We share these 12 stories of collaborationsand partnerships—most successful, a few less so—during this time of educational innovation and stringent accountability to demonstrate why the kind of professional development offered by Writing ProjectTCsmust continue—why it is essential to work respectfully as colleagues and co-learners over time with new and seasoned teachers in their professional arenas.

Eight Ways to Support Faculty Needs with a Virtual Teaching & Learning Center

This means that teachers spend a lot of time adapting and creating their own materials

allowing it to offer dual-language instruction

Minds Online

ethnography means learning from people

Be redundant. Students should hear, read, or see key material at least three times.

L’enseignant joue quatre rôles distincts : celui de client, qui juge l’adéquation du produit au cahier des charges, celui d’expert technique, en cas de difficulté bloquante, celui de chef d’entreprise lorsque cela s’impose et que des décisions autoritaires (concernant les coûts, les délais ou les méthodes) doivent être prises pour empêcher l’échec du projet, et enfin le rôle traditionnel de tuteur.

Pour leur faciliter la tâche, lorsqu’un enseignant dispense un cours magistral, un autre enseignant est présent dans la salle et joue un double rôle : il apporte éventuellement des points de clarification à travers une formulation alternative et il n’hésite pas à poser des questions, parfois volontairement naïves, afin de désinhiber les élèves qui n’oseraient pas intervenir.

more efficient (whatever that means)

While TAs are intended to help students understand the material, their teaching skills vary and they come at the job with widely different backgrounds.

focus on teaching, not learning

improving teaching, not amplifying learning.

Les actions des enseignants sont maintenant considérées comme des actes professionnels, au même titre que les médecins, les avocats, etc.

«Les professeurs qui publient dans une revue disciplinaire n'ont pas toujours le temps, ni la reconnaissance, pour publier dans d'autres publications sur leurs projets ou leurs innovations pédagogiques, explique Anastassis Kozanitis. S'ils le font, ces publications hors discipline ne sont pas reconnues pour leurs demandes de subvention. C'est un frein majeur à la diffusion des recherches dans le domaine au Canada.»

I often use a supplemental evaluation form at the end of the term. There are two competing functions of the evaluation. The first is to give you feedback for course improvement, and the second is to assess performance. What the students might think is constructive feedback might be seen as a negative critique by those not in the classroom. It’s in our interest to separate those two functions onto separate pieces of paper. Before we went digital, I used to hold up the university form and say: “This form [holding up the scantron] is being used by the school as a referendum on my continued employment. I won’t be able to access these forms until after the next semester already starts, so they won’t help me out that much.” Then I held up another piece of paper [an evaluation I wrote with specific questions about the course] and said, “This one is constructive feedback about what you liked and didn’t like about the course. If you have criticisms of the course that you want me to see, but don’t think that my bosses need to see them, then this is the place to do it. Note that this form has specific questions about our readings, homework, tests and lessons. I’m just collecting these for myself, and I’d prefer if you don’t put your names on them.” I find that students are far more likely to evaluate my teaching in broad strokes in the university form when I use this approach, and there are fewer little nitpicky negative comments.

Blogging in the Classroom: A Preliminary Exploration of Student Attitudes and Impact on Comprehensio

The General Causality Orientations Scale: Self-Determination in Personality

The Power of Feedback

haddecidednottogradetheiressays.Iwasbeamingwithexcitement;theywerenot.Suddenly,theairbeneathmywingshaddisappeared.Myexcitementwaslostonthem,andIwasdisheartened.Butwhathappenednextbothappalledandenlightenedme.Istoodthereatthefrontoftheclassandheardwhatsoundedlikeall30ofthemyellinunison,“Youmeanwedidthisallfornothing?”InitiallyIfeltlikeIhadbeenkickedinthegut,butthenIfeltliketheGrinchwhenhisheartgrewthreesizesthatday.

