Category: General
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Pedagogy of the Poinsettia: Teaching and Learning in VIU’s Horticulture Program
In this third episode of the Share Drive, I talk to Jessica Gemella from VIU’s Horticulture Program. Jessica and I (along with Marilyn Funk and Sally Vinden) have been working on a curriculum enhancement project over the last two years, resulting in a number of changes to the Horticulture program. I talk with Jessica about…
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The Share Drive Episode: #2 “Spread the Nerd Around”
In this episode of the Share Drive, I sit down with the vibrant and tech-savvy Anwen Burk, former Learning Technology Support Specialist (LTSS) at VIU’s Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning. Recorded before Anwen left VIU, this podcast highlights the dynamic intersections of technology and pedagogy, and touches on frameworks that conceptualize an effective…
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Open Access Week – Open Textbooks A Brief Commentary
If you are reading this, you may have heard of open textbooks and be wondering what they are and why they may be of benefit to your students and your teaching practice. Here I will briefly make a few arguments which support the use of open textbooks and I hope that will encourage you to…
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A Brave New Pedagogical World: VIU’s Council for Teaching and Learning Engages with Open Pedagogies for 2019-2020
This year, VIU’s Teaching and Learning Leadership Council is engaging with the brave new world of open pedagogies. According to BCcampus (2019), open pedagogy, also known as open educational practices (OEP), “…is the use of open educational resources (OER) to support learning, or the open sharing of teaching practices with a goal of improving education…
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Why Trades Education needs to open its doors to open education
Since the turn of the 21st century, Trades Education has been subjected to rapid changes due to advances in technology, changes in global markets, and other influences such as climate change. A prime example of this pace of change can be seen in the automotive trade. Volvo Cars have committed to putting one million electric…
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Open Access Week 2019: Reflections on Open Access, OER, and Community of Practice
The International Open Access Week theme for 2019, #OAWeek2019, is “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge”, a call to reflect and act so that the future we build is one where “strategies and structures for opening knowledge must be co-designed in and with the communities they serve—especially those that are often marginalized or excluded from these…
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Are you ready to UN-Teach?
(This project fulfills the course requirement—“Roles and Responsibilities” –- for the VIU Recognition of Achievement for Student Engagement.) Successful teachers are agents of deep change. They can be singlehandedly responsible for altering permanently the way students think, act, and view the world—no matter what their discipline, content, or area of expertise. And no matter their…
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The Share Drive: A Teaching and Learning Podcast for Vancouver Island University
The Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning (CIEL) is collecting, recording and sharing stories of teaching and learning from across our campus. Acknowledging how fortunate we at the CIEL are to hear so many inspiring, interesting, and cool stories of teaching and learning, we decided to capture those stories and share them out, podcast…
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August 2019 VIU New Faculty Orientation to Teaching
On August 27th, the Centre for Innovation and Excellence offered its bi-annual New Faculty Orientation to Teaching (NFOT) to 30 new faculty at VIU. This day-long session is offered to “new and kind of new” faculty within their first two years of teaching at VIU who are looking for fresh ideas on how to engage…
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Starting the semester off right: Tips and strategies for a great first day
by Kathleen Bortolin In my earlier days of teaching, I dreaded the first class of the semester. At the beginning of term there was so much nervous energy—mostly mine. These nerves always threw me, so I did what made the most sense: hand out the syllabus, say a couple of things, and send them on…
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Three Exciting New VIUTube and VIULearn Features!
There have been some exciting updates to our learning technologies this summer. Keep reading to learn about three new tools available right now.
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Learning in the Open
I had the privilege of attending the Digital Pedagogy Lab in Toronto last month along with seven VIU faculty members and a couple of our colleagues from North Island College (check out their great posts about the experience here). Of the five options offered at the lab, I attended the Open Pedagogy stream, facilitated by…