General
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Risk Taking in Teaching
[social_share/] [social-bio] I had the extreme pleasure of attending a panel conversation as part of the 4th Annual SoTL symposium last week. Panel members were Dr. Murray Drew from Agriculture and Bioresources, Dr. Jay Wilson and Dr. Michelle Prytula from Education, Dr. Daniel Regnier from St. Thomas More, Philosophy, Dr. Tracie Risling from Nursing and Dr. Mike Bradley from Physics/Engineering Physics. The panel discussion was incredibly thought provoking as would be expected from this line up of faculty from diverse disciplines and different points in their academic careers. The risks they undertook varied from teaching a course with an undergraduate to flipping a class, using social media to develop relationships…
- 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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Lynda.com Open to All at U of S
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Lavonne Cloke Have you ever wanted to learn new software, design or business skills to enhance your personal or professional goals but don’t have the money for expensive courses? U of S faculty, staff and students now have the opportunity to fully access thousands of unlimited, free tutorials, seven days a week, day and night with lynda.usask.ca – a valuable online training resource. Lynda.usask.ca is an online training library that contains thousands of professional grade Windows and Mac tutorials accessed through streaming video. In these videos you will find information that covers many software titles, scripting languages, design and web development platforms as well as popular online…
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Course Design Institute Being Offered as ‘Flipped’ Workshop
[social_share/] [social-bio] For several years, the GMCTE has offered the Course Design Institute (CDI), a four to five-day intensive workshop that walks instructors through the development or redevelopment of one of their courses. This May, the CDI we be delivered in an entirely different format than in the past by “flipping” it to provide participants with more hands-on work time. While in the past, participants attending all day for the four to five days during a single week, this offering will require participants to attend three Thursday mornings over three weeks in May. They will also watch videos and complete assignments outside of these meeting times. They will post their…
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4th Annual SoTL Conference to Be Held at USask
[social_share/] [social-bio] I am extremely pleased to promote and encourage participation in the 4th annual Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) symposium. The day will be strengthened by a diversity of perspectives so we welcome all who would like to attend, no experience of undertaking SoTL is necessary. The event will be held on the 1st and 2nd of May on the University of Saskatchewan campus. In addition to plenary presentations, there will be various opportunities to present your SoTL work or ideas. We invite participation from those interested in dipping a toe in the SoTL waters, those part way through a SoTL project, as well as those experienced with…
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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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Open Textbooks – An Instructor’s Perspective
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Karla Panchuk This post originally appeared on the blog Petragogy on March 23, 2014. I’ve wondered before about the feasibility of creating an open textbook for introductory physical geology. I got as far as sketching out some of the ideas and stopped when it became clear that a lot of work would be involved. My most recent thinking about open textbooks was motivated by learning some startling facts from my students: (1) At sea level, water boils at 1007°C. (2) In areas on the ocean floor where new ocean crust is produced, water can be heated up to 10,007°C. Setting aside for a moment the fact that that my students…
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2014 Higher Ed Horizon Report Released
[social_share/] [social-bio] Every year the New Media Consortium (NMC) and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative release a series of reports on what they see as the coming trends in learning technologies. One such report looks specifically at higher education and the 2014 edition was recently released. While the report has always included what these groups see as the “important developments” that will be adopted in this area in three time frames (within one year, in two to three years, and in four to five years), this year’s report also includes “Key Trends Accelerating EdTech Adoption in Higher Education” and “Significant Challenges Impeding EdTech Adoption in Higher Education”. The “key trends” are broken…
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High Impact Teaching Practices
[social_share/] [social-bio] NOTE: There are ten high impact educational practices that reportedly increase student success. You can access that list and brief description at https://www.aacu.org/leap/hip.cfm, http://www.uwgb.edu/outreach/highimpact/assets/pdfs/kinzieHO2012.pdf, or watch this short 6-minute video: For the back-story—the elements that make these high impact practices check out http://us.tamu.edu/Faculty-Administrators/High-Impact-Learning. A summary is provided here: High impact practices have these elements in common: 1. EFFORTFUL is not a bad thing. In fact, “effortful” stimulates learning and increases retention of that which is learned. “Effortful” is also engaging and focuses attention for an extended period. One of the greatest disservices we can do for students is to reduce the required effort and make things easy. 2.…
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Using Google Hangouts to Bring in Guest Speakers
[social_share/] [social-bio] This post was originally published on Heather Ross’s blog on February 28, 2014. I’m considering myself very fortunate that I’m the instructor for Introduction to Learning Technologies. I get to meet with students in the blended cohort. I get to communicate with participants in both groups through email, Twitter, Facebook and Google+, and a couple of weeks ago I got to sit down and have a Google Hangout with John Boyer, a geography professor at Virginia Tech. He’s done some amazing things with learning technologies in his World Regions course. I started following John some time ago on Twitter and he was kind enough to respond to my…