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Registration Open For TLt 2013
[social-bio] The 2013 Teaching and Learning with the power of Technology (TLt) Conference will be held this coming May 1 and 2 at the University of Saskatchewan. This year’s theme is “Making IT Mainstream: Everybody’s doing IT”. With ubiquitous use of smart-phones, tablets and laptops by students and faculty the days of speaking of educational technology in future or fringe terms are long past. It is now mainstream so conversations at this year’s TLt will focus on the mainstream integration of learning technologies at both the level of the institution and individual instructor, what is what working and what is not, and how all of this is and will continue to…
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Academic Integrity and the Roles Students Play: The Student as Trainee
[social-bio] This is the third in a series of four posts about the ways students positioned themselves when discussing matters of academic honesty and dishonesty in my doctoral study. The metaphor of trainee described below, could also be conceived as the student as investor in or consumer of higher education. The overarching idea I gleaned is the student viewpoint that the desired outcome of a university education is gainful employment, where coursework is merely a means to that end, education an investment in the future, and enrolment in university a contractual relationship with an educational service provider. The Student as Trainee “This class that I’m taking is not relevant to…
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Are Learning Outcomes Corrosive? Isn’t it About How You Frame Them?
[social-bio] A recent article in CAUT Bulletin (January 2013) by Frank Furedi discussed the corrosiveness of learning outcomes. As I read through the author’s comments and opinions, I returned to the same questions of: “Isn’t it about how you frame learning outcomes? Shouldn’t the conversations be about how learning outcomes contribute to the learning process? Shouldn’t we as educators be focused on student learning?” I found the article to be very interesting, as I believe that each of the author’s arguments against learning outcomes may be flipped around to show the positive aspects. The article lists four main consequences of learning outcomes: First, that learning outcomes threaten to disrupt the…
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Developing CAT 1.0
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler When I first arrived at the GMCTE one of the first curriculum development projects I got involved in was the curriculum inventory tool. Initially called Currimap, it was in its initial feedback and trial stages and still growing: over the next few months, feedback from colleagues and faculty led to additional capabilities, refinements and flexibility being built into the code by our programmer. This fall we were pleased to launch our Curriculum Alignment Tool (CAT) 1.0. CAT is now an open-source resource available for those on our campus, and also with the code available for other institutions. Throughout CAT’s development we have strived to balance…
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Academic Integrity and the Roles Students Play: The Student as Competitor
[social-bio] This is the second in a series of four posts where I present the metaphors I recognized as being in use in students’ discussions in my doctoral study of students’ understandings of academic honesty and dishonesty. These metaphors can be treated as lenses students appeared to use to see themselves in the university, to navigate their relation to others, and to interpret events. The Student as Competitor “It’s [good grades] like a carrot dangling in front of you. And everybody’s at a race and whether or not your carrot is big enough will tell you how far you’ll go.” “But you try to find every possible way,…
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Signal or Noise: what do I really want to assess?
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler “The essential requirements of a course/program are the knowledge and skills which must be acquired or demonstrated in order for a student to successfully meet the learning objectives of the course/program.” (University of Saskatchewan policy) When I was in undergrad, I thought I was a good student. I would take notes during classes, remember the material, tutor my classmates, complete assignments, and so on. Then would come the final exam including the multiple-choice section with its numbered bubble sheet. I could read, circle the right answer, even write a rationale, but I could not fill in the correct bubble – I actually could not…
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PLN (Personal Learning Network): What, Why, and How?
[social-bio] Do you work in a specialized field? Do you work in a small department? Do you ever wish you had colleagues that you could share ideas with or someone to bounce teaching ideas off of? The answers to these questions are expectedly “yes” for most faculty members. One way to address these questions is by creating a Personal Learning Network (PLN). A PLN is an informal group of people that you can learn from and along with. The difficulty with creating a PLN is the fact that you may not be able to find people with common interests, skills and subject-matter knowledge. This is where the Internet comes in.…
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Academic Integrity and the Roles Students Play: The Student as Subject
[social-bio] This post is the first in a series of four. My posts largely draw from the insights I gained by conducting a doctoral study of students’ understandings of academic honesty and dishonesty. In my analysis, I noted that students used, indirectly and directly, four metaphors to describe their sense of their role, place or position in the university. This is the first of four posts presenting these four metaphors and their potential explanatory power related to students’ understandings of academic integrity. I begin each with two student quotes that reflect the metaphor used by several students, a short explanation, and ideas about what the metaphor might suggest for teaching…
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Digital Citizenship for the U of S Community
[social-bio] In my recent post on the basics of educational technology I mentioned a bit about what not to put online. “Never post anything online that you wouldn’t want your boss, mother or grandchildren to see. Facebook is not private. Twitter definitely is not private. Even email can end up in the hands of the wrong person (have you accidentally had autocomplete come up with the wrong name and then you sent the email without noticing or had someone forward a message they shouldn’t have?). I also point out the grandchildren part because the Internet is the new permanent record.” In the undergraduate course that I teach for the College of Education I cover…
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Student Evaluations of Teaching: What are we really measuring?
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler with Sheryl Mills On the recent CBC Early Edition podcast, the issue of what standardized testing was really assessing was raised. I find a similar concern arises with student evaluations of teaching. The debate of the validity and meaning is not new, but recent findings further suggest that when asking student about their instructors what we are actually measuring may not be what we expected. We may be looking at the gas gauge to measure speed. We do not appear to be measuring learning, or at least the actively engaged involvement with material that produces increased confidence, higher attendance, greater usefulness of reading textbooks, and better…