Making Connections: Learning and Research
The UBC Okanagan Learning Conference May 2-4, 2007
Program
Wednesday, May 2
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Time |
Event |
Location |
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8:00-8:50 |
Registration & Coffee |
SSC026 |
|
9:00-10:15 |
Keynote: Carl Wieman |
SSC026 |
|
10:15-10:35 |
Refreshment Break |
LIB304 |
|
10:40-11:30 |
Session 1 (concurrent sessions) |
LIB306 LIB305 |
|
11:40-12:45 |
Box Lunch- Pick up your box lunch and choose a room to discuss/share one of the following topics: |
|
|
12:45-1:35 |
Session 2 (concurrent sessions) |
|
|
1:40-2:30 |
Session 3 (concurrent sessions) |
|
|
2:30-2:45 |
Refreshment Break |
LIB304 |
|
2:45-3:35 |
Session 4 (concurrent sessions) |
|
Thursday, May 3
|
Time |
Event |
Location |
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9:00-10:15 |
Keynote: Roland Case |
SSC026 |
|
10:15-10:35 |
Refreshment Break |
LIB304 |
|
10:40-11:30 |
Session 5 (concurrent sessions)
Designing the Learning Commons: Lessons from the Frontlines |
|
|
11:40-12:45 |
Lunch |
SunRoom |
|
12:45-1:35 |
Session 6 (concurrent sessions) |
LIB317 |
|
1:40-2:30 |
Session 7 (concurrent sessions) |
|
|
2:30-2:45 |
Refreshment Break |
LIB304 |
|
2:45-3:35 |
Session 8 (concurrent sessions) |
|
|
3:45-4:30 |
Reception & Award Presentation |
SunRoom |
Friday, May 4
|
Time |
Event |
Location |
|
9:00-9:50 |
Session 9 (concurrent sessions) |
|
|
9:50-10:10 |
Refreshment Break |
LIB304 |
|
10:15-11:05 |
Session 10 (concurrent sessions) |
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|
11:10-12:00 |
Session 11 (concurrent sessions) |
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Session Descriptions
Session 1: Wednesday, 10:40-11:30
Setting Young Minds Free: Undergraduate Research
Session Leader: Robert Hawkes (bio)
Location: LIB317
Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and many other great thinkers made their most important discoveries when they were at an age similar to a typical Canadian undergraduate. It will be argued that the undergraduate years are an ideal time for meaningful research participation. The session will look at factors important to a successful undergraduate research experience, drawing upon an analysis of research experiences, recollections by former undergraduate researchers, and published literature. Some of the factors are independence, collaboration with peers, presentation opportunities, and amount of freedom. An opportunity will be available for participants to share their experiences with respect to extended duration undergraduate research experiences.
Factors the Affect Language Learning
Session Leader: Grisel Garcia-Perez (bio)
Location: LIB306
Researchers have related the causes of improvement in Second/Foreign Language Learning (SLT/FLT) to factors over which language teachers have certain control and to other factors which go beyond their efforts in the classroom. The study presents some of the factors which can clearly influence language acquisition.
Podcasting for Lecture Classes
Session Leader: Jan Cioe (bio)
Location: LIB305
Podcasting is a recently available technique to supplement learning in a lecture format. It is directed at providing ancillary ways of facilitating student learning and highlights the importance of considering the mode of delivery of information. The presentation reviews students' willingness to use this resource, the conditions under which it was used, as well as the limitations of the technique. The technology to increase access to students is available and relatively simple to use.
Session 2: Wednesday, 12:45-1:35
Making Research Meaningful
Session Leader: Ava Dean (bio)
Location: LIB317
This session will provide suggestions and tools for providing an effective and meaningful research experience. The research course I teach includes humour, cooperative learning activities, games, and critical thinking experiences to assist students in grappling with complex research issues in a creative and effective way. Students walk through the design and implementation of a real piece of research and complete the experience by writing up a research report. This year, using both questionnaires and focus groups, 3rd year social work students are completing a satisfaction survey of current and former students for the Academic and Indigenous Studies Program at NVIT. The program will use this data for program planning and review.
