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Friday, June 28, 2013

Blog: Inspiration and Creativity in Education

By: Samah Sabra I was recently in beautiful Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where several staff and faculty from Carleton attended the annual Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education conference. I co-facilitated a pre-conference workshop and attended many sessions facilitated by faculty, senior administrators, educational developers and... More

Monday, June 17, 2013

EDC Blog: The grey area surrounding student motivation

By: Manuela Popovici The more I’ve been thinking about student motivation, the further I’ve moved away from the motivated/unmotivated dichotomy. I realized that I was holding on to a belief in the “right motivation” and thus the only acceptable motivation, i.e. the desire to learn, because that’s how I always felt about school. I... More

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Students blog on presenting research on the media and HIV/AIDS

Heather McAlister shares her experiences performing undergraduate research in South Africa  with her research partner Khadija Ga'al and sharing their research at NCUR 2012. Hi, my name is Heather McAlister and I am a fourth year student in African Studies and Political Science. I was among the first group of students to participate in... More

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR)-the Student Perspective

The National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) began in 1987 as an opportunity for undergraduate scholars from a variety of disciplines to present their research. The conference is held annually and it is an excellent opportunity for meeting presenters from a wide array of institutions for higher learning while also honing the skill of... More

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

EDC Blog: Issues in Teaching and Learning – The ELI List

By: Patrick Lyons Technology and higher education are popular topics for conversation, research and debate within many post-secondary education institutions. A key challenge when thinking about higher education and technology is keeping an eye on trends, issues and developments within the large higher education community as well as external trends... More

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

EDC Blog: Creativity in the Classroom

Fresh off receiving the 2013 Desire2Learn Innovation Award for Teaching and Learning, Carleton history professor Shawn Graham tells us how he manages to keep his teaching creative. By: Shawn Graham I've had some spectacular fails in my teaching practice. When I first started out, I would look around at what other folks were doing... More

Monday, May 6, 2013

EDC Blog: Innovation is not about reinventing the wheel…or using new technology

By: Samah Sabra Often, when I speak with contract instructors, instructors and faculty, they express surprise when I tell them they are innovative. With last week’s annual Canadian Network for Innovation in Education conference being hosted at Carleton, I had a lot of time to think about how we define innovation in education. CNIE... More

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

EDC Blog: Change Can be Hard, but Energizing

By: Samah Sabra Before Fall 2012, I knew there were plans to retire WebCT this April. These plans left me with two options for the next two terms: (1) keep going with WebCT until it was no longer an option or (2) start using cuLearn now that it was available to me. The first... More

Monday, April 15, 2013

EDC Blog: Next Steps for the LMS

By: Patrick Lyons For the last year, the Educational Development Centre (EDC) and Computing and Communication Services (CCS) have been collaborating to transition the university from WebCT (actually Blackboard Campus Edition 8) to cuLearn (actually Moodle). We are now in the final couple of months of our transition and Carleton’s long history... More

Monday, April 1, 2013

EDC Blog: Unlocking Assessment Value with Mozilla Open Badges

By: Andrew Barrett Assessment of learning is important but it can be hard work for all involved. This post explores the question of how educators and learners can potentially get more bang for the effort they put into assessment through the use of the newly released Mozilla Open Badges infrastructure that is receiving considerable... More

Thursday, March 28, 2013

A Teacher’s Perspective: Using Technology to Offer Online Labs

By: Marc St-Hilaire The School of Information Technology is offering a Bachelor degree in Networking Technology (NET). The NET program focuses on the design, installation, operation and management of future complex information networks. One of the main advantages of this program is that it offers a strong mix of theoretical concepts and practical... More

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Blog Post: Celebrating Carleton’s Outstanding TAs

The nomination deadline for the Educational Development Centre's (EDC) Outstanding Teaching Assistant awards and many Departmental TA Awards was last Friday, March 8. The awards celebrate the amazing accomplishments of Carleton University's teaching assistants and their dedication to undergraduate learning. Teaching assistants occupy a challenging... More

