Tag: student engagement

…and so it goes – Trevor Holmes

Bit of a dry spell on the blog this term! We’ll try to be more regular.

So I’m sure readers have been holding their collective breath, awaiting eagerly my update from the first day of class a couple of Fridays ago. That’s right: in my first blog post of 2011, I imagined a perfect pedagogical storm of a first day. I did do what I intended to. Many of the students in lecture contributed good thoughts to the definition of culture we were coming up with, collectively. They didn’t seem to tire of the pairs of images so much as previous years’ cohorts have. And in tutorials, when confronted again with some of the same images, they deepened their analysis still more, becoming comfortable with each other in the smaller setting. I even had them fill out tutorial logs at the end of each tutorial, so those who didn’t get a chance to contribute could let us know what they were thinking. Continue reading …and so it goes – Trevor Holmes

Overheard on the 7 – Trevor Holmes

GRT busWhen I’m not riding my bike to work, I usually take the bus. Waiting for any of the number 7 buses, one overhears things. In the spirit of the “Overheard at” websites, I’d like to offer occasional orts of wisdom from students who, at the end of their day, Continue reading Overheard on the 7 – Trevor Holmes

Generations – Trevor Holmes

I find myself in the rather awkward position of being the father of a teen whose friends — some of them — are now in their first week of classes in their first year of postsecondary studies. As of this week, I can no longer pretend to be that younger, cool guy on my students’ side of “geezer.”

Waterloo Photos of Students
Class of 2014 mindset?

Kidding aside, this is the week during which professors’ well-meaning colleagues, friends, family, and teaching developers Continue reading Generations – Trevor Holmes

Students vote! – Trevor Holmes

ballot_box

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