Category: Student Learning
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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,…
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No Learning Wasted
By Deirdre Godwin, Program Assistant, Professional Development and Training, Faculties of Health and Human Services & Trades and Applied Technology, VIU Getting on to 30 years ago, I took what was then the Long-term Care/Homemakers certificate at Malaspina College. I didn’t graduate. You could say that I withdrew, flunked out, explored other options, or chose…
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It’s only a figure of speech….
by Anna Atkinson, Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Vancouver Island University I’m going to tell a story on myself. It’s the story of perhaps the most profound educational experience of my life, and certainly one of the most important. I tell this one to students because stories are the way our minds…
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Student Identity—Shifting from Child to Adult Learner
by Andrea Noble, Online Course Support Assistant, Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning (CIEL) A child’s fulltime “job” is to attend school. Because it is the main activity of life, a great deal of emphasis is placed here. Students are often labeled as “smart”, “dumb”, “popular” or another negative or positive adjective. School is…
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Modifying Assessment Techniques to Meet the Needs of Students
By Dayna Johnson, Student Teacher, Year 5 Bachelor of Education, Faculty of Education, VIU (written as part of a Principles of Teaching and Learning Course) To experience an event on its own can be a valuable educational experience, but sometimes we can gain the deepest insight when we look at the same event in two…