So for the past century or so, I’ve used variations on a review game when it’s time for students to think back across an entire course. It works for large introductory courses, medium-sized advanced courses, even PhD comprehensive exams! Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Before you think I’m selling the academic term-end equivalent of snake oil, I implore you, gentle reader, to download our latest Tip Sheet; it describes the game in its simplest form. While it’s too late in the term to ask students to come up with key terms (ideally week 10 is a good time to start), there is still value in trying the game in the last class, or recommending it to students for post-class, pre-exam study groups. Continue reading The Coolest Exam Review Game in the Universe? – Trevor Holmes
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.
Notes from a Teaching Developer Conference 2: Universities and New Urbanism – Trevor Holmes
At the Educational Developers Caucus conference I first wrote about a few weeks ago, one highlight for me was a workshop delivered by Erika Kustra and Bev Hamilton from the University of Windsor. While some workshops focus on tips and techniques, and others on current issues, these two critical thinkers facilitated a highly conceptual process that got participants moving around to stations on walls to play with New Urbanism as a metaphor for mapping our institutions (where we are and where we ought to be). Continue reading Notes from a Teaching Developer Conference 2: Universities and New Urbanism – Trevor Holmes
Notes from a teaching developer conference 1: Mark Federman’s Keynote – Trevor Holmes
Several CTE staff members have been at EDC 2009, this year’s iteration of a conference specifically for Educational Developers. It’s a lively group, full of helpful people who prefer to collaborate and share (rather than compete and hoard). After the usual welcoming remarks and housekeeping notes, we had the unusual experience of dramatic readings from two publications (Making a Difference and Silences, both projects of the 3M Teaching Fellows’ Council of our parent organisation, the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education). Continue reading Notes from a teaching developer conference 1: Mark Federman’s Keynote – Trevor Holmes
Brainify.com: academic bookmarking for higher ed? – Trevor Holmes
If you haven’t heard of Murray Goldberg, you have probably heard of his major projects: Silicon Chalk and especially WebCT. Goldberg’s latest baby is a kind of social bookmarking site for academics, and it promises to democratize the classroom in a fully Web 2.0 sort of way. Students and faculty members can join and contribute equally to the building of their disciplines (if by building we mean gathering and annotating online resources that are better than what a search engine alone would find). Brainify.com encourages users to tag resources, but you can also watch for updates to subtopics, Continue reading Brainify.com: academic bookmarking for higher ed? – Trevor Holmes
Announcing a Research Conference on Teaching and Learning at UW – Trevor Holmes
Opportunities and New Directions: A Research Conference on Teaching and Learning will happen Wednesday, May 6 2009.
Proposal abstracts are invited from our own community and beyond, and are due Friday January 30, 2009.
The Teaching-Based Research Group (TBRG), in association with the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE) at the University of Waterloo and supported by Geoff McBoyle, AVPA, invites you to participate in a one-day conference of research on teaching and learning. We welcome anyone interested in this scholarship to join us for an exciting opportunity to network with like-minded colleagues from multiple disciplines and to engage in conversations about new research, work in progress, and emerging ideas.
The full call for proposals is here.
Starting 2009 with a revised Mission Statement – Trevor Holmes
CTE staff “retreated” for a couple of days last October, and one of the results was a collaboratively revised Mission Statement:
The Centre for Teaching Excellence provides leadership in advancing skilful , informed, and reflective teaching.
Three teams of staff members then fleshed out what each adjective really means, and we all came together to finalize language that would then go more “public”:
Skilful teaching involves what we as teachers do, say, or make happen in order to improve learning. Skilful teaching can be learned and taught, acquired and honed. A skilful teacher also recognizes when and why to modify an approach.
Informed teaching involved openness toward new ways of approaching teaching, and a willingness to adjust practice based upon what we learn by listening to students and through discussions with colleagues. Informed teaching is scholarly. It draws on current research and contributes to disciplinary practice in higher education.
Reflective teaching is an iterative process that involves developing an awareness of what we do as teachers, why we make the choices we do, and how our choices impact students’ learning. By examining and sharing our successes and challenges with the larger teaching community, we contribute to an ongoing dialogue about teaching and learning, and extend our own learning and development as teachers.
Feedback on our new Mission Statement is welcome — as always, you can use the Comments feature of this blog to comment publicly, or you can send comments and suggestions to our Director, Dr. Catherine Schryer.
Of lectures and laptops: civility and engagement, Part 1 – Trevor Holmes
A couple of years ago, I asked someone who kept falling asleep or listening to his iPod during my lectures (even though I break things up with “activities” every 20 minutes or so) why he didn’t just stay in his residence room. He said he always went to lectures in case he might pick up something by osmosis. I’m not blaming the student here — just reminding myself that not every second of my craft needs to be gripping to every single student! The increasing use of laptops in class (especially for MSN, Facebook, YouTube, and other non-course-related stuff) is, however, a very public display of what some would call incivility, or inappropriate behaviour amongst lecture attendees.
For the past two days (predictably — it’s the end of term and who doesn’t need a break from grading?) the main discussion list for the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education has been awash in opinions about boring professors and unengaged students. The topic began as a question about banning laptops. Of course banning laptops sounds good to those of us who teach or have observed large first year courses. Until you remember the doodles we did, notes we passed, and other things we did during certain lectures in our own freshman years. Until you remember that some students require laptops to help accommodate disabilities, and banning everyone else’s laptops would “out” them to their classmates. Some good advice came in the form of “use the laptops that show up in class” — which is what I try to do, especially given the possibilities of Web 2.0 tools — and we did get a great reference to an issue of New Directions for Teaching and Learning about this very topic in different disciplines. A quick search of the blogosphere revealed a Chronicle of Higher Education article about this topic too.
This is about more than laptops though.
What concerns me most about the discussion, I think, is that what started as a “blame the lazy millennials” for their lack of civility became a “blame the unprofessional professors” for their inability to keep people awake with entertaining cartwheels (I think I’ll try cartwheels this Winter in my class of 160 students). Blame the students or blame the professors. Pick your side.
I’m simplifying things, but only a little. At least two posters so far have placed the blame for disengaged students squarely on the shoulders of the professors. Ironically, this happens the same day that we find out the data on why students are at university in Ontario and at Waterloo in particular. Sure, 42% really want to be here in an engaged way. Fewer than half. Just over a fifth come because they think they have to, and another fifth have no idea why they bothered. Luckily, a fifth still want to change the world.
http://www.bulletin.uwaterloo.ca/2008/dec/12fr.html
The same holds true of informal polls in a couple of first year courses my spouse and I have taught at another university — fully half the students each year claim not really to want to be at university at all, and cite peer pressure, parental pressure, or just aimlessness as their only reasons to bother going for a degree.
And yet it’s up to us to engage every one of them? Surely, surely it’s a shared responsibility! As a student in the 1980s, when I faced a so-called “boring” lecturer, I saw it as my job to FIND something interesting in the lecture. I was free to leave if I couldn’t. And I knew (as a Trent student) that we’d have a lively tutorial after even the most mind-numbing lecture (there really weren’t many of these; virtually all my lectures in first year were top-notch, and they were delivered by tenured professors, who also ran the tutorial discussions).
This leads me to reflect on the data-driven findings of the Physics Education Research Group at the University of Washington, three members of which visited UW last Friday for the annual Physics Teaching Day, organised by Rohan Jayasundera. They have found time and time again that students CAN in fact improve markedly on basic understandings of fundamental physics concepts through guided inquiry and guided tutorials. This seems to square with the Harvard research on “interactive engagement” techniques (now with clickers) in large lectures. More on next term…