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ISSN 1916-4629 Teaching Perspectives (Print) • ISSN 1916-4637 Teaching Perspectives (Online) Editorial - James Whitehead ................... 1 AAU Sh...
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ISSN 1916-4629 Teaching Perspectives (Print) • ISSN 1916-4637 Teaching Perspectives (Online)

Editorial - James Whitehead ................... 1 AAU Showcase at STU/UNB .................. 2 Library Additions ......................................... 3 Book Review: Team-Based Learning Kathleen McConnell ................................... 4 Focus Article: Trial Run with Team-Based Learning - Janice Harvey .......................... 5 Focus Article: Learning Communities Eamonn Lynch ........................................... 7 Teaching Triangles ..................................... 8 Focus Article: IFAT - James Whitehead .. 9 Out and About (Faculty Abstracts) ....... 11 Focus Article: Facebook in and around the classroom - Andrew Moore ........... 12 Focus Article: Assessment from multiple perspectives - Ray Williams ................... 14 Focus Article: Student curiosity in firstyear language class - Paolo Mateucci .. 15 Providing Accommodations to students with disabilities - Marina Nedashkivska 16 Focus Article: Inclusion is killing us D’Arcy Vermette ....................................... 18 Focus Article: The Teaching Human Martin Kutnowski .................................... 20 2012 Award recipients & nominees 22-24 Focus Article: Gambling with Technology Michael Dawson ....................................... 25 Dear Dr Mentor ..................................... 26 Upcoming Events .................................27-28

Issue 17: Fall 2012

Front Cover: Mary-Lou Babineau, Romance Languages, Spanish, St Thomas University [Teaching Award recipient, 2011] Rear Cover: Mikhail Molchanov, Political Science, St Thomas University [Teaching Award nominee, 2012]

Teaching Perspectives Editor/layout: James Whitehead, 452-0610 (o), [email protected] Contributors to this issue: • James Whitehead; • Kathleen McConnell • Janice Harvey • Eamonn Lynch (UNB) • Andrew Moore • Ray Williams • Paolo Mateucci (Dal) • Marina Nedashkivska • D’Arcy Vermette • Martin Kutnowski • Michael Dawson • Alice Cassidy (UBC) • Kirsten Olds (U of Tulsa) • Allison Pingree (Harvard) Teaching Perspectives is published twice each academic year (one per semester). Publication deadlines for articles are December 1st for the January issue and August 1st for the September issue. We are interested in receiving articles on a wide range of teaching topics, including innovative strategies, techniques and approaches that enhance learning. Write with the understanding that your audience comes from a wide range of disciplines, so try and make your submissions relevant to a broad audience. Articles can vary in length (preferred 500-2000 words) and drafts can be submitted for feedback. References and images are welcomed. Files should be sent to [email protected]. LTD Office: ECH 311 Office: 506 452-0525 Fax: 506 452-0428 Mailing address: 51 Dineen Drive, Fredericton, New Brunswick, E3B 5G3 Canada If you have a question for Dear Dr Mentor, please send them to us at [email protected] and we will anonymously circulate your question to our Atlantic volunteer mentors for feedback. Articles submitted to Teaching Perspectives do not necessarily represent the views of the LTD Committee. The editor reserves the right to not publish a submission. Teaching Perspectives is catalogued and archived with the Library of Canada, Ottawa. Past-issues are also archived on the Moodle page of the Learning and Teaching Development Committee of St Thomas University. This is linked from w3.stu.ca. ISSN 1916-4629 (Print) ISSN 1916-4637 (Online)

Editorial

James Whitehead, Director of Teaching and Learning, STU I should love student opinion surveys. I score quite acceptably, thank you, and perhaps I should just ride the wave of student contentment and shut up. The highest scoring faculty get a pleasant email from the VP Academic each semester, which is nice recognition, and positive reinforcement is welcomed wherever we can get it. [Note, I have never, sadly, been the beneficiary of one of those emails]. Those who score well proudly present their stats in their teaching portfolios where they are an integral component of the academic hiring and promotion package. But what use are the scores, really? Should we be placing so much emphasis on those few numbers? At the time of writing this, I am in the process of reading sixteen teaching portfolios from some of the best teachers in the region. These are nominees for the AAU’s regional Distinguished Teaching Award. Each university gets to nominate up to two of their most acclaimed teachers for the distinction. They are clearly wonderful teachers, whose portfolios are incredibly varied, and yet virtually all are presenting their standard student evaluation scores in a manner that, for the most part, dulls the shine of their submissions. Apart from being somewhat superfluous (after all they weren’t chosen at random for the AAU award by their institution, they are recent recipients of their own institutional awards), the selective content of the statistics renders them almost universally useless. This is my first beef, but not my biggest. As researchers, most of us have a rudimentary understanding of statistics, and the limitations of interpreting incompletely presented data. Unfortunately, it appears from reading these otherwise fantastic portfolios that rudimentary reporting standards have clearly flown right out the window. At the very least, it is impossible to establish whether some biased selection of data has been documented. How many students didn’t respond? How did you select which questions were included and which ones you omitted? Was the course new or experimental? What type of course was it, a seminar or a larger first year class? As the possibility of migrating to online feedback statistics gathering occurs, whether feedback is gathered on paper or online also has an impact on ratings: they typically decrease in online surveys. However, my principle ‘beouf du jour’ regarding the statistics is one with which we are all familiar. Can and should teaching be distilled and evaluated - at all - based on student feedback ratings? Should they form such a key component of tenure and promotion packages? Do these numbers reflect real learning that has occurred? In practice, wouldn’t it be easy for faculty to focus class methods on those that simply maximise the ‘scores’ and still end up with a class of students who have, in actual fact, learned little, though clearly had a good time and loved the prof? Some of our greatest teachers at STU, and I am thinking very clearly of a couple, sometimes do not score well on these evaluations. The students don’t always know at the time of the course the value in what they have learned, and learning can be painful! Who bears the brunt of such recent pain? The questions are also highly limited and students, quite frankly, often have a hard time interpreting them. For example, I have a class in which I abolished my textbook a few semesters ago, and yet the students score me poorly on the question that’s asks how useful the textbook was, rather than leave it blank! My overall average scores suffer. There is the opportunity to choose to opt out of the institutional student survey, with the permission of the VP Academic, as long as an alternate mode of student feedback is clearly proposed. Some faculty have done this, and the alternatives probably result in more focussed data, even if it is harder to interpret or compare with standard data. The absence of such statistics would at least focus those who are reading teaching portfolios for tenure and promotion purposes, or for awards, to find the evidence of good practice below the veneer of a dubious number. So, whats the value in a score of 4.9? A lovely letter and perhaps a rung in the ladder to promotion, but it’s certainly not a meaningful measure of student learning, nor necessarily even good teaching. ... continued on next page

Issue 17: Fall 2012

Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

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Editorial... continued from previous page We again have a wonderful range of articles in this issue of Teaching Perspectives, from both faculty and staff and I sincerely thank them for their contributions. We have several articles on aspects related to Team-Based Learning (Kathy McConnell, English and Janice Harvey, ENVS and yours truly); an article on how Facebook can be used in the classroom (Andrew Moore, Great Ideas); Mike Dawson, History shares his experiences with clickers in one of last semester’s courses. D’Arcy Vermette (Native Studies) questions some common perceptions of an ‘Inclusive’ education. There are also articles on accommodations for students with disabilities (Marina Nedashkivska, Accommodations services) and contributions from Martin Kutnowski (Fine Arts), Ray Williams (School of Education), Eamonn Lynch (UNB) and Paolo Mateucci (Dalhousie U).

We would love to hear feedback on this issue and its content. Even if controversial issues are raised, we rarely do! If you would like to share a comment on a presented stance, we’d love to hear your perspective or experience, and would like to have a “letters to the editor” section. Alternatively, if you have a question you’d like our panel of AAU Teaching Developers to address in the Dear Dr. Mentor column, please email them to us, and they can be printed anonymously. If you would like to submit an article for next semester’s issue, please send the idea or draft to us early, and the finished article by December 1st. Have a wonderful semester and a big thank you again to all the contributors to this issue! James Whitehead, Director of Teaching and Learning, STU

St Thomas university will be co-hosting the annual Association of Atlantic Universities Teaching Showcase with UNB, on Saturday October 13th. This is the principle teaching conference in the region. The last time STU hosted the Showcase was in 1999. We anticipate around 130 faculty from the Atlantic provinces, as well as some from outside our region, will descend on our campuses and share their teaching and learning tips. It will be a wonderful opportunity for our faculty to be able to participate without the expense and time drain of travelling. While the conference theme “Conversations” reflects the fact that we will be talking about teaching and learning, we have also generated some sub-theme sessions that will focus on how we can aid in communications in the classroom, and outside the classroom. For example, how can we improve student-student participation in class or how can technologies can help students build upon in-class conversations? Our desire in organising this conference was not merely to have a series of sessions in which presenters share their teaching practices, but to allow time for the voices of the participants to be heard. In order to maximise these opportunities, in addition to twenty-five regular 25 minute sessions, we have chosen to have ten one hour-long sessions during which there should be time for the attendees to be part of the conversation.

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We had an abundance of proposals prior to the deadline (August 1st), and have regrettably had to hone them down by half to fill the thirty-five slots that are available. However, this means that there should be a nice array of focussed presentations available. There will be five concurrent sessions, based on the following themes: ■ Conversations in the classroom (encouraging and using in-class discussion, ways to teach and promote teamwork, peer-assisted learning, team-based teaching, etc) ■ Conversations about the classroom (general teaching/ learning issues) ■ Conversations and technology (using technology for student interaction and group work, online conversations using social media and other online technologies, faculty-student interaction outside the classroom, etc) ■ Conversations about ideas that matter (big picture teaching/learning issues, e.g., teaching for social responsibility, etc) ■ A pot-pourri mix of the above! You can find registration forms online at: http://aaushowcase2012.ca The regular registration fee of $90 will be subsidised for UNB and STU faculty by the VP Academic (at UNBF and SJ) and by the LTD committee (STU) to reduce the cost to just $50. Please register as early as possible so that we can gauge numbers. James Whitehead & Dawn MacIsaac (Conference co-Chairs)

Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

Issue 17: Fall 2012

Library Corner Recent Additions to the Library (ECH 311) Blended Learning in Higher Education: Framework, Principles, and Guidelines, D. Randy Garrison and Norman D Vaughn, 2007 This groundbreaking book offers a down-to-earth resource for the practical application of blended learning in higher education as well as a comprehensive examination of the topic. Well-grounded in research, Blended Learning in Higher Education clearly demonstrates how the blended learning approach embraces the traditional values of face-toface teaching and integrates the best practices of online learning. This approach has proven to both enhance and expand the effectiveness and efficiency of teaching and learning in higher education across disciplines. In this much-needed book, authors D. Randy Garrison and Norman D. Vaughan present the foundational research, theoretical framework, scenarios, principles, and practical guidelines for the redesign and transformation of the higher education curriculum. The book outlines seven blended learning redesign principles, explains the professional development issues essential to the implementation of blended learning designs, presents six illustrative scenarios of blended learning design, contains practical guidelines to blended learning redesign and describes techniques and tools for engaging students.

Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching, Larry K. Michaelsen, 2004. See the review of this book by Kathy McConnell, opposite.

Books on teaching are always gratefully received by the LTD Library (ECH310). Just call 452-0610 or email [email protected] and we’ll pick them up! Below are some books that were recently donated by John Coates: • • • •

Becoming a Critical Thinker (2nd edition 1996) by Vincent Ryan Ruggiero Holistic Learning: A Teacher’s Guide to Integrated Studies (Curriculum Series)… by John P. Miller Holistic Curriculum REV/E (Research in Education Series) by John P. Miller A third copy of Teaching Large Classes (Green Guide No. 1) (edition 1998) by Allan J Gedalof

Team-Based Learning in the Social Sciences and Humanities: Group Work that Works to Generate Critical Thinking and Engagement, by Sweet, Michael and Larry K. Michaelson, 2012 Team-Based Learning (TBL) is a unique, powerful, and proven form of small-group learning that is being increasingly adopted in higher education. Teachers who use TBL report high levels of engagement, critical thinking, and retention among their students. TBL has been used successfully in both small and large classes, in computer-supported and online classes; and because it is group work that works, it has been implemented in nearly every discipline and in countries around the world. This book introduces the elements of TBL and how to apply them in the social sciences and humanities. It describes the four essential elements of TBL – readiness assurance, design of application exercises, permanent teams, peer evaluation – and pays particular attention to the specification of learning outcomes, which can be a unique challenge in these fields. The core of the book consists of examples of how TBL has been incorporated into the cultures of disciplines as varied as economics, education, literature, politics, psychology, and theatre. The authors explain why they felt a need to change how they taught and why they chose TBL. Furthermore, each chapter provides examples of the assignments and exercises they use to help their students achieve the specific learning outcomes of their courses.

Library Access and Database The contents of the LTD lending library are listed in a sortable and annotated inventory called “LibraryThing”. The easiest way to access it is via the LTD Moodle page (you don’t need to login in order to access the library listing), or type in the following URL: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/stultd You can search by author, topic, title, or a list of search tags. The library is housed in the LTD office in 311 of Edmund Casey Hall and is open during staffing hours of the office that will be posted to the door of the Library, and on our Moodle page, based on staffing availability. You can access the library at times when it is otherwise closed, on request, by emailing [email protected] Past Magna seminars can also be watched in the library or borrowed for up to two weeks.

Review by “brockportcelt”, Apr 9, 2012 on LibraryThing.com

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Book Review Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching Ed. Larry K, Michaelsen, Arletta Bauman Knight and L. Dee Fink. Review by Kathleen McConnell, Department of English, STU

When I arrived at STU in the autumn of 2002, I had never taken a class as large as 70 students; suddenly, I was supposed to teach a lot of them. It nearly killed me. Students weren’t happy, either. Fortunately (desperately), in 2003 I participated in a workshop called “Team Learning in Liberal Arts Courses” led by Brent MacLaine, a poet and award-winning professor at UPEI. MacLaine had adapted strategies from Larry Michaelsen’s Team-Based Learning techniques, developed for huge (mandatory disclosure) business and science courses. With MacLaine’s help, I found ways to adapt Michaelsen’s techniques for my English literature courses, and later, even for Creative Writing. Consequently, when I heard that Michaelsen was giving the Effective Teaching Institute at UNBSJ this spring, I not only signed up; I also nabbed several of my colleagues – full and part time - and persuaded them to come. By the end of the day, I felt like my brain had been popped out of my skull and given a good wash and brush before being put back. The big advantage of TeamBased Learning is that it gives students in a large class a taste of the seminar experience in terms of in-class discussion. A close second advantage is that every two or three weeks students are tested on upcoming material, so they’ve all have read and considered the assigned work before we talk about it in class. There are numerous other advantages – the book is full of statistics proving that students learn the material better and retain it longer – but the seminar-quality experience and the required preparation sold me. The book Team-Based Learning is divided into three sections: I. Key Ideas of Team-Based Learning; II. The Voices of Experience; and III. Major Lessons about Team-Based Learning. The chapters within each section are written by various professors experienced with Team-Based learning. Part I’s “Getting Started with Team-Based Learning” is crucial for the neophyte. In it, Michaelsen lists the four essential principles for group work that promotes learning:

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• • • •

1. groups must be properly formed and managed; 2. students must be made accountable for their individual and group work; 3. group assignments must facilitate both learning and team development; and 4. students must have frequent and timely performance feedback. (28)

This review is not the place to go into the minutae of how those principles are put into practice; if you’re keen, borrow the book from the LTD library and read Michaelsen’s essay! Here, I will simply say that there are solid, (dare I say ingenious) procedures for: • • • •

setting up groups whose members’ resources are diverse; these groups do not change during the course; setting clear learning goals for the course and for each module; in most of my literature courses, a module might be a pair of novels, or one author’s assigned works; administering RATs (“Readiness Assessment Tests”) at the beginning of every learning module [Editor: see article on page 9]; administering peer evaluations so that the results are equitable and based on performance rather than popularity.

