Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness

A comprehensive video covering a lecture from start to finish. When learning to teach, Patrick Winston recommends not copying good teachers, rather watch, think about and then adapt to create own teaching style. His talk about teaching involves considering the elements of a lecture and thinking through how to engage students. He presents several interesting strategies, and if you replace "overhead" with "powerpoint" all points are all still very applicable.

The interior design is perhaps much more mod than one typically sees at a Canadian university - but a fascinating innovation.

Lots of resources to help educators get started.

Series of videos on clickers, managing TAs, managing teaching along with responsibilities, Q&As including about online courses, diverse students, and feedback (discontent vs. systemic).

"The buzz surrounding massive open online courses, or MOOCs, has grown nearly as massive as the courses themselves. MOOCs are the new "thneeds," the oddly-shaped items peddled by the Once-ler in The Lorax: Everybody seems to want one, even if nobody yet knows exactly what they are or what they mean. But amid all this MOOC mania, the University of Maine at Presque Isle is attempting a different kind of free online offering - one that would swap the scale of a MOOC for the high-touch experience of a conventional online course. Michael Sonntag, the provost, calls it a "LOOC": a little open online course."

Video of a keynote by Erik Mazur - a physicist from Harvard. "...how he came to develop Peer Instruction, a teaching method that enhances interactive engagement among students, particularly in large lecture style settings or classrooms."

Introduction on how to design surveys and survey questions to collect customer feedback. Includes: A quick handy table of Likert rating scale labels for measuring satisfaction, agreement, extent, helpfulness, interest, relative quantity, importance and quality rating. *best list I have seen so far* Initial design considerations Common survey question types and examples Common question design pitfalls Tips for technology-based surveys Initial design considerations Before you design your survey Clearly articulate the goals of your survey. Regarding copyright, "As a U.S. Government federal website, HowTo.gov is in the public domain. Materials are free to use, unless otherwise noted"

"A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives*" From Iowa State University Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching.

"Think Twitter is just a waste of time? Think again. Its organizational structure makes it an effective tool for connecting with students and others online" While this article is aimed at K-12, it also applies to higher ed.

The Guardian HE paper in the UK recently published an article highlighting 12 UK blogs on higher education worth following (on things from HE planning, pedagogy, online learning, research, etc.)

"Alec Couros explains some of the strategies that seems to bear fruit when it comes to the adoption of technology for faculty members. He also touches on how to get started with Twitter, and shares some ideas on how to leverage social media for research."

"For the last decade or so, I've put my students' grades where my mouth is. Instead of just touting the importance of failing, I now tell students that if they want to earn an A, they must fail regularly throughout the course of the semester..."

This is the website for the Student Course Experience Questionnaire (SCEQ), deisgned to provide the University community with a basis for strategic, faculty level academic development and curriculum review to further enhance the quality of teaching and student learning.

This article has some validating, and some surprising results from a study done on attendance policies in post-secondary classrooms.

CLASSE is a version of the National Survey of Student Engagement that is designed to be used at the level of an individual course. It is free to use, but requires a note to be sent to the developers (as per the instructions on the website.

While fair use is different (and in flux) in Canada, the rest of this tutorial contains useful information on using CreativeCommons and adding images to things like blog posts

"While classroom teaching and management strategies are well documented, the online learning environment presents different challenges and benefits. Teaching in an online environment requires a special set of teaching skills since many of the strategies and tactics associated with best teaching practices are somewhat constrained by the primarily text-based environment. The VOCAL approach summarizes the key characteristics that a master instructor utilizes to be effective in an online environment. VOCAL is an acronym for Visible, Organized, Compassionate, Analytical and Leader-by-example. The ability of the teacher to effectively infuse these characteristics into their instructional practice - to BE VOCAL - will promote a supportive, challenging, constructive, rigorous and effective instructional environment. Instructors who practice a VOCAL approach will have more productive learning environments, fewer management problems and more positive learning experiences with their students."

"How to create an account:"

"Here are five ideas and tools for video projects that you can try with your students this year."

"Change will happen, though it is likely to be slower than government or some media observers might prefer. Apart from internal consultations, we all need to listen carefully to the most important constituency here: students. It is not clear, for example, that there exists a big appetite for three-year degrees among Canadian students. If anything, the pattern of recent graduates seeking second credentials (master's degrees or college diplomas in an applied field) demonstrates that current employers are requiring more, not less, education."