Educational Technology
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ePortfolios and the Curious Case of the End-of-Term Journal
[social_share/] [social-bio] Sessions on this topic will be held during the Fall Fortnight: Mahara ePortfolios (Short & Snappy session) (Monday August 22, 2016 from 11- 11:25 AM) – Register here Mahara ePortfolios (Expansion Pack session) (Tuesday August 23 from 10:30 – 11:50 PM) – Register here As an undergrad, I took a senior studio art class in which I had to contribute something, anything, daily (well, at least weekly) to a visual journal we would hand in at the end of term. I did nothing with that journal until a stressful and long two days before it was due. My prof loved the hastily complied and craftily “aged” journal I…
- Assessment and Evaluation, Curriculum Development, Educational Technology, General, Graduate Education, Inclusivity, Indigenization, Decolonization, Reconciliation, Instructional / Course Design, Instructional Strategies, Open
Gearing Up With Fall Fortnight 2016
[social_share/] [social-bio] “Happy New Year!!” That is how I think of September and the new school year. This often coincides with a strong pull to stationary stores, tidying my office, organizing my supplies, reading new books, and pulling out sweaters and warm socks. Gearing up for the Fall Term is exciting. There’s often anticipation, hope, renewed energy for trying new things and looking forward to tweaking things I tried last year. I think about taking a class. There are new “school” clothes, crisp mornings, and longer shadows when I head for home. All of that is bundled together as the new term starts. I think about the new faculty, staff,…
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‘Softwhere’ in the Curriculum
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Donna Beneteau, Departmental Assistant, Mining – Civil and Geological Engineering In the era of rapidly developing technology, an efficient use of words in the title seemed appropriate. “Software, where in the curriculum?” didn’t provide the same effect. This question is now something that I ask myself after developing an assignment for the Gwenna Moss Centre’s course “Introduction to Learning Technologies”. I prepared and gave a survey asking 2nd and 4th year Civil, Environmental and Geological Engineering students questions about software that they use in school, on summer jobs and on internships. In total, I received 214 responses, 110 from CE295 and 104 from CE495. As expected, the…
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Developing ePublications
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Adrienne Thomas and Wayne Giesbrecht (Media Production) With discussion surrounding open resources, this is a good time to talk about actually developing epublications and ebooks. For the past 3 years, Media Production (formerly eMAP) has been working with faculty and content creators to realize epub resources. With each new project, we have learned more about what to do and how to do it – an ongoing lesson as the software, media files and platforms continue to evolve. Within the university environment, we are all concerned with the development of unique and immersive material to be used for information, education, research or knowledge mobilization purposes. If you want…
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What is Digital Citizenship?
[social_share/] [social-bio] Many teaching and learning conversations include notions of developing and fostering citizenship for our teachers and our learners in our respective disciplines and fields and in society. Citizenship can be such broad territory. One way to focus it further is to discuss Digital Citizenship. If you’re still stumped, let me point you to a useful set of Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship appearing on a web site dedicated to this topic. Here, among other things, you’ll find types of norms that characterize appropriate and response technology use. The distinctions between digital literacy, digital communication, digital etiquette, and digital rights and responsibilities strike me as most informative. When we…
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Flexibility is Key When Teaching Online
[social_share/] [social-bio] As the new year and new term kick off, I’m facing a great deal of time in front of a computer for the next few months. I’m co-teaching Introduction to Learning Technologies for the GMCTE, which includes a blended face-to-face and online component for on-campus registrants and a purely online open course for everyone else. At the same time I’m taking an online course in qualitative methods for my PhD and taking the four-week long online workshop through BCcampus on adopting open textbooks, which directly connects to both my work at the GMCTE as well as my PhD. That’s a lot of screen time, even for me. I’m…
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College of Education Adopts Use of ePortfolios
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Tim Molnar, Assistant Professor, College of Education The College of Education recently implemented an electronic portfolio system (ePort) called Mahara™. This open source ePort emerged from a collaborative venture funded by several post secondary institutions and government bodies in New Zealand. In Maori mahara means “to think, thinking, or thought.” Our intentions with implementing Mahara™ are to enhance teacher candidates’ learning by offering a place for the collection of evidence, analysis, representation and sharing relating to their experience as developing educators. Instructors and cooperating teachers have the opportunity to examine, assess and provide feedback to teacher candidates on their efforts and progress. Using Mahara™ also offers an…
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Twitter As A Catalyst for Science
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Jorden Cummings, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology In May I had the pleasure of participating in a symposium at the annual Association for Psychological Science (APS) conference entitled Social Media as a Catalyst for Psychological Science. (The organizer of that symposium, Cedar Riener, wrote a great summary of our symposium – including the slides from our talks). My own contribution was specifically about using Twitter as a psychological scientist. In fact, the very reason I was invited to participate in the symposium is because I follow Cedar Riener on Twitter, and responded to his tweet looking for someone to fill in for a symposium speaker who could…
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GMCTE to Offer Intro to Learning Technologies Course Through Canvas
[social_share/] [social-bio] In the fall of 2013 I was preparing to offer a new course through the GMCTE on learning technologies for instructors at the U of S. The cap on the course registration, given that it was a blended online and face-to-face course, was set at 15. Since we are advocates of open education at the GMCTE we decided to open up all of the resources on a WordPress site. We further decided that we would allow people to “register” for the open course to receive weekly emails and they could list their blogs to make sure that I or someone else in the GMCTE would read their weekly…
- Academic Integrity, Educational Technology, General, Instructional / Course Design, Instructional Strategies
It’s Course Design Not Entertainment: A visit from John Boyer
[social_share/] [social-bio] On October 7, we had the pleasure at the University of Saskatchewan of welcoming John Boyer from the Geography Department at Virginia Tech to speak with us about his innovative and increasingly acclaimed approaches to teaching large classes and his approaches for motivating learning and designing assessment. Recordings of his talks are available at these links, and are embedded at the end of this post. 1. Assessment Innovations that Reduce Cheating and Enhance Learning 2. Teaching (Really) Large Classes (Very) Well There is some repetition between them since there were slightly different audiences in attendance at both sessions and John therefore needed to describe the format of his…