Second Thoughts about Team-Based Learning Team-Based Learning is not a panacea. Developing a TBL course takes time at the front-end, especially preparing the questions on the RATs, which is, for me, by far the hardest part. “Appendix A: Frequently Asked Questions” gives some excellent pointers (226). You can’t do TeamBased Learning half way; to get good results, you have to commit to the pedagogy, and then pursue all the elements pretty exhaustively. Despite these caveats, students’ enthusiasm spurs me to continue using Team-Based Learning. In mid-term evaluations, comments like “good balance, “most interesting,” “love the group work” are the norm. The book Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching has the information you need to start teaching using this methodology. It is, alas, skewed to the sciences and business, so you have to dig a bit to get what you need. But Michaelsen’s essays “Getting Started with Team-Based Learning” (27-50), “Creating Effective Assignments” (51-72) and the FAQs (209-228) are good places to start. [Editor’s note: The LTD library has recently acquired a second title by Larry Michaelson on team-based learning in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Read more in the “Library Corner” of this issue]. Kathleen McConnell is an Associate Professor, and Chair of the Department of English at STU. Her book of essays “Pain, Porn and Complicity: Women Heroes from Pygmalion to Twilight” will be published in November.

Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

Issue 17: Fall 2012

FOCUS Article A Trial Run with Team-Based Learning by Janice

Harvey, Environment and Society, STU

After participating in the team-based learning workshop held at UNBSJ in April, I was convinced of its merits and determined to give it a try. The opportunity presented itself with my intersession course in June. The flexibility of the intersession format combined with a small class size presented relatively safe conditions for experimenting with a new teaching method. I did go into the course with a self-imposed handicap, however. TBL guru Larry Michaelson warns against introducing this method while working with new material, advice I ignored. It had been a couple of years since I had taught Introduction to Environmental Problems, and, not surprisingly, my thinking about the course had evolved. I decided to introduce a new text and a brand new course outline while also using the new method. I trusted that the intersession structure would be flexible enough to accommodate any necessary adjustments along the way. I began the course according to script, explaining the TBL approach. Then I divided the class into two teams. With only nine students, the only team selection criteria that made sense was to try to distribute first year and upper level students evenly between the two teams so that team intellectual resources were more or less comparable. Once formed into teams, I allowed them to negotiate the values of the various components of the course evaluation, with the minimum ten percent stipulation for any component. Finally, they did a sample ‘readiness assurance’ test (RAT) based on their in-class reading of the course syllabus. This initiation provided them with a good foundation for moving forward. I also used a peer evaluation form provided on the TBL website to ensure accountability of team members to the group – an excellent tool for eliciting fair ratings and constructive feedback. We did a trial run of this “team maintenance” evaluation half way through the course so students had a ‘heads-up’ on how their team members were viewing contributions and giving them a chance to adjust. I averaged the ratings and compiled all the written comments in to a master evaluation sheet for each student. Both the mid-course trial and final evaluations were done anonymously. While the intersession setting was ideal in some ways, there were drawbacks. With only nine students, I could not make teams of the ideal size of five to seven. I went with one team of four, another of five. The disadvantage of the lower numbers became apparent as irregular attendance by a few students became an issue. The absence of even one member from a team of four changes the dynamic of the team quite markedly. Having only two teams also limited the inter-team discussions; I expect that more teams would have resulted in more diversity in team products and therefore more avenues for discussion. The experience of the TBL process seemed to be positive for students. In the course evaluation (five out of nine students filled out the on-line

Issue 17: Fall 2012

form) two students admitted to being wary of the team approach initially but changed their minds once the team work began. One student came from the ESL programme and had quite limited verbal skills. She seemed to benefit from being part of a small group and was able to contribute to the group’s research although not so much to their discussions. Her final written exam revealed a grasp of key concepts that I’m sure was enhanced by listening to her teammates discuss within the group. Everyone’s final mark benefitted from the team assignments. For most, this was a real motivator to attend class and contribute to the team work. On an individual learning level, I was less satisfied. The idea is that individuals read the material for the module and are then tested on it. They then redo the test as a team, negotiating the answers collectively, learning from one another through the process of discussing and deciding on the correct answer rather than from a lecture. The benefit of this is that there is a strong incentive to actually do the reading. The professor, then, does not need to lecture on that material and can design class time activities on the application of key concepts gleaned from the reading. As expected, most individual scores on the multiple choice module tests were lower than the team score (there were a few exceptions). Yet despite the high team test scores, it was apparent from class discussions following the tests that many students still did not really understand the material they were tested on. They did not seem to learn what they needed to from the process of negotiating collective responses as a team, even when arriving at the correct answer. Further, the high team scores made it difficult to discern what material individuals didn’t really understand in order to supplement with targeted interventions. Once I discovered the gap between team and individual understanding, I ended up using class time to reinforce all key concepts after the testing process. Individual success on these readiness assurance tests depends on reading comprehension, a skill than cannot be assumed all students possess. Further, if the concepts are unfamiliar, even skilled readers have to invest some effort to understand the material. Not everyone is prepared to do this. In the fall semester with a full class of first year students, I have decided to use an introductory lecture prior to the reading-testing process to see if individual comprehension improves. Making the leap from the readiness assurance phase to learning application through strategic team assignments was also challenging. In TBL, the success of the application stage hinges largely on the effectiveness of the assignments given to the teams to solve. While I read everything I could find about how to design such application assignments, ‘getting it right’ is really a process of trial and error in the classroom. This is especially true when using new course material (the reason why Larry Michaelson advises against using TBL with new courses).

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I decided to use the proposed development of shale gas in New Brunswick as a case study through which we would explore key course concepts. I had the teams design concept maps to illustrate the economic, political, social and ecological dimensions of their case study at local and global scales. They produced three versions, with each successive map incorporating new concepts. The teams worked hard on these, engaging in deep discussion and coming up with creative ways to illustrate the systems and relationships at play. They used the white boards to draw their final submissions, allowing for revisions and team participation (we could do this because there were only two teams). They also produced a 500-700 word “cabinet document” in which they documented the salient issues and presented their advice to Premier Alward on the shale gas file. Overall these team products were well done and most students were actively engaged in the process. These assignments did not really have the effect of generating inter-team competition or debate, however, since there was widespread agreement on the issues, and not enough divergence in the approach to the maps. Full class discussion was somewhat tepid as a result. The primary course objective was to provide students with the conceptual and analytical tools to understand the broad dimensions of any environmental problem they might encounter. The final exam was designed to test this objective at the individual level. At the beginning of the exam, I screened a 20-minute video, the CBC news documentary, “The New Conquistadors,” on the activities of Canadian mining companies in Panama, an issue with many similarities to the shale gas issue. The exam question asked them to use the analytical tools they applied to the shale gas issue to explain what is unfolding in Panama. With a few exceptions, the individual exam results were disappointing. While they could describe the Panama issue, they applied little analysis and generally failed to link the issue to the larger system of global resource exploitation and economic expansion, as we did in the shale gas case study. So the transfer of case specifics to more generalized understanding didn’t happen to the extent I had hoped. There is also the distinct possibility that in the final class on a beautiful June day, few students were motivated to put much effort into the exam. Most completed it in record time, a function perhaps of them having collectively chosen to assign a lower value to the final exam at the beginning of the course. Despite some of these issues, the ‘TBL experiment’ was well worthwhile. The task now is to improve the course design and delivery for the ‘real world’ of 60 first year students in September. I will provide more content support at the beginning of the readiness assurance testing. I will also allocate the values for the different course components rather than letting the students do this, to make sure that individual evaluations are properly weighted against team components. Rather than focus on one case study, I will use two or three cases to make sure students are able to transfer concepts before testing them on their ability to do so. Finally, I will spend time this summer refining the team assignments to try to meet more of the TBL benchmarks for effective concept application and learning. Janice Harvey teaches in the Environment and Society Programme, STU. She also served as the Executive Director of the Conservation Council of NB from 1983-89, as VP of Friends of the Earth Canada, and is the first leader of the New Brunswick Green Party.

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Educational Lexicon: Learning Communities The strategic plan mentions several times the desire to encourage the development of more ‘learning communities’. What does this term mean? Learning communities are “classes that are linked or clustered during an academic term, often around an interdisciplinary theme, and enroll a common cohort of students. A variety of approaches are used to build these learning communities, with all intended to restructure the students’ time, credit, and learning experiences to build community among students, between students and their teachers, and among faculty members and disciplines.” (Learning Communities National Resource Center, N.D.). This is spirit behind the Aquinas program, Renaissance College, and other collaborative teaching initiatives. Learning communities have demonstrated many benefits to students (increased engagement), faculty (collaboration), and educational institutions (increased retention and improving the overall education of the student body).

Workshop on Learning Communities To promote and further enhance the faculty and students experience at STU and UNB, a workshop on best practices relating to creating and developing learning communities at STU and UNB will be occurring on December 7th. This is a collaborative project of STU and UNB, sponsored here by the LTD committee and the office of the Vice-President Academic. The workshop will be facilitated by a representative from Evergreen State College, the leading post-secondary institution of the study and practice of learning communities. Dr. Rita Pougiales, former Dean of Faculty Development and Hiring at Evergreen State College, has agreed to facilitate this workshop. The location and exact time of ther workshop are unavailable at the time of going to press, but will be communicated via the LTD Moodle page and email to all faculty. See Eamonn Lynch’s article on the next page for more information.

STLHE, 2013 The annual Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) will be held at the Cape Breton University in Sydney, Nova Scotia next year. Subsidies are available from LTD to offset travel and registration fees. Visit our Moodle page for more information.

Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

Issue 17: Fall 2012

FOCUS Article Learning Communities 101 by Eamonn

Lynch, Business Administration, UNB

This article is a background piece for a workshop that will be held in early December sponsored by UNB’s CETL and STU’s LTD committee/Office of the Vice President Academic on learning communities in higher education. Dr. Rita Pougailes, former Dean of Faculty Hiring and Development at Evergreen State College, will be facilitating the workshop.

What are Learning Communities? Unlike traditional methods, which favour a top-down, authoritative approach to teaching and learning, learning communities view the cultivation of shared experiences, the connectedness among participants, and the interaction of ideas and individuals as fundamental to the learning process. In higher education, learning communities have two primary forms: an interdisciplinary course that is taught by two or more instructors or a series of separate courses that are linked by a common inter-

disciplinary theme, and often enroll a common cohort of students, such as the Aquinas program and Renaissance College.

Programs are the distinctive mode of study at Evergreen. A program consists of two to four (in the deep past as many as seven) faculty who together plan and deliver, generally full-time, a course of study organized around a theme or body of knowledge, to 50 to 100 students. Programs can be as short as one term or as long as three terms (9 months). These programs are often centred on a specific theme or set of questions that invite exploration from two or more disciplinary points of view, or they may be linked conceptually around method or subject matter in a way that promotes more complex understanding of disciplines by being taught in a collaborative fashion. In addition to coordinated study programs, Evergreen offers single faculty programs that provide fulltime study of advanced topics. By providing a structure which links ideas, questions, and disciplinary understandings together with a specific ongoing group of faculty and students, coordinated study lays the groundwork for the formation of a learning community. By having the full attention of students and extraordinary freedom to design programs, faculty members are empowered to create very different, often innovative, usually exciting learning experiences. Ideally, faculty members help shape a multi-dimensional, multileveled conversation that helps students form and shape their own work and builds a knowledgeable audience for their writing and research. Within a coordinated study, students and faculty have an opportunity to develop strong friendships, working relationships, and intense conversations that draw heavily on the shared experiences of the texts and activities of the program. Learning and Planning Through Evaluation

Benefits of Learning Communities Several studies have demonstrated that participating in learning communities provides benefits to both learning institutions and students: colleges and universities have noticed improved retention, student satisfaction, graduation rates, achievement of desired learning outcomes, student–faculty interactions, and time spent on academics and course involvement (Matthews, 1994; Pike, 1999; Tinto, 1998). On the other end, students have demonstrated an improved ability in critical thinking, contextual learning, and writing skills as well as increased involvement with co and extra-curricular activities (MacGregor, 1991). Learning Communities at Evergreen The Evergreen State College is a public, liberal arts college in Wash-

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ington State that was founded in 1967 and began operation in 1971. Evergreen does not have faculties in the traditional sense. Rather, academic activities are coordinated through five interdisciplinary planning units (Culture, Text and Language; Environmental Studies; Expressive Arts; Scientific Inquiry; and Society, Politics, Behavior, and Change) and the Native American and World Indigenous Peoples Center. Evergreen’s curriculum is organized around full-time, interdisciplinary, team taught coordinated studies programs.

Formal evaluations, the ones that appear in the transcripts, are important, but their significance is primarily documentary and retrospective. Informal evaluations, the ones that occur within programs, have the quality of being retrospective and reflective on the one hand and prospective on the other. They situate the student and the experience in midstream and ask for and elicit an assessment, adjustment, and reframing. Student self-evaluations review their work and introduce their in-program portfolio. In individual conferences, a faculty member asks students to connect their experience in the program with their work, and to think about how they can come to own this experience as their own education. The conference provides an opportunity for assessment from the student’s and faculty member’s perspective. This process of

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reflecting examines not only the direct content of the program, but often the experience of learning. Students are asked how they have changed as learners; how such basic acts as reading, knowing, and writing have changed for them through experience. This reflective evaluation , seeing one’s learning and competency develop, opens up questions and helps students see a path within the program and, at the end of the program, provides a key to where to go next. Much of the evaluation process focuses on advising. Informal evaluations by both faculty and students focus on the students’ learning, opportunities for improvement, and possible future directions. The preparation for this review by both students and faculty is a major opportunity to reflect on future directions and to develop a reflective critical assessment of the work of the student and the program.

References • MacGregor, J. (1991). What differences do learning communities make? Washington Center News 6: 4–9. • Matthews, R. (1994). Enriching teaching and learning through learning communities. In: O’Banion, T. (ed.), Teaching and Learning in the Community College, The American Association of Community Colleges, Washington, DC. • Pike, G. R. (1999). The effects of residential learning communities and traditional residential living arrangements on educational gains during the first year of college. Journal of College Student Development 40(3): 269–284. • Tinto, V. (1998). Colleges as communities: Taking research on student persistence seriously. Review of Higher Education 21(2): 167–177.

