Refreshing change: innovating with no guarantees
Scott McIndoe
Chemistry
2019 Harry Hickman Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching and Educational Leadership

Innovating in the classroom comes with overhead: we have to create space in the course, spend time developing our ideas, and figure out whether they’re working or not. But innovations pay off, too: they keep us enthused with the teaching process; it is obvious to the students that you’re trying to improve their experience; the process of sharing our findings with others is immensely rewarding; and occasionally, the idea will crystallize into a genuinely useful tool. I’ll outline what 15 years of trying to do something new in the classroom every year has taught me, and what’s on the horizon for my students. Experiments –not all successful! –in teaching problem-solving skills, 3D drawing, scientific report writing, lab skills through video, laser-cut molecular models, open-source online tutorials, custom lecture books, demonstrations, audience participation (including how to allow your students to ask questions anonymously in class), and more will be covered.

Refreshing change: innovating with no guarantees

The Importance of Space, Place and Reflection: Experiential and Learning-Centred Teaching
Helga Thorson
2016 Award for Excellence in Teaching for Experiential Learning

HHB 110
Facilitator: Shanne McCaffrey, Child and Youth Care

This workshop/engagement gathering asks participants to consider their own interpretations, understandings, and teaching frameworks for Indigenizing, Decolonizing, and using the TRC in their curriculum. We will examine what this means and looks like to each of us and how we can learn, teach and be able to work with students and have them engage in the important work. We will also be able to talk about how Indigenization, Decolonization, and the TRC show up in students by using the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action and Recommendations.

Indigenizing, decolonzing, and the TRC in curriculum work? –I’m confused!

HHB 110
Facilitator: Heather Ranson, Gustavson School of Business

Experiential learning is a learning process where one learns through experience (Kolb, 1984). Although any topic can be taught using experiential learning, sustainability education is a particularly good topic (Rimanoczy, 2016) as it is a topic learned in classrooms and the workplace. Chapman, McPhee and Proudman (1995) offer nine criteria for experiential learning:

1. mixture of content and process;
2. absence of excessive judgment;
3. engagement in purposeful endeavors;
4. encouraging the big picture perspective;
5. creating a role for reflection;
6. creating emotional investment;
7. re-examining values;
8. the presence of meaningful relationships;
9. learning outside one’s perceived comfort zone.

Experiential learning can be based in the classroom or taken out into the field (Lewis and Williams, 1994). Examples of classroom-based experiential learning include cases, role-playing, simulations, and interactive activities. Examples of field-based experiential learning include co-operative education workterms, practicums, internships, and field trips.

In this 60 minute interactive session I will:

• Provide an overview of how to assess your lesson plans for experiential learning
• Review how a lesson plan for a class I teach on Biomimicry (SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, Infrastructure) became more experiential over the course of three years.
• Facilitate a discussion on experiential learning techniques suitable for a number of other lessons

Together participants will create a take-away list of activities we can incorporate into our classes.

Using experiential learning to teach the UN sustainable development goals

Janni Aragon

HHB 128

Facilitator: Helga Thorson, Germanic and Slavic Studies

This workshop investigates ways to facilitate the development of “deep learning” by exploring methods that engage learners in the transformation of perspective and immersing students in the process of meaning making. Participants investigate ways of teaching that include opportunities for dialogic learning, community involvement, and critical self-reflection. Activities and discussions will focus on how a university education can provide students with much more than just knowledge acquisition and offer them the opportunities and skills that have the potential of changing lives.

Transformative learning: Making meaning and changing lives

HHB105

Facilitator: Geri van Gyn, Exercise Science, Physical, and Health Education

Are you concerned by students’ lack of preparation for class? Across disciplines and levels, students underestimate the significance of completing required readings for class and, consequently, limit opportunities for you to engage them in critical analysis and/or application of course content. We will examine the Purposeful Reading Report (PPR) as one effective pre-­­class reading strategy and discuss how to use this activity to fully engage students with course content. We will also discuss how to modify the PPR to fit your discipline and approach to teaching. Participants will receive PPR template, grading rubric, and other published material to support its use.

The purposeful reading report: Ensuring that students read and are prepared for class

Heiner, Banet, Wieman Pre-Reading AJP2014

Another reading on reading

HHB110

Facilitator: Milan Frankl, Health Information Science

Traditionally, programs and courses are developed according to program and course learning outcomes. In this presentation, we describe a Competency Structure for online program development at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Similar to Learning Outcomes, Program Competencies are developed through course content, exercises, case studies, research projects, and simulations. They may be evaluated through essays, quizzes, projects, coursework, and examinations. However, unlike learning outcomes, Program Competencies result in specific skills students can readily apply. Those skills are directly related to the activities they intend to pursue. The objective of most program curricula is to prepare students for the next level of study or employment.

Program Competencies versus Learning Outcomes: A new online course development paradigm

HHB128

Facilitators: Kathy Sanford, Curriculum and Instruction and Tim Hopper, Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education

Using Indigenous principles learned from colleague Dr. Lorna Williams, two non-Indigenous professors (Kathy and Tim) share ways in which these principles have shaped learning experiences for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. We will share Lil’wat principles used in our courses as we work to create respectful and inclusive curricula, welcoming learning environments, and culturally responsive pedagogies and assessment. These Principles include: 1) Celhcelh -Importance of focusing on the learning of colleagues before our own learning, enabling learning opportunities exponentially greater than if we focus only on our own learning; 2) Emhaka7 -Consideration of how our work will benefit the next seven generations to come; our class work will influence future generations of students and teachers, and 3) A7xekcal -Finding our passion and then investing in this passion in our work to energize the community and inspire the learning of others.

Indigenizing our courses: Beginning steps for settler instructors

HHB105

Facilitators: Erin Kelly and Lisa Surridge, English

After describing the rates at which North American university students commit acts of academic dishonesty, the organizers will ask attendees to share their experience of cheating and plagiarism related to written assignments in their courses. We will then summarize recent research (based in part on Lang’s Cheating Lessons) explaining why students cheat and how to foster academic integrity through the course and assignment design. In small groups, we will collaboratively revise past assignments on which students have cheated to make them “plagiarism-proof” and to encourage student engagement. We will finish with a general discussion of how UVic instructors, administrators, and students can work together to create a climate of academic integrity.

Teaching academic integrity, or, how to plagiarism-proof your assignments

Academic Integrity working bibliography

HHB105

Facilitator: Geri van Gyn, Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education

We will begin this session by asking: What do you understand about critical thinking? From there we will refine our definitions and work as a group to explore if we use assignments, exam questions, and more to encourage critical thinking.But then, we will investigate the most important part… how will you assess it?

We are teaching for critical thinking–aren’t we??

HHB128 (NOTE: This session goes until 5:15)

Facilitators: Mariel Miller, Technology Integrated Learning, Joe Parsons, Learning & Teaching Centre, and Helen Raptis, Learning and Teaching Centre

In this hands-on session, we will help participants: master the creation of measurable learning outcomes; decide when to use formative and summative assessment; align their assessments with the course/workshop learning outcomes; ensure that their feedback is effective and efficient; apply best practices in assignment design; and determine when and how to use technology to improve their assessments, assignments, and feedback, based on pedagogical principles.

Designing Effective and Efficient Assessment

Effective and Efficient Assessment Worksheet

Embracing diversity in the digital age: The “new normal” of our times (Back by popular demand!)