Teaching Practices Colloquium Program Abstracts
| Time | Session |
| 10:45-11:25 |
Zen and the Art of Essay Writing TRU's Academic Plan calls for all students to "engage in ...global cultural understanding." In this session, participants themselves will be given that same opportunity as a group of international student-teachers will first share with you hidden dimensions of their own international approaches to academic writing. Writing, or course, is undoubtedly one of the most challenging skills for international students to master. As you'll discover in this session, however, there are techniques that instructors can use to leverage the cultural diversity found in their classrooms, turning potential writing "problems" into academic solutions. Join this group of international student-teachers, and their TESL instructor, as they share with you some of their techniques for helping international students to overcome writing issues and gain the confidence they need to start unleashing the rich cultural diversity hidden within. Session type: Roundtable Room: OM 3612 |
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Once upon a Time: A Fictional Rewrite Assignment "Once upon a time."This assignment explored the realm of theory related to communication and personal meaning. The presenters will tell their tale of how this assignment unfolded and of student learning outcomes. Through McDruty & Alterio's (2002) Learning through Storytelling in Higher Education and other works, the presenters found inspiration. This unique assignment was comprised of three chapters of a fictional short story which allowed for academic creativity. The first portion or Chapter One, began with "Once upon a time" and required the student to conduct a confidential interview of a friend/family member that experienced a negative encounter between a patient and health care. The students were to actively listen, validate, and utilize skills learned in their relational inquiry class. Chapter Two permitted the students to reflect and develop a fictional perspective of the same story they heard and place themselves into the role of the provider. Students changed the aspects of the scenario and peered through a relational lens to ultimately turn the situation into a positive experience. Lastly, Chapter Three, students embraced the critical thinking portion of the paper by utilizing theory from relational inquiry and described the rationale as to why and how they approached the situation differently as a nurse. Once Upon a Time can be incorporated into any theory content and department. Session type: Regular session Room: OM 3632 |
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Moodle Course Design Tips Want to spruce up the look of your Moodle course? This session starts with main course page presentation tips, and grouping and display strategies. We'll take a good look at the power of the label object and editor. As time permits we'll look at some of our favourite activity objects. We'll have the session in a computer lab so have one of your courses in mind to try things out on as we go along. Session type: Regular session Room: OM 1330 |
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Developing Program Learning Outcomes TRU Teaching Fellows, with CELT, are assisting faculty members in the development of program level learning outcomes (PLOs). This session will describe the role of the Fellows who are assisting faculty members in this initiative; address the value of program learning outcomes; the facilitation approach employed; faculty evaluations of the process to date; and the immediate benefits observed. Session attendees will have an opportunity to experience a mini version of the process, including a PLO development workshop. Following the conclusion of this session, attendees will be able to evaluate the merit of Program Learning Outcomes, as well as the current process used at TRU to facilitate the development of these PLOs. Session type: Regular session Room: OM 3772 |
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Core Competencies in Sustainability Education Sustainability is one of the core values of the University, but what does it really mean in terms of actual competencies we expect our students to garner from their education here? Incorporating sustainability competencies into our teaching is easier than you think (and you may already be doing this without actually articulating it). In this workshop I will address some of the key competencies in sustainability education as outlined in the current literature, and show how they can be integrated into our classrooms. Then you will have a chance to brainstorm and share your ideas with other workshop participants. Our students our going to be the future leaders, scientists, economists, health care workers etc., and as such, I believe that we should provide them with competencies that will influence their behaviours and decisions in their careers and personal lives. Our graduates should have a central understanding of sustainability, and a vision of a path toward a sustainable future. Session type: Regular session Room: OM 3782 |
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| 11:35-12:15 |
