9 Annual Dalhousie Conference of University Teaching and … · 2020. 8. 28. · 9. th. Annual...

9th Annual Dalhousie Conference of University Teaching and Learning Connections Across the Curriculum

Wednesday, May 4, 2005

8:00 Continental Breakfast & Registration 9:00 Opening Plenary

Scotiabank Auditorium Catherine Browning, Beth Retallack, and Anne-Marie Ryan Dalhousie University Connections Across the Curriculum: Starting with the first year

10:00 Refreshment Break Room # 2016 2017 2021 10:30 Shelagh Crooks

Saint Mary's University Critical Reading / Structured Writing

Emanuel Jannasch Dalhousie University The Connectivity of Visual Thinking

Esmeralda Thornhill John Barnstead Dalhousie University Revisioning Pushkin, Rethinking Pushkinology

12:00 Lunch in the Great Hall, University Club Room # 2016 2017 2021

1:30 Janice Smith the r•smart group Tools for Learning: An Open Source Electronic Learning Portfolio This session will be repeated on Thursday, May 5 (3:30 – 4:30)

Jason Brown Dalhousie University It's a Mathematical World

Natalia Koutovenko Dalhousie University The Principles of Intensive Language Training in Russia

2:30 Refreshment Break Room # 2016 2017 2021

3:00 Colleen Adl Dalhousie University How Deep Will They Go? Exploring possibilities of solo ePortfolio flights

Judith Scrimger Brent King Mount Saint Vincent University Writing with a Cause: Moving from the classroom to the community

Bob Konopasky Mark Fleming Jennifer Parks Steven Smith Saint Mary’s University Establishing Fair Credit for Student Contributions to Multiple-Author Articles: Different contributions are valued differently across disciplines

Wednesday, May 4

Wednesday, May 4 8:00 – 9:00 Registration & Continental Breakfast 9:00 – 9:10 Welcome & Introductions

Opening Plenary Scotiabank Auditorium

9:10 – 10:00

Connections Across the Curriculum: Starting with the first year Catherine Browning, Faculty of Science & Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Beth Retallack, Faculty of Science Anne Marie Ryan, Earth Sciences Dalhousie University

The majority of first-year students are excited about coming to university and believe that they will be successful when they arrive. Critical to their success are the ways they connect — personally and academically to their university learning experience. Beginning with students’ reflections on their first-year experience, this opening plenary will provide an opportunity for participants to discuss the responsibilities students and faculty must embrace to ensure that the experience of a university education is one of connections — with one another, with the discipline, and with the institution of the university itself.

10:00 – 10:25 Refreshment Break

Wednesday May 4

CONCURRENT SESSIONS 10:30 – 12:00

10:30 – 12:00 (90-minutes) Room 2016

Critical Reading / Structured Writing Shelagh Crooks, Philosophy Saint Mary’s University

There has been widespread consensus among educators that ‘Writing Across the Curriculum’ has considerable potential to enhance student literacy. After all, who can deny the value of exposing students to a wide variety of writing exercises in disciplines as distinct from one another as Philosophy and Management, History and Mathematics?

Critical reading/structured writing provides students with a simple formula for organizing their thinking in regard to textual material and a structure for developing a written response to this material. Utilizing the strategy involves asking and answering three simple but conceptually pivotal questions: (1) What is the issue? (2) What is the author’s position? and (3) What evidence does the author provide in support of the position and is the evidence sufficient to justify it?

After a brief description of the strategy the audience will be asked to use it to generate a short written response to an assigned text. They will then be asked to participate in an open discussion of its relative strengths and weaknesses.

10:30 – 12:00 (90-minutes) Room 2017

The Connectivity of Visual Thinking Emanuel Jannasch, School of Architecture Dalhousie University

This session is built around two exercises drawn from the Visual Thinking A and B (ARCH 2000.03 and ARCH 2001.03) syllabus. In the first exercise participants form themselves into groups using a visual database. In the second exercise these groups undertake a challenge in critical visual thinking. The two exercises are framed in an illustrated talk, and time is left for concluding questions and answers.

