Archives: Blog

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

cuPortfolio – What is it and why is everyone talking about it?

By Allie Davidson, EDC Educational Technology Development Coordinator In the past year, you may have heard about Carleton’s ePortfolio system, cuPortfolio. Maybe you noticed emails in your inbox about how the tool is being used across the university or maybe you heard about it from a colleague who has tried it out in their... More

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Blog: Overcoming illusions of competence

By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics I first heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect from biology professor James Cheetham. It is named after Justin Kruger and David Dunning who wrote a paper titled “Unskilled and Unaware of It”. The effect is often seen on TV in some popular talent show auditions, such... More

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Blog: Considerations for assessing impact

By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics When instructors make changes in their teaching, they often want to know the impact of such changes.  Even though countless studies in higher education exist in the literature, conducting a proper study that meets statistical rigour is hardly a walk in the park. As... More

Monday, June 5, 2017

Poll Everywhere: The fidget spinner for higher ed?

By Kim Loenhart, Educational Technology Support, EDC Fidget spinners are all over the news these days as kids adopt this new tool to deal with sensory and attention needs. Keeping the fingers busy has been promoted as a way to refocus students, provide sensory input and stimulate bored minds. While mostly in the realm... More

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Blog: The power of images in the classroom

By Kim Loenhart, Educational Technology Support, EDC Well-chosen images offer powerful teaching potential. Perhaps nothing gets people talking more than a compelling image or a visual mystery. Consider the viral online discussion surrounding the white and gold dress (or blue and black dress, if you’re one of those people).  This simple image of... More

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Blog: Learn at your own pace as long as you pay

By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics When Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) began to take traction in 2011, there was much fanfare about how higher education could be democratized. The possibility of opening up courses offered at top universities for the masses led some to believe that the gap between the... More

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Blog: 10 things you can do to rev up your course

By: Elspeth McCulloch, EDC Educational Technology Development Coordinator Why not spend a few minutes getting your course ready for the summer or fall term with an EDC course tune up? Sign up to work with an educational technologist to tweak, edit and rethink how you use cuLearn so that you and your students get... More

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Blog: ePortfolio – The nail in the coffin of ‘the dog ate my homework’ (and other merits)

By Julie Lepine, Contract Instructor, School of Linguistics and Language Studies Okay, so maybe the excuses of your university students are not as juvenile as ‘the dog ate my homework’ (or maybe they are!), but I’m sure you’ve all witnessed the slightly panicked, slightly defiant face of a student who has ‘forgotten’ to bring... More

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Blog: Data-driven course improvement

By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics As I start to become more familiar with cuLearn, I realize that there is a lot of course data that can be useful for improving the learning environment for my students. Without a doubt, the ability to perform complex queries in cuLearn is limited.... More

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Blog: Teaching: Who has the power?

By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science I’m getting ready to start a new term teaching a particularly controversial topic — the politics of Israel-Palestine. When I share with colleagues my trepidation, they sometimes like to remind me that, however difficult the task may be, it is the instructor, after all, who... More

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Blog: How can we get students to do the readings?

By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science We often like to think that students value the readings we assign out of a sheer love of learning. But, like us, students have many competing demands on their time, and course requirements inevitably get prioritized according to incentives. For any given student, studying for... More

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Blog: What’s an A+?

By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics About 10 years ago during a lunch conversation that drifted into a discussion on student grades, a colleague asked, “What is an A+?” The question was of course rhetorical. My colleague simply used it to point out the deficiency of the letter-grade system when... More

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