Eamonn Lynch has been an Instructor in the Faculty of Business Administration, UNB since 2005. His primary teaching responsibilities are organization design and organizational behaviour.

TEACHING TRIANGLES We often learn some great teaching ideas by observing others’ teaching practices. With this in mind, LTD will be introducing “Teaching Triangles“ this semester. The Teaching Triangles project attempts to improve teaching and build community through a structured, non-evaluative process of classroom obervation and shared reflection. It is based on the Teaching Squares program used elsewhere and specifically the Teaching Triangles program of our friends at Mt Allison University. A teaching triangle consists of three faculty participants (ideally from different disciplines) who: • observe at least one class taught by each triangle partner (a total of two other classes) • reflect on the class observation experience • share reflections with their triangle partners • share reflections with all the Project participants as a whole. Your Teaching Traingle experience will offer you the opportunity to improve your own teaching by observing your triangle partners in an actual classroom situation. By participating in the Teaching Triangles project you will have an opportunity to: observe, analyse and celebrate good teaching • increase your understanding of and appreciation for the work of colleagues • experience the joy and confusion of being a student • formulate a plan for enhancing your own teaching based on your observations and reflections and the shared reflections of your Project partners It is important to recognise that participants will not be evaluating one anothers performance, but will instead use the observations to reflect on their own practices. Participants will be able to choose the the timing of class visits by their triangle partners, so that the class is a safe, mutually supportive environment and not a surprise visit. The project should take about one hour of your time a week for six weeks, and will follow the following schedule: Week 1 - Triangles Set-up; Week 2 - Class visit 1; Week 3 - Class visit 2; Week 4 - Personal Reflection; Week 5 - Triange share (with your triangle partners); Week 6 - Project Share (with all Project participants). If you are interested in hearing more about this new-to-STU Project, please come to the Week 1 event (Triangles set-up) (see the Semester Schedule on the back pages).

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Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

Issue 17: Fall 2012

FOCUS Article The Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique by James

Whitehead, Director of Teaching and Learning, STU

Picture this: Groups of students actively engaged in discussion, thought, critically analysing concepts, chatting and arguing points amicably with one another. One of the groups explodes in an animated frenzy with cheers while another, a little less exuberantly, bubbles into laughter and groans, then huddles back down into discussion. This might sound like some fantasy of how we might hope our small group activities might work, but is an actual description of a group of Indonesian students taking a Statistics course. This scene was shown in a video at last semester’s Effective Teaching Institute at UNB Saint John by Dr Larry Michaelson of the Central Missouri State University. As you’ll know by now, having read Janice Harvey’s and Kathleen McConnell’s articles in the previous few pages, Dr Michaelson is one of the world gurus and key developers of the Team-Based Learning (TBL) method of instruction. So, what was happening in that statistics course that had the students so enthusiastic and engaged? Surely chemical assistance would be required to have fun doing statistics! Believe it or not, they weren’t just doing stats, but were actually doing a group statistics test! The test is termed an `Immediate Feeback-Assessment Technique` (IF-AT) by team-based learning afficianadoes. As Ray Williams (Education) shared with us last year in his presentation on research on assessment techniques, the learning value of an assessment tool is greatly enhanced if the student is provided with feedback, especially immediate feedback. Without immediate feedback on a quiz question, the students progress to the next question generally assuming they have chosen correctly. With the IF-AT they immediately see if their primary choice is incorrect and then get to re-evaluate their second response. Several studies indicate that students generally `commit` to their selection in a quiz. Without immediate corrective feedback, students often learn the wrong information based on what they answer on a test! The IF-AT system corrects this problem, as the immediate corrective action means that students always leave the test with the CORRECT answer in mind. Both Janice Harvey and Kathleen McConnell mention the Readiness Assurance Tests (or RATs) that form part of the team-based learning technique. The students are assessed on readings that are required to pursue a topic in class. These RATs use the IF-AT technique and provide immediate feedback on whether the students adequately understand the material, and if not, they have an opportunity to immediately clarify any misunderstandings. The IF-AT system is part of the Team-Based learning technique. In other words the quizzes are not individualised, but each student is part of a team of 5-7 students that work together to discuss the options and the rationale for the choices. This is a great illustration of the social construction of knowledge. However, the IF-AT tests could be set as individualised quizzes and still provide formative feedback, though the benefits of collaboration would be lost.

Issue 17: Fall 2012

How the IF-AT works The IF-AT quizzes are formatted as multiple choice questions. I can already hear groans, but MC quizzes are not the epitome of evil if they are designed well. To design them well does require some skill, and clearly they are most easily applied to quizzing content knowledge, but they can perhaps be most effectively used to generate considered discussion in small groups when questions are not simply based on the recollection of data, but if instead require and inspire higher order levels of thinking, including attributing, analysing, critiquing. For example, you might provide a case study description, a chart, an image, a poem and then ask a series of questions that mines the material for progressively deeper levels of understanding/processing. See the box below for an example developed by Dr Brent MacLaine of UPEI, analysing “The Cool Web” poem.

The Cool Web By Robert Graves (1895-1985) Children are dumb to say how hot the day is, How hot the scent is of the summer rose, How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky, How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by. But we have speech, to chill the angry day, And speech, to dull the rose’s cruel scent. We spell away the overhanging night, We spell away the soldiers and the fright. There’s a cool web of language winds us in, Retreat from too much joy or too much fear: We grow sea-green at last and coldly die In brininess and volubility. But if we let our tongues lose self-possession, Throwing off language and its watery clasp Before our death, instead of when death comes, Facing the wide glare of the children’s day, Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums, We shall go mad and die that way. 1. The poetic form of “The Cool Web” is best characterized as A. free verse with a concluding rhymed couplet. B. ballad stanzas with irregular rhymes. C. blank verse with unusually irregular rhythm. D. partially rhymed quatrains with a concluding sestet. 2. To emphasize the adult loss of childhood experience, the speaker of the poem A. relies on frequent breaks in the middle of the line. B. establishes a tone of caution, nostalgia and forgetfulness. C. uses imagery of drowning. D. alludes to the classical myth of endless return. 3. The “web of language” is cool because, according to the poem, language A. is the means by which heated conflict may be resolved. B. lessens the likelihood of achieving spiritual vision. C. makes our register of the world less intense. D. entangles us in misunderstandings.

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If you need some help designing good multiple choice questions, watch the recorded session by Dr David DiBattista on LTD’s Moodle page in the Archived Workshops section. According to information that accompanies the IF-AT forms, students re-tested a week later with the same or similar questions show a 20% increase in the number of correct responses, on average. Students retested with traditional multiple choice quizzes show a slight decrease in the number of correct responses on re-testing. Research indicates that with the IF-AT, more than 60% of the initial mistakes are answered correctly on follow-up tests. Without immediate feedback, students repeat errors 70-85% of the time. Another significant difference between traditional multiple choice quizzes and the ones being taken by the Indonesian students described above, is that every group gets more than one opportunity to get the question right. For those of you who use MC quizzes, how many times have you heard “I could narrow it down to option a) or c), but then I chose the wrong one”, or “I changed my choice at the last minute to the wrong one”. Shouldn’t a student get some credit for narrowing the correct response to two from four or five, rather than get none? Isn’t there some learning that could happen if the first choice is found to be incorrect, and yet there is still potential to get some marks if the next selection is correct – especially if that second chance is coupled with group discussion? This is the beauty of the IF-AT technique. The use of Scratch cards So, how do IF-AT tests work? They use scratch cards. Everyone is familiar with scratch card lottery tickets: incrementally reveal the scratchoff numbers by removing the silver paint with a coin to confirm that yes, you have lost your $2 purchase price! In the case of the IF-AT quizzes, the student (or group of students, if used as a group quiz/activity) can scratch off their preferred answer to see if they got it right. If they did, they will reveal a star, and they can claim the full marks (chosen by the instructor, say 4 points). Cheers ensue. If they get it wrong they have a second chance, after a group groan of course. This is the opportunity that most multiple choice quizzes do not afford, an immediate opportunity to re-evaluate the question, look more deeply at other options, to perhaps hear from the quiet student in the group who may have been unheard among more vociferous, but misguided others. Now is their opportunity to pitch in and and be heard. Perhaps at the next question the group will be a little more reluctant to cursorily accept noisy Dave’s primary selection, when quiet Katie may actually have a more considered opinion to share. The group has a vested interest in hearing from everyone prior to making a selection and it is a wonderful mechanism for increased participation in discussion, critical reading and thinking.

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Having chosen incorrectly the first time, but correctly the second time, the group gets awarded a reduced amount of marks, say 2 points instead of 4. If they require three attempts they get 1 mark, and if they scratch all four they get none. Even a regular multiple choice quiz will present odds of 1 in 4 of selecting the correct answer without any knowledge or consideration. Isn’t marking such a quiz onerous? Traditional MC quizzes are simple right or wrong and easy to mark. Larry Michaelson suggests that the groups mark their own quizzes, or pass the test cards to another group and they award the marks for each question based on rules that are posted to the front of the class on an overhead or Powerpoint slide. Points are tallied up and returned to the instructor. These quizzes can be implemented in a number of ways: after the presentation of some content, to establish if the students understand some key issues, or alternatively; to promote some discussion about a complex issue at the start of a class so that students can frame new content in the light of their deliberations. They could also be used at the start of class to judge an aspect of a reading assignment that was required for the class. If a student has not done the reading, and does not properly participate in the discussion, the group has the right and obligation to inform the instructor. Students can be asked to bow out of the quiz if they have not done the reading, perhaps a couple of times a semester without penalty. Students who freeload are easily identified as everyone is called upon to provide a considered response to aid the decision of the group. Generally, since not being prepared is obvious to group members, their peers, students are less inclined to let their groups down than if they were simply accountable to the professor. The LTD committee has purchased 500 of these scratch cards for trial use. If you would like to try them please let LTD know well in advance of your class and we may be able to provide some. Beyond the trial, they can be purchased from Epstein Educational Enterprises, costing $150 for 500 cards with 50 questions options. Ideally, instructional materials can/should be provided from departmental budgets, so ask your departmental chair. They take around 10 days to arrive. The cards can be used in several classes until all 50 questions have been removed. As an alternative to the scratch cards, if you want to provide multiple opportunities for students to gain marks in online quizzes, the Moodle quiz function allows reduced marks to be assigned for multiple attempts to questions. There are no group discussion benefits as described above, but the immediate corrective feedback benefits are still present. Email [email protected] if you would like a tutorial on how to set up the quiz function.

A quote to irritate your students

”Those who postpone their work to the 11th hour, unfortunately catch a flu at 10:30”. Unknown source (Virgil?)

Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

Issue 17: Fall 2012

“Out and About” STU Faculty Teaching Conference Presentations

If you have recently presented at a teaching conference, or at any conference but on a teaching issue, please send us a copy of your abstract. These abstracts give us insight onto teaching methods being employed/explored among our own faculty, and can act as a springboard for discussion with the authors. The following section illustrates some of the diversity of presentations made by STU faculty recently at such conferences.

Clive Baldwin and Carolyne Hill, Office of the Canada Research Chair in Narrative Studies

¨Pour un enseignement des langues aux autochtones¨ (also presented by Allain, Demers and Pelletier)

Presented at the 2012 Annual Dalhousie Conference on University Teaching and Learning, Halifax, May 2-3, 2012.

Presented at the DIALOG Colloquium of the ACFAS Conference, Montreal, Qc, May 10, 2012.

Social workers seek to understand individuals and groups in their psychological, relational, cultural, societal and discoursal contexts.. One way of developing this understanding is autoethnographic reflection, using the self as a research site to explore how these contexts impact on our own lives. To this end I have been using the ‘River of Life’ exercise as a means of generating a high level of self-reflection among social work students. This exercise consists of envisaging one’s life as a river flowing through a landscape, representing visually the various factors that have impacted upon us over time. As such the exercise can help identify important factors, individuals, events, places and ideas that have contributed to who we are; help place these in an overall sense-making narrative; and can open doors into deeper explorations of particular formative experiences. Not only is this an engaging tool but it also helps students realise that they are subject to the same sort of influences as their clients, thus developing empathy and solidarity, two key social work values. In this workshop participants will be introduced to the River of Life exercise and given an opportunity to explore the potential uses of autoethnography as a teaching tool.

This research focuses on how to channel First Nations peoples’ traditionnal teaching strategies in an effort to respect the students’ culture while linking these strategies to contemporay second language didactics. It is a rapidly growing area of educational concentration which is gaining in popularity not only in Canada but in the rest of the world.

Alice Allain, Romance languages – French Pierre Demers and France Pelletier, Commission scolaire Crie ¨Pour

un enseignement efficace du français L2 aux autochtones¨

Presented at the conference of ¨Association québecoise des enseignants de français langue seconde¨, Montreal, Qc, April 26, 2012. The presentation discussed the links between First Nations teaching practices and the neuroliteracy/intensive approach used for the teaching of French and English in Canada. Abstract: ¨Le but de cette communication est de connaître des techniques de l’enseignement traditionnel autochtone et de voir comment elles peuvent s’utiliser pour améliorer l’enseignement du français L2 aux apprenants autochtones et même aux autres apprenants en général, ces techniques s’intégrant fort bien, par exemple, au socioconstructivisme et à la démarche mise à l’avant par le français intensif. ¨

Issue 17: Fall 2012

Abstract: ¨La conférence fera ressortir comment des pratiques de l’enseignement traditionnel autochtone rejoignent les plus récents courants en didactique des langues et que, par conséquent, la connaissance et l’utilisation de ces pratiques peuvent contribuer à l’avancement des recherches actuelles en éducation. En effet, la didactique des langues est en constante ébullition depuis de nombreuses années et, en ce moment, l’accent est mis sur le socioconstructivisme - avec, par exemple, les programmes intensifs de langue - et aussi sur le paradigme radical - inspiré de la théorie de la nouvelle communication et de la psychologie transpersonnelle - avec des méthodes dites accélérées. Or, il est fort intéressant de noter que ces nouvelles avancées dans le domaine de la didactique des langues rejoignent, de manière frappante, des pratiques utilisées dans l’enseignement traditionnel autochtone depuis des millénaires.¨

Chris van den Broeck, ESL

Presented at the 2012 Annual Dalhousie Conference on University Teaching and Learning, Halifax, May 2-3, 2012. Under a CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) paradigm, the most predominant language teaching methodology of the last thirty years, the notion on incorporating real-world, authentic material into a second language classroom is highly valuable for providing motivation to learners. To that end, the incorporation of such authentic, current, and occasionally provocative material can work toward fostering an aspect of critical inquiry in the EAP (English for Academic Purposes) class, an aspect of the education process that is largely overlooked in this teaching and learning context. This presentation will look at the use of TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) talks in the EAP class, primarily used (but certainly not limited to) to enhance speaking and listening skills. The pedagogical possibilities, and past applications of TED talks in the presenters’ own classroom, will be presented and discussed.

