As I was recently sitting in one of my favourite local cafes surrounded by conversations, I noticed how deeply engaged and connected the participants of these conversations were. It is not that often that I get to see this type of conversations in the university classroom. No doubt, the physical layout of a modern classroom is a far cry from the ambient and hospitable space that one expects to find in their favourite cafe. But is there a way to create a conversation in the classroom that builds authentic connections, engages the learners and makes them fully present in the moment? Continue reading Using World Cafe Methodology to Transform Classroom Discussions – Svitlana Taraban-Gordon
Place-based education and interdisciplinary experience – Trevor Holmes
Recently I attended a pre-conference workshop in Kamloops, BC run by professors from several different disciplines — geography, fine art, literature, philosophy, and biology — who had been collaborating since last summer on “place-based pedagogy.”
Informed in large part by a hybrid of environmental education and critical pedagogy, place-based pedagogy has to do with, as our homework reading suggests, “decolonization” and “reinhabiting” of space and place. We experienced first-hand some of the assignments the group had worked on for an interdisciplinary course, assignments and activities that each had used in her or his own course but that now were being blended together anew. Continue reading Place-based education and interdisciplinary experience – Trevor Holmes
Learning Through Teaching – Michael Li
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
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.
Shed the Light of the Sun – Mark Morton
In a previous post, I mentioned the recent creation of a CTE Tip Sheet devoted to Faculty Mentoring. I think it might be timely to follow up that post with some “testimonials” about the impact of mentors, ones that were submitted to the contest component of the 2010 Loving to Learn Day. That contest had four categories: UW students, staff, and faculty; students in Grades 1 to 8; students in Grades 9 to 12; and everyone else. The mentors that people wrote about for that contest about were diverse: parents, grandparents, spouses, colleagues, children, elementary school teachers, fictional characters, aunts, baby-sitters, brothers-in-law, hockey players, strangers in a nursing home, veterans, graduate supervisors, pets, and more. Continue reading Shed the Light of the Sun – Mark Morton
Research Informing Teaching in the Classroom – Brad Mannell
One of the premises of good teaching at the University of Waterloo is that professors who are good researchers as well as good teachers can provide a richer learning experience in the university classroom. What are the strategies that professors can use to translate their experience of being a researcher into enriched learning experiences for their students? Continue reading Research Informing Teaching in the Classroom – Brad Mannell
Checking the “list” twice – Donna Ellis
What is it about top 10 lists? My understanding of cognitive psychology reminds me that our brains naturally try to categorize information, but lists in relation to instructional development just seem too trite, particularly when they focus on the negative.
My grumbles stem from a fairly recent U.S. News & World Report article called “10 Warning Signs of a Bad Professor“. It was, in essence, a shopping list of behaviours that students should avoid if they experience them early in a semester. I can certainly empathize with students, but the top (or should I say “bottom”) 10 ten list format made the points seem overly simplified. Continue reading Checking the “list” twice – Donna Ellis