The podcast version of the CTE Teaching Tip document called “Effective Communication: Barriers and Strategies” is now available. You can listen to it via the player at the bottom of this blog posting or by clicking here. If you want to subscribe to CTE’s Teaching Tips feed in iTunes, click here. To read the original Teaching Tip document, with all of its references and additional resources, click here.
Author: Mark Morton
As Senior Instructional Developer, Mark Morton helps instructors implement new educational technologies such as clickers, wikis, concept mapping tools, question facilitation tools, screencasting, and more. Prior to joining the Centre for Teaching Excellence, Mark taught for twelve years in the English Department at the University of Winnipeg. He received his PhD in 1992 from the University of Toronto, and is the author of four books: Cupboard Love; The End; The Lover's Tongue; and Cooking with Shakespeare.
Teamwork Skills: Being an Effective Group Member — Mark Morton
As I mentioned in a previous post, CTE has over a hundred “Teaching Tip” documents. I’m exploring the possibility of turning them into podcasts, and making them available on iTunes. One of the ways to create a podcast is via a WordPress plug-in called “Powerpress,” which is what I’m testing out in this posting. I’ve started by turning the Tip Sheet called “Teamwork Skills: Being an Effective Group Member” into a podcast, and I’ve uploaded it here in iTunes. More will follow!
Who do you love, me or Kate? — Mark Morton
CTE has a series of about a hundred online documents — each about a page or two in length — that provide advice on a wide variety of teaching issues. We call them “Teaching Tips,” and they are the most popular resource on the Continue reading Who do you love, me or Kate? — Mark Morton
Grading: It is personal, actually! — Aimée Morrison
[With her permission, we have reprinted below a posting by Aimée Morrison (Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo) that originally appeared on the Hook & Eye blog.]
Grading is personal. And I’m starting to recognize that, for my students, no matter how I frame my response to their papers (“This paper argues” rather than “You believe”, for example) they take it personally: the grades hurt their feelings, they feel personally slighted. Continue reading Grading: It is personal, actually! — Aimée Morrison
Reflecting On Our Work — Mark Morton
I’m proud to work at a teaching centre that strives not only to serve instructors at our own university, but is also happy to share its resources and expertise with staff and instructors from other institutions. A case in point is the meeting that CTE’s Director — Donna Ellis — and I had on November 22 with a delegation from King Saud University. Continue reading Reflecting On Our Work — Mark Morton
Unwitting Learning — Mark Morton
On Taxi, a TV sitcom from the 1980s, there’s an episode in which Jim Ignatowski, whose memory has been permanently addled by chronic drug use, sits down at a piano and is startled when his hands begin to move over the keys and a beautiful sonata flows forth. “I must have had lessons,” he mutters, with surprise. I felt a bit like that last week when I turned on the car radio, which my kids had inadvertently tuned to Radio Canada. As I listened to the French-language newscast, I was amazed that I could understand it. Two years ago I could read French, but I had almost no aural comprehension of it — I simply had a terrible ear. Moreover, over the course of the last two years, I hadn’t studied or tried to improve my comprehension of spoken French one bit. So what happened?
Well, what happened was that two years ago I began studying Arabic at Renison University College. I suspect that as I worked hard to understand Arabic words, phrases, and eventually sentences, I developed auditory processing skills that I previously didn’t have. True, those skills emerged because I was studying Arabic — but they transferred over, without any conscious effort on my part, to French as well. It’s a bit like developing motor skills by playing tennis, and then discovering that you’ve also, unwittingly, become a better dancer.
Of course there must be limits to this sort of “skills transfer.” Mastering chess might make me a better bridge player, and it might even make me better able to spot logical fallacies in my kids’ arguments about why they should be allowed to stay up late, but it won’t make me a better driver on the 401. Or might it? Is it possible that everything we learn enhances everything else that we’ve previously learned? !آمل ذلك
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The Centre for Teaching Excellence welcomes contributions to its blog. If you are a faculty member, staff member, or student at the University of Waterloo (or beyond!) and would like contribute a posting about some aspect of teaching or learning, please contact Mark Morton or Trevor Holmes.
Teaching for Change: A Conversation at Ground Zero — Mark Morton
During a post-Christmas trip to New York City, my wife and kids and I walked to Ground Zero, the site where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood. At first, it seemed that our visit would be underwhelming: the site now looks like any other construction zone, Continue reading Teaching for Change: A Conversation at Ground Zero — Mark Morton