On Friday March 4th, APRIL and CTL co-hosted the second of APRIL’s 2015-2016 Pedagogy Panels. Like our January experiential learning event, this second event, which focused on blended learning, brought innovative instructors together to talk teaching and learning in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. In his capacity as CTL director, Roger Graves kicked the […]
Author Archives: Laura Servage
Here at APRIL, flipped classrooms are on our minds once again as we get ready for our upcoming Pedagogy Panel on Blended Learning. This Hung (2015) article recently caught my eye because it pertained to students learning English, and I’ve heard lots of anecdotal evidence from instructors that recorded content (e.g. lecture capture, podcasts and […]
In his inauguration speech, newly installed University of Alberta President, Dr. David Turpin, made a very direct pledge to enhance the role of the university as a partner in “leading change in Alberta,” stating that the university’s future efforts will focus on “new and innovative ways to mobilize our excellence in research and teaching to […]
Post-secondary institutions across North America are highlighting experiential learning to attract students, and improve their post-education employment prospects. It is widely evident in campus news reports, recruitment activities, and policy documents that higher education institutions, in both their teaching and research missions, are being compelled to draw on experiential practices to strengthen linkages between scholarly […]
In fall of 2013, and again in winter term, 2014 Rutherford Galleria displayed fascinating sculptures composed entirely of discarded books. As discussed in this Curious Arts feature about these student art projects, the sight of tattered books, destroyed in acts of creation, “evoked discomfort in exhibit goers.” Some artists themselves had to take a few […]
As an intrinsically motivated undergrad, I did not really appreciate what an oddball I was until I began teaching undergraduates myself. Unlike me back in the day, many of my students did not complete their readings. Their library research was frequently (ahem) misguided. They weren’t always wound up about good punctuation in APA style either. […]
Most of us have heard that joke-that-is-actually an analogy, “How do you eat an elephant?” “One bite at a time.” For our purposes, that elephant is your teaching practice. Maybe you are teaching a course for the first time, and feel like you’ll be doing well just to get your content in order. Maybe you’ve […]
September is an overwhelming time for instructors and students alike. For faculty, the quiet summer campus is suddenly transformed, teaming with so many, many young people. David Wooderson may have been lusting after freshman in (1993) Dazed and Confused, but the quote he dropped strikes wistful pangs into the hearts of many an instructor: “I […]
A recent post to the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) blog got me thinking again about the role that learning outcomes have played in my own professional development as a teacher, and about some of the reasons why learning outcomes can get a bad rap among professors. There are some fair reasons why […]
In fall, 2014, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) published findings from a Queen’s University study in which three models of delivery in large undergraduate lectures were compared (Leger et al., 2014). Findings showed that student engagement could be enhanced by a “flipped model,” wherein class lectures are viewed online, and students spend […]
PRAXIS: A Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Blog 