SoTL
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Assessment Equity and Alignment with Experiential Learning
When I met with Sandy and Harold I was stressed. I was worried that I was falling behind. After coming from a very busy workplace with many competing deadlines and defined work hours, starting a PhD program and having to manage my time independently is a huge challenge. Most days feel chaotic and I’m often overwhelmed. Being a student has given me space, mentally and emotionally, to think and to focus on my health. But this “room to think” can also be a dangerous thing. Sometimes hours, even days, slip by in an unfocused haze of meandering reading if I’m not careful. This skill of balancing time and energy is…
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Aligning assessment and experiential learning
I didn’t know what to expect as I rode the elevator up the Arts tower to interview for a research assistant position for a SOTL group. I certainly didn’t expect the wave of information and Dr. McBeth’s joyful energy. She, Harold Bull, and Sandy Bonny explained the project in a unique dialect; a mix of English and their shared academic speak. I hope they didn’t catch onto my confusion when they were throwing around the term MCQ, or multiple choice question, (which refers to the Medical Council exam in my former profession). I realized that I had quite a lot to learn if I was going to succeed in this…
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What works with study of teaching and learning?
The Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning (GMCTL) offers grants for groups of faculty investigating what works in teaching and learning practice. For most of, the process of teaching causes us to question, asking ourselves things like: Why did that class work so well? Why did students struggle so much with a particular question on a test? What can I do to help with the increase in anxiety my students are reporting? Gary Poole tells us is important to trust ourselves that these are great questions, and to work to explore them. We need to consult the research in case there is already a well-established answer, we need to…
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Top Hat: How is it being used at the U of S?
The University of Saskatchewan has a continuing commitment to a technology-enhanced learning environment for students and in January 2016 acquired a campus-wide license for the Top Hat student response system. Top Hat is a software-based student response system, incorporating a “bring-your-own-device” solution, that is available at no direct cost to instructors and students. The primary goal of Top Hat is to enhance the teaching and learning experience for both instructors and students by bringing more engagement and interaction into traditional passive lecture-style learning approaches. Who we are We are a research team at the University of Saskatchewan who are interested in student response systems with a specific focus on Top…
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Creating Time for Intellectual Creation: Deep Work and Maker Time
By Carolyn Hoessler The familiar challenge: We are 6 weeks into summer, and in the pile on our desk about mid-way down is that proposal, paper, course redesign that there has yet to be time for. Each week offers 40+ hours, yet there can barely be 2 hours of continuous focused worktime strung together. How can this be? What’s going on: We have time but how we use it changes the quality of that time for worse or for better. Just as fractures weaken the structure integrity of a beam, or aesthetics transform an object into art, time’s productivity is transformed by our use. Within computer science and programming there…
- Assessment and Evaluation, Curriculum Development, Educational Theory, Instructional / Course Design, Instructional Strategies, SoTL
What is the science behind your course design madness?
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Fred Phillips, Professor, Baxter Scholar, Edwards School of Business As we begin another year, students are encountering some of the course design decisions made by their instructors. Some will be introduced to “flipped classrooms”, where students prepare by reading/viewing/responding to a learning prompt before it is formally taken up in class. Others will encounter new learning tools, such as adaptive reading systems that embed interactive questions within reading materials with the goal of assessing each student’s comprehension so that new topics can be delivered the moment he or she is ready to comprehend them. Just as instructors have questions about these approaches and tools, students are likely…
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How Do We Define Success in an Open Course
[social_share/] [social-bio] A version of this post was originally published on Heather Ross’s blog on June 24, 2014. In June I attended the Society for Teaching and Learning In Higher Education (STLHE) conference in Kingston, Ontario. As part of the conference I presented, along with Nancy Turner and Jaymie Koroluk (University of Ontario Institute of Technology), a poster about the Introduction to Learning Technologies (ILT) open course that the GMCTE offered earlier this year. During discussions around our poster as well as in other sessions related to open courses, I had a number of conversations with colleagues about just what is “success” in an open course. Completion rates are often used…
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Students’ expectations are formed early
[social_share/] [social-bio] I have been enjoying a series of blog posts written by the acclaimed UK based higher education researcher Professor Graham Gibbs (you can start with the first of the series here). The blogs have been drawn from a comprehensive publication called 53 Powerful Ideas All Teachers Should Know About, with one idea presented on the blog each week. I was particularly struck by the blog post from a few weeks ago as the ideas presented resonated with the approach of the University of Saskatchewan’s undergraduate research initiative. A key approach has been embedding such experiences in large first year courses which addresses Professor Gibbs’ key take away message;…
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Lee Schulman Tells us to ‘Break Bad’ and Engage in SoTL
[social_share/] [social-bio] “Walter White is dead. Heisenberg is no longer someone of uncertain fate.” These were the opening words of Lee Schulman’s talk, Situated Studies of Teaching and Learning: The New Mainstream. Intriguing. What on earth could the main character of the television series Breaking Bad have anything to do with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)? Schulman continued: “And I must say that I have this fleeting image of my colleagues in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, sneaking away from their Chemistry classrooms or Biology or English or History to their SOTL labs and mixing a brew intended to undermine the clarity of thought, the certainty, the…
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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…