2006-2007 Teaching Effectiveness Program

 

Maximizing the Effectiveness of Broadcollecting
Tom Haffie, Department of Biology, University of Western Ontario
August 10, 2006; 2.5 hrs

Higher education classrooms are typically equipped with some combination of blackboards, overhead projectors and computer-based multi-media with audio amplification - all are "push" technologies intended to facilitate the ability of one to broadcast to many. Such environments promote uni-dimensional and uni-directional interactions (instructor to student only) that may not accommodate more effective pedagogies. However, the current generation of clicker technology now enables broadcasting to be punctuated by a new type of interaction that we call "broadcollecting". Broadcollecting is the "pull" that, in combination with the traditional "push", promotes multi-dimensional and multi-directional interactions that can transform the learning environment. The success or failure of this technology to fundamentally change teaching and learning in positive ways turns on the quality of the impact of broadcollecting. 

Reflecting on his experience in using clickers with his first year Biology class at the University of Western Ontario, Tom will engage participants in a critical discussion around questions of interest to the group such as:

• What opportunities and challenges does broadcollecting present to the instructor in front of the class? 
• What types of broadcollecting questions are most useful? 
• What is the relationship between clicker questions and exam questions? 
• What types of pedagogies are enabled by broadcollecting? 
• How can we maximize the usefulness of accumulated click records? 
• What types of ethical or privacy issues arise during broadcollecting? 
• How can broadcollecting be used for evaluation? 

In general, participants will gain increased awareness of clickers and the potential benefits that arise from the new classroom interactions that they enable. 

 

Inclusive Pedagogy and Related Conversations
Kumari Beck, Office of International Teacher Education, Simon Fraser University
September 27, 2006; 1.5 hrs 

This session will provoke discussion on key issues related to internationalization of curriculum and pedagogy. Key learnings will be shared from Inclusive Teaching, a pilot project on internationalization of curriculum in a Faculty of Applied Sciences, as well as preliminary findings from Kumari Beck's doctoral research on the experiences of international students. From a variety of these and other experiences, issues for discussion will be identified.

 

Using an interactive web site to build student e-portfolios
Prof. Deborah Berrill, School of Education and Professional Learning
October 6, 2006; 1.5 hrs 

Participants in this workshop will go online to access an interactive portfolio building web site to learn about the process of building a student e-portfolio. Two types of student portfolios will be presented: a teacher education portfolio and a biology portfolio. Advantages and limitations of the site will be identified and successful ways of introducing the site to students will be described. Participants will build their own e-portfolio entries related to their teaching practice.

The development of student portfolios was an initiative that Deborah Berrill started about fifteen years ago. Deborah realized from comments of hiring teams, that graduates of the concurrent teacher education program were able to articulate the knowledge and skill that they had learned. After a number of different approaches, she found that the development of portfolios enabled them to 'see' their own knowledge and skill -- and to represent it tangibly. The great challenge was to find ways to represent knowledge in a concise format. Working with others, including students, portfolio entry samples were developed and refined. More recently, she recognized the need for an interactive online web site to support students more fully in what can be a very daunting exercise. To this end, Deborah created portfoliomaker.ca. This initiative continues to evolve and has had considerable impact on her teaching and on student learning. 

Over the ensuing years, Deborah has heard from graduates about how helpful the portfolios were in job interviews. Interestingly, this came not only from use of the portfolio during the interview, but even more powerfully from the process of creating the portfolio and the type of critical thinking and reflection involved in selecting items to include and writing comments about those items.

 

Reflections on Accommodating Diverse Learning Styles in the University Classroom 
Prof. Susan Wurtele, Department of Geography

October 13, 2006; 1.5 hrs 

Susan Wurtele will present on strategies for designing an inclusive classroom. The first part of the session will focus on Susan's reflections on her own experiences integrating principles of universal instructional design as they relate to assisting students' diverse learning styles, including students with disabilities. Susan will share how she went about adapting a university course using UID principles. She will also reflect on her teaching practices and the impact that this teaching methodology can have on university faculty and students. In the second part of the session, Susan will lead a discussion on overcoming the obstacles faced when accommodating diverse learning styles in university courses.

 

Collaborative Assignments
Prof. Cathy Bruce and Fiona White, School of Education and Professional Learning
October 19, 2006; 1.5 hrs

Assessment is always an interesting topic amongst university faculty. To make things even more interesting, Fiona White and Cathy Bruce will be talking about how instructors who teach within the same course or instructors who teach in different courses can collaborate on assignments to ensure the integration of student learning more fully across courses either within a single discipline or across disciplines. Cathy and Fiona have completed an Academic Innovation Funded project that involved a cross-course, cross-section assignment where students had to apply learning from more than one area. The process, marking strategies, and outcomes will be shared with participants in order to facilitate further conversation about collaborative assessment practices.

