What is it actually meant to “learn” something? Is it just to acquire the necessary information? To understand it? Or maybe you just need to be able to answer that question on the final exam. To most people (students at least), this is in fact what learning is all about. To me, the only way I would know I have learned something is when I am able to teach what I have learned to someone else. Continue reading Learning Through Teaching – Michael Li
Author: trevorholmes
As Senior Instructional Developer, Curriculum and Programming, Trevor Holmes plans and delivers workshops and events in support of faculty across the career span. Prior to joining the Centre for Teaching Excellence, Trevor worked at a variety of universities teaching courses, supporting faculty and teaching assistants through educational development offices, and advising undergraduates. Trevor’s PhD is from York University in English Literature, with a focus on gothic literature, queer theory, and goth identities. A popular workshop facilitator at the national and international levels, Trevor is also interested in questions of identity in teaching and teaching development.
SCoPE out this rich international resource – Trevor Holmes
I’ve just returned from four days in British Columbia, where I had a small glimpse of Olympic fever in Vancouver as I passed through coming home from a conference in Kamloops. While Canada’s medal quest will be over in a short while, a site I’ve used before and was reminded of this past Saturday truly deserves the Gold. It’s called SCoPE, and it’s for anyone interested in higher education research and practice, often but not exclusively with an online flavour. There are synchronous seminars with live interaction, as well as asynchronous discussions and archives of past events. The content-rich site has documentary, wiki, and video resources from their early seminars to their lates
t offerings — currently, “Pimp your Post,” about that important first class message in an online course. It’s free to join, and an excellent use of resources through BCCampus (after a start-up grant ran its course through SFU a while ago). This was just one of many resources showcased at Educational Developers Caucus 2010 at Thompson Rivers University; in the coming weeks I’ll report on other useful stuff I learned (or re-learned — sometimes it takes Your Faithful Curmudgeon a few tries).
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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.
A commercial webinar on teaching – do we want this? – Trevor Holmes
Normally, I’d be loathe to flog a business solution to a pedagogical problem that can be solved easily in-house. However, I noticed in my email inbox (I belong to too many listservs!) a freebie from a company that specializes in higher ed “webinars” — ugly word, I know — this one has some time-saving tips about uses of regular everyday technology and higher-octane stuff. Continue reading A commercial webinar on teaching – do we want this? – Trevor Holmes
Educational Fads and Jargon 1 – Trevor the Curmudgeon
It’s Holiday Season. I really should be feeling generous. Everything is going well. However, I’ve been so involved lately in running meetings or workshops that my immersion in educational theories may just have reached the point where I’m gasping for air. Here’s why: “incentivize” — yup, one word. I can’t really see that it is a word, an allowable word, but if it is, it may indeed be one of the ugliest in the English language. Other than “impactful” I guess. I’m not even going to grace the offending word with a citation, as I wouldn’t want to endorse the company that offers it. The context in which I saw it: browsing around for energizers to use with smart grown-ups (rather than off-putting ones that are meant really for elementary kids), I saw a link to a site for a rewards and sanctions system that uses plastic credit cards to “incentivize” students between the ages of 11 and 18. I think it’s a sign of the end of the world. But seriously, the deeper point for me is that humans do not need a newfangled business-speak word to be curious, to be civil, or to be engaged (even if the latest wisdom seems to suggest that millennials need something vastly different than X’ers and boomers did). We just need the right conditions for the people and the topic, and learning itself will be incentive enough to jump in head first.
Twittering and Continuous Partial Attention – Trevor Holmes
For a week, I’ve been Twittering. Normally, Mark Morton (intrepid voyager in neotechnology-land) would be the jolly fellow bringing you glad tidings of great techno-teaching joy. Having experimented for something like fifteen years in the classroom, though, I thought it would be fun to continue my Early Adopter mentality and change up my own course this coming Winter term over at That Other University down the street, adding a bunch of social networking tools that had previously existed in partial form or by accident in Cultural Studies 101. Continue reading Twittering and Continuous Partial Attention – Trevor Holmes
Students vote! – Trevor Holmes
As a teaching developer, a good deal of my time is spent thinking about faculty members’ needs in the teaching/learning equation. I consult with them individually, help to run a workshop program, go into Department meetings on curriculum design… but I also think about students in the overall picture. My own teaching philosophy used to include an emphatic claim about students knowing best what they need; since my idealistic early days, I’ve tempered that a bit, while maintaining that some, in fact, really do have a solid sense of themselves and their learning. This frames the difficulty I have reconciling two views I hold about the recent voting by students in general and students on Senate. Continue reading Students vote! – Trevor Holmes
How *I* chose my undergraduate university — Trevor Holmes
Okay so here’s the thing. Saturday I found myself at work for a short while. My own fault — I was late on something so took an hour to come in and fix things up so I wouldn’t look like a complete loser on Monday morning. I saw thousands of parents with scared-looking, uncommunicative kids being almost dragged along behind them. It was the parents who looked around with the sense of wonder, curiosity, and eagerness that once upon a time would have been the preserve of the young people seeking the right school. Continue reading How *I* chose my undergraduate university — Trevor Holmes