An Alternative Simulation Experience: The Use of Standardized Patients in the Lab Simulation is used increasingly in nursing education to provide a more experiential learning experience. Simulation includes a variety of techniques, including role playing, the use of mannikins, and the use of standardized patients. A standardized or simulated patient is a person trained to act as a patient with a set of symptoms or problems (Glasgow, Niederhauser, Dunphy, Mainous, 2013). The use of standardized patients has many benefits as the student has a more realistic experience for interpersonal and communication responses (Suling, 2013). The Thompson Rivers University School of Nursing BScN program utilizes simulation across three of the four years of the program, but has had minimal experience using standardized patients. With the interest to trial an innovative learning technique, the lab educators in a third year lab course developed a unit on prioritization and decision making. The scenario was based on the use of standardized patients, who pla yed multiple clients on an acute medical ward. The lab educators wanted to create a simulation experience that fully engaged students in their learning by developing their communication and collaboration skills with clients and peers, and work on their ability to prioritize and make decisions with multiple and changing client care needs. Our presentation will discuss the development of this simulation experience, the benefits and challenges of using standardized patients, and feedback for future simulation experiences. Session type: Regular session Room: OM 3612 |
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Combining Twitter and Moodle ECON1950: Combining twitter and Moodle to reach students outside the classroom A typical first year economics course is heavy on the use of theoretical models and students have regularly provided feedback that more real world examples are needed. To address this need, the social media platform, twitter can be used in combination with Moodle to provide students with real world examples relevant to the course material. A twitter hashtag for a course (e.g., #ECON1950) can be embedded in the Moodle site for the course. This enables an instructor to easily share links to relevant articles and to pose questions to the students outside of class in real-time. This session will provide an introduction to using twitter; including hands-on demonstrations of how twitter works, how to create a hashtag, how to make a threaded twitter essay, and how to embed a twitter feed into a Moodle course site. The session will also include an overview of how twitter was used in two ECON1950 courses last winter at TRU. And finally, the results of a student questionnaire evaluating the teaching tool will be presented. Session type: Regular session Room: OM 3632 |
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Minimizing Stereotype Threat and Implicit Bias Stereotype Threat occurs when we think we might confirm a stereotype about some aspect of our identity. That thinking actually impedes students' performance in class. Victims of stereotype threat underperform on the relevant tasks because they are preoccupied by fears of confirming the stereotypes about their group. There is substantial empirical support for the claim that most people - even those who explicitly and sincerely avow egalitarian views - hold implicit biases against such groups as women, FNMI, LGBT people, and so on. This is true even of members of the "target" group. Studies at universities across North America reveal the prevalence of implicit bias among professors. For women in philosophy, implicit biases are unconscious biases that affect the way we perceive (for instance) the quality of a woman's work, leading us to evaluate it more negatively than it deserves; while stereotype threats may lead a woman to genuinely underperform in philosophy. In this Teaching Practices Colloquium session I outline two methods for reducing the negative impacts of implicit bias and stereotype threat in the classroom. The first is straightforward: conform to equity committee best practices regarding syllabi, and have students submit assessment materials blind as a means to combat implicit bias. The second involves affirmative prompting prior to assessments, and embodied cognition and power poses throughout the class as a means to overcome stereotype threat. Session type: Regular session Room: OM 3741 |
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Izing: Intersections, Parallels and Separations TRU has a strategic priority to increase intercultural understanding. At the same time we have a strong track record in internationalization and a deep commitment to Indigenization. Clearly these are different goals with individual mandates and values driving them. This session will review the literature and trends regarding interculturalizing, internationalizing, and Indigenizing and invite participants to identify areas of synergy and divergence in working towards these goals at TRU. Specifically, we will explore the question of how a focus on student learning might allow us to see these initiatives as parallel or complementary rather than competitive while at the same time recognizing the need to articulate the uniqueness of each in administrative and student services levels. We will also explore which learning theories support multi-perspective, inclusive pedagogies for our multicultural, multination campus. Session type: Regular session Room: OM 3772 |
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The ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy The Association of College and Research Libraries' Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education reflects an education system designed for students from a particular cultural background which predisposes them to make certain assumptions about the world. In this talk, I will attempt to uncover some of these assumptions, and will argue that if we are to serve all of our students -- and in particular our international students -- we must make these implicit assumptions explicit. I will also share my experience using information literacy instruction to acculturate international students to North American academic norms, including the necessity of addressing and properly citing the opinions of others. Without an understanding of the assumptions that underlie the ACRL's Framework, international students may find themselves operating in an information ecosystem that they find utterly bewildering. For instance, for a student who does not understan d that reasonable people may disagree, North American citation practices may simply not make sense: if there is one and only one correct way of looking at an issue, then all knowledge is, at some level, common knowledge. It is only with an understanding of research as an ongoing conversation that the necessity of keeping track of different voices becomes obvious. Participants in this session will have an opportunity to discuss how they can help their own students understand both the Framework and the assumptions that underlie it. Session type: Regular session Room: OM 3782 |