Experience Team-Based Learning: New Models for Successs with Student Teams in the Active Classroom
Session Leader: Jim Sibley (bio) & Judy Gillespie (bio)
(note: This session runs from 12:45 to 2:30)
Location: LIB305
This very interactive session will introduce you to the very powerful team-based learning (TBL) instructional strategy. You will experience the main instructional components of TBL, including individual and team readiness assurance testing and team application exercise and reporting, and receive extensive readings on implementing TBL in your own classroom.
Social Software and the New Dimensions of Learning
Session Leaders: Robert Campbell (bio) & Veronica Gaylie (bio)
Location: LIB111
This presentation highlights social software in action in two graduate level Education courses structured as Wiki environments supported by Podcasting, Blogs and shared media applications. The presenters will examine the ways that students actively participate in instructional content and ultimately shape course construction through their involvement in new learning environments.
Session 3: Wednesday, 1:40-2:30
Service Courses: Scientific Literacy or Cash Cow?
Session Leader: Liam Rourke (bio), Leslie Reid (bio) & Julie Weible (bio)
Location: LIB317
In this presentation, we examine a special type of course that is common in universities throughout Canada—the "science for non-science majors" course. Senior administrators imagine that these courses endow non-science students with a functional level of scientific literacy. But such an educational objective is indiscernible in the course syllabi, which stress content coverage; the learning activities (mainly lecture); student assessment (typically multiple-choice exams); and classroom organization (large theatres). What are discernible are the large and stable amounts of revenue generated for the faculties that offer these courses to students who are required to take them. In this presentation, we explore a gap that has developed at one post-secondary institution in western Canada between the ideal of "science for non-science majors" courses and the actual courses as they are offered. Exposing this gap prepares the ground for discussions concerning how these courses could be designed to achieve their original, admirable objectives.
Using Blogs and Wikis for (Inter)Active Learning
Session Leaders: Gary Hunt (bio), Norman Friesen (bio) & Linda Stollings (bio)
Location: LIB111
The literature on undergraduate education documents the benefits of cooperative learning techniques. It has been shown that students learn from each other when working towards a common set of objectives. Blogs, allowing individuals to create public "logs" or journals, and wikis, enabling the collective composition of hypertext documents, are interactive Web technologies that can be used to facilitate active and cooperative learning. This workshop will explore the advantages and challenges that these technologies can present. Participants will create their own blog (or wiki) and discuss possible adaptations of these technologies in their own educational environments.
Session 4: Wednesday, 2:45-3:35
Interrogating Issues and Theoretical Perspectives
Session Leader: Heather Ryan (bio)
Location: LIB317
The workshop will examine the evolution and response to a 'class plan' as it exists now, as a loose structure of age/stage analysis of the research literature in each of the age/stage sections based on student's particular interests in that age group but tied to their individual research goals and interests. Initially I modelled the use of evidence provided by research, multi media and theoretical perspectives to teach critical thinking and pragmatic instruction. This social constructivist design has been employed by each student in the class, using evidence based interrogation of contemporary issues in human development and responding to the queries and contributions from others in the class. If we aim to broaden perspectives in our students and develop skills across many different modalities, does the alternative delivery and multi media aspects improve access to and critique of many of the research issues they bring forward?
Ethnolinguistic Vitality and the Internet
Session Leaders: Dr. Karen Ragoonaden (bio)
Location: LIB306
This presentation will focus on the preliminary findings of a research project undertaken in the Fall of 2006. Discussions will center on the effects of ethnolinguistic vitality on second language acquisition with particular emphasis the interactive resources available on line. Data culled should provide directions in which to encourage a willingness to communicate in the target language. Further discussions will revolve around orientations and social support which would encourage second language communications between language learners.
Love the one you're with! How open source & social networks build community
Session Leader: Cyprien Lomas (bio) & Ulrich Rauch (bio)
Location: LIB305
The tension between "common sense" agreements by many and oligarchic
decision making by the few highlights the fragile nature of community
developing collaborative software in our institutions.
