Category: Learning Design
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Maxwell Stevenson joins the Centre as new Associate Director
The Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning welcomes Maxwell Stevenson to the new role of Associate Director. Maxwell hails from Victoria where he grew up and attended the University of Victoria. After his undergraduate degree he headed to England to do his Masters in Architectural History and his PhD exploring the role of the…
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VIU Teaching and Learning Conference: Registration Filling Up Fast!
VIU Teaching and Learning Conference: Celebrating Impactful Assessment Wednesday, May 10 – Friday, May 12 Conference Website: bit.ly/viutlc2017 Program Sessions: Link (online schedule that allows you to bookmark sessions you may wish to attend; adding sessions to your schedule does not mean you are registered – please still complete the registration for each day you wish…
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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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Engaging students with Open Education at VIULearns 2016
Last week during the VIULearns event on the Nanaimo campus I had a chance to engage students directly with the idea of open education. I positioned our booth to draw students in around all aspects of open education; including open access, open data, open educational resources, open licenses, open educational practices, and open source software.…
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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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Teaching Excellence Video Series: Gail Krivel-Zacks on concept mapping and designing meaningful case studies
Gail Krivel-Zacks from Education talks about using concept mapping to help students organize information with complex relationships and to help students demonstrate learning over time. Gail discusses a process by which she had students create relevant case studies for other students to create a deeper and more meaningful learning experience.
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Student Panel Highlights on the topic of “What Helps Me Learn”
In our August 2014 New Faculty Orientation we invited a group of diverse students representing various faculties to discuss their academic experiences around what helps them learn at VIU. We have compiled a series of very brief clips (30 seconds-3 minutes) of these students talking about what helps them learn best in a variety of categories. The clips below are…
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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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I have to get an A on this!
by Rob Ferguson, Teaching Faculty Member and Co-Chair, Department of Recreation and Tourism Management, Faculty of Management, VIU Our current higher education system has created a culture where the almighty ‘A’ has somehow lost some of its sheen. I’m confident that most, if not all, university educators have been confronted with the student who asserts…
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The student 3.0 in our classrooms: fiction or reality?
by Olaf Ernst, Visiting Scholar, NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences (Visiting Department of Recreation and Tourism Management, VIU) Like with new technical products, which new versions replace the old ones after a while, within educational environments much is said about the ‘new student’. Many popular and scientific articles are published about this new prototype,…
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A light-bulb moment 30 years in the making
by Sandra Johnstone, Teaching Faculty, Faculty of Science and Technology, VIU Illumination A few weeks ago I had a busy day. I attended a morning meeting to discuss learning outcomes for our programs in the Earth Science department. In the afternoon my daughter and I jumped on the ferry to visit my parents. Over the…
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Auditory Learners and the Lecture Format
by Doris Carey, Faculty Member, Faculty of Academic and Career Preparation, VIU In my decades as an educator, few students have ever claimed that their preferred learning modality is auditory. Not that it matters, since no research evidence exists to support the widely held belief that students learn best when their preferred modality is accommodated.…