October 2012 – Centre for Teaching Excellence Blog

Another Good Way to Learn: Debates — Justin He, Co-op Student

Learning, in many university students’ minds, is reading textbooks and attending lectures. Yes, this is one way to learn, but it should not be the only way for students to learn. It is true that students can learn knowledge by this way, but is this the best way for students to learn? Also, other than knowledge, what can they learn from just reading textbooks and attending lectures?

As we all have known in today’s society, students who only have “book” knowledge are not good enough. They require more realistic skills. The question is, how can they develop more skills? I am sure there are many ways to do that, but I suggest students to develop their skills by engaging in debates. You can develop many different useful skills for being a debater.

In general, debate helps you effectively to develop four skills:

Communication
Presentation
Teamwork
Critical thinking

A typical debate match has judges, a motion, which is a topic to debate, and at least six or more debaters. There must be two sides in a match, and debaters are evenly distributed on both sides. Each side is either in favour of or opposed to the motion. Therefore, it has a thesis statement and points to support its position.

Debaters need to figure out the most effective way to deliver all of this information to the judges. Otherwise, they will lose the match if no one can understand their speech. This is the time for people to improve their communication skill. It helps people to find a better way to deliver information and communicate with their audiences in their normal lives. Also, debaters need to clearly present their thesis and points during a debate match; therefore, this is an effective way to develop presentation skills too.

Debate is not an individual activity because a typical debate match involves more than one debater on one side. Debaters need to cooperate with teammates and debate with the other side. As we can see here, teamwork is extremely important. It is a great opportunity for debaters to build up the teamwork skill.

Furthermore, debaters should not only focus on their thesis and points. They have to think of the thesis and points of other side and find out a way to retort them. At this stage, debaters can improve or develop their critical thinking skill.

I suggest that professors consider having an in-class debate as one of the assignments for students. It will surely consume some of their lecture time for teaching; however, this assignment provides an opportunity for students to develop some important skills for their future. Therefore, it is worth to give up some teaching time to let students undertake an in-class debate.

Writing Math: MathJax and Desire2Learn — Paul Kates, Oct 18, 2012

Please visit the MathJax and Desire2Learn page to read about writing mathematics using MathJax in the Desire2Learn course management system here at the University of Waterloo.

Paul Kates
Mathematics Faculty CTE Liaison
pkates@uwaterloo.ca, x37047

Update Your Lectures: Re-Thinking PowerPoint in the Classroom – Zara Rafferty

Oh, how I loved PowerPoint as a student. When the lights at the front of the room clicked off and the PowerPoint projector clicked on, my peers and I took that as our cue to sit back, relax, and start surreptitiously texting under our desks. What was class time for, really, if not to catch up with the latest Facebook news?

Silly faculty, I thought, don’t they realize that, by posting the lecture slides, they are eliminating the need for me to listen in class? As for the few wily instructors who left blanks in the slides? Well, they eliminated the need to study for tests, as we could be fairly sure those blanks would comprise the bulk of our quiz questions.

It was only when I became an instructor that I realized how vital PowerPoint was for me. The slides helped keep me on-track, allowed me to share images or embedded videos, and ensured that I touched upon key discussion points.

But, as I gazed out at my students, not-so-covertly texting, nodding off, or staring at me with vacant eyes, I realized I was doing something wrong. I was using PowerPoint as a crutch and not as an effective communication tool. I turned to PowerPoint to organize my notes when I had not left myself enough time to plan a thoughtful, engaging lecture. I thought that by using a different font (hello, Rockwell!) and selecting a colourful PowerPoint template, I was somehow pioneering educational technology.

Wrong.

I had to face the sad fact that I didn’t know how to use PowerPoint effectively. I didn’t, and you probably don’t either. And that’s okay. We can fix it! Here are my top 5 resources for reinventing how you use PowerPoint in the classroom:

1. You Suck at PowerPoint: 5 Shocking Design Mistakes to Avoid
2. Re-Think Your Use of Visuals: Dance vs. PowerPoint, a Modest Proposal (from John Bohannon, who also created the Dance Your PhD project)
3. PowerPoint Inspiration: 28 Creative PowerPoint Designs
4. Active Learning with PowerPoint Tutorial
5. Try other PowerPoint-esque programs, like Prezi, Keynote, or SlideRocket

Of course, you could always get rid of PowerPoint altogether, but I suppose that’s a topic for a future post…

Happy designing!

(Image via)

MOOCs Usher in a New Era of Learning — Katheryn Rivas

The past year has witnessed a landslide of global participation in Massive Open Online Courses. These classes are commonly referred to as MOOCs and have attracted a diverse range of students from across the globe. In addition to massive enrollment figures (spilling over 100,000 in some cases), these courses are unique in that they are offered by some of the top universities in the United States and the world– for free.

Last month one million users registered with Coursera, making it the most popular MOOC site on the web. The site was founded only a few months ago, in April of 2012, by computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller from Stanford University. A competing MOOC site, Udacity, was also launched by a former Stanford professor, Sebastian Thrun.

It would be remiss not to mention Sebastian Thrun and his role in the MOOC revolution. It was his Fall 2011 Artificial Intelligence class that ignited the spark of MOOC fever that swept the U.S. after enrollment numbers climbed to 137,000. Though only 23,000 completed the course – Thrun said he was hooked on the thrill of teaching massive classes, describing a particular fascination with the peer-based teaching that flourished among the course community.

The trend of MOOCs is spreading not only in the U.S., but to other countries as well. Today, Coursera has a participating university in Canada, India, Scotland and Switzerland. International support for these classes is most evidenced in the international student participation rates. In Thrun’s original AI class, only 25% of the enrolling student body was located within the United States. Independent classes are cropping up across the world in Internet labs and open universities, providing education to those who may not have had access to such information otherwise.

Information is exactly what students of MOOCs are receiving. The classes do not offer degrees or course credits to students who are not enrolled in a parent university, which makes the very purpose of MOOCs different from a traditional institution of higher education. Currently, the most popular courses are in business and technology, suggesting that professors are seeking to answer a need for information within the professional field, making MOOCs relevant and impactful for members of the workforce rather than a student body. There are certificates of completion available for some classes, but the certificates do not carry the title of any university.

Currently, Coursera offers the widest selection of classes of the MOOC sites and has branched out of the STEM box (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) with humanities courses such as poetry and mythology. Other sites such as edX seemed to be bound to the STEM courses for the simple reason that coursework can be assessed and graded by calculations – in other words, by a computer. Other sites are embracing the concept of a peer-educated community by requiring peers to review original work that cannot be graded by a computer. The quality of such peer-based education has yet to be determined.

Another unknown factor of the MOOC era is how these sites will develop sustainable business models. While the motives behind these startups have been primarily utopian – to make higher education globally accessible – the millions of dollars invested in these new companies demand a for-profit model.

The business model that Thrun has suggested would possibly transform MOOCs into a type of trade school in which qualifying students would agree to have their scores and information sold to recruiting companies. This relationship would support a definition of open courseware that provides education despite barriers of finance or distance; but it could also work to limit courses to relevant industry-related topics.

Katheryn Rivas is a prolific freelance writer and professional blogger who frequently contributes to www.onlineuniversities.com as well as other education and technology sites. If you have any comments or questions, drop Katheryn a line at katherynrivas87@gmail.com.