Festival of Teaching and Learning

In this episode, Lead Educational Developer, Ellen Watson, is joined by Dr. Kara Schick-Makaroff and Ph.D. candidate, Morgan Wadams, to talk about their research into supporting the development of Teaching Assistants online. As a result of their work, Kara and Morgan have developed some resources to assist instructors and programs as they prepare TAs for non-traditional modalities of instruction. Listen here.

In this episode in our series of podcasts highlighting presentations accepted to the 2020 Festival of Teaching and Learning, Ellen Watson, Lead Educational Developer at the U of A CTL is joined by Felicitas Kluger, Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Science about memory encoding techniques and how students can use these techniques to improve their memorization! Listen here.

This is the second episode in our series of podcasts highlighting presentations accepted to the 2020 Festival of Teaching and Learning, CTL's Ellen Watson is joined by Dr. Kyle Whitfield and Bryan Braul. Kyle and Bryan discuss their SoTL project investigating teaching culture in the Faculty of Extension and give our listeners insight into the important work of developing a teaching culture—even in a remote environment. Listen here.

Read the transcript here.

This is the first episode in our series of podcasts highlighting presentations accepted to the 2020 Festival of Teaching and Learning. In this episode, Ellen Watson, Senior Educational Developer at the U of A CTL is joined by Dr. Gregory Thomas, Professor in Secondary Education, and U of A librarians, Virginia Pow and Debbie Feisst to talk about their research into the use of podcasts to engage students' metacognition with citations. Listen here.

Read the transcript here.

Empathy as a Pedagogical Strategy within the Context of Online Teaching and Learning
Mireille Hamel (Faculty of Education)

This presentation aims at bringing awareness on the importance of empathy as pedagogical strategy and its positive impact on students and teachers in the context of online teaching and learning. Once the definition of cognitive empathy is addressed and the perspective of integrated approach of lifelong learning, you will hear about digital and declarative identity of participants of online classes. The overall goal of the presentation is to show empathetic culture as efficient strategy that can benefit all, including our institution. (Recording available soon)

Presentation slides

Active Learning in Research Methods: Social phobia matters
Jennifer Passey (Faculty of Arts), Andy Scott (Faculty of Science)

This presentation reviews a re-designed research methods course to focus on active learning. A recent evaluation revealed increases in domain specific self-perceived and actual knowledge, but only for those students who were low in social phobia. (Recording available soon)

Presentation slides

Templating the eClass Learning Experience: Tools, settings and strategies
Bryan Braul, Kim Wardrop, Amanda Magnan & Alex Lomas (Faculty of Extension)

This presentation will highlight the main components of the Faculty of Extension’s eClass course template and discuss the educational benefits of providing a standardized learning environment. Watch here.

Teaching the Concept and the Tool: Lessons in ethical, equitable digital literacy practice
Lydia Zvyagintseva & Kate Cawthorn (Library and Museums)

Teachers interested in developing digitally fluent and ethical scholars of the 21st century are well-positioned to partner with makerspaces and digital scholarship centres to provide meaningful opportunities to unite the subject matter and the praxis of digital methods. This presentation proposes a vision for such partnerships through an intersectional, interdisciplinary lens grounded in constructionist theory and a commitment to an equitable, diverse community space. Watch here.

Augmented Reality Application to Develop Learning Tool for Students: Transforming cellphones into flashcards
Nazlee Sharmin & Ava Chow (Dentistry)

This presentation explores using Augmented Reality to develop a learning app. Using this app, students will be able to use their cell phones as a flash card to learn and self-test their learning. Watch here.

Implementation of Augmented Reality Teaching Tools in Biomedical Sciences
Paul LaPointe (Cell Biology) & Pierre Mertiny (Mechanical Engineering)

Augmented reality (AR) is an emerging technology with potential to realize cognitive benefits and enhanced student engagement while accommodating diverse learning styles. This presentation discusses the experience with student learning, application and content app design, classroom deployment, and opportunities for institutional support that will bring AR learning tools in to the mainstream. Watch here.

Online Instructional Videos: Best practice and leveraging analytical data
Michael McNally (School of Library and Information Studies), Amanda Wakaruk (Library and Museums), Julia Guy (School of Library and Information Studies), Luc Fagnan (School of Library and Information Studies) & Adrian Sheppard (Library and Museums)

This presentation examines how best practice in the design on online instructional videos can be complemented with insights from analytical data on user engagement from YouTube. Watch here.

Supporting Academic Integrity in Equitable, Diverse, Inclusive Contexts at the University of Alberta
Helen Vallianatos & Mebbie Bell (Student Services)

This presentation provides an overview of academic integrity best practices, a snapshot of the current University of Alberta academic integrity resources, and short-term strategies to pilot new ways of learning about academic integrity. Watch here.

Strategies to Prevent Academic Misconduct in Online Exams
Sabina Valentine (Agricultural Food & Nutritional Science)

This presentation discusses why online courses are especially vulnerable to cheating behaviours, strategies that were implemented in Nutrition 100 to prevent cheating in online exams, and a discussion of how strategies for prevention of cheating in Nutrition 100 can be improved for the future. Discussion of strategies utilized has significant implications for other instructors who use online exams in their courses. Watch here.

Supervised Exams in Online Classes: Experiences, advice, and requests
Timothy Mills (Linguistics)

This presentation discusses how to make closed-book online exams work at the University of Alberta. (This presentation addresses instructors as well as administrators). Watch here.

Dr. Cosette Lemelin and Dr. Emily Block share some details about this year's virtual Festival of Teaching and Learning. Read the article.