Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Blog: Educators outside of the classroom

By Stephanie Vennard, Residence Manager – Russell, Grenville, and Prescott Houses When we think about educators, most people automatically think about teachers or professors – people who do formal classroom teaching. They impart academic knowledge onto our students and help them achieve their career aspirations. That being said, we often... More

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Blog: End-of-term cuLearn checklist

By Tamara Vaughan, Educational Technology Assistant, EDC The end of the term is always busy: you’re calculating, finalizing and submitting grades, meeting with your TAs one last time and making grade changes when necessary. After the course ends, however, what happens to your course on cuLearn? From a technological perspective, how do you... More

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Blog: Professors and mental health: An untapped resource

By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science With general increasing awareness around mental health issues, professors may have more of a role to play than they realize. While we may not be therapists or physicians, we may be well positioned to support our students not only intellectually, but emotionally too. Since the... More

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Blog: Stupid is as stupid does – Critically considering tests of intelligence on reality television is a pedagogical win

By Rebecca Bromwich, Instructor, Department of Law and Legal Studies No, I’m not “Canada’s Smartest Person,” as measured by the tests offered on reality TV, and the demonstration of that on national network television offers a wonderful teachable moment. This fall, I was nominated to go on CBC’s reality TV gameshow Canada’s Smartest... More

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Blog: To lecture is to inspire

By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics These days, “lecturing” has been receiving a bad rap; a lecturer who lectures in the traditional sense is often referred to as a “sage on the stage.” The standard argument against the traditional lecture is that it is an outdated mode for information transfer.... More

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Blog: Using BigBlueButton to engage your students is easier and more powerful than ever

By Elspeth McCulloch, EDC Educational Technology Development Coordinator Have you thought about incorporating BigBlueButton (BBB) into your course? BigBlueButton is a synchronous web conferencing tool that allows instructors and TAs to host live online presentations, seminars, office hours and meetings from cuLearn. The technology is feature... More

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Blog: The month of “Novemblah”

By Claudia Buttera, Lab Coordinator, Department of Biology November can be a tough month to get through. It is dark when I get up in the morning, and it’s getting darker and darker when I leave campus to head home. I look out my window to see that strong northerly winds and drenching rains... More

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Blog: How to get students to spot their “academic discipline” around every corner

By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science An exciting byproduct of my fourth-year seminar on political opinion writing has been the phenomenon of students discovering politics — the “home discipline” of the course — around every corner. The class, which I developed this year as a special topics course, is... More

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Blog: Teaching a blended course: Trial and error

By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science With the university’s push towards incorporating more online teaching, “blended” courses (courses in which some classroom time is replaced by online material) have appeared. In my faculty (Public Affairs), the blended model was rolled out as a half-and-half model (with... More

Monday, October 3, 2016

Blog: Residential curriculum

By Natalie Allan, Assistant Director, Residence Life Services In our residence community, we are focused on the learning that takes place outside of the classroom. We wonder what should students learn as result of living in residence? What strategies should we use to promote this learning? And how will we know if they learned... More

Friday, September 30, 2016

Blog: Labyrinths and their benefits

By Maristela Petrovic-Dzerdz, Instructional Design Coordinator, EDC Have you noticed the walking labyrinth in the quad recently? We live in a very busy world where we are overwhelmed with distractions every minute. Technology enables us to be connected all the time, inducing anxiety caused by the fear that we might miss out on some... More

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Blog: Learning, attention, silence and rest

By: Rebecca Bromwich, Instructor, Department of Law and Legal Studies On preparing for a new teaching term as the summer of 2016 turns into fall, I have a new challenge. Perhaps it’s a good problem to have: I’m teaching things I have taught before. This gives me some breathing space to reflect on, and... More

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Blog: From choosing a math textbook to writing one

By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics Some people regard math as a black-and-white subject. Such a sentiment has a certain degree of truth. Calculus two centuries ago is still calculus today. Theorems that have been rigorously established will not become untrue in the future unless our logical foundations... More

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Blog: Flexible evaluation

By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics As a new academic year is about to begin, many instructors are in the process of drafting course outlines. When I was a student, I always went straight to the evaluation scheme as soon as I received a course outline. I suspect that many... More

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Blog: Can we take anything from the success of PokémonGo into teaching and learning?

By Claudia Buttera, Lab Coordinator, Department of Biology If you haven’t already heard of the absolute craze that is PokémonGo, here’s a brief overview from a non-gamer. The first Pokémon games launched in 1996 and were designed for Nintendo handhelds. The game is based on capturing, training, battling and trading virtual fictional... More

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Blog: High-stake final exams: To give or not to give

By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics In some countries, graduation from a degree program requires passing a number of high-stake exams. Examples of high-stake exams include the SAT, International Baccalaureate exams, and many licensure exams. Music exams administered by the Royal Conservatory of Music are also... More

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Blog: Should professors assign their own work?

