In collaboration with colleagues at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus, I designed and facilitated, again and again, a series of discipline-specific workshops called “Foundations of Teaching and Learning in X” where X is Health and Exercise Sciences, Digital Literacy, Nursing, Engineering, and others. In this series of blog posts, I describe the motivation,…Continue reading →

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Freeman et al. (2014) remind us Active learning engages students in the process of learning through activities and/or discussions in class, as opposed to passively listening to an expert. It emphasizes higher-order thinking and often involves group work. Those times in our in-person classes when we stop talking and let the students work together on…Continue reading →

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When students work in groups on bigger assessments like projects, papers, posters, and presentations, instructors often include peer evaluation in the assessment of the project. That is, they ask students to assess each other’s contributions to the project, and those assessments are part of the final grade the students receive. I learned about a peer…Continue reading →

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Six weeks ago, at the end of July, new campus leadership at UBC Okanagan decided to restructure the Centre for Teaching and Learning and eliminated the position of Director, and therefore, me. When the day comes post-covid-19 when we can sit around and laugh over drinks, I’ll add some details. My neighbour, Raymond, had the…Continue reading →

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Last Fall, the senior staff in my Centre for Teaching and Learning suggested we should take a look at our mission. Other units at UBC Okanagan have been updating their “Mission, Vision, Values” – perhaps to align and synchronize with the new UBC Strategic Plan. I have to admit, I wasn’t enthusiastic about the “MVV”…Continue reading →

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Scholarly teaching. Education research. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. These are all activities related to applying valid research methods – typically developed in other disciplines – to study teaching and learning. For faculty members who’s merit, tenure, and promotion is based, in part, on their research output, publishing articles about education can’t hurt but it…Continue reading →

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Every Fall, I follow along as Derek Bruff @derekbruff tweets out inspiring stories from the open classroom event his Center for Teaching runs at Vanderbilt. Course instructors from across campus volunteer to open their classrooms and welcome their peers to come observe. While we may have 25, 60, 300, or more students in our classrooms,…Continue reading →

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As Will Rogers once said, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” What you do in your first day of class establishes the learning environment for the rest of your course, so it’s critical to think and plan carefully. Nobel prize winner and science educator, Carl Wieman, reminds us the goals…Continue reading →

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(This is adapted from a poster I presented at the 2018 Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) Conference, Université de Sherbrooke, June 20-22, 2018.) Designing a Large, Active Classroom As class size increases, instructors face an increasingly difficult challenge. There is clear evidence that more students are more successful in classes with…Continue reading →

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At the 2018 UBC Okanagan Learning Conference, keynote speaker, Robert Talbert talked about the rights of students, based on the work of Crystal Kalinec-Craig. Student have the right to be confused the right to make mistakes and revise one’s thinking the right to speak, listen, and be heard the right to write, do, and represent…Continue reading →

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