Month: February 2014
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How to Turn Your iPad into a Document Camera: Teaching Chemistry in a Room not Designed for Teaching Chemistry
by Jessie Key, Teaching Faculty Member, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Technology, VIU This semester I am teaching a fairly large section (for VIU) of 72 students in CHEM 232 (Organic Chemistry II). VIU, like many other colleges and small universities, has only a handful of lecture theatres which can actually accommodate this…
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Life Map
By Sherryl Maglione (Miss Magz), Cowichan Campus, ABE English Instructor, Vancouver Island University A meaningful way to understand one’s life and commemorate one’s progress through events and situations is to reflect on important memories, think about the people who are important to us, and gather images together that are critical to understanding our personal history.…
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Simulation Snippets Part III
By Barbara Metcalf, Teaching Faculty Member, Bachelor of Nursing Program, Faculty of Health and Human Sciences, VIU For all blog posts on this topic see Simulation Snippets Part 1; Part 2; Part 4 and Part 5 This has been a red-letter week in the simulation suites. This week, I debuted the two most comprehensive simulations I have…
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Defender of academic standards or supporter of student success?
by Rob Ferguson, Teaching Faculty Member and Co-Chair, Department of Recreation and Tourism Management, Faculty of Management, VIU Being an educator within post secondary is often a position where interests and values seemingly conflict. For example early on in my teaching career I had evaluated a student’s work at below standard resulting in a fail…
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Pushing Back at the Imposter Syndrome
by Bryan Webber, Teaching Faculty Member, Faculty of Management, VIU The “Imposter Syndrome” is a psychological phenomenon that I’m familiar with from my previous life in the corporate world. In my simplified version, it refers to one’s self-doubt about their worthiness of the position they’ve achieved. And this is regardless of evidence to the contrary…
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A Case for Engaged Teaching
by Marilyn Assaf, Communications Officer, University Relations, VIU My son Robert reached an important milestone last year – high school graduation. I felt a huge sense of relief watching him walk across the stage to receive his dogwood certificate. But what does it really mean? Yes, he’s completed 12 years of public education, but is…
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What Kind of “12th man” Am I?
By Sharon Kelly, Teaching Faculty Member and Degree Advisor, Faculty of Management/Educational Counsellor, Student Affairs, VIU It’s Super Bowl Sunday, and the “de boys” in the house are watching the game. The Seahawks pull ahead and the fans at the hometown stadium wildly cheer their boys on. I am not at the stadium urging them…
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My First MOOC
by Melissa Robertson, Learning Technologies Support Specialist, Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning, VIU I am in the second week of my very first MOOC, History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education. It certainly has been a learning experience for me. I have just finished Week 1 and am near the middle of week…
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Dear Graduate: Skills are Skills are Skills
By Carrie Johns, Secretary Registrar and Convocation, Registration Centre, VIU On January 30 and 31, 2014, VIU celebrated the graduation of nearly 500 degree, diploma, and certificate students. Two convocation ceremonies were held at the Port Theatre, with all the time-honored traditions and more recent additions, passion and enthusiasm that have become synonymous with VIU.…
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Walking a Mile in Their Shoes: Reflections on Learning
by Doris Carey, Faculty Member, Faculty of Academic and Career Preparation, VIU When designing a course, writing a syllabus, preparing assignments and deciding on assessment strategies, I try to remember how I felt about my instructors’ design decisions when I was a student. I can’t think of many times that I felt comfortable in a…
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The difficulty with Difficulty, or Why we should quit whining and embrace The Struggle
by Sandra Johnstone, Teaching Faculty, Faculty of Science and Technology, VIU “Appropriate difficulty” I participated in a CIEL discussion group recently where the topic was “Effective Teaching”. We had been provided with materials that detailed surveys of university instructors and university students to articulate their perceptions of effective teaching. The conversations that emerged during our…
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New Technologies in Class: An Added Value or Not?
by Olaf Ernst, Visiting Scholar, NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences (Visiting Department of Recreation and Tourism Management, VIU) I have to admit: I am not a man of his time. To say it in another way: I missed the ‘digital’ boat, only being a passive user of Facebook and Linkedin, not connected to Twitter,…