The two exercises will be tuned to touch on all the theoretical dimensions of the courses, and to provide experiences that connect personal reflection with group decision-making and engage cerebral with bodily information processing.

Wednesday, May 4

10:30 – 12:00 (90-minutes) Room 2021

Revisioning Pushkin, Rethinking Pushkinology Esmeralda Thornhill, Law John Barnstead, Russian Studies Dalhousie University

The time has come to ground a study of the Father of Russian literature, Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, in the centrality of his Black Identity and its meaning for his life and oeuvres. For some time now, we have been designing an interdisciplinary course to probe the unexamined silences that shroud Pushkin’s Blackness, so as to reveal their ideological, historical, legal and human significance. This interactive multi-media session is intended to share our work with the broader community, and to invite suggestions for making the course the best it can be. Our work contributes to the burgeoning body of Afrocentric research and Critical Race scholarship in the humanities. This unprecedented inter-faculty collaboration not only constitutes cross-fertilization of research interests, but it also enhances and consolidates our previous joint initiatives that cut across disciplines and transcend academic units. As the world shrinks and an increasingly wider public discovers Pushkin, both his impact on and significance for peoples of African descent emerge as areas demanding meticulous attention.

12:00 – 1:25 Lunch

Great Hall, University Club

Wednesday May 4


1:30 – 2:30 (50-minutes) Room 2016

Tools for Learning: An Open Source Electronic Learning Portfolio Janice Smith, Senior Education Consultant the r•smart group

Learning portfolios offer flexible environments in which students can document their learning to reveal the motivations, processes, and connections in their learning. Constructing learning portfolios on-line offers advantages for enriching, revising, sharing, and assessing student learning. The Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI) has produced an e-portfolio that will become available to users at Dalhousie University in fall of 2005. This session will familiarize participants with ePortfolio uses, demonstrate the functionality of the OSP tool, show how OSP is currently being used at a variety of colleges and universities, and offer an invitation to become involved in the Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI).

PLEASE NOTE: This session will be repeated on Thursday, May 5 (3:30 – 4:30)

1:30 – 2:30 (50-minutes) Room 2017

It’s a Mathematical World Jason Brown, Mathematics & Statistics Dalhousie University

Each topic in mathematics is often taught as an island unto itself, floating far away from the civilized world.

In a new course I have created, Combinatorial Modeling, I stress how the best, most beautiful and most useful of mathematics is derived from the connection between the fields, as well as application to real life problems. In this talk I will show how students' views of mathematics can drastically change by seeing the "big picture," and allow them to find radically new approaches to problems. In particular, I will explain how mathematics is relevant to the arts, with the recent discovery of A Hard Day's Night Theorem.

Wednesday, May 4

1:30 – 2:30 (50-minutes) Room 2021

The Principles of Intensive Language Training in Russia Natalia Koutovenko, Russian Studies Dalhousie University

This session will review the main principles of intensive language training methods of Kitaigorodskaia (syggestopedia and syggestologia), Shekhter, et al. Several principles that were formulated and used in practical activity will be discussed:

1. The principle of personal-oriented communication;

2. The principle of role organization of educational material;

3. The principle of concentration of educational material and teaching;

4. The principle of multi-functional exercises;

5. The principle of team interaction.

Successful intensive teaching involves interaction between students and teachers. Different types of group activity will be presented.

For example, the ‘principle of personal-oriented communication’ demonstrates the necessity of understanding the role students’ personality plays in the social and communicative aspects of active participation. Likewise, the ‘principle of concentration of educational material and teaching’ necessitates active synthesis and analysis to learn lexical material.


