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
After attending one of the Sixth Decade Mid-Cycle Review sessions, I began thinking about some of the comments that were raised during and after the session regarding academic excellence and what that entails. Continue reading Learning is a Social Activity – Katherine Lithgow
A while ago I heard about interesting research in psychology that discusses the state of optimal experience called flow. This fascinating research, pioneered by Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced chick-sent-me-high-lee), suggests that the state of flow is characterized by complete mental and physical commitment, clarity of focus, mindfulness and loss of sense of time. Continue reading Flow as an Optimal State of Learning – Svitlana Taraban-Gordon
Lately I have been thinking about the weather a lot. Well, a lot more than usual. (Isn’t it the number one topic of choice of casual conversations among Canadians?). The weather changes so frequently around this part of the country that sometimes I take change for granted. So much so that I may not notice changes. Except for lately, because lately I have daily reminders of the change that is going on all around me. The changing of the leaves is one of the most visually striking reminders to me that change is happening. It makes the change much more explicit. It’s ‘in your face’ so to speak.
All this reflection about change started me thinking about the changes that happen to our students (and ourselves) as we go through the learning process. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could actually see our students change colour like the leaves – as they grow in knowledge and understanding? For instance, what colour would deep learning be? Perhaps crimson or purple? How about critical thinking? A rich orange perhaps? And what about teachers? Would we glow a warm yellow if our teaching was engaging? How different life would be for both student and instructor alike if we could actually see the effects of teaching and learning in a rainbow of colours, so we could know for certain a change was occurring…
But…that is not the way it is.
So, I do my best to try and incorporate the principles of good teaching into my courses, in hopes that change will happen – even if I cannot see it. I read some literature related to teaching and learning and try to make some adjustments – albeit minor ones – in the way I teach. I try new things. I watch and see if a change occurs. Perhaps my efforts do result in a little deeper learning and a little more critical thought and reflection in my students, perhaps not. I may not notice a big change in my students – I only see them for a short time – and then they move on. But perhaps I can trust the process somewhat. The same way I trust the changing of the seasons. I may not be able to see change happen in my students in the same way as I see the changing of the leaves, but I like to believe my efforts have been worthwhile, and that the colours are there, underneath.
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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.
My colleague Monica Vesely recently blogged about connecting with our students by being more transparent in our teaching. This is solid advice and helps us to think about putting our students and their learning experiences at the core of our teaching. It fits with a recent e-flyer that I received about the 5Rs that we can use to better “engage” students: relevant learning, research-based approaches to instruction, rationales for course designs, relaxed and participatory learning environments, and relational opportunities and rapport with professors.
I have my own thoughts about how to connect with our students. I recently delivered a keynote talk at a geotechnical engineering conference on teaching and learning where I was asked to provide my insights on how to promote effective learning in the lecture setting. Traditional didactic lectures have not been the ideal setting for students to learn deeply – to retain key concepts and apply and connect knowledge across multiple contexts.
In a non-traditional interactive format, I explored principles of deep learning with the participants and then presented a model about making connections in our teaching to promote effective learning: learner to content, learner to learner, and learner to instructor.
At the core of this model is the learner, not the instructor. I asserted that our learners need to be at the core of our teaching and provided various strategies for connecting with our students during our face-to-face teaching time. To connect with the content, we can use compelling questions, discussion via questions, one-minute summaries, concept maps, and narrated modelling (explaining your thinking processes as you solve a problem). Connecting with other learners can be achieved through activities that have students working together during class time and sharing their thinking. Making our own connections with students involves using nonverbal strategies (e.g., smiling) and creating trust through sharing information about ourselves and our learning or asking students for their feedback on our course during the semester.
In an effort to connect with my learners in that conference setting, I demonstrated as many of these strategies as I could, and I enjoyed our lively discussion around what they planned to apply in their own settings.
So what about you? It can be truly satisfying to connect with your students during the few hours of class time you have with them each term. Being able to witness their learning in class is much more energizing than looking at a sea of disengaged faces. Why don’t you give it a try? Remember, we’re here to help.
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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.
As educators, we prepare and use many planning materials in teaching our respective courses. We sweat over learning objectives, we develop concept maps and we careful choose learning activities and assessment methods to best measure our learning objectives. We then consider the alignment of our course design components. After we have lovingly crafted our course, we launch it in the lecture hall or laboratory. And then we wait. We wait to see how our learning activities were received and how our students fared in their assessments and we wait to receive our course evaluations.
Sometimes the feedback we receive on our teaching is in line with our expectations, but more often than we would like, it is not. How could such meticulous planning result in such misunderstanding? How is it that the product of such hard work can be so poorly received?
Quite possibly, it is not the work we did but rather the work we did not do in communicating our intentions to our students. I do not suggest that we walk them through a course design workshop, but what I do suggest is that we telegraph some of our intentions. If we include a learning activity clearly suited to someone who learns well through reflective observation, we (as instructors) may wish to let the other students in the class know that we have also included activities geared at those who learn best through active experimentation (of course, we need not use this formal terminology in our explanation). This simple act of verbalizing our intentions and alerting our students to the consideration we have for all learning styles may suffice to ward off grumblings at best and non-participation at worst. Likewise, in our assessment rubrics, if we highlight that the emphasis in the grading breakdown aligns with the course learning outcomes and curriculum expectations, we can avoid many perceptions of unfairness or unreasonableness. Many such opportunities exist within our planned course material to make our teaching intentions plain to the students.
Such efforts at transparency can serve as guides to students as we shepherd them through the course material. While taken individually they involve small amounts of effort and yet, collectively they can reap significant rewards if they help to bring students on board with our pedagogic plan. After all, don’t we all appreciate knowing where we are going and why?
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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.
The New Year for me, metaphorically speaking, is September. I guess that is because I am by now a “lifer” in the education system. September has an air of new beginnings and excitement; even with the shortening of the days and the cooling of the air. I think of it as fresh and clean. I guess that is why I felt the need to rise to the challenge and see an opportunity upon listening to Ken Coates on CBC Radio’s The Current a few weeks back. For those who didn’t hear it, it is well worth the listen. I haven’t read his book “Campus Confidential” yet, but I imagine that is going to be equally thought provoking. At first listen it (and probably read) it might be discouraging and yet it offers glimmers of hope. There are, and always have been, those students who want to “beat the system and get through with the least effort” as one young fellow interviewed so succinctly put it. There are many though who want to be, or at least can be, challenged and want to learn. They may sometimes need a little guidance and prompting and re-directing and pushing. Yes – their lives are very busy, but those of us on the other side of that initial university experience are tasked to keep them (or get them) excited and seeing their education as a priority. A means to a job/career? Perhaps, but more importantly a life experience – a means to look at the world critically and to find the passion, to delve more deeply into what ever it is that they are leaning. If we encourage them to do those readings (with a carrot or a stick), to engage in class, to think critically through well designed assignments and assessments perhaps we can begin to see some deeper learning and have students “engaged in great ideas”. Is it a window of opportunity?
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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.