 

Integrating Interactive Teaching Into Your Classroom: Getting started with low and medium risk activities
Prof. John Bishop, Michael Konopaski and Prof. Asaf Zohar, Business Administration
November 2, 2006; 2 hrs

Students learn little by passively listening. If faculty are going to have students actively learn the conceptual systems appropriate to a discipline, then we must encourage active learning through interaction between faculty and students and amongst students. Traditionally this has been accomplished by discussion and student presentations in small seminars, but we now face the challenge of meeting this learning need in larger classes. This workshop is an introduction to interactive teaching techniques that can be used with classes larger than seminars. After a brief overview of current thinking on the importance of interactive learning, emphasis will be on introducing low and medium risk teaching techniques that are easy to organise and control, but that have been found to be effective in aiding complex student learning.

 

Popular Education at Trent: New Possibilities in the Classroom
Brendan Bailey, Prof. Lynne Davis and Erin Krekoski, Indigenous Studies

November 20, 2006; 2 hrs

Popular education challenges traditional power relations in the classroom. Inspired by the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, this teaching approach questions the political neutrality of the education process. In popular education, the experiences of students are valued and become the starting point for collective analysis leading to reflection and action. Often creative expression is used as a medium to deepen and extend analysis. Lynne Davis has used this approach since 1989 to introduce students to the theory and practice of building sustainable communities in Indigenous and international contexts. 

This workshop will use a number of exercises to introduce ways of working with a popular education methodology. Participants will have an opportunity to move from personal experience to collective analysis and reflection. Participants will also design an application of popular education that they can use in their own teaching. 

 

Braided Practice: Weaving Inquiry into Teaching and Learning
 

Dr. Richard Gale, Senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching & Director of The Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) Higher Education Program

November 16, 2006; 2.5 hrs 

During the last decade the scholarship of teaching and learning has begun to flourish on college and university campuses around the world, particularly at Canadian institutions dedicated to the scholarly investigation and improvement of student learning. This presentation will address aspects of the history and practice of the scholarship of teaching and learning, with particular emphasis on institutional innovation and the place of inquiry in teaching excellence. All university and college faculty, instructors, and administrators are invited to attend and participate.

 

Interactive and Adaptive Online Learning in the Sciences
Prof. Marco Pollanen, Department of Mathematics 
November 22, 2006; 1.5 hrs

The Internet offers phenomenal opportunities for interactive learning. However, many subjects such as Mathematics rely heavily on "non-textual" knowledge such as formulas and graphs. In trying to create an interactive online learning environment for mathematical based sciences this presents both challenges and opportunities. In this presentation we will introduce two new technologies to make online mathematics more interactive and outline our experiences in using these technologies in an online component of a traditional course. 

The first technology is a communication tool that extends the concept of a chat room or whiteboard to include capabilities for mathematical and symbolic content. It loads into a standard Web browser with no installation, and assists users to input and communicate in real-time the symbolic content, such as formulas, that is often an impediment to communication in other technologies such as e-mail or instant messaging. 

The second technology is a web-based adaptive learning environment. It leverages the algorithmic nature of mathematical formulas to create template based exercises. From a single template the software can generate a virtually unlimited number of different exercises. In addition, with the aid of a computer algebra system the software can assess free-form answers for correctness. The goal of this technology is to allow instructors to create exercises that automatically adapt to a student's particular level and skills.

 

Always / already "isms" --sensitizing for respectful teaching and learning
Prof. Maureen Connolly, Physical Education / Women's Studies & Director, Centre for Teaching, Learning and Educational Technologies, Brock University 
March 2, 2007; 2.5 hrs

In an era of heightened political correctness coupled with the excesses of a media soaked culture, it is easy to assume that awareness of a variety of discriminatory attitudes and behaviours (e.g., racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ablism, colonialism, to name a few) has resulted in a decrease in their occurrence. What remains alarmingly clear, however, is that awareness has lead to a sense of the already accomplished eradication of these attitudes and behaviours, and their manifestation has moved to more subtle and ostensibly "innocent " set of habits and practices that are much more difficult to recognize and address.

In this session we will generate examples of the habits and practices mentioned above and discuss learning strategies which engender a space for discussing awkward and uncomfortable topics without reproducing the oppressions we are critiquing. Participants will engage in a variety of active learning experiences.

