Instructional Strategies
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Authentic Assessment
[social_share/] [social-bio] I think of authentic assessments as ways for students to demonstrate knowledge and understanding in a public way. What makes assessment authentic for me is that students do something to show what they know in a public way that benefits a wider community than the one person assigning a grade. The posters that students did in their first year College of Agriculture and Bioresources (AgBio) classes this past term are, in my way of defining authentic assessment, stellar examples. Working in teams, students prepared a research poster as part of their undergraduate research experience. On the afternoon of December 3rd there were 99 posters on display up and…
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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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Feedback to Improve Teaching
[social_share/] [social-bio] This fall I taught my first for-credit university course. I have plenty of previous teaching experience in the K-12 system and non-credit workshops/courses offered through the GMCTE, but this was the first-time teaching paying university students. I was feeling some apprehension and added pressure. With this pressure in mind (and wanting to provide the best learning experience possible) I put together a formative assessment plan for the course. This plan would allow students to provide me with feedback on my teaching and use of learning activities. Here is a list of some of the items in that plan: Pre-Course Survey: I began with a pre-course survey the last…
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Crafting Artful Teaching
[social_share/] [social-bio] I’ve been a teacher since I was 6 years old and I still absolutely grin when I see a class that is well-structured and flows with lots of student and instructor excitement and enthusiasm that is “on purpose.” When the class time flies by, things are “accomplished,” there’s action, and “learning” is palpable, that is what we strive for, and to me it’s as beautiful as a great movie, a heart-felt song, or a painting that claims your attention. I saw these qualities in a 50-minute class taught by Leah Ferguson, a new faculty member in Kinesiology. I was absolutely grinning by the end of the class so…
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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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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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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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A Lesson In “Not Imposssible”
[social_share/] [social-bio] Each year about this time I start to imagine what if this year things were different. The possibilities of lively discussions, great feats of learning, and engaged students arise with excitement and then that doubting voice drifts in… But what if it was not impossible? What if the needs I perceived in my students and in my goals could be met? Inspiration is offered by Mick Ebeling and the Not Impossible labs through their work that began when they heard of a boy named Daniel, an individual with a particular need, and then asked the question “what if this is not impossible?”. After pulling together a team to…