Wednesday May 4


3:00 – 4:00 (50-minutes) Room 2016 How Deep Will They Go? Exploring possibilities of solo ePortfolio flights Colleen Adl, ePortfolio Project Dalhousie University

The theory goes: once students are introduced to an ePortfolio tool, they'll use it for their own purposes (reflection, personal and academic development), and the world will be a beautiful place for all. In piloting Dalhousie's My.ePortfolio tool, 17 students were paid to create their own ePortfolios. Given free reign to do whatever they want, it was suggested that they use the tool to explore possibilities for career or education; to work through a decision they needed to make; to develop their skills; to document their progress during the semester. The only other instruction was a tutorial developed to complement My.ePortfolio.

Using examples from student work, this session will review the students' challenges, the levels of depth they explored, and the connections they made between the personal, academic and career goals. Modeling reflective practice via class activities is a necessary element to helping students make the most of their ePortfolios. To that end, a handout of classroom activity ideas and resources will be available. This session will also provide a sneak peak into Dalhousie's My.ePortfolio tool. 3:00 – 4:00 (50-minutes) Room 2017

Writing with a Cause: Moving from the classroom to the community Judith Scrimger, Public Relations Brent King, Public Relations Mount Saint Vincent University

Student writing is often undertaken in a communications vacuum. Students write essays or assignments for one reader, the professor teaching the course, and often for one purpose, to attain a grade. The topics themselves are usually externally imposed in a way that must seem arbitrary to many students. Geer and Sinor (1997) go so for as to suggest that, “student writing is given little respect in terms of permanence, value, or meaning.” When students write for community readers on behalf of a community organization, they are motivated in new ways to develop the literacy skills we expect of university students.

In this session, the presenters will describe a second-year year course in persuasive writing which uses a modified form of service learning to enable students to apply their research and writing skills to the pre-determined needs of a client. Clients included: a non-profit arts centre which provides arts education, community outreach and professional development in the arts; an organization which facilitates the full participation of persons with disabilities in the Nova Scotia labour force; the country’s national agency for blood collection and blood safety; and a national organization whose purpose is to educate and advocate on behalf of a degenerative bone disease. Students prepared a portfolio of persuasive pieces, including a position paper, an opinion editorial for a daily newspaper, a speech for a specific audience identified by the client and a persuasive letter. From the outset, all of the written pieces were approached as articles that could actually be published for the clients’ specific purposes.

The presenters will provide session participants with an opportunity to identify the ways in which writing for a real audience for a clearly defined social purpose can change the dynamic in the writing classroom. The session will address the administrative realities of incorporating service learning into a course and share both the successes and the not-so-successful results of this endeavour.

3:00 – 4:00 (50-minutes) Room 2021

Establishing Fair Credit for Student Contributions to Multiple-Author Articles: Different contributors are valued differently across disciplines Bob Konopasky, Psychology Mark Fleming, Psychology

Wednesday, May 4

Jennifer Parks, Psychology Steven Smith, Psychology Saint Mary’s University

An increase in multiple-author articles within and across disciplines, and articles with student/staff contributions, compels an explicit review of the work of publishing in order to fairly recognize contributions and set order of authorship. Seventy-one Saint Mary’s University (SMU) faculty members in 19 Arts, Sciences, and Commerce departments rated six components of such work from 1-100, the ratings adding to 100. Across all faculties, perception of order of importance from greatest to least was: writing, then structured tasks, design, and idea generation rated similarly, then providing resources and managing the project rated similarly. The Arts faculty saw significantly more value in writing than Science and significantly less value in idea and design than both Science and Commerce.

SMU faculty reported that tenure/promotion decisions are significantly more closely tied to order of authorship than influence and prestige. They believe that being listed earlier on publications influences tenure/promotion more and obtains significantly more influence and prestige at other universities explaining why, perhaps, faculty reported sometimes allowing authors who contributed less to come first in authorship.

Generally, faculty are less willing to list students/staff as authors if they are paid for their work even if they make a substantial contribution to a publication.

Methods are offered to achieve transparency of contribution, to fairly determine order of authorship, to calculate each author’s percentage of the total effort required to produce the publication, and to decide whether students and staff should be included as authors or contributors. Feedback regarding this departure from tradition is encouraged.