Monday, March 11, 2013

EDC Blog: Student Self-Assessment and Learning

By: Samah Sabra A couple of years ago, a friend challenged me to get students involved in their own assessment. While I like to think of myself as someone who is willing to take risks in teaching, has a great attitude toward students and believes that anyone, if given enough support and time, can... More

Monday, February 25, 2013

EDC Blog: March is Assessment month at the EDC

By: Joe Lipsett In recent months, the EDC has been offering “themed” programming months (January was Teaching with Technology, February was Learning Outcomes). March will be themed Assessment and for a number of reasons, we expect that there will be a great deal of interest from faculty and contract instructors in exploring this topic.... More

Thursday, February 14, 2013

EDC Blog: Learning Outcomes, Course Design and Online Teaching

By: Samah Sabra When I started this position in May 2012, I had a conversation with a friend who was about to embark on her first online teaching experience. Over coffee, she told me that she was a little nervous about what a change in medium of course delivery would mean for her. Would... More

Monday, January 21, 2013

EDC Blog: My first steps into the digital world

By: Anthony Marini For the past four years, I have been facilitating Carleton University’s teaching certificate program here at the Educational Development Centre.  In each cohort, the topic of integrating technology into the teaching/learning process has been addressed by having the unit’s director come into a session and discuss the... More

Monday, December 10, 2012

EDC Blog: Winding Down and Bringing It Together

By: Samah Sabra One of my biggest challenges as an instructor has been learning that the end of the semester never comes with as much “extra” time as I hope it will. While I always want it to be a time to wind down from constant prep and emails – perhaps a bit of... More

Monday, November 26, 2012

EDC Blog: Of Dinosaur and Teaching and Learning

By: Patrick Lyons As some of the EDC blog readers know, on occasion I have the opportunity to teach ERTH 2401, more commonly known at Carleton as the dinosaur course. This second year Earth Sciences course is designed to introduce non-science students to key geological concepts and situate dinosaurs within the dynamic environment of... More

Monday, November 12, 2012

EDC Blog: He Said/She Said – Lessons Learned: Reflecting on Teaching

He Said (Joe Lipsett) Recently, I’ve led some Teaching Talks with teaching assistants on the value of reflecting about teaching. It’s a topic that’s close to my heart because it requires me to re-evaluate my approach to teaching, including the way I interact with and engage students, and how my teaching philosophy has changed... More

Monday, October 29, 2012

EDC Blog: What can those black marks on a multiple-choice response sheet tells us about teaching and learning?

By: Anthony Marini One of my roles as Senior Teaching Associate at the EDC is to consult with instructors around issues related to using multiple-choice test items in their assessment activities. As a faculty member with a focus on educational measurement and assessment, I have worked with many instructors in a wide range of... More

Monday, October 15, 2012

EDC Blog: Adoption of Plagiarism Prevention Innovations

By: Andrew Barrett As a relatively new member of the Educational Development Centre who is also trying wrap-up a dissertation in Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University, I find myself wearing two hats. When wearing my Manager, Instructional Innovations hat, the shampoo bottle instructions version of what I do could be summarized as... More

Monday, October 1, 2012

EDC Blog: He Said / She Said – The Start of Term

He Said/She Said is a new recurring feature on the EDC blog. Throughout the year Joe Lipsett and Samah Sabra will tackle a number of topics from their positions as Teaching Development Associate/Educational Developer, as well as Contract Instructors (in Film Studies and Canadian Studies respectively). He Said (Joe Lipsett) For me, the first... More

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Fear of Failure, Assessment, and Community Support

By Samah Sabra As I close the door to the bathroom stall and hang up my jacket, I am struck by the words someone has scrawled across the wall. I and other users of this stall are reminded, or perhaps admonished since it is written in all-caps, to STOP FEARING FAILURE. Perhaps the person... More

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Learning Through Observation and Reflection: The Case for Lecture Clubs

By Samah Sabra At the beginning of May, I started a new position as an educational developer with the EDC. It’s difficult to convey my excitement about working at the EDC, but suffice it to say that I’m a total geek when it comes to discussing anything to do with learning and teaching. (My... More

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Are Exams Useless?

