Register now for the fifth annual University of Windsor and Oakland University Teaching and Learning Conference, themed, Beyond the Traditional Classroom: Engaging Students Through Experience, May 19 and 20, 2011, Windsor, Ontario, Canada. We’re pleased to offer you the following snapshots of this year’s conference events!
Featuring 97 presenters from 16 institutions across Canada and the United States facilitating sessions on experiential learning, the conference offers topics ranging from service learning to place-based pedagogy, from problem-based learning to authentic assessment, and from role-playing to simulations. You can find the conference schedule on our website: http://cleo.uwindsor.ca/oakland/index.php
You can also create your own customized and printable schedule of your day using the MySchedule feature at: http://cleo.uwindsor.ca/oakland/sched/. This feature allows you to mark sessions you are interested in by clicking on the stars that appear next to the session titles. This schedule can be printed and/or emailed to you.
This year’s the poster session will include an adjudicated competition involving peer-review and an international panel of judges. The Dr. Wilbert J. McKeachie International Poster Prize will be awarded on May 19.
We are excited to announce that we will close the conference this year with an Experiential Learning Expo, Friday, May 20 at 11:00am. At this special event, representatives from a number of universities in Ontario and Michigan will showcase their university’s experiential learning initiatives.
We invite you to register at http://cleo.uwindsor.ca/oakland/register/
Registration costs for University of Windsor and Oakland University faculty, staff, and students are underwritten wholly by the Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic, University of Windsor and Senior Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Provost, Oakland University.
For more information on the conference visit: www.uwindsor.ca/tlconf.
It’s spring! I hear birds, see tulips in the yard, and there’s a tiny bit of green on the trees. If you’re finishing exams and final papers though, you might feel more like our friend Sharpie Sandbox:
Good luck with end of term everyone. We’re here all summer, so please do stop by again.
I am currently feeling completely overwhelmed by the administrative side of teaching this term. I’m teaching a distance education course with 200 students. Luckily, I’m working with a fantastic co-instructor and two undergraduate teaching assistants, so the responsibility and tasks are somewhat spread out.
However, over the past few days, things have exploded. Classes ended last week so we’ve been hustling to get assignments graded and returned. This is probably where the feeling of quickly spinning in all directions began. I discovered two students submitted the identical personal reflection. Students who never registered with Student Disability Services began requesting special accommodations for their final exam. Students were getting sick and having to leave town for family emergencies. Suddenly I was immersed in Senate Bylaws, procedures for reporting academic misconduct, and learning about aegrotat status.
Then the exam happened.
That was followed by emails from more sick students, students facing emergencies, and more than one student who’d overslept. I can’t find a policy for “I slept in, can I write the makeup?” !!! I don’t think that this being a distance education course is making anything easier.
This is a side of teaching I never prepared for. I’ve spent years going to workshops about active learning, engaging students, leading effective discussions, using technology to enhance learning, creating rubrics, giving feedback, etc. When it comes to determining what’s an acceptable excuse, when to use the official channels, and when it’s okay to bend, I’m drawing on my undergrad philosophy courses and thinking about how I’d want to be treated. And when it comes to learning about the university’s official policies, I’m using google site search and consulting with the department director. I haven’t had time for much else this week. In retrospect, I think I was pretty lucky last semester that no one missed the final and I didn’t catch any plagiarism. Life was so much simpler then…
I’m not sure where the preparation for this side of the job should come from, but I think there needs to be some. Should this fall under the umbrella of a centre for teaching and learning? Should it come from the office of the registrar? Would any grad student choose teaching if they knew what was in store?
Image: Creative Commons licensed “38..365 Stack Attack!” by Katkamin
Our dear friend at Sharpie Sandbox comments on exam time. Quite probably, many (most?) of us are feeling this right now:
Mode 1 only lasts as long as Mode 2 takes to arrive. There is no living in between:
Remember Bloom’s Taxonomy? It’s that handy tool that helps you create measurable learning outcomes. What if there was an easy way to match your learning goals to tools that support your students’ learning at each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy? And what if those tools were free?
Enter Google Blooms, assembled by Kathy Schrock. Kathy’s created a clickable image map that matches 51 of Google’s tech tools/toys to each level of the revised Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. I thought I’d tried most of Google’s free tools, but there are some on here I’d never heard of. I’m looking forward to playing with the new ones and hopefully integrating some of them into future classes.
Visit Kathy’s original image to mouseover each tool name to visit and try out each tool.
Google Blooms, assembled by Kathy Schrock
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