Wednesday May 4

9th Annual Dalhousie Conference of University Teaching and Learning

Connections Across the Curriculum Thursday, May 5, 2005

8:30 Registration & Refreshment Room # 1198 2170 2176 9:00 Svetlana Barkanova

Acadia University From Astrology to Astronomy, from Astronomy to Physics, from Physics to Math: Making popular culture serve education

Anthony Thomson Acadia University Presenting the Making of Social Theory: Cross-discipline connections

Bruce Greenfield Lyn Bennett Dalhousie University Introducing the FASS (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences) Practicum for Writing Tutors

10:00 Refreshment Break 10:30 Dennis Farrell

Dennis DeBay Douglas Reach Dalhousie University Music and 'Skilful Numbers': A computer-assisted resource unit, supporting the formal study of music- and ear-related disciplines

Dawn Henwood Dalhousie University There is a ‘Me’ in Memo: Using personal writing to help students connect with their professional voice

Susan Stackhouse Dalhousie University The Speaking Voice

12:00 Lunch (on your own) 1:30 Eileen Herteis

Mount Allison University Student Portfolios: A documentary of learning

Gwendolyn MacNairn Dalhousie University "FEED" the Need to READ with RSS (Real Simple Syndication)

Anne MacCleave Felicia Eghan Mount Saint Vincent University Values Reasoning Across the Curriculum

3:00 Refreshment Break 3:30 Janice Smith

the r•-smart group Tools for Learning: An Open Source Electronic Learning Portfolio This is a repeat of the session offered on Wednesday, May 4 (1:30 – 2:30)

Ed Leach Dalhousie University Entrepreneurship at Atlantic Canadian Universities: Cross-curriculum issues

Anne Marie Ryan Dalhousie University Connecting the Dots and Thinking Outside the Box: The challenges and opportunities for learning and teaching in the first year classroom

Thursday, May 5

Thursday, May 5 Page 13

Thursday, May 5 8:30 – 9:00 Registration & Refreshment


9:00 – 10:00 (50-minutes) Room 1198

From Astrology to Astronomy, from Astronomy to Physics, from Physics to Math: Making popular culture serve education Svetlana Barkanova, Physics Acadia University

People hate math. Physics is considered dry. How do I teach astrophysics to a diverse group taking my course as a required science elective? Not only do I have to generate some motivation, but also to overcome their math illiteracy. Where do I start?

We all try to build on something our students already know. But these students have not taken university physics. They have been studying arts and history. The physics they bring from high school is at least a hundred years old and mainly covers the old boring Newton and the eccentric, incomprehensible Einstein. Almost everybody is proficient in astrology, though. Being part of a popular culture and not science, astrology does not compete with astronomy; thus, I see no reason fighting it. Instead, I use it as my pivot point. I teach my students to identify the Zodiac constellations, then use math to track stars’ motion through the sky. I point to the brightest stars with the romantic names (like Antares, “Hart of the Scorpio”); highlight its history, than talk about thermonuclear fusion burning in its core. A shell of art, mythology, and history makes math less scary. Geology gives a head start on planetology.

The audience will be asked to work in pairs analyzing some of the astronomy concepts. Another fun activity will allow the participants to identify their Zodiac constellation and see how it changes with time.

9:00 – 10:00 (50-minutes) Room 2170

Presenting the Making of Social Theory: Cross-discipline connections Anthony Thomson, Sociology Acadia University

This presentation describes and illustrates the presenter’s approach to teaching introductory social theory. There are many modern and innovative ways to approach social theory, such as making it relevant to students’ everyday lives or future careers, or to current headlines. The presenter’s is none of the above. Much of his approach is pedantic and highly structured, with hardly any post-modern sensibilities. It does, however, examine ideas in the framework of time and space, adapting a highly conventional chronological structure to consider the interconnections of ideas about the social or in opposition to the social. As Margaret Atwood says, context is all, and the contexts he illustrates enter the spaces between some disciplines, seeking to find echoes of ideas in a variety of places. So, he calls attention to pieces of art, literature, and drama as illustrative of these ideas. In some cases these are connections to classical authors or artists that people might know; in most cases, they aren’t known. Other than merely trying to enliven the class, which is not a worthless goal in itself, these connections are important because they reflect the wider goals of a liberal education.