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FOCUS Article Facebook in and around the classroom by Dr Andrew

Moore, Great Ideas, STU

I was still a graduate student when Facebook came to Canada. I remember the apprehension that came with signing up and creating a profile, submitting yourself to the scrutiny of the World Wide Web. I also remember the initial thrill of suddenly being reconnected with all those faces from the past: elementary school classmates, old neighbours, friends who had moved away. It was like attending a high school reunion on the Internet. Gradually, as the initial appeal of playing “What ever happened to…” wore off and as more and more people from my “real life” social network signed up, the utility of Facebook – for disseminating information, soliciting advice, sharing Internet links, and organizing get-togethers – became more apparent. (Its ability to suck time away from my dissertation became pretty obvious too.) All of this is to say that Facebook had become a useful tool in my daily life well before I came to teach at STU; maybe that’s why I’ve always been interested in how students use Facebook and how teachers might use it to improve learning, and the university experience in general. It is very difficult to speak about Facebook without resorting to hyperbole. The social network now has 850 million active users according to the most recent count. If Facebook was a country, only China and India would be bigger. Like it or not, Facebook has permanently changed the world. Whether or not you use Facebook, you can be sure that the vast majority of your students do. Recognizing all this, it’s important that we all give at least some thought to what Facebook’s stunning ascendance means for our students and our classrooms. Here, I’d like to speak a bit about how I’ve tried to grapple with and adjust to the Facebook phenomenon at St. Thomas. Facebook as subject of study I believe any social phenomenon as pervasive and influential as Facebook deserves to be talked about in our classrooms. Just as we try to make students aware of the ways that politics, culture, religion, art, and media shape and influence their lives, we also need to give students opportunities to think about how they are being affected by social technologies. The first class I ever dedicated to Facebook was in English 2013: Research Methods in English. Part of what I tried to do in Research Methods was give students a sense that the study of literature wasn’t just about poems and novels, but also about narrative and the role it plays in our lives. Facebook was a great way of illustrating to students how individuals use narratives to conceptualize their own identities and to communicate those identities to others. We spent one class contemplating Facebook as a kind of continuously updated digital autobiography. Students enthusiastically offered up examples as we discussed the “editing decisions” people make when using social networks, posting certain pictures and sharing certain kinds of information. We also discussed how identities are produced communally on Facebook. Insofar as other people can tag users in photos and post on their walls, controlling one’s own narrative on Facebook can be a challenge. Further, it’s a challenge that is peculiar to this generation of students.

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For the past two years, my colleague, Rodger Wilkie, and I have also discussed Facebook as part of our introductory lecture in Great Books 2206: Human Nature and Technology. Part of our intention in that course is to blur the categorical distinction between the “natural” and the “technological” and to help students recognize just how dependent humans are on technology. Facebook’s relevance to this discussion is quite obvious. In this course I also try to trouble the notion that all technological innovations are simply tools over which human users have total mastery. As George Grant tells us, technology does “impose” a destiny upon us: it shapes its users. Individuals and communities have to make certain concessions and adjustments in order to adopt particular technologies. Facebook provides one of the clearest illustrations of the truth of this argument: once adopted, social networking radically changes how the user lives his or her life. Precisely because its reach is so broad there are innumerable points of contact between Facebook and various courses here at STU. Even when teaching a course that seemingly has nothing at all to do with social networking, Facebook can be a handy example to have in one’s pedagogical tool-belt. It can be surprisingly useful when trying to communicate the relevance of historically distant or otherwise foreign ideas. For instance, I teach a lot of Shakespeare, and students sometimes have trouble empathizing with female protagonists who worry about their chastity, or with the various crises that arise around oldfashioned ideas like honour. But students who use Facebook understand what it means to have a carefully cultivated public identity. We all feel violated when our “good name” has been besmirched, whether by a Machiavellian ensign, or a malicious tweet. Facebook as pedagogical tool Because most of our students already use Facebook and are comfortable with the technology, it is also tempting to try and incorporate it into our courses as a teaching tool. In the Great Books for Journalists section of the Aquinas Programme, we have tried using Facebook as a pedagogical platform. Recent Great Books for Journalists students have been invited to join a private Facebook Group (not visible or accessible to the public). We have then asked them to post some short pieces of writing onto the wall of the Group. One of the ideas here was to have prospective journalists get into the habit of writing for an audi-

Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

Issue 17: Fall 2012

ence – even if that audience is limited to their classmates. Course-specific Facebook Groups can also work as a kind of digital bulletin board, allowing instructors to remind students of upcoming deadlines or communicate a sudden change in the reading schedule. Students sometimes set these up on their own as well, to organize study groups or pose questions to their classmates. One cautionary note: I think we probably have to think hard about making Facebook a mandatory component in any class. Facebook is a money-making enterprise. It collects data about its users and then uses that data to help other companies sell targeted advertising. Facebook is also notorious for its constantly evolving terms of service. For these reasons, and others, not all students feel comfortable using Facebook, and that is their right. So, I think it is important that we allow students to opt-out of participating in any Facebook related assignments or exercises. Facebook may work best as a supplementary tool. Facebook as digital courtyard I’m not someone who thinks students learn as much outside the classroom as they do inside of it. (If that’s true, why come to university at all?) However, I do recognize that valuable learning does occur beyond the walls of the lecture hall. A university is more than just a series of courses. Here at St. Thomas, we try to round out and augment the education of our students through guest lectures and film series, conferences and theatrical performances. As a small teaching-centred institution we also pride ourselves on the mentoring we’re able to provide our students. A good university works to establish a culture of learning, to create a variety of avenues and opportunities for students to pursue their interests and their passions. Similarly, good universities create spaces that allow students to socialize and congregate, study and work together. Our courtyard is an exceptional example. We all know what a strong attachment our students have to the courtyard. I think it’s because it represents physically the idea of the university: a place for discussion, a place to engage with peers and teachers, a place to read and think on a sunny afternoon. However, in an age where students are spending more of their time online, the university has to adjust its strategy with respect to places and spaces. In short, the university needs to provide opportunities for students and faculty to meet, talk and argue online as well as offline. I think Facebook can potentially be a valuable tool in this respect. For example, this past year in Great Books we started a Facebook Page1 for our students. Part of our intention was to augment the already strong sense of community that exists among students in our programme. The page is meant to be a fairly informal social space. Some of the content is just silly. We post inside jokes and birthday announcements for novelists and philosophers. But we also use the Page to post programme announcements like thesis defense dates and information about public lectures. Our students use it to organize GRID Society elections and outings. We’ve also tried using it to share newspaper ar1 A Facebook Page differs slightly from a Facebook Group. Pages allow administrators more control over content. We found that each new cohort of students was starting its own Group and then a year or two later abandoning it. There are probably half a dozen dormant Great Ideas and Aquinas: Great Books Groups on Facebook. Our Facebook Page is administered in-house, so students and graduates can come and go as they please and the Page will remain active.

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ticles and videos that are relevant to courses in our programme: an animated version of Aristophanes’ speech in the Symposium for students studying Plato, or a Washington Post article about the military use of unmanned drones for Human Nature & Technology students. One of the really nice things about our Page is that it has allowed us to reconnect with some of our alumni. Some of our formers students have found the page, pressed “Like,” and added it to their News Feed. Remember that Facebook’s initial draw was how it allowed us to reconnect with people from the past. It remains the best tool for that. Our hope is that our Page will help us keep in touch with current students after they graduate as well. Final thoughts I’m aware that some of the possibilities and issues I’ve discussed here are not specific to Facebook. Twitter is another a communication technology worth discussing. And Moodle may be a superior platform for sharing and discussing course content. However, no other platform has as wide a user-base as Facebook. No other similar technology has had the same impact. And while no technology lasts forever, or even for very long (witness the precipitous decline of Blackberry), Facebook has made the Internet a much more “social” place. That’s not going to change anytime soon. Thus as teachers we need to come to grips with the educational implications of Facebook and its cognate technologies. Dr. Andrew Moore is an Assistant Professor who teaches in the Great Ideas Programme at STU, and is also Past President of the STU Alumni Association.

First class ice-breaker Getting students to know one another at the first class can be done with all sorts of ice-breaking games. However, why not have them do something of material use to the class at the same time, for example devise a couple of optional marking schemes? You will probably want to set guidelines so that the final essay or exam cannot be worth 0% or 100% etc, but within the set limits they can tinker as they like. Rather than trying to form consensus with one marking scheme to which everyone must adhere, if you get them to generate two possible marking schemes, perhaps one with less focus on exams and more on writing assignments to benefit students with exam anxiety and a penchant for writing, the individual students can then opt for one or the other. They’re forced to take a position, speak now or forever hold their peace, and communicate with their classmates. Now, this may only work as you intend if your marking scheme is simple. If it is complicated it may just generate confusion among the students, though the very focus of their attention on the syllabus in the first class may result in some really great questions and some greater understanding than simply handing out a prescribed marking scheme! [JW]

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FOCUS Article Viewing Assessment from Multiple Perspectives by Dr

Ray Williams, School of Education, STU

As professors, when we discuss the concept of assessment, we typically envision it as a measure of success. It is a process whereby we evaluate students’ learning and assign grades that reflect the degree to which they have communicated their understanding and skills. Many of us also look upon assessment as a process that provides us with feedback on our success as teachers. In both cases, assessment is a process that follows learning and provides insight on accomplishment. We seldom question this relationship between learning and assessment because it is so entrenched in the education system that we take it for granted. In this paper I ask you to question your mental models of assessment and open your mind to a broader, more effective relationship between assessment and learning. Ask yourself – “Must assessment always follow learning or can it occur before and during as well?” If so, would the purpose of assessment vary based on when it is performed? I expect that many of you are already using pre-assessment and some may be conducting diagnostic assessments as well. If you are, you know that pre-assessment is designed to determine what students know before the course begins and diagnostic assessment provides us with an idea of how individual learning is progressing well before the course ends. These two examples show us that assessment clearly includes processes that should not lead to final grades. Why then are we obsessed with recording marks for every assignment students submit? Unfortunately this obsession has little to do with measuring accomplishment! It seems that we too often revert to assessment as a way to motivate students to work and fall victim to the belief that in order to ensure student effort, every assessment must be used to calculate students’ final grades. As inappropriate as this may be, there are even more insidious assessment practices we need to question. We time assessments to determine how fast our students communicate their learning as if it were a valid measure of their intelligence. We provide single opportunities for students to show what they can do because we think that second attempts are unfair. We also use a narrow scope of assessment practices because we see them as easier to grade or we are so invested in them that we cannot consider others. Each of these practices must be carefully examined as we ask ourselves - “What are the justifiable purposes of assessment?” Current beliefs on assessment provide us with three distinctly different purposes of assessment. The purpose of assessment can be either summative, formative, or instructional. Summative assessment is “assessment of learning”. Summative assessment serves the traditional purpose of arriving at a final measurement of accomplishment. As teachers we must conclude the learning process and provide grades that communicate how well students have learned. These grades are then used to sort students, award them with degrees, and provide them with access to opportunities achieved through competitive processes. Formative assessment is “assessment for learning”. Formative assessment takes its name from its capacity to ‘inform’ both the student and the teacher on how to improve the teaching/learning process. Forma-

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tive assessment practices include pre-assessment, diagnostic assessment, informal questioning practices, classroom activities that challenge students to demonstrate their thought processes, and many other activities such as homework or short quizzes that enhance student learning. What these practices have in common are their ability to enhance learning rather than evaluate students. As such … they should not count as part of an academic grade. An academic grade should be a measure of academic knowledge and skills, not a measure of work ethic, attendance, or an ability to meet deadlines. If we wish to report these behaviours it should be done separately and they should be reported as non-academic comments. Instructional assessment is “assessment as learning”. Instructional assessment is perhaps the least used form of assessment. It is a process that includes students in the assessment practices. Student learning is enhanced by involving students in the assessment decisions that have been typically controlled by the teacher. Students are given opportunities to determine what will be taught, how it will be taught, and how their learning will be measured. Students are required to promote peer learning by performing peer assessments, providing assistance to classmates and, when appropriate, working in teams to communicate accomplishments. If you question the validity of its use in your classroom I ask you to consider its most common form as a measure of our own accomplishment – the peer review process used for academic publications. The ultimate purpose of assessment is to measure learning. For most of our students success of this learning will be measured by their capacity to become employed. However, as university graduates they face very different workforce demands than we did. Continuing advancements in technology that provide the immediate access to information and diverse forms of personal communication present new challenges for employment in a knowledge society. As we measure student accomplishment we must adapt our assessment practices to the employability skills of the future. The academic skills they will need are the ability to communicate effectively, think critically, and become lifelong learners. They will depend even more on personal management skills such as positive attitudes, healthy behaviours, responsibility and adaptability. Lastly, they will need to work effectively as members of teams. If we hope to prepare our students for these realities we must rethink our assessment practices. We must align the beliefs and practices we use to measure student accomplishment with the demands that our graduates will face. The assessment methods used when we were students may not be adequate. Summative assessment although always important may not be enough to make our students successful in their post-secondary endeavours. We must stop reporting academic performance by including formative assessment measures and we must broaden our assessment practices to include instructional assessment ... continued on page 17: See ‘Ray Williams”

Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

Issue 17: Fall 2012

FOCUS Article Future Tense - Engaging student curiosity in a first-year language class by Dr

Paolo Mateucci, Italian Studies Program, Dalhousie University, NS

First-year language classes offer fertile ground for experimental activities centered upon the students’ own interests. To foster a challenging, productive and comfortable environment, I devise imaginative approaches to in-class work that develop the students’ linguistic and communication skills. From the first day of classes my students are encouraged to interact in Italian by working together in pairs, in small groups, or as a whole class. In addition, they are called upon to share information about themselves and their world-views while developing strategies to listen and interact proficiently with their peers. Language classes at Dalhousie facilitate the creation of this type of classroom environment as they typically run for two consecutive terms and meet several times a week. The frequency of classes allows the students to get to know each other well. These factors, combined with a reasonable faculty/student ratio, contribute to creating a learning environment where the students’ intellectual curiosity can be engaged and their enthusiasm can emerge. One of my goals in the Italian for Beginners course is to introduce the usage of the future tense of Italian verbs towards the end of the second term. By this time, students are usually quite familiar with a variety of engagement activities, and they are comfortable expressing themselves in Italian. In preparation for the lesson that introduces the future tense, the students write intensively about themselves in their homework. More specifically, I ask students to write about their academic curriculum, the most important projects they have currently under way, and their wider ambitions in personal and professional life. These preliminary assignments are crucial because they provide relevant information about the interests and motivations of each participant in the class. Also, in the weeks preceding the introduction of the future tense, the class program covers the use of reflexive verbs alongside the vocabulary of clothing and fashion. This means that students know, and can use, reflexive verbs such as mettersi (to put something on), or vestirsi (to dress up). On the day I teach the future tense, I bring to class a few props, including a ring, a scarf, and a hat. Students use the reflexive verbs they already know to describe in Italian these garments, as well as the fact that I am putting them on. After this warm-up activity, I continue to wear the props and I take on the persona of a fortune teller. To add emphasis, I dim the classroom lights and I pull out of my bag a soccer ball covered with aluminium foil that becomes my crystal ball. These details create a learning environment that excites interest and curiosity about the content of the lesson. Next, I move around the classroom wearing the scarf, the hat and the ring. Holding the crystal ball in my hands, I start predicting the future (in Italian) to the class in general, as well as to each specific student. All predictions are positive or optimistic, and they are tailored to the students’ personal interests. Using the information collected when

