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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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How to Make an Effective Rubric
Good rubrics have three key advantages: If you develop them, they help you align your assignment with your outcomes They help you have similar marks for different students’ assignments of similar quality (inter-rater reliability), if you practice using them with other instructors or your TAs They increase student understanding of the skills you want them to demonstrate and focus your students specifically on those skills Although a good rubric is very helpful, they can be hard to develop. This video describes why we use rubrics, common mistakes we make as we create them, and how to make a good one. Interested in more? View a one hour session from Sue…
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Considerations for creating an open-book exam
An alternative to the traditional time-constrained invigilated final exam is the open-book exam. “Open-book” implies that learners will have access to some type of references or resources during the exam, but the level of access to resources and time constraints are variables controlled by the instructor depending their exam design decisions. If you are considering an open-book exam, here are some things to keep in mind: Focus on the Learning Outcomes – When making decisions about exam design and the types of questions you are going to have on your exam, think about the most important things you want your students to come away knowing (your learning outcomes / key…
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What Can You Do About Academic Misconduct?
The causes of academic misconduct have been well-studied and the following points explain most of this concerning behavior. Research shows that very few students plan on doing things like buying papers or crowd-sourcing exam questions when they enroll in courses. Students widely report that their decision to “cheat” was almost always instead taken at the last minute, under pressure, based on one or more of these 3 concerns: Students placed a low value on what was to be learned Students had low expectations of success for themselves, whatever success meant to them Students believed cheating was widespread: “Everybody’s doing it—I’d be dumb not to” Low value on learning required…
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How Do I Set Up My Notifications in Canvas?
As you’re getting started with Canvas, you’ll want to set up a few things to make it work more like the way you’d like. Within Canvas you’ll find a button under which it says Account. When you click on that you’ll see a list of links including Notifications, Profile, Files, Settings, and some other things we won’t worry about for right now. Notifications is where you can specify how and how often you receive notifications about updates within your courses in Canvas. These may include posts to discussion forums, submission of assignments, students signing up for appointments, etc. This resource created by Canvas details how to set up your notifications: How do I set…
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What to Do First in Your New Canvas Course
By Roberta Campbell-Chudoba Canvas offers faculty and instructors an exciting online platform with efficient and effective tools to improve the teaching and learning experience, especially during this time of remote instruction. In mid-June of 2020, Canvas courses will be available to all those who elected to be ‘Early Adopters’ and faculty whose college, department or school is implementing Canvas across courses for Fall 2020 term. We’ve decided as a Canvas implementation team, not to reinvent the wheel and instead, point you to great resources Canvas has to offer! Most people want to get familiarized first with the look and feel of Canvas. So, let’s get started by accessing your Canvas Dashboard at canvas.usask.ca (available in mid-June). Once you have…
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Office Hours, Remotely
When we move to remote teaching, we need to consider how we will continue to provide students with student-instructor interaction. One way of offering this is through office hours. While we used to offer office hours outside of lecture or class time, now we might be able to leverage our scheduled class time to engage with students to discuss problems, specific questions, or examples. Transmission of content (powerpoints, videos, readings, etc.) can then be reallocated to asynchronous hours. Determine if it best suits your course to offer: group discussions, individual consultations drop-in sessions Be consistent with whichever options you choose. Remind students often via email and course notifications. Use the…
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Copyright and Remote Teaching
As you prepare for remote teaching this fall, you need to keep in mind issues related to copyright. The following key points were made in the USask version of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARLs’) copyright guidance released as the University quickly shifted to remote teaching in March: Most of the legal issues are the same whether the teaching is done in person or online. If it was okay to do in class, it is often okay to do online – especially when your online access is limited to the same enrolled students. You can continue to apply the University of Saskatchewan (USask) Fair Dealing Guidelines. The following resources have…
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Studio-based Remote Teaching
Studio-based courses are about the process of observing, creating, critiquing, and refining over time. Students learn techniques and process, attempt them, compare what they have created to criteria, intent, or other works, and then refine or iterate. The 4 key elements for a studio-course include: Observing a demonstration of a process or the creation of a product Performing a process or create a product using appropriate materials or space Comparing, critiquing, or observing drafts and final products Refining, iterating, and revising to improve skills and observation Observing and Performing a Process Would you typically be present to observe students’ create some artifact of their learning and is this process an…
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Online Sharing Circle
Technology is excellent at allowing us to work remotely, but it can be more challenging for building community or keeping a community strong. Technology’s strength is for communication and is not as robust for building connection, especially with larger groups. Purpose The goal is to create the ‘lunchroom’ experience where people share and ground themselves within their respective working group/community. We believe that this type of opportunity will contribute to the art of kiyokiwin, coping with the social isolation, allowing people to raise topics outside of work priorities, better understanding of each other, and so much more. Online sharing circles could be used by instructors to facilitate “courageous curiosity” with…