General
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Who’s in Charge? You or the Room?
[social_share/] [social-bio] ISSoTL 2014 was held this past October in Quebec City. I was attracted to the conference not just because of the theme (“Nurturing Passion and Creativity in Teaching and Learning”) but also because of the location—I had not been to Quebec City before. I walked from the Hotel Claredon, reputedly the oldest hotel in Canada, to the conference centre through the gates going from the old city to the “new” city each morning. I couldn’t help but notice how different it felt from one side of the wall to the other. The transition zone was well marked and prominent. On the winding narrow streets of the Old City,…
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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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Creativity and Innovation: An example with Soil and Art
[social_share/] [social-bio] For the past ten years, Dr. Ken Van Rees has been incorporating visual art as ateaching tool in his soil science field courses SLSC 898 and 480. Van Rees, of the Department of Soil Science, was recognized earlier this year by the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and Desire2Learn’s Innovation Award in Teaching and Learning. In the following address, delivered at this year’s Celebration of Teaching, Van Rees speaks about his innovative art and soil science classes and inspiring creativity in his students.
- 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…
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USask Professor Adopting Open Textbook
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Eric Micheels, Assistant Professor, Department of Bioresource Policy, Business and Economics The following post was written by Eric Micheels of the University of Saskatchewan and was originally published on his blog on October 6, 2014, under the title, The Economic of Economics Textbooks. It is reprinted here with his permission. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of having a meeting with Heather Ross, an instructional design specialist at the University of Saskatchewan, where we discussed open-access textbooks. The meeting came about after a conversation on twitter where I mentioned that I was considering adopting an open-access text for AGRC 113, a course that has a…
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Defining Shared Thresholds for Dealing with Academic Dishonesty
[social_share/] [social-bio] The Academic Misconduct Policy at the University of Saskatchewan recognizes that as instructors, we often are in a great position to judge the severity of an act of dishonesty and to situate that act in the context of our course. The informal procedures available through the U of S academic misconduct policy set clear parameters—to apply a grade penalty on the assignment or test that is of concern, it must be dealt with using the “informal procedures”. Whereas, the formal procedures may be invoked when the grade penalty you see as deserved extends beyond the assignment or test to the overall grade for the course. However, each of…
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The Academic Dishonesty Redirect: Be Explicit, Know your Policies, Assess Authentically
[social_share/] [social-bio] At the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness, when faculty and instructors ask us about academic integrity, we will inevitably steer the conversation to three main values: the value of being very explicit with students about the rules you expect them to follow the value of understanding the rules of your home department or college as well as the university policy on academic misconduct, the value of designing assessment for authentic learning. Here’s a video that demonstrates this tendency quite nicely, if I do say so myself: And, for further evidence of our redirect, coming up on Monday, October 6 1:30 – 2:15 in the GMCTE Classroom, as…
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Creativity? Teamwork? Tips for Effective Creative Collaborating
[social_share/] [social-bio] At a recent Leadership Conversation we focused on creativity as it pertains to collaborative projects. We based our discussion on ideas from the book Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull who was one of the founders and is the current President of Pixar Animation. (For those of us who didn’t read the book, we got the Coles Notes version from a short video of Ed Catmull speaking about some of what he later wrote in this book. It’s well worth the time to watch!) Heather Ross, who facilitated this conversation, focused our conversation around the following three questions: 1. What was one thing that you took away from what…
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wâhkôhtowin: 2014: Linking Kindred Sprits
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Tereigh Ewert and Jeff Baker The Beadwork Committee, of the College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan, had a vision for a national conference that would bring together “kindred spirits” to unpack decolonization and kindle Indigenization processes and methods to transform educational practices. This vision is coming to fruition from September 18-20th, when the University will welcome delegates from the province, the country, and the world. The wâhkôhtowin conference is structured uniquely, in that on the first full day, papers will be presented in concurrent sessions, where delegates might share ideas regarding Indigenous theory and application, decolonizing practices, the value of Story-telling, working with Elders, examining…
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GMCTE To Host Annual Celebration of Teaching
[social_share/] [social-bio] The Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness will host the annual Celebration of Teaching in recognition of the past academic year’s award-winning teachers on Friday September 12. At this year’s Celebration, the Sylvia Wallace Sessional Lecturer Award and the Provost’s Outstanding Teaching Awards will be presented. The Celebration will take place at the U of S in Arts 241 from 3:30 to 5:30. If you are planning to attend please RSVP to Sharilyn Lee at the GMCTE at sharilyn.lee@usask.ca. The award winners are listed below. Click on the individual names to learn more about the recipients. Sylvia Wallace Sessional Lecturer Award Rod Johnson and Bert Weichel, Geography and…