Issue 17: Fall 2012

checking home assignments, I can for example foretell an interesting trip abroad for those who have applied for an international exchange program, prognosticate the positive outcome of an academic project currently in progress, or predict the ultimate success of a student planning to graduate in a given academic year. In the following step, I encourage the class to infer, gather and then clearly outline the function and the proper conjugation of the verbs introduced in the future tense. For example, if I have used the verbs andare (to go), fare (to do) and vedere (to see), I ask the class to create short sequences of sentences featuring the usage, in the future form, of the same verbs in a logical order. I review the students’ input using the blackboard and the textbook, and I allow a proper amount of time for questions, answers, clarifications and further examples. Students are then prompted to demonstrate their newly acquired knowledge, speaking Italian in pairs. Each student foretells the future to her or his classmate, predicting such events as the fulfilment of a personal wish, the accomplishment of an ambitious project, or the realization of one or more career goals. As the students practise I move around the classroom to monitor their progress and to provide advice. I first introduced this activity in my Italian for Beginners class of 2010-11, and it met an exceptionally positive response. In fact, after having practised in pairs, the students spontaneously started predicting the future of the whole class, as well as my own! Most student predictions, besides being properly formulated in Italian, included a number of quite amusing statements, for example concerning the contents of the end-of-semester written exam. “You will grade the final exams generously” joked one student in Italian. Playing along, another added that “the written exam will not include the trapassato prossimo (past perfect).” This role-playing session was effective in leading the students to rapidly master the intricacies of the future tense of Italian verbs. Both the class’s performance and the feedback received after the lesson showed that this activity caught the students’ imagination and inspired their interest in understanding the grammar topic under consideration. I firmly believe that effective teaching not only requires versatility, commitment, knowledge and enthusiasm, but also the instructor’s constant dedication to finding the inspiration to create productive and stimulating in-class activities. The instructor needs not only to come up with creative ways to engage the students’ curiosity, but also to be willing to take on the (moderate) risks involved in activities such as role-playing, and to support the students in the same risk-taking. In the context of a first-year foreign language class, the “risks” of role playing are comparable to the challenges all students face as they learn to communicate in a foreign language. First published in “Focus”, Newletter of Dalhousie University’s Centre for Learning and Teaching, Spring 2012, v20. Reprinted with permission.

Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

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FOCUS Article Providing Accommodations to Students with Disabilities by Marina

Nedashkivska, St Thomas University

This article’s aim is to equip faculty with an understanding of the tasks and mandate of the Student Accessibility Services (SAS) at St. Thomas University. The increased number of students with disabilities at St. Thomas has resulted in a reorganisation of services, and reassessment of current practices. Students with disabilities are among the fastest growing student populations at STU. Both legally and morally, we are obliged to provide appropriate academic accommodations for these students. We also believe that proven academic ability must be the sole basis for participation in, and advancement through, post-secondary education. The most frequent interaction between the SAS and faculty is regarding classroom accommodations, exam accommodations, extended instructional support and provisions for assignment extensions. In this article we will present themes drawn from experiences while dealing with such issues and I will attempt to provide perspective through illustrative examples. Our goal is to dispel some misunderstandings regarding the students in our care, and the services our office provides. Common misconceptions about the SAS office: • We do not provide accommodations for students who seem to be struggling in a particular course. SAS provides only reasonable accommodations, which are directly connected with the student’s impairment, to students with documented disabilities. • The SAS office does not conduct Assessments and Diagnoses; instead, we refer students to appropriate professionals. • The SAS office serves only students with well documented disabilities. Temporary illnesses, family situations and financial difficulties do not qualify for accommodations through SAS. • SAS only recommends accommodations which are based on the psycho-educational assessments and medical evidence for each specific case. If we recommend an accommodation to a course, it is solidly based on the specifics of a particular disability. If there is a disagreement with faculty regarding the provision of an accommodation then we urge faculty to engage with us in a collaborative discussion rather than refuse to provide the accommodation owing to perceptions of “unreasonableness” or “compromising” the standards of academic integrity. There is usually some mutually satisfactory middle ground. • SAS organizes and re-schedules exams and tests for the students according to their specific needs, and not based on the convenience of the office itself or the faculty. If a student with a severe learning disability or medical condition has more than two exams in one day, it is the student’s responsibility to contact a professor and make arrangements for an alternative time oor day for the exam. The SAS can then make arrangements for exam accommodations. New facility and technical aids Student Accessibility Services moved to a newly renovated space in GMH 104 in November, 2011. The facility consists of two labs and the office. In the labs we have plenty of up-to-date technology to teach students to be independent and self-reliant. The reading software,

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Kurzweil, works well for students with visual impairments and different learning disabilities, Inspiration software helps with writing and composition, Zoom Text and Jaws are designed to assist students with visual impairments access the Internet and print texts. We also have Dragon Naturally Speaking (voice to text software) to help some students dictate their thoughts into text. We also use our labs for tutoring sessions, exams and tests. From July 2012 we have two full time employees working at the office: The coordinator for Student Accessibility and the Accessibility Advisor. Advising Faculty As soon as we register a student with a disability we ask the student to deliver a letter and the accommodation form to the all professors for that semester. This advises the professor of the presence of a student with disability, and about the plan to accommodate the student throughout the year. Very often, with a student’s permission and on the student’s request, we arrange an individual meeting with professors, the student, and the Advisors from Student Accessibility, so that a team approach can be developed to help the student. Classroom accommodations Each situation must be considered individually to understand how to support a student. For example, if a student asks a professor to wear a FM amplification system it means that it is essential for her/him and should not be dismissed as unnecessary. Occasionally faculty have been resistant to wearing the FM microphone, and place it on the podium. This is inadequate to pick up a sufficiently strong audio signal and, in effect, denies the student the accommodation. We support students self-reporting of their disabilities and we call them ‘experts of their conditions’. Please let the students have their “voice” when it comes to practical modes of accommodation, and cooperate with SAS recommendations or contact us to discuss alternatives. Some students with neurological disorders perceive the world in unique ways and they sometimes react unpredictably to their environment. Their perception and functioning might be challenging, even for experienced professors. We advise that as soon as you experience a challenging or distracting student behaviour, contact SAS and we will advise you on the available options. Course Instructions Students with certain physical and learning disabilities might have difficulty processing instructions. We encourage students to contact their professors and work on clarifying detailed instructions in one-on-one meetings. Some students might also require additional support as they may have hearing, visual or paraplegic impairments, or severe learning disabilities. If the attempts to clarify additional instructions fail then we advise that a note-taker or trusted tutor-coach act as a person who takes notes on additional instructions, and then makes sure that the

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students understand what is required of them. These practices are not unique to STU, but have been adopted elsewhere as providing proven benefit to students overall academic and personal growth. In some cases we may have unresolved disagreements between a faculty member and the SAS office about the instructional accommodations that may require the intervention of a third party. In several cases, these protracted disagreements have led to unnecessary hardship on students. On occasion, involving a note-taker or a tutor has been seen as compromising the learning process and faculty did not recognize that the accommodation proposed by the Accessibility Advisor was made based on the information given by an external specialist in the field. Accessibility Advisors try to intervene only if a student has difficulties with faculty, and can provide advice to both parties on the best options that are available. Marina Nedashkivska is the Coordinator of Student Accessibility Services.

Wikipedia - good or bad? Wikipedia course gets students’ research online. All through school, they told him Wikipedia was a dirty word in academia; a lazybone’s library to be banned from bibliographies. But now that Gaurav Sharma (U. of Toronto, Scarborough) is taking a course whose entire goal is to teach students to get their psychology research posted on Wikipedia, he sees how strict its standards are, and he has new respect for the online encyclopedia. For more on this topic go to the Star.com: http://www.thestar.com/ news/gta/education/article/1230732--wikipedia-course-gets-students-research-online

Wikipedia Presentation @ STU Dr Anna Smol (Mount St. Vincent University) will also be sharing her perspective on how Wikipedia can be both a positive and negative impact on students, in a presentation that she will be giving to STU faculty this semester. See our line up of events this Fall.

Ray Willaims: Assessment... continued from page 14 strategies. If we expect to make students more responsible and adaptable we must make them partners in their own learning and give them a voice in how they will be assessed. In doing so we will develop in them the attitudes and behaviours they will need to see learning as a lifelong pursuit and prepare them to work with others to create a future that we cannot even imagine. Dr Ray Williams is an Associate Professor in the School of Education, at St Thomas University. He is currently entering his 41st year as a teacher. He teaches a course in Measurement and Evaluation in the B. Ed. Program and a graduate course in Assessment as an Instructional Practice to practicing teachers through the St. Thomas University Education Institute. His current research is an examination of factors that define student achievement.

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Social Media in the classroom Looking for creative ways to engage student by including social media in the classroom? Chris McCormick (Criminology) shared the following link for our readers. It’s a doozie with 100 ideas for teachers on how to do so. http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2010/05/100-inspiringways-to-use-social-media-in-the-classroom/

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Research Grants LTD offers research grants of up to $500 to faculty who wish to engage in research related to teaching. Applications will be given higher priority when they are submitted by a faculty member during the first three years of teaching and from applicants who have not received a grant in the previous two years. Research grants may be awarded for projects that assist faculty to: • Assess, improve or modify techniques of instruction; • Assess student perceptions, responses and attitudes to teaching practices; • Assess innovations in teaching and learning; • Develop/critique educational philosophies and practices, • Have the potential to promote an enhanced learning environment; In the past, grants have been made to assist faculty in developing new technical skills or new programmes and teaching materials, and to evaluate their effectiveness. Potential applicants are encouraged to discuss their project with the Learning and Teaching Development Director prior to making a formal application. Applications should describe the project goals, methods and assessment criteria and describe how the results may be used to enhance the learning environment. The application should include a budget. Applicants are strongly encouraged to publish their results, and if this is the intent, the anticipated venue for publication should be presented. LTD sponsorship should be recognised in the acknowledgements.

Conference Support LTD supports our faculty benefitting from attending and presenting at teaching conferences. We have grants available to offset some of the travel/registration costs. These are determined on a step scale based on distance. Details are posted on our Moodle page (no login required). Preference is given to those who have not recently made a claim.

Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

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FOCUS Article Inclusion is Killing Us by Dr

D’Arcy Vermette, Native Studies Programme, STU

It would probably be an understatement to say that Aboriginal peoples in Canada have had a rocky relationship with education. Education has been used as a weapon to destroy Aboriginal cultures … but most of us have already heard of the residential schools. You often hear people speak of the good intentions behind residential schools, but one has to be seriously deluded to think that good intentions were behind the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their communities and the indoctrination which was designed to facilitate the destruction of Aboriginal cultures. Self-centered and self-righteous thinking perhaps, but the intentions, like the actions, were not good. The question then is, are we still deluding ourselves today? After all, residential schools were not the totality of the problem. When you can run roughshod over a People like that with the stated goal of eliminating them as a People, there are certain conditions which need to be fixed beyond the “schools” themselves.

itself from in order for Aboriginal Peoples to gain some semblance of liberation. Brady made great efforts to educate the Métis people about the root causes of their oppression because he was trying to avoid annihilation for his People. Similarly, when thinking about the nature of Aboriginal education today, the words of Vine Deloria Jr. can be used to begin to understand what is really at stake: Ideological leverage is always superior to violence. The problems of Indians have always been ideological rather than social, political or economic… [I]t is vitally important that the Indian people pick the intellectual arena as the one in which to wage war. Past events have shown that the Indian people have always been fooled by the intentions of the white man. Always we have discussed irrelevant issues while he has taken our land. Never have we taken the time to examine the premises upon which he operates so that we could manipulate him as he has us.

There is a tendency to link the social problems experienced by Aboriginal peoples to the legacy of the residential schools, but there were social problems and broken and destitute communities prior to Residential schools. The causes were identified by settlers in the early 1800s. A settler report found that the taking of game and land were the central causes and that it was the fault of the settlers. There is a more honest analysis in those brief findings than is being offered by focusing on healing “students” of residential schools… as if the problem exists within the individual students, and as if the problem will go away after “healing” has taken place. When have they healed enough that we can say they will be able to deal with the ongoing conditions of colonialism?

Ideology is important because our actions depend both upon how we view our place in the world and how others view our place in the world. And, in a world where equality continues to be limited to sameness, Aboriginal peoples will be victims of colonialist ideologies. Equality is meaningless without an examination of the context in which it is grounded. Once one realizes that “economic equality” operates largely on the presumption that Aboriginal peoples are (or want to become) marauding capitalists (and the corresponding realization that Aboriginal cultures are not capitalist cultures) the idea of equality is quickly shattered. Any initiatives that reach out to Aboriginal peoples in this way do so at the expense of Aboriginal ways of life. To pretend that Aboriginal peoples “make the choice” to crossover to capitalism is perhaps one of the more common self-serving lines of rhetoric employed through capitalist ideology. When your own ways of life are actively being suffocated, what “choice” is to be made?

