Month: July 2012

Why should we care about student feedback? A new perspective – Mihaela Vlasea, CTE Graduate Instructional Developer

Consider the following question:

“As educators, given that we know more than the students on the subject we are teaching, why should we care about feedback from students in terms of how we are lecturing? Are we giving students too much freedom over our teaching methodology?”

Three main reasons come to mind when thinking about why I became involved with the Centre for Teaching Excellence as an Instructional Developer:  I love working with people, I enjoy teaching and I am always pursuing opportunities for improving my teaching skills. I am a strong advocate for the idea of a dynamic educator, one that is able to adapt not only to the classroom environment but also to the demands of the job market in preparing students for their future careers. With this I mind, I was quite surprised when I was faced with the above mentioned question. Continue reading Why should we care about student feedback? A new perspective – Mihaela Vlasea, CTE Graduate Instructional Developer

Lessons learned by a first-time instructor – Alex Shum, CTE Graduate Instructional Developer

Using Online Videos (made by WACOM boards), along with iClickers and Presentation Slides as part of my first course as an instructor

 

I’m currently wrapping up my first course as an instructor. Some of the lessons I’ve personally learned will be covered in this post. I hope they might be useful for the reader, when they teach their first course. I’ll aim to make this post as general as possible so that they may be relevant to any first-time instructor. I should also mention that the CTE Website has a lot of useful teaching tips for first-time instructors and TAs. Continue reading Lessons learned by a first-time instructor – Alex Shum, CTE Graduate Instructional Developer

Trust in the classroom: is it something we really need? — Plinio Morita

On July 5th, we hosted a CTE graduate student workshop on the topic of Trust in the Classroom. My goal was to foster discussion around the topic of trust in a collegial and safe environment. Based on the feedback that I received from the participants, I decided to devote a blog posting to it as it was highlighted as an important, but unusual topic in teaching development workshops.

This observation is supported by the lack of literature about trust in the classroom in higher education. The literature on trust is extensive, ranging from engineering, to social sciences to business. When it comes to education, the focus has been on secondary and elementary education, as many authors discuss activities and techniques to develop trust and create a trust fostering environment. However, a post-secondary classroom is quite different. When looking for literature on trust in higher education, I was able to find only a handful of studies on this topic. Continue reading Trust in the classroom: is it something we really need? — Plinio Morita

iClick? iClick not. — Dan Gan, CTE Co-op Student

Over the years, teachers and professors alike are coming up with new, innovative ways for students to learn and retain information. One of the more recent additions to these gadgets is the iClicker, an electronic response device used in different schools across Ontario. Now, we must ask ourselves a simple question: Is the iClicker actually effective? Through my experience with this gadget, from pondering whether or not to take it out in class, punching in the classroom code, and trying my luck on the day’s set of problems, in no way did it appeal to me. Continue reading iClick? iClick not. — Dan Gan, CTE Co-op Student