What
are the conditions that allow collaborative teaching and learning
efforts and what the technical and ethical frameworks needed to promote
optimal collaboration?
Session 5: Thursday, 10:40-11:30
The 7 Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education
Session Leader: Niamh Kelly (bio)
Location: LIB317
Chickering and Gamson, working with a team of University educators and sponsored by the American Association of Higher Education, developed the ‘7 Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education’ in the late 1980s, with the expressed interest of improving University undergraduate education. The 7 Principles describe good practice in undergraduate education as: (i) encouraging student-faculty contact; (ii) encouraging cooperation among students; (iii) encouraging active learning; (iv) giving prompt feedback; (v) emphasizing time on task; (vi) communicating high expectations; and, (vii) respecting diverse talents and ways of learning. The last two decades have seen Inventories associated with the 7 Principles being used by a variety of educators in assessing undergraduate education and the “Flashlight Project” has adopted the 7 Principles in evaluating the impact of technology on student learning. In addition to this, the 7 Principles have informed the development of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) used by colleges and Universities in America and Canada to benchmark their performance in delivering quality undergraduate university education. This interactive workshop will examine how tools associated with the ‘7 Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education’ can be used to assess teaching and learning.
Teaching Elementary Science: An International Focus
Session Leader: Carol E Scarff (bio)
Location: LIB306
In addressing curricular and conceptual challenges to teaching science to children in both Canadian and Caribbean classrooms, strategies and techniques are illustrated and discussed to highlight an open inquiry approach to teaching and learning science. The 50 minutes will include 1) sharing current research ideas 2) active participation in science activities 3) Group dialogue that includes the participants' experiences with the activity and their own practice, as well as the identification of some necessary and sufficient conditions for effective science teaching and learning.
Designing the Learning Commons: Lessons from the frontline
Session Leaders: Melody Burton (bio) & Wendie McHenry (bio)
Location: LIB305
Learning can happen anywhere and informal campus spaces are powerful sites of learning. Libraries, often viewed as traditional learning spaces, are being transformed into learning commons or centres. What is different about these spaces? Who occupies them and what happens there? Wendie McHenry is leading the planning and construction of the Mearns Learning Centre at the University of Victoria. Melody Burton lends her insights into how the learning commons model might be implemented at UBC Okanagan. This session features an interview style of dialogue between the two speakers.
Session 6: Thursday, 12:45-1:35
Chickering and Gamson's Seven Principles and "Generation Me": Still Relevant?
Session Leader: Russell Day (bio)
Location: LIB317
In 1987, Chickering and Gamson published the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. This set of principles has become a ‘touch stone’ for many workshops on improving student engagement - the ultimate goal of many teaching enhancement / professional development programmes. But how relevant are these seven principles 20 years later with a new generation of students? In this workshop / discussion, we will first explore what Howe & Strauss (2000) have to say in Millennials Rising and what Jean Twenge (2006) finds in her research reported in “Generation Me”. Next, we will see how the Seven Principles might still guide our efforts to engage students. Finally, we will discuss how we might apply what we have learned in our individual classrooms.
Using Technology to Enhance Success of First Nations
Session Leader: David Harper (bio)
Location: LIB306
First Nations students are not as successful as the “mainstream” in post-secondary education in BC. This session will focus on identifying the unique challenges these students face and illustrate important special considerations that administrators, teachers, and developers must consider to improve the success rate of First Nations students. Participants will gain a greater understanding of the specific challenges faced by First Nations students in our post-secondary system and of the possible solutions provided by new educational technologies and other educational innovations. This session is also related to a pilot project, now underway, that will provide important information on the efficacy of using educational technology and innovating course design to address important issues of access and success in the post-secondary system.
Take a Clicker for a Test Drive
Session Leader: Jim Sibley (bio) & Teresa Wrzesniewski (bio)
(note: This session runs from 12:45-2:30)
Location: LIB312
There is a new low-cost solution for adding interactivity and engagement to any classroom. With the new breed of classroom response systems (aka "Clickers") it has never been simpler to incorporate interactive teaching into your classes. Come get a hands-on introduction to clickers and the new possibilities they bring for engaging and interacting with your students in large class settings.
