Category: Teaching & Learning
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Teaching Faculty Scholars Program: 2013-2014
NEW!! – Teaching Faculty Scholars Program: Applications Extended Until August 19th! Invitation For: Full-time regular teaching faculty members who are new, emerging, or who could benefit from a one-year cohort-based learning opportunity covering the essentials of university and scholarly teaching The Teaching Faculty Scholars Program (TFSP) is a one year program committed to supporting teaching…
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2013 Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) Annual Conference Summary
Three staff from the Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning (CIEL) attended the STLHE (Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education) 33rd annual teaching and learning conference in Sydney, Nova Scotia from June 20-22, 2013. Kathleen Bortolin – Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Specialist, Cayla Neil – Teaching and Learning Support Assistant and Liesel…
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Signature Pedagogies: Three Program Level Projects to Improve Learning
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…
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Faculty Development Spring Institute: First Time a Success
Vancouver Island University (VIU) hosted the first annual Faculty Development Spring Institute (FDSI) this May 21-24, 2013. We had 29 participants from the island, mainland BC, Yukon and Ontario! We were aiming for 30 and we are quite pleased with the interest and the amazing group of people who came out. A collaborative effort between…
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Pros and Cons of Technology Embedded within Teaching and Learning Centres – and Not in IT
At a recent Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Conference (STLHE), I was part of a round table discussion about the pros and cons of including educational technology departments (serving learning management systems, blogging, video streaming, mobile devices, online course instructional design) within higher education teaching and learning centres. In Canadian colleges and…
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Gamification – Article and Infographic
I came across a couple of interesting (and short) articles on gamification in education today. Although the language makes it seem like gamification is something only the K-12 sector is working on it is becoming a trend in post-secondary as well as job training. In fact, there are over five different seminars on gamification of…
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Have you tried a “week zero” in your D2L course?
When teaching an online or web-enhanced course, how do you make essential course information stand out from all the rest of the course content? The first week in an online environment can be overwhelming. In addition to encountering Desire2Learn, students are provided with a course tour that reviews the syllabus, explains how to participate in…
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Bill Gates on giving Instructors Real Feedback
In this TED Talk Microsoft founder Bill Gates proposes a method for getting teachers real feedback on their practice. A recent initiative from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the Measures Of Effective Teaching Project which aims to close the gap between institutional expectations for effective teaching and what is actually happening within classrooms. The initiative seeks to identify…
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Desire2Learn Learning Sessions
This March our Centre began running Desire2Learn Learning Sessions, welcoming 31 instructors from various faculties to 25 different sessions throughout the month. The instructors averaged 2 sessions each! If you didn’t get a chance to attend any sessions, we are offering eleven different 50 minute sessions at many times and days in April, May…
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Learning, Innovation and Teaching Enhancement Grants Awarded
In January 2013 The Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning along with the support of the Vice President Academic and Provost offered a limited number of grants to VIUFA and BCGEU instructors. The purpose of the grant was to allow instructors the opportunity to purchase a teaching or learning resource to support the teaching…
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Embedding media in your D2L course
Video and other visual media enrich your course. Video allows your students to access material at their own pace – they have the power to pause, rewind and replay material as many times as they like. You could record your lecture (for help getting started, see the post by Michael Paskevicius here) or you could…
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Is Gaming Responsible for Student Disengagement
I’m currently reading a book titled ‘Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter’ by Steven Berlin Johnson. I would recommend reading this book. It is an amazing and thought inspiring read. But that’s not what this post is about. In part of the book, Steven discusses why…