teaching development

Strange Bedfellows? Engineering Education & The Performing Arts

Kathy Becker — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 20:03:45 +0000

Strange Bedfellows? Engineering Education & The Performing Arts Kathy Becker Wed, 09/27/2017 - 16:03

Can we make our classroom environments more engaging while remaining true to ourselves and our course content? In this active workshop, Robert Danisch, Chair of Drama and Speech Communications, will share tips from the world of communication and the performing arts to help us enhance our classroom presence to foster active student engagement.

Through this session we will examine the unlikely allies of engineering education & the performing arts and discover strategies we can easily implement to promote student engagement.

Co-facilitated by Marc Hurwitz, Conrad Business, Entrepreneurship & Technology Centre, and Gordon Stubley, Associate Dean, Teaching, this session will give participants the opportunity to

Acquire & practise strategies for crafting an engaging teaching presence
Hear from a panel of effective teachers about how they promote student engagement.

Special thanks to panelists Dan Davison (ECE), Maud Gorbet (SyDE), and Mark Pritzker (ChE).

All ��ݮ��Ƶ Engineering faculty members, sessional instructors, and teaching assistants are encouraged to attend — registration is not required. Refreshments will be provided. Please contact Kathy Becker if you have any questions about this event.

Printable Event Poster (PDF)

Threshold / Troublesome Concepts: What MUST We Teach?

Kathy Becker — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 15:05:42 +0000

Threshold / Troublesome Concepts: What MUST We Teach? Kathy Becker Tue, 10/06/2015 - 11:05

Our disciplines abound with fascinating, rich, and important concepts to teach. Yet how do we decide on which concepts to focus when designing courses and programs?

Research from the past decade suggests that focusing our attention on identifying “bottlenecks” and “threshold concepts” – troublesome and sometimes transformational ideas – can help us to design courses and programs around concepts that have great potential to impact deep and lasting change in student learning.

This session will investigate the impact of instructor approaches and practices on student conceptions of expectancy and value.

Co-facilitated by Julie Timmermans, Centre for Teaching Excellence, and Gordon Stubley, Associate Dean, Teaching, this session will help participants to

recognize that certain concepts within a course/program are more important than others and worthy of greater attention and
identify a troublesome or transformational concept in their own course or program.

All engineering faculty are encouraged to attend — registration is not required. Refreshments will be provided. Please contact Kathy Becker if you have any questions about this event.

Printable Event Poster (PDF)

Student Motivation for Learning

Kathy Becker — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 14:17:55 +0000

Student Motivation for Learning Kathy Becker Wed, 10/08/2014 - 10:17

What motivates student learning? Can instructors influence the motivation levels of their students?

Some theorists believe that motivation for learning is impacted by two factors:

1. Student beliefs about their ability to succeed in the learning task (expectancy)

2. The perceived importance of the learning (value).

This session will investigate the impact of instructor approaches and practices on student conceptions of expectancy and value.

Co-facilitated by Donna Ellis, Director of the Centre for Teaching Excellence, and Gordon Stubley, Associate Dean, Engineering Teaching, this workshop-style event will help participants investigate how their own experiences have informed their thinking about student motivation.

Participants will leave with specific strategies that can be applied to facilitate and foster motivation for learning in their students. All ��ݮ��Ƶ Engineering faculty members, sessional instructors, and teaching assistants are welcome to participate in this session.

All engineering faculty are encouraged to attend — registration is not required. Refreshments will be provided. Please contact Kathy Becker if you have any questions about this event.

Printable Event Poster PDF