Integrating Research into Undergraduate Research
Session Leader: Alaa Abd-El-Aziz (bio)
Location: LIB305
The UBC Okanagan Academic Plan states that “faculty and students
(graduate and undergraduate) will pursue a wide range of research -
basic and applied, local and global, - and will capitalize on the
strength of research as a teaching and learning tool.” Dr. Alaa
Abd-El-Aziz will lead a panel of faculty who will share their
experiences with integrating research into the undergraduate experience.
Session 7: Thursday, 1:40-2:30
Multiple Perspectatives on Student Engagement
Session Leader: Panel (UBCO)
Location: LIB305
Student engagement promotes successful student learning, retention, and satisfaction for faculty and students. Dr. Alaa Abd-El-Aziz will lead a panel who will discuss student engagement from the, student, faculty, student services, and senior administrative perspectives.
As Good as it Gets: Wikipedia for Critical Thinking
Session Leaders: Marjorie Mitchell (bio) & James Laitinen (bio)
Location: LIB317
Are your students using Wikipedia? How are they using it? Have you banned the use of Wikipedia for your assignments? Join James Laitinen and Marjorie Mitchell in a discussion about using Wikipedia as a tool to teach critical thinking skills. Bring all your biases and opinions. Come away with ideas to challenge students to logically and rationally examine their own practices.
Group Interdependency and Undergraduate Research
Session Leader: Vicki Green (bio)
Location: LIB306
Many faculty seek ways to engage students in reading, reflecting and discussing significant ideas in undergraduate education. This session will acquaint participants with a strategies that will demonstrate how to assign multiple readings to a class of students, develop group interdependency, and promote engaged discussion and accountabilty among students. Come and find out what has work positively across many class sections. Come and contribute your insights and ideas to engage undergrduates in reading and discussing research.
Session 8: Thursday, 2:45-3:35
Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL)
Session Leader: Carl Doige (bio)
Location: LIB305
Meaningful learning of science content can present considerable challenges for both learners and instructors. While social constructivist theory provides a framework for considering how students learn most effectively, it does not furnish specific practical approaches to classroom teaching. Science teachers at the college and university levels are faced with the duty to provide a stimulating active learning environment while at the same time ensure that significant amounts of material are covered in finite periods of time. Often, these two goals (i.e. “active learning environment” and “covering content”) are at odds. Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) is an approach that has been developed by chemists to deliver science content in a student-centered group-based manner. My aim for this presentation is threefold. Participants will first experience the POGIL approach to learning in a mini-chemistry lesson (no chemistry background is required). We will next analyze the components of a typical inquiry-based lesson. Finally, we will evaluate the process by considering the merits and pitfalls of applying this approach to the science classroom. Connected to this evaluation, I will share students’ comments and some of my observations of using the process during the past academic year. I hope that the participants will come with a critical mind to evaluate the process and to share their insights into effective student-centered science teaching.
Drawing is Learning in a Botany Laboratory
Session Leader: Lyn Baldwin (bio) & Ila Crawford (bio)
Location: LIB306
University faculty often become entrenched within their own disciplines and thus students lose access to interdisciplinary perspectives that can inform and enhance their learning experiences. We believe that interdisciplinary collaboration (in this case, between visual arts and science faculty) has the potential to promote active student engagement and broadens the academic experience of both instructor and learner. In this session, we describe how we have used drawing tutorials and the creation of illustrated journals as a way of engaging students in a traditional botany laboratory. We will discuss student response to the drawing lessons and the impact that drawing lessons have had on their understanding of the botanical world. We will show examples of students’ work and encourage discussion of how drawing and the creation of illustrated journals could be used as a pedagogical tool. Participants in this session will be led through simple hands-on exercises that enhance a student’s ability to focus on observational skills required for drawing from life. Participants in the workshop will experience the difference between drawing “cold” and drawing after preparing themselves through preliminary exercises. The drawing exercise will explore a common, living object, similar to what might be found in a biology lab, to evaluate the impact of spatial versus verbal understanding on perception of the natural world.
