How *I* chose my undergraduate university — Trevor Holmes

helicopter_parents

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

e-learning: green learning?

ereaderA few weeks ago our Senior Instructional Developer, Emerging Technologies the illustrious Mark Morton sent off an email informing us of an interesting new device that he had come across called the PlayAway. This device is an audiobook that is integrated with its own hardware, including battery so you can just plug your earbuds in and “play away”. He suggested that they were virtually “disposable” and popular in elementary schools where it would not matter if they were lost since they were relatively inexpensive. Continue reading e-learning: green learning?

Invest in People – Jane Holbrook

 

feet and grassI’ve just returned from a conference jointly sponsored by CSSHE (Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education), COHERE (Collaboration for Online Higher Education and Research) and CHERD (Centre for Higher Education Research and Development). Its title was “The Future of Online and Blended Learning: Strategy, Policy, and Practice”.  Along with Mary Power and Scott Anderson, I had the opportunity to learn about how blended and online learning are, or will be, supported and shaped by upper level policy decisions and through faculty development programs that are provided by teaching centres in universities and colleges across Canada.

I wanted to share my main take-away from the conference; invest in people.

Our grassroots approach to supporting blended learning at UW seems to be working as well, or better, than what is happening at other institutions. Rather than just applying large amounts of money to the development and ongoing support of a few “flagship” blended courses, or having pockets of course developers working in isolation in Schools or Faculties to develop programs of blended courses, UW provides support for the development of blended courses more broadly.  Through CTE and ITMS (Instructional Technologies and Multimedia Services) there is support to design courses that represent a range of “blendedness” and that align with the discipline and objectives of instructors who choose to use online components in their courses.  We do this through our CTE faculty liaisons and through my role as an instructional developer of blended learning, as well as through the technical support provided by the UW-ACE help  team. These people are knowledgeable about teaching and learning, bring a range of expertise to the job and adapt their practices in response to the needs of the students at UW.
 
Mary and Scott presented a session called “One Model for Success: Supporting Blended Learning through Faculty Liaisons” where they shared how liaisons promote technological and pedagogical best practices together as “one stop shopping” when they consult with instructors  and how the physical placement of the liaisons within the Faculties increases their visibility and accessibility and facilitates relationship building. They spoke about how they function as neutral and objective consultants within their Faculties and how, through their own networks, they can share what works well, and what doesn’t, in blended courses.  They talked about how they collaborate with the folks at ITMS, work on technology-related committees and how their input promotes better decisions around UW’s support of technology.

Reactions from the audience? Many commented on how lucky we are to have this model, that this seemed really different from the strategies used on their campuses and how this approach must have involved some risk and vision on the part of our upper administrators.

Of course there are challenges. As Mary and Scott pointed out to the crowd, there is just too much work now. The liaisons have become victims of their own success. We are all struggling to continue to support this model and its original intent because  as the number of blended courses grow and the number of faculty using UW-ACE increases we are strapped to provide the same levels of pedagogical consultation and support that we did when these (mostly part-time) roles were envisioned in 2001. My hope is that in this atmosphere of cut-backs and fiscal restraint that we can maintain this vision and even  increase our support at the grassroots level, in people.

Failures, mistakes, stupidity – foundations of success in academia

oops2Earlier this term I read a one page article, The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research. The article proclaims the importance of – nay – the imperative of learning from mistakes as a valuable education path. The author describes his astonishment that a very bright fellow PhD student gave up a career path because it made her feel stupid. Continue reading Failures, mistakes, stupidity – foundations of success in academia

More about using Pop-Ups for Educational Purposes – Mark Morton

AAAADG06KPYAAAAAAFSrnQA while back, I posted a note on this blog about a method I had devised for creating pop-up “roll-overs” for text-based web pages. In other words, the method allowed users to put their mouse cursor over a word in a web document, causing a small pop-up window to appear containing more information. My reason for doing so was related to second-language study: for example, an instructor could upload a page of, say, a German text, and every word on that page could have a pop-up associated with it, which would not only define the word in question but would also clarify the relevant grammar. My method of creating those pop-ups was a bit cumbersome, so it’s fortunate that I recently upgraded from Dreamweaver CS3 to Dreamweaver CS4, and discovered that the later version of that program includes a feature for easily creating text-based pop-ups. The feature uses something called Spry Tool Tips, which is an Ajax-based web-development framework.

With Spry Tool Tips, you can easily create any number of pop-up roll-overs, without having to look at even a smidgeon of HTML or Java code. Moreover, the pop-ups can contain hyperlinks to other web resources (something my previous method couldn’t do), and can also include images. You can also easily control the size, colour, and placement of the pop-ups. All in all, it’s a great tool for instructors who are interested in creating teaching resources for their students.

You can see an example of Spry Tool Tips in action at a page that I’ve made here. Just roll your cursor over some of the Arabic words on the top right side of the page, and pop-ups with explanatory text should appear.

Bookstore Digital Platform – Shawn Gilbertson

Just over a year ago, the University of Waterloo Bookstore and over 20 other member bookstores of the Canadian Campus Retail Associates supported the development of a digital content platform. The generic site, Campus E-Bookstore, can be accessed by students at UW through the Booklook search engine. For example, by searching “Bronte” in the Author/Title search field, you will see an embedded link to the site under the title “Jane Eyre”. The first phase of the platform allows students to download popular public domain titles in the open epub format. These ebooks, known as digital study versions offer students high quality alternatives to traditional course materials. Most important, they are free and can be viewed on many mobile smart devices and epub friendly e-readers. Further development of the site will take place in phases in late 2009 and early 2010 which will offer students and faculty more  options to traditional content…

CTE and the 6th Decade Plan — Donna Ellis

starI was recently asked to document how well CTE’s activities and services meet the university’s 6th Decade Plan.  At first this seemed like a pretty straightforward task since there is only section in the Plan devoted specifically to teaching.  And yet, as I re-read the Plan, I recognized that our work fits with numerous recommendations as well as the overall orientation of the Plan, which calls for “excellence, pursued and supported in all activities” (p.4).  We are the “Centre for Teaching Excellence” and we take our name very seriously.  We strive to model the highest standards in our programming, resources, and support services. 

So how do we fit with the Plan?  Naturally, we provide programming and support to help faculty members and graduate students develop “enhanced teaching skills” (p.6).  But we do much, much more than that.  Here’s a sampling…

  • We support faculty members who want to commit to and demonstrate excellence in teaching through offering events like the Instructional Skills Workshop and the Teaching Excellence Academy where our own faculty members show leadership by co-facilitating. 
  • Our activities marry teaching and research through our own research work and that of the faculty and staff members in the Teaching-Based Research Group. 
  • We engage in innovation in teaching and support others in their quest to try new ideas with regard to teaching, whether they involve learning technologies or more traditional instructional methods. 
  • We also support the development of aligned, innovative curricula as we work with an increasing number of departments. 
  • We help to celebrate Waterloo’s great teachers through the university-wide teaching programs. 
  • We help provide great learning experiences for students by hiring them into our office, assisting with campus learning projects such as e-portfolios, and supporting internationalization efforts. 

As well, we have an amazing team of staff members who think strategically, collaborate endlessly, and give 110% everyday to help support teaching excellence at Waterloo.

So the exercise of mapping our activities to the 6th Decade Plan clearly showed that we’re on the right track.  But it also reminded me how proud I am to be part of something so good.  As a support unit, we often downplay our contributions.  I see that we really shouldn’t because we have a lot to offer.  If you haven’t checked out how CTE can help you, please view our website, contact one of our Liaisons, or drop by one of our offices.  We’re here to help!