Communication Studies Professor Benjamin Woo

What does a grade mean? 

Professor Benjamin Woo began his proposal for a Carleton University Teaching Achievement Award with that question. The awards are “intended to enhance the teaching of their recipients and the quality of instruction at Carleton.”

In an entry entitled “Does Specifications Grading Add Up? Evaluating Alternative Approaches in University Assessment,” Woo proposed convening a group of professors and instructors to pilot and measure a new approach to assessment, which “gives students greater agency and responsibility in their learning.”

Following the two-year pilot project, Woo will report back to the University community on his findings.

How shall I be in this world?

That’s the challenge Marylynn Steckley offers her students in Global and International Studies. She holds an Instructor II designation in Arthur Kroeger College and has won a Carleton University Professional Achievement Award in recognition of her teaching.

Steckley is a critical geographer by training whose passion is to “enliven her students to engage meaningfully in confronting global inequality.”

How can art illuminate legal studies?

Contract instructor Tiffany MacLellan brings that question to her classes in the Department of Law and Legal Studies.The winner of a Contract Instructor Teaching Award, she invites students to “turn to traditional empirical sources frequently leveraged in legal studies, as well as nontraditional sources like aesthetic and spatial sites.” She is committed to creating educational experiences within and outside the classroom, and has used works in the Carleton University Art Gallery to illuminate themes in course readings.

This story was originally published on Faculty of Public Affairs website on Thursday, February 21, 2019.