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Pedagogy + Practice
By The Teaching & Learning Commons
The Teaching and Learning Commons serves as a catalyst, collaborator, connector, communicator, and coordinator for teaching and learning at KPU. The teaching and learning blog “Pedagogy + Practice” strives to increase connection with faculty by sharing our thoughts on important teaching and learning topics and inviting you to share with others. We hope to invoke curiosity and provide resources for further exploration. If you would like this to be delivered weekly to your email, please subscribe, if you prefer to browse at your leisure, please visit as often as you like.
Latest Blog Posts
Ask, Find Out, Act: The Benefits of Inquiry-based Learning
Science labs. Rock climbing. Student-led projects. The Amazon Field School. What do these have in common? They are all taught at KPU with an inquiry-based learning model. Or have the potential to be. Inquiry-based learning puts students in the driver’s seat, and has them explore and share an experiential research or creative process/project that holds…
Generative AI. or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bot
Generative AI (GenAI) is a thing! If you’ve read the news lately, it seems to be one of the only things we should be paying attention to, with headlines like: “Cutting edge AI raises fears about risks to humanity” “Artificial intelligence poses “risk of extinction,” tech execs and experts warn” “How ‘freaked out’ should we…
“Aiming for the Moon”: Designing Assignments for Mastery-Based Achievement
A Mastery-Based Grading (MBG) assignment is an educational assessment designed to evaluate a student’s proficiency in specific competencies that are critical to their field of study. MBG assignments challenge students to go beyond rote memory and instead apply their knowledge to practical, real-world scenarios—encouraging them to reach for the moon in every endeavor! This educational…
A Holistic Approach to Assessment: Integrating Self, Peer, Instructor, and AI
As educators, finding better ways to measure learning is always on our agenda. While we’re familiar with traditional assessment methods and the valuable insights they offer in measuring students’ mastery of specific content knowledge, we recognize their limitation in capturing the full range of students’ abilities and experiences, such as critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration….
Teaching Through Undergraduate Research: The Transformative Power of Active Learning
After the invasion of ChatGPT into our classrooms, you probably asked yourself, “What assignments can I give my students to defeat such an appealing tool, especially for students who have to work extensive hours per week besides studying?” In this piece, I will give you one effective and exciting suggestion: research projects. I will present…
A Rose by Any Other Name: Competency & Mastery-Based Learning and Assessments
Introduction In the ever-changing landscape of Canadian higher education, discussions persist around the “best” pedagogical approaches to student learning, instruction, and assessment. Traditional education often relies on seat time, percentage-based grading, and conventional “pen and paper” assessments like essays and exams (Malan, 2000; Diegelman-Parente, 2011; Sturgis, 2014). Non-traditional education, particularly evolving over the last century,…