Developing Critically Thoughtful e-Learning Communities: Theory & Practice
Session Leaders: Philip L. Balcaen (bio) and Janine R. Hirtz (bio)
Location: LIB317
In this presentation, we consider an approach to supporting the development of critically thoughtful e-learning communities—where participants are deliberate about the use of specific intellectual tools supporting critical thinking. This work begins to address Garrison & Anderson’s (2003) argument that such critical thinking should play a central role within the ecology of e-learning communities by asking what such communities might look-like. We provide qualitative evidence to illustrate use of a blended approach involving alternating face-to-face and e-learning interactions in developing a critically thoughtful community of learners. The regular face-to-face sessions help introduce participants to five categories of intellectual tools including content knowledge, criteria for judgment, thinking concepts, learning strategies and habits of mind offered by Case & Daniels (in press) as supporting critical thinking. However, while playing a key role, early examples from a current study indicate that use of e-learning technologies between sessions provides opportunities for thoughtful collaborative inquiry.
Session 9: Friday, 9:00-9:50
Critical Reflection: The Role of the Interlocutor
Session Leader: Wendy Burton (bio)
Location: LIB317
When reflecting on teaching, we often express our experiences as story. These stories are a form of action research; these stories are evidence to support a knowledge claim. The intentional witness to these stories as knowledge claims - the interlocutor - can be a partner in critical inquiry into our practice. I will briefly explain the theory of critical reflection, describe the concept of critical incident, and sketch the role of the interlocutor. The focus of the session will be small group (pairs) activity where the pair will take turns telling a story about a critical incident in teaching or learning, and practicing the role of the interlocutor.
What Students Really Want: A Word Frequency Analysis of Student Comments on ratemyprofessor.com
Session Leader: Terence Day (bio)
Location: LIB305
Ratemyprofessor.com provides a uniform reporting matrix across institutions, jurisdictions, and disciplines, that provides a rich source of information on student likes and dislikes. Although ratemyprofessor.com faculty evaluations are widely disparaged, and individual evaluations are unreliable, there is a significant correlation between ratemyprofessor.com faculty "overall grades" and publicly available UBC Vancouver faculty evaluations. Several hundred student comments on geography faculty in universities, university colleges and colleges in BC were collected from ratemyprofessor.com. A maximum of five comments per faculty member were collected. The frequency of words in the student comments was counted, and key words attributed to teaching attributes. Overall, the results showed substantial concern for empathy, assessment issues, and stimulation of interest. There was some concern for understandable and clear explanations, but little concern for good organization, clear goals, or encouragement of independent thought. Implications for faculty evaluations will be discussed.
Time- Lapse Digital Photography as a Research Tool
Session Leader: Mike Minions (bio)
Location: LIB306
A digital still camera can be a fabulous research tool in any field of study that involves visual change over time. This session will look at the practical considerations of using the interval recording capability built into modern digital cameras as a means of gathering research data, and explore some of the ways in which that data can be analyzed and presented.
Session 10: Friday, 10:15-11:05
Digital Distractions in the Classroom
Session Leaders: Terence Day (bio), Mike Minions (bio) & Peter Arthur
Location: LIB305
Wireless internet access allows students to access relevant material during lectures. However, network access also allows students to play games, e-mail their friends, and engage in other non-academic activity during class time. Faculty are becoming increasingly frustrated as students don’t pay attention. Moreover, other students are distracted by flashing screens around them, and the laptop users themselves presumably don’t learn much. Despite the investment of millions of dollars in wireless networks in universities and colleges across Canada, there is surprisingly little research to support the value (or otherwise) of student wireless access in classrooms. This panel discussion will examine some of the issues, and discuss some of the strategies that might be deployed to maximize student learning, and reduce student complaints and faculty frustrations. Faculty members are invited to share their experiences.
