Your Brain on Experiential Learning

“Is disengaged.” “Is easily distracted.” “Shows no interest.” “Never shows up.” No professor wants to use these phrases to describe their students, but disengagement is a persistent problem — making descriptions such as these all too common today. Experiential Learning can help. Experiential learning is a powerful educational approach that helps students remain focused as…

Defining Competencies and Outcomes

by Racquel Biem Defining Competencies and Outcomes  Although there, is no widely accepted distinction between a competency and an outcome, there is sufficient commonality for the following working definition to be used to improve the structure and clarity of courses and programs.   A competency is an overarching capability the learner can do. Examples include critical…

Authentic Assessment Grid

Defining Authentic Assessment

by Racquel Biem The term “authentic assessment” is often misleading as it is not just about assessing a student submission ‘authentically’; rather, it focuses on the context and relevance of learning beyond academia. The following definition considers the interconnectedness of learning tasks, activities, and feedback in designing authentic assessments. Authentic assessments are evaluations of student…

Helping Students Build Resilience

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased stress and mental health challenges for many people, including instructors, staff, and students. To help our students, and each other, to build or rebuild resilience we need to take a multi-pronged approach. While the university offers a variety of resources, there are things instructors can do within their classes to…

GMCTL to Launch New Open Course on Open in Early February

The University of Saskatchewan is a leader in Canada around open educational resources (e.g. textbooks) and is moving toward wider integration of open pedagogy (students as contributors, not just consumers of knowledge). As part of this, and in the spirit of open educational practices (OEP), on February 1, 2022 we are launching a new open…

Write your teaching statement, with a little help from a friend

Teaching philosophy statements are challenging to write, whether you are writing one for the first time or revising one you wrote years ago. This blog post is designed to help you start writing or revising your statement. Part of what makes a philosophy statement challenging to write is that they are  diverse in style and…

Using Your Syllabus to Set the Tone for Class

The syllabus is often the first window that students get into a course. An instructor may post it to Canvas, email it, or even still hand out printed copies. While the university sees it as a contract, and instructors and students see it as a description of expectations for course work, the syllabus can do a lot…