By Samah Sabra For those who don’t teach Spring/Summer courses, exams may be a distant memory by this time of year. Students wrote them in April and you already graded them, submitted final grades, and are possibly taking a break from thinking about teaching before planning courses for the Fall and Winter terms. Indeed,... More

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Innovation in Teaching and Learning

By Patrick Lyons When I think of innovation, I think of a change, an idea or activities that are new or different. Thinking of innovation in the context of technology is easy. The smartphone is innovative. Hybrid cars are innovative. The Internet is filled with innovative applications that change how we interact with information... More

Friday, May 4, 2012

Re-introducing Bloom’s Taxonomy

By Margaret Cusson Lately, I have been working on curriculum development through the Academic Quality Assurance process, whereby I am advising and working with units on the learning outcomes associated with their programs.  Through this work, I have had to pull out Bloom’s Taxonomy on multiple occasions.  Having worked in a teaching and... More

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Flipped Classrooms: Increased Accountability and Engaged Learning

By Kelly Holmes What is a flipped classroom? A flipped (or inverted) classroom is where students are assigned normal “lecture” materials to review on their own time or as part of the allotted class hours in preparation for the scheduled class. There are various methods of delivery but professors can assign readings, record their... More

Monday, March 12, 2012

Unlocking the Secret

By Patrick Lyons You may be familiar with Rhonda Byrne’s bestselling self-help book and film “The Secret”. In her book, she tries to convey that an individual’s success is built on the idea of thinking positively and optimistically. I don’t really want to discuss Byrne’s book or argue for or against her ideas of... More

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Academic Publishing and Writing Advice from the Thesis Whisperer Blog

I came across a great blog for Teaching Assistants or instructors who are writing Ph.D or Masters theses or for anyone who simply needs inspiration for ongoing academic publishing.  Dr Inger Mewburn‘s The Thesis Whisperer blog provides a ton of tips and great strategies for working in academia.  While there are too many great highlights... More

Thursday, February 24, 2011

A Great IDea: Going Online Using Our Instructional Design Resources

With the recent launch of CUOL, there has been some buzz around campus about what this means for academic course design possibilities. The introduction of online course development provides solutions for instructor, teaching assistant, and room allocation resourcing issues in addition to providing added flexibly and accessibility to the learning... More

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The shy ones

by: Thomas Larder, former Film Studies TA As a teaching assistant involved in leading discussion groups, it is inevitable that you will come across some students who are readily and eager to participate, while others will be shy and avoid any chance to engage in discussion.  It is sometimes easier to allow the more... More

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Dialogue in the margins

By: Laura Weir, MA Public History A large number of teaching assistant-ships on campus are based almost entirely on marking.  While it may seem that you’ve lucked out on a lighter workload, you in fact face a more challenging form of teaching. Relying on assumptions that students will take interest in every grammatical correction... More

Thursday, August 5, 2010

When you say math, we say “chalk talk!”

by: Rob Nettleton Three researchers at Carleton are making headlines with their new research project that delves into the language of “chalk talk,” a study of learning complex math problems in University. Led by Ottawa resident Natasha Artmeva, Carleton University professor Janna Fox and alumna Lin Chen, together they discovered that “the... More

Monday, June 14, 2010

The Full(er) Plate

Matthew Murdoch,  former teaching assistant, Department of Psychology My first year as a TA began with a great deal of stress. After taking time off following my undergrad degree, I enrolled in a new university, moved across the country, and arrived the day before my first day of official duties. To add to this,... More

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