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PhD Reform: A Speedier and Dissertation-Free Degree?
[social_share/] [social-bio] Not long ago, I began the arduous process of applying to PhD programs. I didn’t make it far. What stopped me was not a lack of desire to push learning further, to what most graduate students see as the logical end of journey that began with their first university class. I was stopped by the nagging sense a PhD would simply take more time and resource than I had available. Because I disliked falling prey to so utilitarian an impulse, I began looking into the PhD itself, to better understand why such a worthy intellectual endeavor appeared unsustainable and to find out if other students felt the same…
- General, Indigenization, Decolonization, Reconciliation, Instructional / Course Design, Instructional Strategies
Undergraduate Student Engagement Underpins Success of Indigenous Philosophy Class
[social_share/] [social-bio] How can a European educated, non-Aboriginal philosopher effectively and ethically teach a course on Indigenous philosophy? For Dr. Daniel Regnier, professor and department head of philosophy at St. Thomas More College, the answer to this question was to set aside a traditional approach to teaching in favour of collaboratively designing and teaching Phil 115: Indigenous Philosophy. “There is a big ethical problem in approaching teaching the normal way when there is such a history of injustice. Normally, a professor who has a minimal familiarity with logic or some philosophical tradition would still be qualified to teach, for instance, an introductory logic class,” Regnier said about the challenges he…
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Curating your Experience – What an ePortfolio can do for you
[social_share/] [social-bio] I recently spent some time on a project to move a learning log used by a non-profit organization to track the progress of their young participants into an online environment. I have since learned a lot about the various tools available to create and publish such documents online, but I remained curious about the rationale behind creating an online learning log or, as it is commonly called, an ePortfolio. Luckily, the TOOC (Introduction to Learning Technologies) currently running through the GMCTE covers e-portfolios extensively in week 11. My goal with this post is to provide a summary of what I have learned about ePortfolios, some of which draws…
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GMCTE Resources – Our Staff Picks
[social_share/] [social-bio] Over the years, we at the GMCTE have been collecting resources about all aspects of teaching and learning. The collection includes a library, copies of Bridges newsletter, a blog, social media and a large section of our website. That is a fairly long list of resources and, unless you have a specific idea of what you want, it can be a bit overwhelming. So, I thought it would be useful to ask our staff about the most interesting or useful resource they would recommend: GMCTE Library Colleen Charles: I would recommend Magaret Kovach’s Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2009, if someone is doing research…
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The Course Design Process
[social_share/] [social-bio] If you have made it through one or more university degrees, it is likely that you have wondered why some courses appeared almost entirely unplanned, while others were highly structured and obviously planned well in advance. If you have ever been a teaching assistant or an instructor, it is likely that you thought about how to plan a course so that students, like you did in the past, get the most from it. This can be a daunting thought for a first time instructor, or for an instructor who wants to try something different while planning next term’s courses. Luckily, others have thought about this a great deal,…
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To Be, or Not to Be (an Academic)
[social-bio] Now that I am (finally) nearing the end of my MA in Philosophy, I face the student’s dilemma: What now – work or more school? Work is certainly an appealing option, since being a broke student sucks. However, meaningful work is hard to find. Pursuing a PhD is worth it intrinsically, and can (actually) open doors to meaningful work. Either way, the future is uncertain, and uncertainty is anxiety inducing. I blogged last year about the value of acquiring ‘professional skills’ while studying, since current grad students face either fierce competition in a shrinking academic job market or a world outside the academy that might not understand what a…
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Marginal Revolution University Joins the Online Education Arena
[social-bio] Marginal Revolution University (MRU) is named after a successful blog called ‘Marginal Revolution’ that is updated daily by George Mason University development economics professors Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok. Cowen and Tabarrok founded MRU. The blog’s title should give most readers a pretty good idea about what sort of commitments Cowen and Tabarrok bring with them to the courses they offer for free online. During the late 19th century, a ‘marginal revolution’ in economics brought an end to the prevailing labour theory of value, which was supplanted by the use of mathematical calculations of marginal cost and utility to explain economic phenomena. Setting the author’s commitments aside is not…
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TLt 2013 Brings Ideas Together
[social-bio] The University of Saskatchewan and the Gwenna Moss Centre hosted this year’s Teaching and Learning with Technology conference on May 1 and 2. The theme was “Making IT Mainstream: Everybody’s doing IT,” focusing on “the mainstream integration of learning technologies at both the level of the institution and individual instructor; what is working and what is not, and how all of this will continue to effect higher education.” Two pre-conference events were held on the first day; Evaluating the Integration of Technology: Understanding the Purpose and Process of Evaluation Research with Valerie Irvine, Brad Wuetherick and Stan Yu, and IDing our Future: A Meeting of the Minds of Instructional Designers, for instructional…
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Canadian Student Blogs About Finland
[social-bio] If you are curious about the student experience of higher education in Finland, which has been a hot topic in the news lately, I highly recommend you read this blog. It is written by Irene Smith, a Canadian and former undergraduate Peer Mentor from the U of S, who is currently studying at the University of Turku in Finland. Her blog posts cover topics as diverse as hierarchies in education and the integration of undergraduate and graduate degrees, and they all deal directly with the contrast between higher education in Canada and her experience of university in Finland. Finland is currently regarded as a world leader in education, according…
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Philosophy for Children: Experiential Learning at the U of S
[social-bio] Philosophy in the Community of Saskatoon Philosophy as a discipline is often thought of as an individual pursuit. However, it is my view that philosophy has always been about connecting with others, as shown by Philosophy in the Community, which has been offering public lectures off-campus for eight years. Philosophy can engage diverse audiences, even children. Philosophy for Children As a method of teaching, philosophy can be a tool to facilitate not only the development of communities of inquiry in primary and secondary schools, but also critical, caring and creative thinking skills among students of all ages. Philosophy for Children (P4C) programs have been growing in popularity all over…