9:00 – 10:00 (50-minutes) Room 2176 Introducing the FASS (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences) Practicum for Writing Tutors Bruce Greenfield, English Lyn Bennett, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Dalhousie University

This presentation will introduce the recently approved “Practicum for Writing Tutors,” a full-credit class that will teach upper-level students how to share their skills with others. Though senior students are employed in countless University Writing Centers where they assist students in any number of academic disciplines, we

Thursday, May 5

believe that the discipline-specific FASS practicum presents some important academic advantages over the more usual methods of training and deploying Peer Tutors. We will thus begin by offering a brief history of the practicum’s inception and its ongoing development, describe the pedagogical advantages of peer tutoring, and explain how we expect the class to operate during the regular academic year.

Since participating professors will provide opportunities for tutoring in their classes and will supervise the work of their respective tutors, the session will include an open discussion to entertain new ideas, address questions, and explore possible problems. As we will also explain, instructors who choose to use tutors will be expected to reinforce the Writing Practicum’s approach to teaching writing, administer tutorial evaluations to their own students, and provide their own evaluations of the tutors’ performance. We thus anticipate a lively and productive interactive session within the presentation.




10:30 – 12:00 (90-minutes) Room 1198 Music and ‘Skilful Numbers’: A computer-assisted resource unit, supporting the formal study of music- and ear-related disciplines Dennis Farrell, Music Dennis DeBay, Mathematics & Statistics and Music Douglas Reach, Music Dalhousie University

The actual “First Principles of Music” have become neglected and remote for music majors and many others curious about music. Such bases touch upon the nature of pitch, harmonic intervals, the origin of scales, harmony, etc.

These principles were formulated in the past because of certain advantages:

a) most educated people shared a similar grounding in whatever mathematics then offered; b) contributions came from thinkers of the stature of Euclid, Pythagoras, and Archimedes, to William of

Ockham, Kepler, Newton, and Helmholz; c) these people were passionately curious, if non-professional, music performers; d) certain treatises on music, such as by Boethius (d. AD 525) had been, up until 1912, required reading at

centres such as Oxford; e) all such discussion could rely on numerical tables which, written down, facilitated the anchorage of

otherwise instantly vanishing, musical sounds (ratios); and f) there was, as now, an awareness of constant change in music-making ventures themselves.

Our musically tailored computational “tables” introduce a similar grasp of this particular heritage of ideas. This

session presents a computer-based class-adjuncted resource, capable of servicing more than any one particular class offering. Comfort-enhancing colour schemes, with same-colour tracking promote informational continuity. On the other hand, disconnected “sidebars” provide an outlet for “suddenly-burning questions.” Economy and elegance neatly forestall any limitless “prodigality of all possible outcomes.”

Presentation, with discussion and hands-on usage, steered by sample, 20-second exploratory activities.

Thursday, May 5

10:30 – 12:00 (90-minutes) Room 2170 There is a ‘Me’ in Memo: Using personal writing to help students connect with their professional voice Dawn Henwood, Business Administration Dalhousie University

The mandatory first-year Business Communications class in the Dalhousie Commerce program incorporates a unique hybrid of reflective, analytical, and transactional writing. This session will examine two of the highly personal kinds of writing students explore along their way to developing the skills to craft essays, reports, and job search documents: the reflective narrative and the elevator pitch.

In the first term of the communications course, the reflective narrative introduces students to the power of freewriting to unleash their creativity. It also helps them learn to recognize the emergence of “voice” in their writing and to distinguish critical introspection from mere story-telling.

