The Virtual Maple League Teaching and Learning Centre is pleased to share our February programming: 1. Maple League Hosts: Students as Partners in Open Educational Resource Creation: A Discussion and Workshop 2. Better Together: Maple League Teaching Support & Welcome to My Online Classroom On Thursdays, join us to explore classrooms and pedagogical methods across the Maple League 3. Asynchronous Content: Missed a session from earlier this year or last semester? Check out videos of recent past sessions below For more information, please don’t hesitate to contact Heather Carroll, Director of the V_MLTLC at hcarroll@luc.edu or Dr. Jessica Riddell, Maple League Executive Director, at director@mapleleague.ca. If you would like to host or suggest a session, please reach out to us!
Maple League Hosts: Students as Partners in Open Educational Resource Creation: A Discussion and Workshop On Thursday, March 11,beginning at 11:00 am Eastern, 12:00 noon Atlantic, join us for the March Maple League Hosts: Students as Partners in Open Educational Resource Creation: A Discussion and Workshop
Join Kim Mears (University of Prince Edward Island), Meghan Landry (St. Francis Xavier University), and Tiffany MacLennan (Maple League of Universities) to discuss how creating and adapting open educational resources (OERs) can be a great opportunity to work directly with students as partners. We will discuss how and why to have students as partners, the benefits of OER partnerships to both faculty and students and hear from Kim about successful student partnerships at UPEI. Following this, there will be an open discussion/workshop on how you can start OER projects and include students in them from day one. All are welcome. Join by clicking: https://bluejeans.com/8198229605
Better Together: Maple League Teaching Support & Welcome to My Online Classroom On Thursdays this month, we are offering Better Together: Maple League Teaching Support Sessions and a Welcome to My Online Classroom session. These events begin at 11am Eastern, Noon Atlantic. Join by clicking: https://bluejeans.com/8198229605 Thursday, March 4: Better Together: Open Educational Resources (OERs) at the Maple League. Elizabeth Stregger (Librarian, MtA), Siobhan Lacey (Student, StFX), Dr. David Webster (Professor, Bishop’s), Dr. Conor Vibert (Professor, Acadia) will discuss their experiences with creating, adopting, and advocating for Open Educational Resources (OERs) and their vision for the future of OERs at the four Maple League Universities. Thursday, March18: Welcome to My Online Classroom: Statistics for Business with Dr. Arshad Taseen (Bishop’s). In courses that are quantitative in nature, emphasis is on skill building and learning. Expertise is developed by practice – applying the principles repeatedly to different scenarios. Teachers use a variety of techniques to present these principles to help master the skills. In online courses, absence of exchange in body language between students and teachers presents extra problems. Most students prefer to keep their camera off leaving the teacher to stare at the circles on the screen, wondering if everyone understood the concept. Here I created a visual-interactive book with my notes, PowerPoint animations, interactive apps, and my light-board videos of problem solving as a SCORM package that allows students to use and repeatedly watch or play with it to understand the statistical concepts in a way they think they learn best. I will show what I learnt from the previous semester and how I corrected them for the current semester. I am using Moodle as the main platform to deliver the course; what features seem cool but hinder student focus. Also show how the use of SCORM packages help deliver conceptual material and use of Klose quiz for problem solving during group work in Microsoft Teams. Thursday, March 25: Better Together: The Participatory Professor. Join Dr. Gabrielle Donnelly (Acadia) as she shares her experience of shifting the course Group Facilitation and the Art of Gathering to an online format and how she is supporting students in building skills and capacities to host generative, equitable, and culturally responsive online spaces for each other and community partners. Before teaching at Acadia, Dr. Donnelly spent a decade working as a professional facilitator. During this session, we’ll explore what works well (and what doesn’t!) around the intersections of facilitation and teaching in online contexts.
Asynchronous Content
Welcome to My Online Classroom
Welcome to My Online Classroom: Professor Jasmeen Sidhu Teaching through the Looking Glass: A brief glimpse into teaching about visual processes online, taught by Dr. Jasmeen Sidhu (Bishop’s). Perception is a course about how our senses, mostly vision, and audition, allow us to know and understand the world. A large focus on the visual system is observed across Sensation and Perception courses, as seeing is one of the most complex and well-understood tasks a human being does. How does one teach the complex physiology of sensory systems and its functional manifestations in an online setting? How does one get high engagement levels in a STEM-oriented course, where the material is often technical and specific? How does one foster a sense of community and collaboration in a prerequisite STEM-oriented course? Welcome to My Online Classroom: Dr. Corrine Cash Climate and People, taught by Dr. Corrine Cash (StFX). Dr. Cash’s work focuses on environment, climate change, urban issues, and social equity (including how women are impacted in these settings). She is currently conducting research on how people who live in informal settlements in coastal cities are adapting to the impacts of climate change. Join to hear about teaching this cross listed course between climate and environment and development. Welcome to My Online Classroom: Dr. Angela Pratt “This is fine.”: Finding fun in the fury of managing a large hybrid course in “these challenging times” hosted by Dr. Angela Pratt (Bishop’s). Join to hear about teaching a course about Social Media & Sport in a hybrid format to over 100 students. Welcome to My Online Classroom: Dr. Chelsea Gardner THIS IS (a class about) SPARTA: Dr. Chelsea Gardner (Acadia) will take you on a tour of her virtual Maple League course on the topic of Sparta: Ancient History & Modern Identity. Students from Acadia and Mount Allison gather weekly in a seminar-style class that is entirely virtual, working together to discuss ancient texts, modern scholarship, and the way in which Sparta has been reappropriated in Europe and North America, particularly by fascist groups. Discussion will focus on a semester-long initiative in which students are tasked to collectively improve Wikipedia’s open-access resources available for the study of one of the most (in)famous cities of ancient Greece.
Maple League Hosts Maple League Hosts: Embracing the Spirit of Ubuntu Join Dr. Joy Mighty to discuss how the African philosophy of Ubuntu helps us to understand and embrace our common humanity. At the same time, Ubuntu challenges us to reimagine our post-secondary institutions as vehicles for achieving equity, diversity and inclusion in a fractured world. In particular, we will discuss the implications of adopting Ubuntu as a means of transforming our curricula, teaching methodologies and learning environments so that all students, regardless of their social identity, may have an equal chance to learn and be academically successful. Maple League Hosts: Daring to Hope Join Dr. Claire Hamshire (Manchester Metropolitan University), Dr. Rachel Forsyth (Manchester Metropolitan University), Dr. Paul Taylor (University of Leeds), Dr. Heather Smith (University of Northern British Columbia) and Dr. Jessica Riddell (Bishop’s University). This international panel of educational leaders (from four universities and two continents) will explore what constitutes a resilient and hopeful university and how do we build it? Panelists will explore theoretical and practical implications of social change in the post-secondary landscape and challenge dominant narratives around resilience, authenticity, and hope as a way forward to help others make change in the space where they are.