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| 1:15-2:05 |
Virtual Labs: The Future of Educational Technology In this presentation, I will explain how I utilized virtual computer technology to offer effective teaching and learning methods in Ethical Hacking course. One of the biggest challenge when offering an Ethical Hacking course is to design lab experiments so that students learn how to prevent, identify and resolve network security breaches without affecting the university computer network. To address this problem, I developed various virtual lab setups for this course which are completely isolated from the university network. Student surveys show that this was a successful and effective technique to improve student learning and their hands-on exercises while, at the same time, protecting the university’s computer network. Using virtual technology has also a great impact on student learning in online courses. Virtual labs can provide remote-access to computer labs in various disciplines of Science and Engineering. Virtual labs could be designed to motivate distance-learning students to conduct experiments by arousing their curiosity. This helps online-students in learning basic and advanced concepts through remote experimentation. Virtual labs will also make it easy to offer other computing courses online as it will enable applications to be instantly delivered via computer or mobile devices. Session type: Speedsession Room: OM 1732 |
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Smart Boards: Not Your Average Overhead At last year's TPC a challenge was muttered..."using Smart Boards as expensive overheads" and this challenge was taken up. In this speed session basic functions and tools of a Smart board will be experienced by the audience. How can we work towards the ultimate goal of a Smart board in higher education: collaborative note taking? Session type: Speedsession Room: OM 1732 |
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Student Perception of an Online Instant Classroom Response Tool The objective of this study is to examine student perception of a clicker-type online instant classroom response tool provided by the website Socrative.com. This simple method works as follows: during the class, the instructor asks the students to answer a multiple-choice question and the students answer the question in real time using mobile phones or smart phones. The instructor and the students can see the responses live on the Socrative.com website. This method has a number of potential benefits: 1. The instructor can instantly identify which concept students understand and which they don't. As a result, the instructor can focus on the concepts that students find difficult to understand. 2. The method fosters student engagement as all students get to test their understanding of the subject matter right after it is presented to them. The study surveyed students of four classes where the instructor used this online based response tool to examine students' perception about the benefits listed above. The results showed that about 77% of the students thought that this system contributed to improving their understanding of the subject matter. The results also show that about 80% of the students thought that this system promoted their engagement with classroom teaching. Finally, about 79% of the students would recommend that other instructors use this tool in their classes. Session type: Speedsession Room: OM 3632 |
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Memorizing Academic Vocabulary Based on the presenter's experience integrating nontraditional approaches into a traditional language classroom instruction, the session introduces practical tips on using an old, common game with a new twist for teaching academic vocabulary. During the session, participants will play a game and learn academic words from the Academic Word List taught within English for Academic Purposes courses. Participants will also be introduced to another vocabulary learning activity, which involves digital photography and Power Point presentation. Session type: Speedsession Room: OM 3632 |
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Finding, Developing and Using Open Education Resources Over the past months, there has been a good discussion amongst faculty about open texts and open resources. From this discussion it is clear that there are differing views about the benefits and challenges of using these resources. This session is designed to provide faculty with more information about open resources and highlight how they can enhance academic freedom and originality in teaching. Creating content and distributing it in the classroom is the definition of academic freedom and originality in teaching. A brief history and tour of Open Education Resources (OER) repositories will be presented. With OER, faculty create a resource based on their particular context and/or circumstances and then license it so that others can similarly adopt them or adapt them for their own classes. Open Texts are faculty written and peer reviewed texts developed by a number of organizations around the world, including BC Campus. At TRU, a faculty member who has helped develop and used on open text in the classroom will speak about this experience. In addition, participants will be shown where to search for open texts and how to adopt and/or adapt them. Session type: Regular session Room: OM 3741 |