In the second term of the course, the elevator pitch focuses students on the need to move beyond common buzzwords to describe themselves and their accomplishments to potential employers. The concentrated format of the assignment (the pitch must be under a minute) and the conversational context require students to rely on their own words and their own speaking style, rather than on the pre-fabricated language that appears in so many job application documents.

In this 90-minute session, participants can expect to experiment with freewriting and to create their own pitch, either for themselves or for a course they teach.

10:30 – 12:00 (90-minutes) Room 2176 The Speaking Voice Susan Stackhouse, Theatre Dalhousie University

This session will address the fundamental issues of breathing, volume and power, articulation and care of the voice. Learn and/or review the process and exercises for proper vocal development; a professional warm-up, that you can use to prepare for teaching/speaking; how to deal with common vocal problems; and what to do about bad habits. There will be time allotted for discussion around specific voice-related concerns. Participants are advised to wear comfortable, non-restrictive clothing.

12:00 – 1:25 Lunch (on your own)



1:30 – 3:00 (90-minutes) Room 1198 Student Portfolios: A documentary of learning Eileen Herteis, Purdy Crawford Teaching Centre Mount Allison University

More than just scrapbooks of mementoes, student portfolios vary widely in content and purpose. They are flexible, evidence-based tools that encourage students to reflect in and on learning. Moreover, many teachers, educators, and researchers believe that portfolio assessments are much more effective than "traditional" testing methods for measuring academic skills and informing pedagogical decisions.

Moving us away from single occasion testing to samples of work over time, from mere acquisition of knowledge to reflection and metacognition, portfolios are changing how we think about assessment, and they are having a profound effect on learning.

1:30 – 3:00 (90-minutes) Room 2170 “FEED” the Need to READ with RSS (Real Simple Syndication) Gwendolyn MacNairn, Computer Science Librarian Dalhousie University

Who has enough time to read everything in their primary interest areas, let alone material related to other areas of the curriculum? Web access to news, journals and email has made it more challenging than ever to keep up-to-date. If this sounds like you, and you’d like some help, come and learn about RSS (Real Simple Syndication). The Director of the Pew Internet Project reported in January 2005 that "5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online. This is a first-time measurement from our surveys and is an indicator that this application is gaining an impressive foothold." In other words, this new technology "tool" is helping busy people read more material in limited amounts of time.

Thursday, May 5

1:30 – 3:00 (90-minutes) Room 2176 Values Reasoning Across the Curriculum Anne MacCleave, Faculty of Education Felicia Eghan, Family Studies and Gerontology Mount Saint Vincent University

Educators, human relations specialists, health care professionals, and other helping professionals deal with increasing complexity and confusion in this postmodern era characterized by competing values and perspectives. Guidance is needed to help sort through this seeming chaos and the values reasoning process serves as an heuristic for this purpose.

The values reasoning process was designed to help persons: 1) assess value questions or claims; 2) make thoughtful, reflective, and justified value judgments; and 3) resolve value conflicts. The goal of the values reasoning process is to help persons make the best judgments possible. The process also helps persons view issues with greater insight, deal with complexity, understand and empathize with competing perspectives, develop tolerance and open mindedness, and become more sensitive to the ethical dimensions of issues and problems (MacCleave, 1996, n.p.). 3:00 – 3:25 Refreshment Break


3:30 – 4:30 (50-minutes) Room 1198 Tools for Learning: An Open Source Electronic Learning Portfolio Janice Smith, Senior Education Consultant the r•smart group

Learning portfolios offer flexible environments in which students can document their learning to reveal the motivations, processes, and connections in their learning. Constructing learning portfolios on-line offers advantages for enriching, revising, sharing, and assessing student learning. The Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI) has produced an e-portfolio that will become available to users at Dalhousie University in fall of 2005. This session will familiarize participants with ePortfolio uses, demonstrate the functionality of the OSP tool, show how OSP is currently being used at a variety of colleges and universities, and offer an invitation to become involved in the Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI).

PLEASE NOTE: This is a repeat of the session offered on Wednesday, May 4.


