Author: Liesel Knaack
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Daylight is Coming! VIULearn Upgrades to a Modern Responsive Design April 30
On April 30th, VIULearn (VIU’s learning management system) will be changing its look to a more modern and cleaner interface – called Daylight. Daylight is a brighter and more stream-lined environment with emphasis on faculty and student activity. The way VIULearn functions (where buttons are, how things work) remains untouched as the entire system will work…
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Learning to Learn: Student Study Strategies for Success!
The start of the school year is always an exciting time for learning. It is also an excellent time to share learning strategies with students (and faculty) to assist them in being better learners. The past month I’ve visited many classrooms and done a number of program orientation sessions on metacognition and effective learning strategies.…
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VIU Faculty Fast Start Institute
Initial “Launch” Workshop Dates: Tuesday August 25 and Wednesday, August 26, 2015 (2 days) Time Each Day: 8:30 AM – 3 PM each day (breakfast and lunch will be included) Description The goal of a faculty member is to thrive and excel, not merely survive. The Faculty Fast Start Institute is a Fall 2015 (one…
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Skills and Post-Secondary Education Summit: Five Year Initiative on Canadian Education
I attended possibly the best learning experience I have had in recent years! The 2nd Annual Skills and Post-Secondary Education Summit was an extremely well-organized, wonderfully-designed experience for sharing expertise and new knowledge along with research insights and directions for post-secondary education in Canada. For the past decade or so, I have been on…
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The Off-Campus Classroom: Community-engaged Pedagogy at VIU – Three Special Sessions!
The Centre for Innovation and Excellence and Learning would like to invite everyone to a new speaker series to explore innovations in community-engaged pedagogy at VIU. Intent on sharing some of the stories from faculty, staff and students already engaged in campus-community partnerships, VIU instructors, staff and students will present their stories of community-engaged teaching…
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Course Redesign Institute
Teaching Faculty Members: Do you have a course next term that could use a boost of new ideas or an enhancement to engage students more? Do you want to reconsider your assignments and ensure they are in alignment with intended learning outcomes? Might you have a course that is working okay for you and your students, but it could be…
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Mid-Year New Faculty Orientation
We invite all new VIU teaching faculty and newly appointed sessional instructors to join us on Friday, January 9 for VIU’s Mid-Year New Faculty Orientation. Breakfast and lunch are included. The purpose of the Orientation, sponsored by the Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching, is to introduce you to teaching and learning resources for…
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Horses and Motorcycles
by Darlene Goodrick, Supervisor – Printing & Duplicating, Vancouver Island University How does this topic apply to learning and teaching at VIU? Maybe it doesn’t but being mother to twins involved much learning and teaching and helped make me the person I am today now working at VIU. One of the twins loves horses and…
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Facilitating Inquiry-based Learning: Reflections of a Rookie
by Sandra Johnstone, Teaching Faculty, Faculty of Science and Technology, VIU My inspiration This semester is the first time that I have designed and facilitated a course that centres on a semester-long collaborative research project. The course was a third-year earth science course in Geochemistry, with ten students enrolled. The project was based on 162…
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Learning and Nanaimo Bars
by Greg Klimes, Teaching Faculty, RMOT, Faculty of Science and Technology, Vancouver Island University In my program I delve into the basic principles of law enforcement, as it relates to the protection of our natural resources. In any successful program to be successful, there are always two 2 parts involved. Education and consequences. Education would…
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VIU looked at with Dutch glasses
by Olaf Ernst, Visiting Scholar, NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences (Visiting Department of Recreation and Tourism Management, VIU) As you probably remember I am not a regular VIU faculty member, but a long-resident visiting scholar from a country on the other side of the globe. Now, after having been here for almost three months…
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What Successful Teachers Do
by Doris Carey, Faculty Member, Faculty of Academic and Career Preparation, VIU I recently read an article with an intriguing title: The Differences Between Successful And Unsuccessful People (Jacqueline Smith, Business Insider, March 19, 2014). I immediately thought of what I might include in a list of the differences between successful and unsuccessful students, thinking…