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Open CourseWare at the U of S
[social-bio] Are you teaching a class this term? Would you consider opening some of your class resources to the public? Students thinking of taking your class next year could look up your notes to get a better idea of what to expect. People outside the university could find out more about what we do. Your colleagues could learn more about what you do. Using the U of S Course Tools, you can hand-pick files within your course for sharing more widely. Every course using U of S Course tools has a built-in public view. By default, the public view is very limited, and you can chose to share as many…
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Perplexed by Plagiarism – What Students May Not Know About Referencing Conventions
[social-bio] Students, when asked what the purpose of referencing is in papers, are likely to respond “to avoid plagiarism.” Slightly less rule-bound and more educationally enlightened, some might say “to show where the ideas in my paper came from.” Now, while these interpretations may be accurate, they are incomplete and indicate a rather narrow view that may explain why students often report being perplexed by the notions plagiarism, originality, and authorship. Looking back, it wasn’t until I was a grad student that I started to recognize and value the information that referencing conventions provide. As an undergraduate student, I recall believing there was a “quota” of references to be filled…
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Reducing Confusion and Improving Teaching by Sharing Who We Are as a Discipline
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler The Book: The University and its Disciplines: Teaching and Learning Within and Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries. Edited by Carolin Kreber (2009). Routledge, Taylor and Francis* Each time I meet with individuals from across campus I am reminded how disciplines are not just collections of faculty, rather they encompass specific ways of knowing: What constitutes evidence? What questions do we ask? What ways do we conduct research and to what end? Such answers form the epistemological foundation guiding our scholarly activities. However, this foundation is often implicit, not explicit, and thus a mystery for students. The result? The encounter of student and instructor can degenerate into an…
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Getting Started with Blended Learning
[social-bio] Blended learning, defined as using online tools to support face-to-face instruction, is a popular term these days in education. It can represent a very wide spectrum of ideas from posting lecture materials online all the way to holding some of your classes online. There are many possible benefits to employing blended approaches and with growing pressures to offer more courses online, I think now would be a great time to start exploring. If you are thinking of doing some blending, here are ideas of where you could begin: Post your course syllabus and lecture notes – or portions of notes – to your course’s Blackboard page. This will give…
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Diigo for Portable Bookmarks and Sharing Resources
[social-bio] For many years I did what most people do when I wanted to bookmark something online – I would save it in whatever browser that I was using and if I was away from my home computer I would email the link to myself. If I wanted to share the link with others I would email it to them. This worked fine for awhile, but then I started working on multiple browsers and on multiple computers and I would become frustrated when I realized that the link I needed was stuck in the bookmarks on a different computer. Does this sound familiar? Today, I never worry about such things…
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Do Students Know What Academic Dishonesty Is?
[social-bio] Students know that academic dishonesty is wrong and punishable. Students clearly understand some of the acts known to be academically dishonest, especially where intention to break known rules for a grade advantage is apparent, such as in exam cheating or purchasing papers on-line. At the U of S it is a requirement that teachers provide information or link to the information about academic misconduct on course syllabi. And, yet, students are still left wondering is it wrong to study from circulating old exams from the same course or professor? Is it wrong to, instead of reading Hamlet the play, to watch a movie version and write an analysis on…
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Schooling the World
[social-bio] What is the purpose of modern education? What do colleges, universities, and schools prepare the children of the world to learn how to do? In his blog, 2 cents worth: Teaching & learning in the new information landscape, David Warlick, a self-proclaimed “35-year vagabond educator,” both asks and responds to the following question in his post entitled, “What is the purpose of education.” He suggests that: “The purpose of education is to appropriately prepare our children for their future.” There are some implied, but essential questions in that answer: What will their future hold? What will they need to know? What are appropriate method, materials, environment, activity? Who are…
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Do Teachers Hate Discovering Academic Dishonesty? Yes!
[social-bio] In my reading, researching, writing and chatting about the topic of academic dishonesty over the past decade, teachers’ reactions to academic dishonesty can range from feelings of general disillusionment with students to feelings of personal affront by a specific student. Many struggle with questions like why would students do this, what could I have done differently, what is the right thing to do now? Beyond avoiding the disappointment that encounters with suspected academic dishonesty entail, as teachers I propose we are called to create the conditions for academic honesty because of our commitment to students’ achieving the learning outcomes set out in our courses as well as our commitment…
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Debates as a Teaching Method or Course Format
[social-bio] Recently, I did some reading on using debates as a course format. I had been familiar with using debates as an instructional strategy, but not as the actual format for an entire course. I was able to find a few examples of where this had been previously done, including the Genome 475 course at the University of Washington: For this course, debates were used for all of the units. Each unit was broken into three parts A introductory lecture or discussion The debate An open discussion of issues raised in the debate Other important pieces of information from this example were that Class attendance is required and part of…
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The Profession of Learning
[social-bio] My title here at the Gwenna Moss Centre is officially “Instructional Design Specialist”; I apply my instructional design background to help faculty and instructors develop and improve their skills and abilities as teachers and course designers. However, I think of my “real” work as being more fluid and less prescriptive than the title suggests; I think my ultimate role is to be a “professional learner”. A philosopher at heart, I am prone to reflecting on ideas such as “What is learning? What is teaching? Is it truly possible to have one without the other?” and hoping that I can inspire others who are also on their own teaching and…