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Simulating a Baby Delivery: Preparing to Care Victoria is about to deliver a baby and we need your help! She is a manikin, simulating a birth of baby Florence in the TRU nurse lab. Her role is to provide students with the opportunity to witness and review the birthing process, consider post-partum nurse interventions, and ask questions freely- in a safe and non-threatening environment. Unfortunately, maternity educators are challenged with offering a real delivery experience in practicum settings. Few students are able to witness first hand the supportive care to a laboring woman and her family during the birthing process and then convert the childbirth event into supportive post-partum care. Through simulation, discussion without prejudice is possible, theory and experiential learning is transformed into unlimited possibilities. Come see how our future nurses are being exposed to new technology while considering the oldest skill in human history, delivering a baby! Session type: Regular session Room: S331 |
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Meet the Learning Technologists Over the past year, Open Learning has been taking on a more active role in providing service and support to campus users of learning technology. In this session, the team would like to describe some of the things they have been doing, and some of the improvements they hope to roll out in the coming year. More importantly, they hope to open a dialogue with TRU's instructors and students on what is needed, and how we can work together to make the most out of our online learning technology. After a short introduction and demo of some available tools, we invite you to share your questions, suggestions, ideas and your hopes for what we can do. Session type: Roundtable Room: OM 3782 |
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| 2:15-3:05 |
Clickers in the Classroom Audience Response Systems (ARSs, often referred to as clickers) have been used in education since the 1960s. As late as the 2000s, this technology continued to be expensive and/or difficult to use. In the last 6 years, several free, online versions of this technology have been developed and offered and can be accessed by teachers and students via the internet. Audience Response System have been shown to have many benefits to teaching and learning in a post-secondary setting. Teachers can practice flexible teaching as they receive instant feedback on students' understanding. ARSs can be used for informal or formal assessment and have been found to increase student engagement, student achievement, and in some cases increase levels in student interaction/collaboration. This session includes a short, interactive presentation on ARSs and then a guided session where participants can create their own ARS activities with support from the presenter. Session type: Regular session Room: OM 1330 |
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Promoting Knowledge Application through Animations To promote nursing students' knowledge application, educators often use case scenarios which are predominantly presented in written, video, or simulation formats. There is very limited literature on the use of animated scenarios to target nursing students' knowledge application within the classroom setting. This presentation reports on the development and utilization of animated scenarios to promote nursing students' reasoning abilities. Pros and cons of animated scenarios are outlined with emphasis on the usefulness of animations in learning. Strategies on how to introduce animations in teaching and research are also discussed. Session type: Regular session Room: OM 3632 |
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Thinking in Images Helps You See the Stars We live in a society that is image-obsessed, and yet education focuses on abstract forms of intellection, especially emphasizing measurement and argument. Measurement and argument are crucial, but we need to pay more attention to what I refer to in my writing as 'imagethinking,' the process of form/trans/forming images -- mental images, that is. Increasingly in my teaching I have tried to emphasize this aspect of learning -- to train students in what my Ph.D. supervisor, Northrop Frye, called 'the educated imagination.' This emphasis requires a mental shift, the kind of shift that the famous art educator Betty Edwards called 'drawing on the right side of the brain' -- later revising her terminology to call it 'R-Mode' thinking, where attention focuses on sensation and image, not on abstract ideas. In working with this approach, I am increasingly convinced of its importance in practical terms for students. Learning has to be an active process, but from the earliest age of their lives, students are immersed passively in manipulative images, and thus are alienated from their own power and agency. I have developed some simple but powerful exercises, aimed at strengthening the active power of images. I work with this approach in teaching writing, as well as in stimulating students' reading powers. In this presentation, I invite participants to try these exercises and offer a discussion and analysis of how they work. Session type: Regular session Room: OM 3741 |
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Universal Design for Learning: Engaging Learners Academic accommodations for learners with documented learning needs are a Human Right, and are a requirement at TRU. However, rather than approaching these needs on an individual basis, the approach of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can be used to accommodate these needs in an inclusive manner which benefits all students. The theoretical basis of UDL and several quick and easy technological "accommodations" will be shared as examples. Participants will also take part in an inclusive group learning activity that not only demonstrates UDL, but also demonstrates a research-based instructional practice that increases student engagement for all. Session type: Regular session Room: OM 3772 |