 

Peer Review Models for Enhanced Learning
Prof. Sarah Keefer, Department of English Literature
March 16, 2007; 1.5 hrs 

Sarah Keefer has used peer review as an integral part of fourth-year teaching for six years and is currently developing models for the application of this useful procedure at the undergraduate level including first-year, in Humanities or Social Sciences courses that require academic discourse as a component of their submitted work. This strategy allows students a better understanding of the correct process of producing work in essay or report format, and encourages them to differentiate between draft and final copy, since circumstances for revision are generated in a "safe space" (students reviewing other students without faculty involvement until the final project is complete). Peer review is therefore student-transparent to allow reviewers both to receive constructive suggestion and to learn by positive and negative example as they read and comment on the drafts of peers. Given the increasing difficulty that intake students demonstrate when asked to construct academic discourse of any kind, the peer review process has application for improving this essential skill needed for success in Humanities or Social Science courses.

 

Reflections on the UPEI Faculty Development Summer Institute -- Is it for you?
Prof. John Bishop & Michael Konopaski, Business Administration 
March 22, 2007; 1 hr 

This past summer John Bishop, Asaf Zohar and Michael Konopaski attended the University of Prince Edward Island's Faculty Development Summer Institute. This institute brings together faculty from across Canada to engage in conversations, presentations and techniques on how to connect active teaching and learning with motivation, critical thinking, giving feedback to students, and engaging large and diverse groups. In this teaching conversation, Michael and John reflect on the impact of this conference on their teaching practice from the perspective of early and mid-career faculty.

Carleton University Instructional Technology Day 
April 4, 2007 

This one-day conference featured Carleton faculty members and their use of technology to create an engaging learning environment. 

Developing and Nurturing a Statement of Teaching Philosophy
Prof. David Poole, Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning / Mathematics
Friday, May 4, 2007; 2 hrs 

Increasingly, the requirements for appointment to academic faculty 
positions, tenure and promotion decisions, nominations for teaching 
awards, and grants in support of teaching innovation include a 
statement of teaching philosophy. Often, such a statement forms part 
of a larger teaching dossier or portfolio but it may also need to 
stand on its own. In this workshop we will discuss what makes a good 
teaching philosophy statement, how to develop one, and how it may 
change over time.

Examples will be given to illustrate some of the salient features of 
a good teaching philosophy statement and participants will be asked 
to share their own ideas. This workshop will hopefully prove useful 
both to those beginning to develop their teaching philosophy 
statements and to those who already have one.

 

Reflections on using student voting clickers to enhance in-class participation
Prof. Jocelyn Aubrey, Psychology; Prof. Carolyn Kapron, Biology; Prof. Ralph Shiell, Physics and Astronomy; Prof. Al Slavin, Physics and Astronomy; and Prof. Andrew Vreugdenhil, Chemistry
May 8, 2007; 2 hrs 

During the 2006-2007 academic year, student voting clickers were used in first-year courses within the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Environmental and Resource Studies/Science and Physics & Astronomy, in a second-year Psychology statistics course, and within the School of Education. This teaching conversation brings together faculty who have used the technology to share their reflections on the impact of clicker technology on their teaching and their students' level of engagement, and to share some of the feedback they have received from their students, both informally through conversation and formally through questionnaires/course evaluations.

Studies have shown that student learning is greatly enhanced if part of classroom time is spent in guided, small-group discussion. One way to encourage such participation in even large classes is for each student to have a handheld "clicker", similar to a TV remote control, that allows student responses to be recorded, with their ID number, in a computer. No wiring is required, and the receiver (typically 3 cm wide x 8 cm long) is plugged into the instructor's computer USB port. A class of up to 1000 students can use a single receiver. Typically, the instructor will ask the class a question with several multiple-choice answers, with the questions being either of the right/wrong variety, or designed to gauge student opinion on social issues, for example. Students can decide individually or in small-group discussion and then each vote for one answer electronically. The computer tallies the scores and displays a histogram of the responses which is projected via the data projector, so that the class and the instructor know at once the aggregate class opinions. The computer will grade responses and assign participation and/or correctness marks as desired. The clicker system can easily be interfaced with PowerPoint if desired. 

Eastern Ontario Symposium on Educational Technology
Royal Military College, Kingston, Ontario
May 24, 2007

This one-day symposium brings together faculty and instructional designers from across Eastern Ontario to share their challenges and new opportunities in the field of educational technology. This year’s theme is Educational Technology in Action; our conference will focus on best practices and exemplary work. This symposium is an opportunity to share knowledge and experiences in the application of technology to the teaching and learning process, in the classroom and at a distance. The program consists of several presentations, which will be delivered in two concurrent streams.