Healing is important but to achieve that result we must also cure the disease. With all parties so involved in the pursuit of therapy, there is little room to hold those who conceived of and orchestrated the crime to account. Such a choice pressures us to focus our collective efforts into looking forward, cleansing ourselves with “truth and reconciliation” commissions, and learning to move on, in a kinder more sensitive manner. The easiest, cheapest, and most convenient way for mainstream educators and institutions to do this is to be more inclusive. There is a great push to see the inclusion of Aboriginal peoples into all facets of Canadian life. The vision is quite simple and it has been around for hundreds of years. That vision argues that the disproportionate poverty and social breakdown in Aboriginal communities can be cured by making Aboriginal peoples more like the “mainstream.” Whether it is called assimilation, genocide, civilization, or inclusion the vision has been consistent for quite some time: Aboriginal people, as Aboriginal people, must cease to exist. Now, through inclusion, we are attempting to do with a smile what residential schools did with force and abuse. That is, ensure compliance with the dominating ideology at the expense of Aboriginal cultures. There is a picture in the Glenbow Archives featuring Métis leader Jim Brady at a protest in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1961. He is standing next to a sign which read simply: “Education not Annihilation.” Brady argued that colonialism is a debilitation that the western world must free

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Educators have a choice in what they offer Aboriginal peoples. We can continue to carry out assimilationist programming or we can endeavour to empower both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples to seek out a world in which Aboriginal ways of life are allowed to thrive. Last year Andrea Bear Nicholas, the Chair of Studies in Aboriginal Cultures of Atlantic Canada at St. Thomas University joined me on a panel about “Indigenizing the Academy” at the Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences. Bear Nicholas summed up the present trend as follows: “The imposition of alien western economic values of private property and entrepreneurship is being marketed as the salvation of our peoples.” Educational institutions get on board because it is essential that they have a role in this process. If Aboriginal people were to succeed in such a project without advanced education, it could undermine the value of such an education more generally. And so, governments and universities have been developing all sorts of initiatives to try to ensure that they have a role to play in bringing Aboriginal people into the “modern” economy. There is a consequence to such initiatives, a consequence which is not foremost on the minds of those employed at Universities. Every day

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that an Aboriginal student spends on campus is a day that is not spent in their own communities learning their own traditions, language, and ways of living. Whether we like it or not, this sends a pretty clear message about the value of Aboriginal cultures. Every class that is taught in English or French is not taught in Maliseet, Cree, Michif, and so forth. Aboriginal ceremonies that are brought into the classroom serve to decontextualize, even parody, and thus undermine those traditions rather than honour them (or live them). Every scholar who advocates for equality but attaches such notions to western economics, political policy, government bureaucracy, and therapeutic strategies does a disservice to Aboriginal peoples’ struggles. The response to Aboriginal peoples has been generated within a narrowly focused socio-economic framework. As such, Aboriginal peoples are measured and studied according to economic and social indicators. These indicators are not designed to provide a backdrop for social and economic practices in some abstract form but, rather, they are designed to initiate a particular response … a response rooted in the same ideology which gave rise to them. That is to say that inclusion is not a strategy crafted because Aboriginal people are Aboriginal. Rather it is a strategy crafted because they continue to be disproportionately undereducated and lower in socio-economic indicators. Once the empirical data comes in, the rest takes care of itself. It merely becomes assumed that Aboriginal peoples want to live their lives like good marauding capitalists and universities play a complicit role in bringing about that vision. There doesn’t need to be a big conspiracy behind such intent. It manifests through the common ideology of like-minded people. The expectation extends to Aboriginal academics as well. We are expected to find ways to incorporate ourselves in University structures in a way which stops us from complaining and which doesn’t require any work by or concession from settler society. That is where symbolic inclusion comes in. We find those symbols in the tracking of enrollment numbers, in offering material in our courses which teaches Aboriginal ceremony (as if that is how we truly understand Aboriginal Peoples condition in this world) and by incorporating artwork or ceremonial shows on campus. But does resisting these symbolic initiatives mean that there is nothing else for academics to do in support of Aboriginal people? Bear Nicholas provides a path. She says: “If the Universities really care about the survival of our cultures, they will recognize that the restoration of these stolen lands lies at the heart of our survival as peoples.” She argues further that class time would be best used for “teaching First Nations students to understand and critique the historical and material conditions of their lives so as to equip them for the real challenges that they face.” Indeed, that mission extends to all students because we can little expect others to support our liberation if they do not understand the justification for doing so. Indeed, if universities really care about the equality of Aboriginal peoples they will support our liberation. Nay, they will actively pursue our liberation. We have to be very careful about what messages we are sending. And, I think that we need to reflect upon what inclusion does and doesn’t mean for Aboriginal peoples. But we have to remember that these people we strive so hard to include are Aboriginal. To date, inclusion in education has shown little in the way of helping Aboriginal Peoples understand their own oppression. Instead, it merely serves to make them better at adjusting to (and not complaining about or otherwise resisting) the devastation of their lands, communities and languages. Indeed, we delude ourselves by talking about the silliest things such as decolonization, post-colonialism and reconciliation. “Decolonization” has no context here. It is not a knowable reality. People often use the

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word to indicate that an individual has come to realize how the world works. The goal is to ensure that the individual is able to see the oppressive structures and ideologies for what they are. But does this individual decolonized mind change the ways in which we are allowed to live? If decolonization is to have any content it must include the return of Aboriginal lands and the removal of foreign governing structures. If all we are talking about is transforming individual minds, “decolonization” is rhetoric rather than reality. Similarly, has anyone thought about what reconciliation means? Last year at Congress, National Chief Atleo talked about reconciliation and also mentioned the legal cases which he believes Aboriginal peoples are winning. I had the distinct impression that he didn’t actually read those court decisions, because it is quite obvious that the doctrine of reconciliation set out by the Supreme Court of Canada is designed to ensure that the colonization of Aboriginal lands will continue. The Court has designed rules that undermine Aboriginal rights for the economic benefit of the settler society. We also have academics blowing smoke about this era of “post-colonialism.” I suppose that we all want to feel unique, to differentiate ourselves from our predecessors, but do we have to do it by being so incredibly ignorant about the continuing pillage of Aboriginal lands, the continuing suppression of Aboriginal cultures, and the silencing of Aboriginal languages? What do these academics think that colonialism was if our current reality is “post” that? Worse still are situations where academics refuse to acknowledge the material conditions of Aboriginal peoples’ dispossession because it is not uplifting and they don’t want to create a downer for the students. I am not entirely blaming academics who think that they are talking about something new and fascinating when they use these ideas or language. After all, there is an expectation in the academy that we, as academics, will do groundbreaking research. And, let’s face it; talking about colonialism can get stale. For example, I had a reviewer of one of my articles which discussed ongoing colonialism in Canadian law make the following comment: “this is a tired debate in relation to which we have hopefully moved on as a legal community.” Hopefully, moved on? In order to move on, doesn’t colonialism have to actually stop? Or is it just that the message is too inconvenient for many scholars to support? Does it require too much work to actually try and stop colonizing Aboriginal peoples? Is it easier to bring in an “Elder” to teach about the medicine wheel or how to smudge? Rather than ensuring that our students are prepared for debates and critical thought about the ongoing destruction of Aboriginal cultures, are we happy to simply include a few symbols around campus? We have a choice in terms of what we do in the classroom. Are we going to be a shining example of a community that is able to come together to carry out our moral responsibility? Are we going to advocate for the return of Aboriginal lands, the protection of Aboriginal languages and the extraction of the tentacles of colonialism? Or, are we going to blindly fall back on the essence of our colonial nature and merely ask for greater “inclusion” of Aboriginal peoples? I leave you with the words of Zygmunt Bauman: “Moral duty has to count on its pristine source: the essential human responsibility for the Other.1” And, a gentle reminder that there is in fact “otherness” in Aboriginal cultures that needs to be protected. The simple push for greater inclusion has, as its natural consequence, the death of Aboriginal cultures. Dr D’Arcy Vermette is the Director of the Native Studies Programme at STU. 1 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991) at 207.

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FOCUS Article The Teaching Human by Dr

Martin Kutnowski, Fine Arts Programme, STU

The category Homo sapiens—”the knowing human”—was invented in 1758 by Swedish naturalist and explorer Carolus Linnaeus, the father of modern biological taxonomy. Fittingly created during the Rationalism, the designation survived the plethora of paleoanthropological findings of the last two centuries. All newly discovered hominids—Australopithecus afarensis, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and so on—were measured against the standard of the modern, “wise” human. The name stuck. The designation deserves some critical examination, however, for Homo sapiens is a cultural, historically-dependent definition, at least as much as a scientific label. The Greek etymological root of sapiens is sophía. In the words of Gerhard Friedrich, “... [sophía is] derived from an adjective [sophos, wise] and always denotes a quality, never an activity.” In all fairness, how much of a daring assumption it’s to say that we are a “wise” species? Has this name become anachronistic? Given what we have learned in all fields of human knowledge during the last hundred years or so, it may be time to reconsider calling ourselves “wise men” and instead give ourselves a name that responds more accurately to our ongoing construction of personal knowledge, which happens during our lifetimes as individuals, but also during the lifetime of our community, that is to say for the entirety of the evolution of our species. Would perhaps Homo discipulus, “human who learns,” or homo docens, “human who teaches,” be more accurate labels for our species? Of course, many species learn (otherwise, how could we explain why dogs lift their paws for a biscuit?), but one crucial difference is that humans, because of spoken and written language, are able to transfer a large proportion of the knowledge gained in one generation to the next. Or perhaps sapiens should be understood as the ability to share knowledge, rather than merely possess it. As Isaac Newton, another Rationalist, said: “If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Perhaps I am wrong about taking issue with a venerable scientific label. As a non-scientist, however, and particularly as a teacher in the arts and humanities, as well as a practical artist, the potential problem I have with this denomination is that it may imply a permanent quality, instead of one that derives from an activity. This dichotomy between

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permanence and development has strong ties to the pedagogic debate between natura and nurtura, a pendular question which explores whether individuals are innately talented or if education can make a substantive difference. An old Spanish saying unequivocally sides with nature: Lo que natura non da, Salamanca non presta (“That which nature does not give, the university cannot lend”). Without denying that every human individual has a different genetic configuration and extremely diverse potential (not two babies are physically equal at birth, not even identical twins), I believe that experience (and particularly education) is still the defining factor in the development of each individual person. Recent discoveries in neuropsychology have shown how new synaptic pathways are developed in the human brain at any biological age as new information or skills are acquired, and how the context in which we live—and the opportunities for learning that it provides, or not, including things as basic as nutrition—have a decisive influence in the development of particular areas of the brain. In other words, provided with the opportunity, every human being is potentially capable of learning and passing the knowledge on to others. Recent ideas such as the “10,000hour rule,” popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers (the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of regularity and discipline, rather than innate talent), is a practical manifestation of this ideological shift. To me, one of the inevitable conclusions of the application of the 10,000 rule is this: Innate talent and acquired talent (which is to say, skill acquired through formal or informal learning) may be indistinguishable from each other. Putting too much stock on innate talent, and particularly thinking that “what nature gives, teaching cannot provide,” may lead to unfair and arbitrary decisions. One recent study showed how a disproportionate number of elite hockey players in Canada were born in the month of January. Without any biological basis to justify it (unless we were to assume that people born in January are more talented for hockey), the only explanation was that children born in January were enjoying a phenomenon known as relative-age advantage. Because the coaches were unaware of the relative-age advantage, they assumed innate talent when in fact there were other factors at play. The unfair consequence of this wrong notion—a kind of Pygmalion effect—was that some children were relegated in favor of others. I will take this notion a step further, and claim that the Spanish say-

Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

Issue 17: Fall 2012

ing, and the process whereby hockey players were chosen in Canadian rinks among so many other examples, are excellent symbolic representations of the ideology which has vastly informed pedagogy in formal education at all levels, perhaps even up to this day. It is a kind of Darwinian pedagogy, epitomized by the all-or-nothing, stopwatch in hand, final exam. No wonder why quiz shows, based on the same premise of providing “right” or “wrong” answers, punish contestants with “elimination,” or offer them “lives” as a bonus. This pedagogy is in fact epitomized by the oldest quiz show of all, that of the encounter between Oedipus and the Sphinx (perhaps the toughest, strictest teacher there is) at the gates of Thebes: failing to provide the right answer also means death (albeit in literal terms). And perhaps there is some logic to a Darwinian motivation for formal education. After all, intergenerational teaching and learning has been perhaps the most fundamental evolutionary advantage that our species has had over all others so far. Without the cumulative knowledge that we call culture, humans would still be living in trees, escaping from predators in the jungle. It’s the ability to transfer acquired knowledge—from making fire, to developing tools, to securing food sources, throughout thousands of generations—what created the civilization in which we live today. Just as easily, however, this civilization can be all but lost, whether because of our own un-learned ways (war, pollution) or because of cataclysmic forces beyond human control (volcanic eruptions, meteorites). Harnessing the power of our collective, ongoing construction of knowledge is the one tool that may help us survive as a species, whether in the near or distant future. For this reason, all stakeholders (particularly those directly involved, such as students, teachers, parents, and government officials) should recognize that education is not just about spending money, or increasing one’s chances to make more money in the future; teaching and

Contact your Learning and Teaching Development Committee •

Jocelyne LeGresley (LTD Office Assistant) 452-0642



James Whitehead, Director of Teaching and Learning, [email protected] , 452-0610



Learning and Teaching Development Moodle Page: https:// moodle.stu.ca/moodle/course/view.php?id=117 (you will need your Novell ID and password to gain full access to resources)



LTD Office and library (from which the Magna Seminars/ books can be borrowed) is ECH311. 452 0525



Committee members: Ray Williams ([email protected]), Andrea Schutz ([email protected]), Omar Basabe ([email protected]) Student representative (TBA)

Issue 17: Fall 2012

learning has an evolutionary purpose which is functional to the biological imperative of survival, and formal education is the explicit method (even if not the only one; folklore and ritual are other prominent ones) by which humans disseminate the current knowledge and invite new members to the collective. Even if our culture were not ready to move beyond a purely Darwinian conception of education (for that, we would probably need to move beyond capitalism, which is not happening anytime soon), we teachers should immediately get rid of its deterministic component. Recognizing that sustained opportunities for teaching and learning are the gamechanging factor in the development of the individual and the community, and considering the magnitude of the global challenges lying ahead (climate change, scarcity of energy and natural resources, pandemics, to name a few) the human collective in general and specialists (we, teachers) in particular should make an effort to refine our pedagogies. Deterministic views about education (“this child has no brain for mathematics,” “this child is tone deaf and cannot learn music,” “I am not good with facts”) perhaps stem from the same potentially deterministic assertion that ours is a species that “knows,” rather than one that “learns.” Different people learn differently, and the slogan of the US Department of Education from a bit over ten years ago—no matter its political underpinnings—is accurate: “No child left behind.” Except that this is not an altruistic slogan. No child should be left behind, for the sake of the child but also for the sake of the species. Educating as many individuals as possible, so that they can effect a positive influence in human culture and pull us all towards a livable future, is our species’ single, defining evolutionary advantage, and perhaps our only hope. Dr Martin Kutnowski is a Associate Professor and Director of Fine Arts, St Thomas university. He is a contemporary composer and music theorist originally from Argentina.

LTD Workshops for Students Some of our faculty have agreed to provide workshops for students on various non-academic topics that may help improve their success in the classroom. University isn’t all about acquiring knowledge, but the acquisition and development of skills, and we thank the following faculty for volunteering their valuable time to provide these opportunities this semester. The dates of the presentations are posted below, more complete information is presented in the schedule of events listing at the end of this issue. Alan Hall – Note-taking skills - Sep 26 Karen Robert – Time management(Pomodoro technique) - Sep 28 Clive Baldwin – Giving presentations - Oct 10 Mikhail Molchanov – Giving Presentations - Oct 19 Andrew Titus – A holistic balance to academics and life - Nov 14 Janet Mullin – Exam preparation and writing - Nov 21 Julian Walker – Increasing Confidence for that big exam - Nov 28 Please let you students know about these workshops. You might even consider attendance as a required component of your course? Attendance can be taken on request. We would like to offer workshops like these, and on other topics, on a regular basis - to give a wider opportunity for students to benefit. Please contact the Director of Teaching and Learning if you would be willing to participate next semester, at [email protected]

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2012 Teaching Award Recipients The STU Teaching Awards recognise great teaching and great teachers on campus. This year, the Teaching Award Adjudication Committee received six new nominations from students and faculty-peers, and there were three other updated portfolios submitted from the last year`s new nominees that were also reconsidered for the award this year. See the next page for recognition of all those who were newly nominated this year. The number of nominations this year were down as compared to last year, despite there being the same number of equally deserving faculty! Please encourage students or colleagues in your programme or Department to nominate a faculty member who you feel represents what is best about good teaching at St Thomas. Teaching Awards are not just end-of-career recognition, but a way to recognise dedication, enthusiasm, and integration of good pedagogical methods into classes, at whatever stage of career. Congratulations to both of our 2012 recipients and all the nominees.