By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science Summer typically means the time to design fall course syllabi. In deciding which readings to include, should professors assign their own work? In the case of required books for purchase, there is the potential conflict of interest owing to the instructor profiting (however... More

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Blog: An unexpected advantage of the summer term

By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics Exams aren’t always popular among students (are they ever?). However, in a large math class, exams and tests are almost inevitable to ensure consistency in the assessment of students. In a previous blog article, I wrote about testing prerequisite knowledge at the... More

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Blog: The jagged profile

By Rosella Ingriselli, Educational Development Support, EDC As I sat at my desk planning for the upcoming EDC Summer Institute (yes, I just name dropped), which focuses on creating an inclusive classroom, I started doing some research on appropriate materials to include as part of the participants’ “homework.” My quest led me to a... More

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Blog: In praise of online teaching – Thoughts as the first millennials turn 40

By Rebecca Bromwich, Instructor, Department of Law and Legal Studies We are riding a generational and technological wave into a new mobile age, and teaching and learning in higher education are along for the ride. I didn’t start off as a tech enthusiast, but recent experiences, and the example of a wonderful friend, have... More

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Blog: ThingLink: Student generated, interactive, multimodal images

By Allie Davidson, Educational Technology Development Coordinator I recently went to the CALICO conference at Michigan State University and attended a panel presentation with several instructors who are using the tool ThingLink to increase student engagement and foster critical thinking in the classroom. I think it can be used as a powerful tool... More

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Blog: Should you ask students whether they liked the book?

By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science In my course on graphic novels and political identity, I often like to open a class session by asking students whether they “liked” the book on offer that week. As an opener, it’s a softball question that can help put at ease students who might... More

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Blog: Should professors reveal their views

By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science Should students know a professor’s views? I read with interest a recent article in Carleton’s Teaching and Learning newsletter about those of my colleagues, who, like me, teach courses on “controversial issues.” One colleague, who teaches about animal rights, asks the... More

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Blog: Captur[ing] Carleton: Engaging learners through screencasting

By Michele Hall, Educational Technology Development Coordinator, EDC The educational psychologist, John Dewey, once said, “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.” In my last blog post, I wrote about my own failures at teaching today when using yesterday’s model, the lecture, and noted a few strategies... More

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Blog: Beginning exams

By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics About midway through the first time I taught MATH 3801, Linear Programming, I found out that many of my students did not remember what the rank of a matrix was. The rank of a matrix is a basic concept covered in first-year linear algebra.... More

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Blog: Beyond PowerPoint: EdTech and the active learning experience

By Michele Hall, Educational Technology Development Coordinator, EDC The EDC’s Teaching and Learning Symposium is fast upon us, and this year’s theme—Active Engagement: Success in the Classroom and Beyond—has me reflecting on how my own teaching practice has evolved over the years, from passive to interactive, and how it continues to... More

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Blog: The DIY syllabus

By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science Part of the job of higher education is getting students to shift from being consumers of knowledge to producers of it. The syllabus, or course outline, is one way in which we provide students with information and perspectives we expect them to master. But what... More

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Blog: The rise of AI in education

By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics AlphaGo’s recent victory over 18-time world champion Lee Sedol at the game of Go in the Google DeepMind Challenge Match stunned the world. AlphaGo is a Go-playing computer program developed by Google subsidiary DeepMind. Its victory was a big deal because many people... More

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Blog: Who might be at risk in online courses?

By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics It has been asserted (see, for example, Tony Bates’ e-book, Teaching in a digital age) that a properly designed online course covering a topic that can be taught online can work as well as a face-to-face course. Such an assertion is backed by the... More

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Blog: When course material is life-changing

By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science Sometimes the course material we assign can have unexpected effects. In my fourth-year seminar on graphic novels and political identity, I have allowed my syllabus to stray from a narrow view of my discipline. So while we study works on such topics as the Holocaust,... More

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Blog: The use of simulation in teaching social work practice: A potential answer for the art and science of social work

By Kenta Asakura, Assistant Professor, School of Social Work First and foremost, I’m a social worker. Before my recent appointment as an Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work here at Carleton, I spent over a decade providing individual, family and group counselling in various marginalized communities as a clinical social worker. As... More

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Blog: Lessons learned from teaching evaluations

By Kim Hellemans, Undergraduate Chair, Department of Neuroscience For the Fall 2014 semester, I received the lowest teaching evaluations in my 10-year career in university teaching. In a way, I expected them. I had come back to work in Fall 2014 after a 10-month maternity leave with my youngest daughter. To say I struggled... More

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Blog: Rethinking bias in teaching

By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science When teaching controversial topics, particularly the kind that are known in everyday discourse to be polarizing, the question of professor “bias” is sometimes raised. Does every professor necessarily have a bias, and if so, is bias something that should be disclosed to... More

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Blog: “Why” vs. “WTF” questions

By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science As the old adage goes, a famous physicist (I’ve seen the story attributed to both Richard Feynman and Isidor I. Rabi) became so successful not because he knew all the answers. Instead, it was because, when he’d return home from school each afternoon, his mother... More

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Blog: Slide presentation tips for recorded courses

By Jim Davies, Associate Professor, Institute of Cognitive Science Video versions of courses tend to get one of three views: the professor, the slides or a combination. I’ve had students complain that they see too much of the professor in the videos, and I can understand this: watching Khan Academy videos, for example, shows... More

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