Simulation Comes Alive
Session Leader: Marjorie Wright (bio)
Location: LIB306
We have a simulator that physiologically matches a human being and can respond via computer direction to interventions that are suggested by learners engaged in health care. How can we use such technological tools to enhance students' learning, competence, and confidence? What conditions have arisen that make it mandatory for students to be more familiar and better skilled when they approach patients in need of health care? The research suggests that in using simulation there is more thorough learning and increased confidence levels for students. But in designing an integration of simulation into a curriculum, how has research informed and challenged our notions of teaching? At UBC Okanagan School of Nursing we have been given the equipment and the mandate to bring more enhanced simulation into our teaching. There is much planning and preparation required to launch such an addition to our nursing labs but based on the research evidence we are going ahead. Right from the start, research questions arise about the quality of simulated learning. The opportunity is ours to look at the process of integration of simulation, the effectiveness on student learning, and the outcomes of better prepared health care workers. The skills to be enhanced are not limited to nursing and emergency procedures but to communication and social skills as well. Simulation is a burgeoning field with a need for research on implementation, integration, intended outcomes, and innovative learning. We want to tell our story of making simulation an integral part of our nursing curriculum.
Changing Institutional Culture to Support Thoughtfulness: A Case Study from India
Session Leaders: Philip L. Balcaen (bio) and Pammy Singh (bio)
Location: LIB317
In the presentation, we describe work to infuse critical thinking across the primary to grade 12 curriculum at a large secondary school in the city of Chandigarh, India over a three year period. As well as presenting the story of this work, we outline how the case has substantially informed the development of “The Comet Model”—an inquiry-based approach to institutional change.
Session 11: Friday, 11:10-12:00
Epiphany: Transformational Learners
Session Leader: Stan Chung (bio)
Location: LIB317
Is your classroom learner centred? Is your classroom interactive? Is your classroom transformative? Do you have control over the epiphanies and tranformational moments in your classroom? This practical and interactive session explores ways in which to understand the learning epiphany and offers practical strategies on understanding and improving transformation in the classroom.
Equipping Students to Translate Research into Practice
Session Leaders: Kathy Rush (bio) & Gwen Anderson (bio)
Location: LIB305
Translation of new knowledge into any practice discipline may be blocked by a variety of personal, professional, institutional, and economic barriers. Knowledge translation requires computer and informational literacy, which have been shown to be lacking among practicing nurses. Undergraduate research courses provide an ideal context for equipping students with the skills for knowledge translation. In this session, two nurse educators will share teaching approaches they have used to build informational literacy skills in preparing students for knowledge translation. Laptop computers in the classroom, the first approach to be described, became a medium for integrating learning activities that gave students experience with the process of using research evidence to guide practice. The way this technology was used will be described and demonstrated, and teacher and learner evaluations of laptops as learning tools highlighted. The second approach, use of an inquiry model in redesigning an undergraduate nursing research course, was used to draw students into the research process while simultaneously synthesizing the entire body of nursing research related to genetics and health care. With this approach, one step building on the next, students worked in groups to review, critique, and synthesize the literature that led to new research questions and proposals. Students presented their topics to each other at synthesis and proposal stages. The process of moving students through this multi-stage process will be detailed. Although these teaching-learning approaches were used separately, a participatory group activity will be used to explore innovative ways to combine the two in enhancing student learning.
Coaching Students, Stimulating Discovery
Session Leader: Natalie Butto (bio)
Location: LIB312
Research – whether academic, legal, journalism, or consumer-oriented – is significantly guided by the questions that are asked. Stimulating questions can facilitate more meaningful discovery. Coaching is a collaborative process which encourages inquiry and deeper learning. If students are proactively engaged in the discovery and formulation of their own answers, they are more likely to be committed to the process and results. In this interactive session, the facilitator will share coaching principles and techniques, and conduct a demonstration. Then, participants will have the opportunity to practice coaching skills 1-on-1 with each other.
Last reviewed 
5/16/2012 9:23:41 AM
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