2012 John McKendy Memorial Teaching Award for Full-time Faculty

2012 Teaching Award for Part-time Faculty

Bradley Cross, History

Haydée Sainz, Romance Languages

Brad Cross takes risks. He claims his best courses are ones in which he draws attention to what the collective, including himself, doesn’t know, or might not be able to know. They learn as a collective and create new knowledge by employing research skills that he mentors. His students have actively studied historic artifacts at King’s Landing to learn about past cultures through their material history, they research with a practical purpose, and their work collaboratively benefits the group’s learning while also providing exhibitions for the community at large (service learning). His Travel Study courses to New York have evolved to provide rich contextual experiential learning opportunities that bring urban history alive. He has also actively engaged in collaborative, learning communities both with other history faculty and with faculty in Fine Arts and STS. These linkages enrich the students understanding of the relevance of History to other disciplines. Despite introducing all these risks into what could be an otherwise stable, ‘regular’ learning environment, student feedback is enormously positive. Dr Cross’ courses are an excellent illustratration of the benefit of employing non-traditional teaching techniques, of taking those risks in a framework of organisation, preparation and ongoing self-reflection. The adjudication committee is pleased to acknowledge these successes by awarding the John McKendy award for full-time teaching for 2012 to Dr Brad Cross.

Dr Sainz’s teaching portfolio expresses the joy that she has for her teaching of Spanish. She often uses films and plays as media to engage students in learning the language, to foster their cultural appreciation and analyse cultural differences and similarities. Haydée even uses film as a vehicle to invite students to create new content based on their revised understanding; an example of higher order learning, all while students are developing their language skills. She provides opportunities for students to use Spanish while debating controversial cultural issues, such as the Cuban embargo or homosexuality in hispanic cultures. Student feedback expresses an appreciation for learning the language in the context of the culture. As a part-time facuty member she is not expected to engage in extra service to the university though she has, for several years, taken a leadership role in organising the annual Hispanic Day activities at STU. This event includes many students and faculty from both UNB and STU, as well as embracing outside community members. It is a keystone culmination of a series of learning projects across both universities. Haydée provides novel guided opportunities for her students to actively define their own goals and evaluate their own progress. She is also engaged in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning by sharing her teaching methods in international and regional teaching presentations. We, the adjudication committee is pleased to recognise teaching excellence of our part-time faculty by presenting the 2012 Part-Time teaching award to Dr Haydée Sainz.

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Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

Issue 17: Fall 2012

2012 Teaching Award Nominees I am always very hesitant to use the term award “winners” when it comes to describing the recipients of our teaching awards. For there to be winners suggests that everyone else is second best, and that is not the case. Our awards are a way for us to annually celebrate the collective good teaching of our faculty, and focus, for a moment, on a couple of stellar examples of which we should all be proud. To a certain degree, to be nominated requires a certain amount of luck: that magical alignment of stars - a mixture of a great teaching year, that awareness of the awards among the students, the presence of a student ‘leader’ that rallies others to support a nomination, and then get it submitted in time! Many faculty go unrecognised merely because these stars don’t align. Adjudication is the final hurdle, and it is very difficult to select a recipient. One of the greatest rewards for all the nominees are the comments expressed within the nomination letters that they receive. LTD passes these letters on to the nominees so they can fully understand how the students and colleagues appreciate their teaching efforts both inside and outside the classroom. Below we present some excerpts from these letters. Because we reconsider updated portfolios for the following year’s award considerations, we have already printed some of the comments for faculty considered this year in last fall’s issue of Teaching Perspectives. We represent here only those faculty who were newly nominated this year. [JW]

Part-Time Award Haydée Sainz, Romance Languages - reconsidered nomination - 2012 recipient Alice Allain, Romance Languages - reconsidered nomination Mark Tunney, Journalism - new nomination It’s the work Tunney has done with The Aquinian that really sets him apart from any other professor. Tunney has coached our team through the entire process. He knows when to coach and when to step back and let us go. On Sunday evenings, he’s on-call in case we need to ask him any questions while we lay-out the paper. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, he sits down individually with all eight of us, critiques our work from the last week and helps us focus our ideas for the next. (Laura Brown) For many, Mark has become a mentor, someone they know they can not only trust academically and journalistically, but also personal. For me, Mark is there whenever I have a rough day or a tough decision to make. I know I can talk to Mark about anything and he will listen and will often find a way to turn the negative into a positive, like a column or story. He pushes his students when they least expect it; he encourages them when they need it most; and he isn’t afraid to tell them when they need to work on something – sometimes harder than they thought.

Issue 17: Fall 2012

As student journalists, that’s exactly what we need. I don’t think Mark knows the impact he has left on the students of The Aquinian – and every other journalism student that crosses his path. (Alyssa Mosher) I realized recently how much of an impact Mark’s advice has had on me. I sometimes meet with first-year writers for The Aquinian to help them figure out how to write their stories or email them to tell them what worked and what didn’t. Halfway through, I realized almost all of the things I was telling the student had been taught to me by Mark. The advice is being passed on. (Karissa Donkin)

Jill Cummings, ESL - new nomination Dr. Jill Cummings has demonstrated to us, the ESL students, her exceptional knowledge in teaching ESL 1033 (Listening and Speaking I), ESL 1043 (Speaking and Listening II), and ESL 1053 (Maritime Society); and her numerous activities on our behalf to develop the ESL community, including a research presentations in which we participated to present our research posters related to Maritime geography, history, and society. She developed highly interactive opportunities that kept us talking English, writing interviews assignments, surveys, and investigations beyond class. As a professor, Dr. Cummings was always enthusiastic about teaching and her enthusiasm and knowledge transformed our classes into academic events that encouraged us to dig deeper, read more, work collaboratively and, non-native speakers in a new community to speak up, make connections with English-speaking students and professors. (Jiale Lin, ? Henan Liang)

Andrew Moore, Great Ideas - new nomination Not only is he articulate, intelligent and an effective communicator of very difficult concepts, Dr. Moore also goes above the standard requirements to provide a dynamic, modern approach to classical thought. (Nywani Albert) Coming to the end of my fourth year at St. Thomas, I can happily remember many excellent professors, because there is an abundance of knowledgeable, committed, outstanding professors at this university. However, since I’ve been enrolled in Dr. Moore’s courses, no other professor has had a greater impact on my education and my enjoyment of St. Thomas. Great Ideas professors must be competent at lecturing and facilitating long discussions, in a way that is informative but does not impose any particular interpretation of the works onto the students. Dr. Moore excels at leading discussions in an open and accepting manner, yet he manages to retain structure, and his ability to articulate complicated ideas allows him to lead students through the complicated thoughts of some of history’s greatest minds. (Eric Plant)

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Julian Walker, Communications - new nomination I lacked any real academic focus or aspirations when I began at St. Thomas in 2008. I am now months away from graduating with Communications as one of my majors. Julian’s combination of experience, enthusiasm, and personable demeanor encouraged me to work harder than I ever had in school something for which I was rewarded with uncharacteristically high marks. On a personal level, Professor Walker has gone out of his way countless times to help me. He has proofed my personal resume for summer jobs and prepared me diligently for an important (and ultimately successful) job interview despite holding no official capacity as my professor or advisor. He is perpetually available to sit down with a student and iron out questions, concerns and future plans. (Tom Bateman) Julian Walker has been the most influential man on my academic career. His kindness, support and genuine care for his students make him an obvious choice for this award. It’s pretty simple really: My life would be very different had I not been fortunate enough to meet Julian Walker. His faith in my abilities has pushed me to pursue a higher level of education and he has helped me believe that the barriers standing between my success and me are artificial – and for that support and faith in my capabilities he deserves my lifelong appreciation and this award. (Jessica Bruce) I have been, and continue to be, challenged and supported by Julian as an invested educator and compassionate mentor. Knowing the nature of these [presentation/discussion] classes, when it was your turn to be present, it was important to know more than anyone else in the class about your topic. When it wasn’t your turn, it was interesting to hear their opinions others had on the topic and exiting to try to stump them. If conversation lagged, Julian would throw in radical opinions or fascinating comparisons, forcing us to assume a new perspective or consider an angle we were overlooking. You often found yourself arguing with someone you actually agree with – and arguing well. My ability to not only consider the opinions of others, but learn from them, even if I don’t agree with them was developed in these classes. Julian was a huge influence in my success in university and continues to be someone to whom I feel accountable today. I regularly draw on the ideas discussed, advice received, and skills developed in his classes in my career, and my life, today. Thank you. (Ashlen Henry)

Full-Time award Brad Cross, History (recipient 2012 - reconsidered nomination)

patiently as we think for ourselves. Dr. Kutnowski teaches with a contagious enthusiasm about the course material and teaching in general. It is nearly impossible to not get engrossed in the subject because of the passion with which Dr. Kutnowski teaches it. It is plain to see that he loves his job and the subject. He has taught me more about responsibility, respect, effective communication, formal writing, presentation skills, and other skills than any other teacher I have ever had. He helps his students grow as composers, students, and people. (Rodney DuPlessis)

Mikhail Molchanov, Political Science - new nomination Dr. Molchanov is rigorous but is careful to scale the level of work demanded to the level of course he is teaching. This means that he brings out the full potential of students in their first, second and third years without overwhelming them. Dr. Molchanov got me hooked on political science in my first year and gave me the skills which will help my critical analysis in graduate school. He has offered insights other professors have not and has made himself available and willing to help whenever it was needed. (Rob Larmer) Dr. Molchanov is the kind of teacher who shows students their worth, while never letting us have any reason to do poorly. He pushes us to be stronger, more dedicated people, academically and personally. While being accessible and supportive of his students out of class, he also shares stories about his experiences and gave humorous examples that make classes fun. As the course took us around the world to study the politics of different countries, Dr. Molchanov helped made the subject alive and easier to understand by giving real life examples from his travels and experiences. I never wanted to miss his stories about Soviet Russia and his travels to Brazil, Japan, and other countries. (Khairunnisa Intiar) Dr. Molchanov never accepted the minimal levels of effort from our behalf and always challenged us to reach new standards of excellence. Dr. Molchanov’s interest in, and understanding of, his students extended outside the classroom through the help and accommodations that he provided us whenever we asked him, and encouraged us to develop our personal research interests and pursue them to the best of our ability and to not be superficial in our goals and strategies. (Megan Brunton)

“Alternative Literature” Free source cartoon from xkcd.com

Martin Kutnowsi, Fine Arts - new nomination He has truly mastered the technique of “wait time”. When he leaves us with a question and we are left glancing at each other with puzzled looks, he does not relent until one of us offers a response. If the response was not correct, he gives another subtle hint and waits again. Other professors get impatient and want to continue with their lecture, but Dr. Kutnowski understands the value of active learning; so he waits

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Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

Issue 17: Fall 2012

FOCUS Article Pressing their Buttons: Gambling with Technology in a Canadian History Classroom by Dr

Michael Dawson, History, STU

You may recall reading in the last issue of Teaching Perspectives that clickers were available at STU for pilot testing in a couple of classes. The manufacturer of one brand of clickers provided class sets of 60 clickers for this purpose. Mike Dawson, History, STU, shares his experiences of these clickers in his class and his students’ feedback.

I don’t consider myself to be a likely candidate for embracing “new” technology in the classroom. I only incorporated Powerpoint into my lectures a few years ago. And even then I made sure to bring along my old overhead projection sheets “just in case.” I’ve had students in the front few rows backing away nervously as I’ve vented my anger at an unresponsive DVD player. And after attending a WebCT lesson about a decade ago I emerged firmly convinced that there was “nothing there” that was going to add value to my students’ learning environment. And yet… Technology played a key role this past term as I substantially reinvented my Canadian “survey” course, HIST 2913: The Historical Roots of Contemporary Canada. With the aid of a dependable laptop (my new MacBook Air), a snazzy piece of software that creates 3-D timelines, a course Moodle account, and iTunes for musical interludes, I launched HIST 2913 2.0. I’d been seeking out new ways to teach this course for a while. I wanted to get away from a dense meta-narrative that tended to be driven primarily by chronology and to move more in the direction of a thematic course that would allow me to focus the students more intently, and for longer periods of time, on key issues such as colonialism, regionalism, consumerism and national identity. And so rather than offering a 13-week-long comprehensive narrative I provided a much more concise 3-week version. And then we spent the next 10 weeks exploring a new question (almost) each class. Such questions included: Why and how did Canada develop a welfare state? When and how did Canada become a consumer society? What explains the persistence and influence of western alienation? What’s the deal with government-run liquor stores? The 3-D timeline, Moodle account, (Keynote) presentation slides and the musical accompaniment all helped me to revamp old lecture material and incorporate new research and secondary reading into the course. But the biggest technological influence on HIST 2913 2.0 was also the biggest gamble: student-response devices, or clickers. I took part in a “clicker” trial. It was a fairly last-minute decision as the clickers became available just a month before the course began and

Issue 17: Fall 2012

I didn’t get to sit down and play around with them until about a week before the first class. But having read a little bit about them online, and having attended a brief presentation by TurningPoint Technologies, I convinced myself that this was a gamble worth taking. The clickers we employed are small electronic devices (about the size of a very bloated credit card) that contain a numeric key pad that allows students to respond to polling or multiple-choice questions. Much of what I had heard about clickers emphasized their role in facilitating “peer” learning. I didn’t use them that way. I can see the benefit of allowing groups of students to work through the answer to a very complex problem in a physics or medical school lecture hall. But (my) history lectures have a different rhythm. Instead, I was keen to employ them in three ways. First, with the new course format (an overarching narrative early on followed by a series of thematic lectures) I wanted an effective way to quiz my students. I was keen to assess my students’ comprehension of the lecture material fairly often and I wanted a way to motivate my students to stay “on top” of the material as we moved along. I was also looking for a way to get feedback, in the form of marked quizzes, to students efficiently and effectively. On this count the clickers worked very well. I devised multiple-choice quizzes covering the previous lecture (or two). I posted the questions on the screen at the front of the room and the students pressed keys to answer. We briefly reviewed the answers together and then moved on to the next lecture. After class, I would press a few buttons on my laptop and the results were beamed into my students’ Moodle gradebooks. I anticipated a wide range of headaches on this front but none materialized. Second, I used the clickers at the beginning of the term to poll my students about their interest in, and understanding of, a wide range of Canadian History topics. This proved to be a good way to get everyone in the room used to the technology. It also, as one student pointed out to me, created an instant sense of community in the classroom. More importantly, with everyone anonymously expressing their degrees of interest in particular topics I was able to make more informed decisions about how I was going to proceed. The students, in effect, were able to influence the content of the course right from the start. I polled them on about 20 different topics. I didn’t necessarily “drop” topics that polled lower than others. Instead, I used the polling data to facilitate brief conversations with the students that allowed me to anticipate how they might “resist” or “misunderstand” key historical issues. In short, the polling allowed me to revise and invent new “hooks” so that my lectures were speaking more directly to the students in front of me. My third plan for the clickers consisted of incorporating a series of