3:30 – 4:30 (50-minutes) Room 2170 Entrepreneurship at Atlantic Canadian Universities: Cross-curriculum issues Ed Leach, Business Administration Dalhousie University

A consortium of Atlantic Canadian university-based business development centres, university entrepreneurship chairs, and other university-based partners joined forces to identify needs and developmental opportunities regarding gaps in entrepreneurship education, awareness, and advocacy at the university level in Atlantic Canada. The project, funded by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), identified current entrepreneurship education models on a national and international basis; developed an inventory of existing entrepreneurship courses and entrepreneurial skill development programs currently in existence in our Atlantic Canadian universities; conducted an attitudinal survey of faculty, students, and alumni; created a delivery model; and developed a possible implementation strategy.

3:30 – 4:30 (50-minutes) Room 2176

Connecting the Dots and Thinking Outside the Box: The challenges and opportunities for learning and teaching in the first-year classroom Anne Marie Ryan, Earth Sciences Dalhousie University

First year students come to university at the cusp of their emergence into more complex thinking. As “instructors” in these first year classes, we have an exciting yet daunting opportunity to foster divergent thinking and encourage meaningful learning, through providing opportunities for students to make connections, and to think divergently. As students venture into the university learning environment, the nature of many first year courses provides students with a broad-based gamut of sub-disciplines within a given field. This combination of students ready to move forward, and a diverse curriculum, provides us with golden opportunities for creating enriched environments for learning. We can foster a learning environment in which divergent thinking is encouraged, and learning avenues are carved to make connections on many levels: within a discipline, between disciplines, and indeed, beyond the discipline to the world beyond the walls of academia.

In this session, we will look at some ways in which we currently encourage and support connections on a variety of levels in first year classes. We will examine how we can make connections explicit, and explore the balancing act between covering content, building skills, and providing opportunities for deep and meaningful learning. Participants are encouraged to share their experiences with first year teaching and learning and, as we explore these experiences, we aim to develop strategies to support and encourage learning connections and divergent thinking. The format will be a combination of whole group discussion and small group activities / discussion.

Thursday, May 5

9th Annual Dalhousie Conference of University Teaching and Learning Connections Across the Curriculum

Friday, May 6, 2005 8:30 Registration & Refreshment 9:00 Closing Plenary MacMechan

Auditorium. Killam Library André Oberlé University of Winnipeg The Power of Making Connections: Enhancing student learning through learning portfolios

12:00 Lunch (on your own)

Killam Library, Main Floor

Friday, May 6


Friday, May 6 8:30 – 9:00 Registration & Refreshment

CLOSING PLENARY 9:00 – 12:00

9:00 – 12:00 MacMechan Auditorium

The Power of Making Connections: Enhancing student learning through learning portfolios André Oberlé, Centre for Innovation in Teaching and Learning University of Winnipeg

Learning portfolios are an excellent tool for students to document and reflect on their learning experience in a given course and across the disciplines. At the same time, the portfolio is a very effective assessment tool for student learning. A project portfolio is designed to document the learning in a single project. Portfolio assessment significantly increases student learning and student satisfaction and gives more satisfaction to the instructor in the assessment process. It also empowers students in letting them take ownership of their learning and realistically assess their own progress.

Further, the experience of keeping portfolios will significantly aid students in becoming life-long learners.

In this workshop, participants will explore the nature of the learning portfolio and the project portfolio and investigate how the creativity and reflection involved in keeping a portfolio will significantly enhance student learning and student satisfaction. It will become evident how learning portfolios allow students to document and take ownership and pride in their learning while providing an effective assessment tool for instructors, and encourage students to make learning connections within individual courses as well as across their whole program.

Both the traditional hard-copy portfolio and the online portfolio will be discussed. Participants will have the opportunity to see some examples of portfolios. They will look at their own course offerings and design a plan for a portfolio for one of their own courses with reference to cross-discipline connections.

9 Annual Dalhousie Conference of University Teaching and … · 2020. 8. 28. · 9. th. Annual...

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