It was of interest that all attribute categories of un- creative characteristic~ and almost all attribute catego- ries of creative traits (39 of 42) were suggested by both male and female teachers

Wenzler and Cartier (1999) make an effective case for the use of games in organizational learning by asserting that “Games and simulations help organizations develop symbolic thinking and gestalt understanding; help them create memories of the future; enable shared experiences and the building of shared intelligence; and, possibly most important, develop their members' motivation and confidence to act,” (p. 375). A number of books and manuals (e.g., Pike & Busse, 1995; Stolovich & Keeps, 2002; Thiagarajan, 2003) advocate this kind of learner or trainee involvement

Cruickshank, D. R., & Telfer, R. (2001). Classroom games and simulations. Theory into Practice, 19(1), 75-80.

Games promote transfer because they require student participation and active involvement with the material within a rich context (Cruickshank & Telfer, 2001).

In the second part of the study, five faculty members were mentored to change traditional lectures to interactive games. A review of their perceptions of success and difficulty in using such activities in the college classroom, their students’ perceptions of the exercise, and student performance identified both benefits and costs. Suggestions are made for strategies to successfully implement games in the college classroom, based on consideration of these benefits and costs and the survey results.

Identifying issues important in their lives and community, and deciding on one to address

Many teachers agree that student-directed learning makes sense when it comes to their own learning but this rarely translates to their approach to teaching.

Convinced that big undergraduate lectures are ineffectual, Wieman long ago ditched those big performances in favor of getting students to problem-solve. He gets them actively engaged with course material, working in smaller groups. The techniques have become known as an evidence-based, "active learning" style of teaching.

Love in pedagogical work is an orientation. It’s a commitment to the personhood of learners, to their intersectionality, to their deep emotional backgrounds, to the authenticity of their lives. It is a decision to commit first to the community of learners and second to the material we’ve come to teach.

Every child a reader"

Teaching in a Digital Age

BCcampus as a whole is a research project in the eyes of our parent institution SFU

Teaching: Just Like Performing Magic

Dweck’s message is that we can’t just adopt a growth mindset and forget about it, and simply praising effort regardless of actual progress is completely counterproductive. Successfully cultivating a growth mindset is an ongoing process that consists of teaching strategies for growth and praising effort thoughtfully, rather than regardlessly.

The whole organic nature of learning experience through the #walkmyworld learning events meant that I learned what I needed to learn as I needed to learn it. It wasn’t a top down dictate of learning outcomes because the outcomes were determined by the process. It is a revolutionary concept — yet as ancient as Aristotle. Learning should never be measured solely by standard outcomes; people learn, and I mean really LEARN, when they discover for themselves what they know, what they want to know, and how they want to know it.

Over the years, I've challenged the notion of just having kids read on their own at school. (Or, maybe not so much challenged the notion as told people about the actual research findings on this topic which aren't so wonderful.) I’ve not been a friend to DEAR, SSR, SQUIRT, or similar schemes that set aside daily amounts of time for self selected reading in the classroom.              Most studies don’t find much pay off for this kind of reading—either in reading achievement or motivation to read. There are many better things to do if your goal is to encourage reading than to just tell kids to go read on their own (a directive that sounds a lot like, “go away and leave me alone").

evaluate efficacy

no research

wring out every ounce of performance

increased investment in professional development and teaching-friendly tenure and promotion practices

In one study at San Diego State University, students enrolled in an Introductory Psychology course were taught using three kinds of lectures: one that incorporated course content-related humor; one that included humor, but not related to the course material; and one that used no humor at all. When researchers tested student’s retention of knowledge six weeks later, they found that those who attended lectures with course-related humor scored significantly higher than the other students.

Eliot was a chemist, so perhaps we should take his criticisms with a grain of salt.

2014 study showed that test scores in science and math courses improved after professors replaced lecture time with “active learning” methods like group work

I’m hot and sweaty

But if we abandon the lecture format because students may find it difficult

“It is not a recitation of facts, but the building of an argument.”

It keeps students’ minds in energetic and simultaneous action.