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“rhetorical interludes” into my lectures. I planned to ask students, for example, to consider the conundrum that faced Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier when it came to the issue of Prohibition. I would use the clickers, I thought, to give the students three policy alternatives for Laurier and ask them to weigh in on what his best option was. Unfortunately, this plan didn’t come to fruition. I couldn’t quite bring myself to disrupt the “natural” flow of the lectures to incorporate such polls. I was far more comfortable confining polls and quizzes to the beginning and end of class where they wouldn’t interfere with my “timing.” It could be that as I grow more comfortable with the technology I’ll figure out a way to pursue this plan more effectively. But for now I’m quite content to continue using clickers in this course even if only two out of my three plans have proven successful. The course evaluations and some end-of-term polling would seem to confirm my positive assessment of my technological gamble. The clickers, along with the other forms of technology, tended to facilitate rather than hamper my pedagogical goals. And for someone as technologically-challenged as myself this result comes as both a relief and a reminder that teaching is sometimes about taking chances. Dr Michael Dawson is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, St Thomas University

Want to try the Clickers? Faculty wishing to try using the Clickers should contact the Director of Teaching and Learning, as class sets can be made available for free by the manufacturer for trial purposes.

associated questions). They hand in their ticket as they walk into the next class. You can then do a variety of things with their answers: shuffle and re-distribute, call out one and ask for responses… 3. Whether you use think-pair-share, small group work, or individual active engagement, give your students some examples from the literature to show how they enhance learning, and build some aspect of it assignments and assessment. These methods should show students that interacting and taking ownership are skills they need to do well in this course, and of course elsewhere in life. Alice Cassidy, Principal, In View Education and Professional Development; Course Coordinator, Faculty of Science, UBC Dear Hopeful:

Dear Dr Mentor... Questions sent in by faculty to Dr Mentor will be circulated to the Professional & Organisation Development in Higher Education listserv, seeking the responses of these faculty development experts. The questions and responses are then available to any of those POD listserv members - a syndicated column having started right here at STU! Please send your questions to [email protected]. When appearing in the newsletter they can be signed, or anonymous. Dear Dr Mentor, Last year I taught my first seminar based course. It was a challenge to get the students to interact and take ownership of their own learning, and I ended up having to lead the conversation throughout most of the sessions – even though I had set readings and student facilitators assigned for the classes. I wonder if you have any advice regarding how to improve the dynamic for seminar classes so that more students are engaged. Hopeful, STU Dear Hopeful, Sometimes students are not used to interacting, or are unsure how to do it. I have 3 suggestions for you to try: 1. Set an “active tone” early. On the first day, hand out small sticky notes and pose questions such as: What intrigues you about this course? What will you contribute? What does the (topic) mean to you? They add their responses to group collections, organize them, and share with the class. 2. To ensure that students do readings, ask for a ‘ticket-to-class’ - each student answers one question (I give out 3 colours of paper, along with

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One strategy I’ve found useful in addressing the problem you describe is a “midpoint reflection exercise.” It’s a variation on assigning discussion facilitators and/or presentations, but because it introduces an element of spontaneity, and because I as instructor am pledged to silence for some period of time, I find that the students are more engaged and take more responsibility for themselves than they do in the other modes. Here’s a brief write-up of the activity (click on the first link): http://cft. vanderbilt.edu/teaching-guides/teaching-activities/discussions/#models Good luck! Allison Pingree Director of Professional Pedagogy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government Dear Hopeful, I find it helpful to model the interactions for students initially, by providing them with some questions to guide their reading and our class discussion of it. Then after a few classes that way, you might prompt students to form their own questions of the material. This can be done in advance at home; through a course management site threaded discussion, blog, or journal; or even in class, on sticky notes, where students write discussion questions anonymously and post them on a board. As a class you choose the questions that will guide your discussion. You might even save a few minutes at the end of class to “de-brief” the questions: which were useful in sparking productive discussion? The other suggestion I have is thinking about application. This will differ based on your field, but in mine (history of art), I will often ask students to apply ideas in the readings to new works of art/ideas that were not part of the reading. We might start off discussing an image or idea from the reading and then move to an “unknown” artwork. This can help determine what the students have actually understood from the readings. Kirsten Olds, Assistant Professor, University of Tulsa

Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

Issue 17: Fall 2012

Upcoming Events This semester we have again tried to avoid regular teaching periods for our events. They are primarily scheduled for 2:30 pm on Fridays. A new series of student workshops are similarly scheduled at various minimally subscribed class-slots. Informal discussion sessions we call our DIALOGUE series. These will be held in the Faculty Lounge in Edmund Casey Hall at 2:30pm on Fridays. Other sessions requiring digital projection facilities will be held on Friday afternoons at 2:30 pm, in Holy Cross House 101. Refreshments, good cheer and informal discussions are available at all events!

August •

Wednesday 29th, 4:00pm THE FLIPPED CLASSROOM. This is the first of two online seminars on the flipped classroom. Part 1 will focus on the background and research behind flipping your classroom (giving students the content they would normally receive in the class for assimilation outside class, and doing homework type exercises in the classroom, with peer and faculty interaction) and will give a basic outline of the benefits and considerations. HCH 101. Pre-registration required if you want to watch it at home via the link on the LTD Moodle Calendar (1 hour)

September •

Tuesday 4th. MOODLE WORKSHOPS. 2:00pm: Intro to Moodle for the Moodle newbies. 3pm: Workshop for those with some experience but wanting to refresh/learn more. Hosted by Rik Hall. ECH G2. Please pre-enroll by sending your name/department, whether you have used Moodle before, or have particular requests to [email protected].



Wednesday 5th, 4:00pm. THE FLIPPED CLASSROOM. This is the second of two online seminars on the flipped classroom (the first occurred Aug 29th, link from LTD Moodle Calendar). Part 2 of a 2-part Series about Classroom “Flipping” will focus on the application of flipping the classroom and offer pertinent suggestions for how to successfully implement the system on campus. HCH 101. Pre-registration required if you want to watch it at home via the link on the LTD Moodle Calendar (1 hour)



Friday 7th, 3:00pm. GENERATING A TEACHING PORTFOLIO for renewal/tenure/promotion purposes. What are some common issues with teaching portfolio that you might want to avoid? This will be a Q and A session, with previous members of CAPT and recent chair of CAPT, Martin Kutnowski. Faculty can bring their portfolios for specific questions. HCH101 meeting room. (1 hour)



Monday 10th, 2:30pm. MOODLE HELPDESK. You attended the Tuesday workshop, played with it over the weekend and have some follow-up questions? Go to MMH310 for personal one-on-one assistance between 2:30 and 4:30pm. Can’t get into school? We can give you a demo by broadcasting our helpdesk screen live online to your computer. Call us at 460-0610.



Friday 14th, 2:30pm. TEACHING TRIANGLES Information Session. Ever wanted to be a fly on the wall in another faculty member’s classroom, so you can poach their great teaching ideas? Come to this session to hear about Teaching Triangles, a project that facilitates learning through observing others classes. See the article on page 8 for more information. HCH101. Refreshments and nibbles available. (30 minutes)



Friday 21st, 2:30pm. VIRTUAL VISITING SPEAKERS. Bringing speakers to your classroom from remote regions is often fiscally and logistically impossible, yet there is huge untapped potential value in these opportunities. Find out several ways technology can be used to bring these virtual speakers, or even classes from other schools, to your students. HCH101. Facilitated by James Whitehead. (1 hour)



Wednesday 26th, 1:30pm. STUDENT WORKSHOP - NOTE-TAKING SKILLS. Students often sit back and expect knowledge to flow into them like a lecture `download`, without realising that taking notes, and how they take notes can affect their subsequent understanding. Dr Alan Hall will present some ideas to help students get the most out of note-taking. HCH101. (1 hour)



Friday 28th, 2:30pm. USING THE POMODORO TECHNIQUE TO AID WITH TIME MANAGEMENT. This presentation by Pomodoro convert, Karen Robert, explains how this technique can aid both students and faculty manage their time better when multiple demands often provide distraction. HCH101 (1 hour).

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Upcoming Events

continued...

October •

Monday 1st, 2:30pm. MOODLE HELPDESK. Go to MMH310 for personal one-on-one assistance between 2:30 and 4:30pm. Can’t get into school? We can give you a demo by broadcasting our helpdesk screen live online to your computer. Call us at 460-0610.



Friday 5th, 2:30pm. DIALOGUE SESSION: Seminar Classes. Seminars are distinctly different from larger classes. Find out how other faculty attempt to increase the interactivity of students and help them prepare to get the most out of these sessions. Facilitated by Andrea Schutz and Beth McKim. ECH201 Faculty lounge. (1 hour) Refreshments and nibbles will be available.



Weds 10th, 4:00pm. STUDENT WORKSHOP: Death by PowerPoint: How (not) to give presentations. This session will provide a general, and light-hearted, introduction into how to make presentations using, and not using, Microsoft Powerpoint. We will cover issues of format, structure and presentation style. By the end of the session students will have a list of do’s and don’ts to think about when preparing presentations for assessment. Facilitated by Clive Baldwin. HCH101 (1 hour).



Saturday 13th. 8:45 to 5:00pm. AAU TEACHING SHOWCASE, St Thomas University and UNB (starting at Marshall D’Avray Hall). Pre-registration required. $50 registration for STU and UNB faculty, $90 for others. More information at http://aaushowcase2012.stu. ca



Friday 19th, 11:30pm. STUDENT WORKSHOP: Individual and group presentations: From preparation to delivery. This session is intended primarily for the first and second year students. It will focus on planning, preparing, and delivering individual and group presentations on the topics assigned by the instructor, when these presentations form a part of mandatory assignments for the course. It will feature a short presentation by a workshop moderator Dr. Molchanov and a roundtable discussion on the topic. The objective of the session is to exchange experiences, focus on best practices, and derive some working models for subsequent use in teaching and learning processes. Facilitated by Mikhail Molchanov. HCH101 (1 hour).



Friday 19th, 2:30pm. MAGNA 20 MINUTE MENTOR Double Bill: Blended Learning 1. “What is Blended Learning” An overview of how combining classroom instruction and online activities can transform student learning, and “In Blended Learning, What should my students do online?” Explains how Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning can help faculty determine whether to deliver content face-to-face or online. Presented by: Ike Shibley and Tim Wilson. HCH101. (1 hour) Refreshments available.



Friday 26th, 2:30pm. VIRTUAL VISITING SPEAKER: THE IMPACT OF WIKIPEDIA on student research. Dr Anna Smol (Mount St Vincent University) will share her perspectives on the role of Wikipedia on student research and invites the discussion/experiences of participants in how Wikipedia can help/hinder that research. HCH101 (1 hour). Refreshments available.

November •

Friday 2nd, 2:30pm: TEACHING TRIANGLES SHARING. Faculty involved in the pilot of the Teaching Triangles project will share with one another, and other interested faculty, teaching ideas/practices they learned from attending one another’s classes. ECH201 (1 hour). Refreshments available.



Monday 5th, 2:30pm. MOODLE HELPDESK. Go to MMH310 for personal one-on-one assistance between 2:30 and 4:30pm. Can’t get into school? We can give you a demo by broadcasting our helpdesk screen live online to your computer. Call us at 460-0610.



Friday 9th, 2:30pm. MAGNA 20 MINUTE MENTOR Double bill. Blended Learning 2. “Should I Use ADDIE as a Design Map for My Blended Course?” – Providing a comprehensive approach to designing a blended course, and “What Three Things Could I Do to Improve My Blended Course?” – Focusing on the phases of learning, using technology, and increasing collaboration to enhance blended learning course design. Presented by: Ike Shibley and Tim Wilson. HCH101. (1 hour) Refreshments available.

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Issue 17: Fall 2012

Upcoming Events

continued...

November continued •

Weds 14th, 4:00pm. STUDENT WORKSHOP: A holistic approach to academics and life or “Running with the devil/Living in your body”. Of the many dangers to one’s well being that academia poses, perhaps the worst is the threat to a person’s physical well being. There’s strain on our bodies produced from long nights, substance use, and stress. I will talk about my own experiences as a student and teacher in coming to terms with all of these things and some of the simple, yet hard, lessons that I’ve learned. Facilitated by Andrews Titus. HCH101 (1 hour).



Friday 16th, 2:30pm. INTERPRETING TEACHING EVALUATIONS. Do your teaching evaluations not reflect the effort you put into teaching? In this interactive session we will perform a post-mortem on an example evaluation and glean what we can from it in order to discuss key issues in interpreting the evaluations. You can bring some examples of your own, either numeric or long form, for inclusion. Facilitated by James Whitehead. HCH101 (1 hour)



Weds 21st, 11:30pm. STUDENT WORKSHOP: Exam preparation and writing: you’re wiser than you think! This 60-minute session will offer strategies to help you get the most out of your study time, as well as hard-won secrets for writing exams. Facilitated by Janet Mullin. HCH101 (1 hour).



Friday 23rd, 2:30pm: DIALOGUE SESSION: Quoting, Paraphrasing, Citing and Plagiarism. Let’s consider what students don’t know about ownership of discourse and how we can help them learn it. Facilitated by Russ Hunt. Faculty Lounge-ECH201. Refreshments available.



Weds 28th, 4pm. STUDENT WORKSHOP: Increasing your confidence for that big exam. Many students fear exams and do not use the tools available to them to maximize their performance. This session with provide ideas for obtaining the marks you deserve. Facilitated by Julian Walker.



Friday 30th, 2:30pm: THE SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND LEARNING. Research on teaching is valued equally with research in our chosen disciplines for tenure and promotion purposes. This session will act as a brainstorming session for ideas on possible research topics which a collective of faculty may develop. Representatives of other research teams will be invited, to share their insights on how to best proceed with group-research projects. Facilitated by Gayle MacDonald and James Whitehead. Co-sponsored by the Research Office. HCH101. Refreshments available.

December •

Wednesday 5th: Last Day of classes



Thursday 6th, 8:30-12:15. UNB KALEIDOSCOPE. UNB’s annual teaching showcase. STU Faculty are welcome. Marshall D’Avray Hall. 8:30-am start. Google “UNB Kaleidoscope” for more information as it becomes available.



Friday 7th. LEARNING COMMUNITIES WORKSHOP. The time and location details will be during the semster and will be posted to Moodle. Dr Rita Pougailes, Evergreen State College, will be facilitating this full day workshop on teaching using Learning Communities. For more information on Learning Communities, see content on pages 6 and 7. REGISTRATION will be required at http://eventregister.stu.ca

Image Sources: Flickr.com images sought with creative commons releases allowing users to ‘modify, adapt and build upon’, Wikimedia commons, Facebook or the STU Communications photo archive.

Issue 17: Fall 2012

Teaching Perspectives - St Thomas University’s Teaching Newsletter

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James Whitehead

Omar Basabe

Andrea Schutz

Ray Williams