A common challenge in teaching statistics is the uses of Greek letters that may not familiar to English-speakers: a Chi-square test and the symbol χ² seem very unrelated. A similar…
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Learning Through Osmosis
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler The phrase “learning by osmosis” conjures ideas of sleeping with a textbook or sitting near the smart students. What about in the classroom? Lecturing while students passively listen is like letting the difference in osmotic pressure between the students’ brain and the instructor’s brain (or the classroom air) be the driving force to promote transport or diffusion of knowledge. This statement is paraphrased from a recent conversation with a faculty member about how faculty are expected to learn about the culture of their departments (another post, perhaps) and students are expected to learn when sitting listening in a classroom. As I learned in the conversation,…