Lectures are essential for teaching the humanities’ most basic skills: comprehension and reasoning

"What really is our role as professors?" he asks. "Is our role to simply give out information and people will use it as they wish? Or is our role to honestly and truly help guide people to be who they are and how they will live their life?"

other needed resources

but in making clear what was obscure

Accordingly a great orator has truly said that "an eloquent man must speak so as to teach, to delight, and to persuade." Then he adds: "To teach is a necessity, to delight is a beauty, to persuade is a triumph."(2) Now of these three, the one first mentioned, the teaching, which is a matter of necessity, depends on what we say; the other two on the way we say it.

But only by those who can learn them any one who cannot learn this art quickly can never thoroughly learn it

THE PROPER AGE AND THE PROPER MEANS FOR ACQUIRING RHETORICAL SKILL.

Moreover, we must not even trust to the first learning by heart; it will be better to have syllables repeated and to impress them long upon the memory; and in reading too, not to hurry on, in order to make it continuous or quick, until the clear and certain connection of the letters become familiar, without at least any necessity to stop for recollection

if he is unwilling to learn, let another be taught before him, of whom he may be envious.

The study of Latin ought, therefore, to follow at no long interval, and soon after to keep pace with the Greek; thus it will happen that when we have begun to attend to both tongues with equal care, neither will impede the other.

The best of rules, therefore, are to be laid down, and if any one shall refuse to observe them, the fault will lie not in the method, but in the man.

Nor is their misconduct less prejudicial to the manners of their pupils;

Since they disdain to yield to those who are skilled in teaching and, growing imperious, and sometimes fierce, in a certain right, as it were, of exercising their authority (with which that sort of men are generally puffed up), they teach only their own folly.

Of paedagogi this further may be said, that they should either be men of acknowledged learning, which I should wish to be the first object, or that they should be conscious of their want of learning; for none are more pernicious than those who, having gone some little beyond the first elements, clothe themselves in a mistaken persuasion of their own knowledge.

It is incredible how much retardation is caused to reading by haste; for hence arise hesitation, interruption, and repetition, as children attempt more than they can manage; and then, after making mistakes, they become distrustful even of what they know

When a tutor has observed these indications, let him next consider how the mind of his pupil is to be managed. Some boys are indolent unless you stimulate them; some are indignant at being commanded; fear restrains some and unnerves others; continued labor forms some; with others, hasty efforts succeed better

Is there not then, it may be asked, a certain height of eloquence too elevated for the immaturity of boyhood to comprehend it? I readily confess that there is, but the eloquent professor must also be a man of sense, not ignorant of teaching and lowering himself to the capacity of the learner, as any fast walker, if he should happen to walk with a child, would give him his hand, relax his pace, and not go on quicker than his companion could follow

The principles of good diction can be so taught, and therefore we have men of ability in this direction too, who win prizes in their turn, as well as those speakers who excel in delivery -- speeches of the written or literary kind owe more of their effect to their direction than to their thought.

They, again, are satisfied if through the prestige of their names they can draw a number of pupils into their society; I, you will find, have never invited any person to follow me,

while the teachers of philosophy impart all the forms of discourse in which the mind expresses itself. Then, when they have made them familiar and thoroughly conversant with these lessons, they set them at exercises, habituate them to work, and require them to combine in practice the particular things which they have learned, in order that they may grasp them more firmly and bring their theories into closer touch with the occasions for applying them

he must in himself set such an example of oratorythat the students who have taken form under his instruction and are able to pattern after him will, from the outset, show in their speaking a degree of grace and charm which is not found in others.

they pretend to wisdom and assume the right to instruct the rest of the world

since they pretend to search for truth, but straightway at the beginning of their professions attempt to deceive us with lies

This is the first step: if you focus your attention, your mind, making progress by this means, will perceive more. (3) Th

Thus my argument is complete, and you have its beginning, middle and end. And I don't say that wisdom and virtue are teachable, but that these proofs do not satisfy me.