Undergraduate Research
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Embedding Research, Artistic, and Scholarly Skills: A Step-by-Step Guide for Classroom Success
Whether you’re a seasoned educator or just beginning, this blogpost aims to empower you to align your course outcomes with research, artistic, and scholarly work (RSAW). Let’s explore a self-guided journey of instructional alignment using the 7-level research skills framework and the experiential learning cycle. To undertake this self-guided exploration, you may wish to have the following material handy: Sticky notes in two colours Paper Markers Pens A large piece of paper Step 1: A Day in the Life… Grab a sheet of paper and markers, and draw a ‘day in the life’ for you as a researcher, scholar, or artist. What tasks do you take on? How well can…
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Using Authentic Assessment to Integrate Current Events Into Courses
Authentic assessments are activities, whether for marks or not, that involve students addressing “real-world” problems in a way that reflects activities they might engage in as a professional in the discipline. Authentic assessments can provide several benefits to both students and instructors, including: Enabling students to actively engage with current issues to increase engagement in learning Allowing students to see the role the discipline may play in addressing issues Broadening the audience, which may lead to increased effort and quality Sharing potential solutions outside of institution is “what the world needs” Reducing issues around academic integrity When creating such activities for your students there are a number of things that…
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Why Open Educational Practices in Our Context?
In the previous post about open educational practices (OEP) at USask, I explained what they are. In this post, we will explore why so many people are already engaging in OEP, and why you should consider integrating these practices into your own teaching and research. Our beliefs make us Open supporters Open allows students to participate in the co-creation and sharing of text on current major issues (BLM / Indigenous lives, the pandemic, climate change, struggling small businesses) in their learning, demonstrating that USask is engaged with addressing major issues shaping the world and giving students relevant career skills they can demonstrate for potential employers. When students create materials to…
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What Are Open Educational Practices in Our Context?
We have seen significant growth in the use of open educational resources at the U of S in the past six years. As of this fall, more than a dozen open textbooks have been created or adapted at by instructors and students have saved well over $2 million dollars. “Open”, however, is about more than just textbooks and money saved, it’s about a way of thinking about teaching and learning. This is the first in a serious of posts looking at the integration of open educational practices (OEP) already occurring at the U of S, as well as about the potential for integrating OEP into courses and programs across the…
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Virtual Poster Presentations – Recommended Tools
Note: This list assumes student work is already coming in the likely poster formats (PDF, image as JPG or PNG, PPT, DOC) as opposed to being presented using some unique platform (e.g., Prezi, Sway). Please investigate the help pages linked below first. If you require additional help with one of these tools, email itsupport@usask.ca. Tool Strengths and Challenges Canvas Discussions · Asynchronous (students can access at any time ahead of a given deadline) · Students attach their poster to a thread which classmates can view · Classmates can add comments / feedback to the thread · Simplest tool that enables student interaction! Panopto assignment · Asynchronous · Students produce…
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Featured Instructor : Colleen Bell
Course Innovation Community CIC 2019 Colleen Bell, Assistant Professor Faculty Member in Political Studies Colleen teaches International Studies 110, Global Studies, to a class of over 80 students. By participating in CIC, Colleen was able to gather new ideas on structuring student debates, improve her use of rubrics, and better able to select and sequence the content necessary to engage students (which sometimes felt like a sacrifice!). She used some of her CIC funding to support grading and coaching and another part to have a team-based competition in class. The competition motivated students to watch and evaluate videos made by their classmates. Colleen’s concerns with large class teaching were that…
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Practice Your Research Skills Early and Often
by Merle Massie, Coordinator, Undergraduate Research Initiative We tend to think of university as a place to soak up knowledge, to learn stuff, to end up with a ‘brain full of smartness,’ as one twelve-year old boy once explained. Yet the new University of Saskatchewan Learning Charter promises, and expects, more. While content knowledge is important, the Charter sets out skills and practices that students, faculty and staff are expected to pursue.Three of those skills and practices are specific to research. USask wants students, faculty and staff to: be able to locate, understand, evaluate and use information effectively, ethically, legally and with cultural appropriateness develop and apply appropriate skills of…
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Teaching Students About Research: Open Data = Quality Data with Easy Access
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler When we teach students research skills and ways of approaching being a researcher, we know that research is more than just plugging in numbers or following a script. In a statistical analysis, being able to select the variables to use (and not use) and the analysis to answer the question is as important as running the analysis. We want students to design their own questions and analysis. The challenge though is where to get appropriate data easily and ethically? At the U of S, we are in luck! Our librarians have identified several key Open Data sources: Canadian Open Government Data http://libguides.usask.ca/c.php?g=16466&p=91079 Site…
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Complying with the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Diane (DeDe) Dawson, Science Liaison Librarian, University Library The new Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications came into effect on May 1st 2015. This policy applies to all grants awarded from that day and onward (exception: CIHR has had this policy in place since Jan 1, 2008). This blog post is intended to be a handy, practical introduction to the policy and how to comply. The Policy Details: “Grant recipients are required to ensure that any peer-reviewed journal publications arising from Agency-supported research are freely accessible within 12 months of publication” (emphasis my own). There are two routes to achieve this: Online Repositories (a.k.a. the “Green” route)…
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Undergraduate Research: Co-Publishing With Students
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Jason Perepelkin, Assistant Professor, College of Pharmacy and Nutrition Passive listening and dumping information on exams doesn’t give students the depth of learning and experience that lasts beyond the scope of a course. Having students engage with practitioners and specialists and in a real world environment helps students learn more deeply; chasing grades doesn’t do this but chasing experience does. The elective fourth year course Marketing for Pharmacists is designed for up to 20 students. The course is a project based course where students, working in groups of two to three, work directly with a practicing pharmacist. By working directly with practitioners, on an issue identified by…