This article is reposted from Dr. Brad Anderson’s blog. Dr. Anderson is based in Vancouver and teaches at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. You can find his original post HERE. Many thanks to him for allowing us to share his work! Are we a wise civilization? Can we grow wiser? Being cynical about these questions is easy….
Do you ever feel like your students have a better handle on technology than you? Have you ever stood in front of your class and had to use the ominous phrase, I’m having some technical difficulties? Whether you identify with the above scenario completely or perhaps feel confident in your ability to navigate various technologies…
Over the last several years, along with many of my colleagues in post-secondary education, I have begun to learn about the significance of decolonization. At this point, I feel as though I am only on the very first steps of a journey that will extend much deeper. I first learned about residential schools in 2013,…
I recently began my workshop, Assessments 101: More Than Multiple Choice, with the caveat that I don’t hate multiple choice questions (MCQ). For exams I still regularly use MCQ in addition to a variety of other formats. I think MCQs get a bad rap. They’re a tool, and like all tools there is a skill…
Christina Page Educational Consultant, Diversity and Inclusion: Teaching and Learning Commons “No culture has ever developed all human potentialities; it has always selected certain capacities, mental and emotional and moral, and shifted others. Each culture is a system of values which may well complement the values in another” — Ruth Benedict As educators, we are often asked…
Shortly after writing my recent post on discussion-based learning I came across a book by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins (2013) titled Essential Questions – Opening doors for student understanding. Asking questions is something most teachers do, however have we seriously considered how the quality of the questions impacts the quality of the response? Reflecting on…
“Learning through discussion is often aligned with learning through collaboration” (Laurillard, 2012). However, they are not the same pedagogical focus. The focus of collaboration is to produce something that has been created together. Discussion on the other hand is to explore concepts, negotiate meaning, share perspective and deepen understanding. In a traditional classroom discussion is…
At first glance, asynchronous discussion-based learning seems simple and obvious, pick a question to post in a forum and post it in the learning management system. If only it was this simple. As a beginning online instructor, I used the questions given to me by a colleague and found myself frustrated with a class full…