At Vancouver Island University, the Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning is working on three projects related to signature pedagogies, professional learning and knowledge networks.

VIU is engaged in a teaching and learning institutional-wide project for enhancing teaching of our faculty and engaging them in current best practices around signature pedagogies and discipline-specific teaching methodologies while connecting faculty with learning and knowledge networks to advance understanding and engagement in scholarly teaching and research of practice at VIU.

This project is also about enhancing learning of our students to produce graduates already engaged in professional learning networks and collaborative activities through deeper learning experiences and experiential education and community activities.

The three projects are in the following faculties/programs:

• Bachelor of Science in Nursing Degree (4 yr program) – focus on professional communication skills via Calibrated Peer Review process and then how do nursing faculty model and engage in knowledge networks/professional development connections –  so they can share that learning with nursing students to extend their understanding of how to be a lifelong learner – about 10 faculty from program involved
• Recreation and Tourism Management Degree (4 yr program) – focus on co-op/experiential education and what do employers tell us about curriculum changes and how do we model ongoing change in program development, teaching and learning strategies/assessment and evaluation methods in exemplary programs and what signature pedagogies work best for Rec/Tourism – whole department of 14 faculty engaged
• Bachelor of Education (5 yr program) – focus on discipline-specific teaching to engage students in learning about how to be a teacher in that subject, small action-research projects from 8 faculty

Dr. Tom Carey, Research Associate/Visiting Scholar aids the Centre, Director and VIU with these projects.

The projects started in early 2013 and are evolving into their second year after consultation, literature discussions and analysis of practice happened thus far. More projects are being added this Fall. All the projects fall under this framework. More detail on each project will follow in these blog posts.