Teaching and Learning News

By Helen Luo, Work-Study Student, Teaching and Learning Centre

SFU’s Learning Garden, shown in March 2013 as it was being developed, is visible from the south walkway along Convocation Mall.

A tour of the garden

SFU’s Learning Garden is an outdoor space established this year by Sustainable SFU near Convocation Mall on the Burnaby campus. It offers student groups a chance to grow their own food on rented plots of land, and on June 5 it was the site of the first event marking UNEP World Environment Day at SFU: a tour led by gardens manager Athenaise Guertin that demonstrated the potential of the space as a location for learning about food, garden management and sustainability.

A dialogue about food

In all, Sustainable SFU and the Teaching and Learning Centre collaborated on three events to address the day’s theme of “think-eat-save.”

The second event was a dialogue titled “Talking about Learning about Food.” Diana Bedoya, an SFU kinesiology instructor, shared her experience with KIN 110 Human Nutrition: Current Issues, in which students are introduced to concepts related to nutrition and food choices. Bedoya noted that the course attracts students from various disciplines with dynamic opinions about food and nutrition issues. She described the Diet Analysis assignment, an important component of the class in which students record their diets for three days and then analyze the nutritional content. Students reported that the course caused them to become more conscientious about their food choices and prompted them to speak with friends and family about the importance of good food choices.

Bedoya also spoke about her use of iClickers, an audience response system used to facilitate in-class participation. She found iClickers to be a powerful tool for getting students’ attention, encouraging participation and helping them understand their level of comprehension of course material.

The next speaker was Eric Sannerud, a recent graduate and Udall Scholar from the University of Minnesota. Sannerud shared stories about Cooking on a Student’s Budget, a course offered at the University of Minnesota’s Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives Institute. The course is intended to teach students about food security through the preparation of nutritious meals. The lab component incorporates topics of food safety, basic nutrition, cooking instruction, budgeting, time management, menu design, and food preservation and storage. Students take on a project that will create a resource to benefit the local community. Through weekly assignments (e.g., a blog post about a trip to a local farm) as well as through acquisition of cooking techniques, they obtain hands-on experience with food.

Both Bedoya’s and Sannerud’s courses offered experiential learning opportunities for students, including self-reflection on diet and food choices and activities that improved analytical and problem-solving skills.

Embedding experiential education

The day ended with a workshop for instructors and students interested in planning an experiential education activity within a course. Eric Sannerud was joined by David Zandvliet, an associate professor in SFU’s Faculty of Education, in a presentation that aimed to empower students and challenge faculty members to view education as a dynamic space for student-driven learning and impactful experiences.

The workshop began with a discussion of the pedagogical approaches that underpin, respectively, environmental learning and sustainable agriculture education. Sannerud presented a case study about Cornercopia, a student-run certified organic farm that produces more than 100 varieties of fruits and vegetables and provides students with valuable skills in farming, business management and marketing.

Zandvliet then illustrated Kolb’s experiential learning theory with a short video about a group of elementary students and teachers who tried the “100 miles diet” in Victoria, B.C. (Kolb’s theory proposes a four-stage learning cycle consisting of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation.) Class activities included visits to local farms and meal preparation using ingredients grown within 100 miles of Victoria.

Workshop participants were then put into groups to devise a plan to use experiential learning to make a change at SFU. The activity was designed to simulate the decision-making process of a student-led experiential education session.

Related links

Learning Garden

Sustainable SFU

Teaching and Learning Centre

David Zandvliet’s web page

The alien head (above) is actually an immersive environment: by blocking external sights and sounds, it deepens the experience delivered by the audiovisual equipment inside (right, below). The head was part of a showcase organized by Bernhard Riecke (right, bottom) and students in his IAT 445 Immersive Environments course.

IAT 445 Immersive Environments has traditionally been a hands-on opportunity to learn about animation software. When Bernhard Riecke took on the course this past spring, he decided to re-invent it in a way that would enable his students to develop abilities like self-management, creativity and motivation in addition to technical expertise. The result was a teaching and learning experience that stretched both instructor and students.

Flipping the classroom

Riecke, an assistant professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) at SFU’s Surrey campus, is convinced that instructors need to find new ways of engaging with students.

“I feel like we’re living in the post-lecture world, in a way, because you have all these things online—so we have the gift of physical, face-to-face contact, and I feel that I should really spend it on something that’s useful.”

For Riecke, that meant flipping the classroom: having students learn software skills by watching specified Lynda.com tutorials on their own time, applying those skills to solve a given challenge, and then gathering for interactive activities during class time.

“Our students are tech savvy,” he says. “I mean, they’re happy to watch things online, they’re always connected more than we, so what can we do in the lectures that makes sense, that they really benefit most [from]?”

Now, he notes, “sometimes half of the lecture is spent basically showing them examples and giving them little questionnaires and basically provoking questions where they need to really think and apply what they see.”

Transferable skills

That approach wasn’t always easy for the 30 students in the class. Some wished for a traditional format in which they could simply sit back and listen. But others indicated that the lessons they learned about things like self-management and finding passion were very useful—and that’s what Riecke thinks is important.

“In a way that’s the only thing that really transfers, hopefully. I mean, I want transferable skills. I don’t care about the fact learning, the rote learning. They forget all about this in a few weeks afterwards, and the question is really what will help them to succeed in the future and what do we need to teach our students.”

Taking ownership of learning

The emphasis on helping students take control of their own learning applied to the way assignments were marked as well. Riecke provided clear and open rubrics and then asked students to demonstrate to him that their work met the requirements.

“One of the visions of the course is really to help them become more proactive and really take full ownership and responsibility of their own learning, their projects, their career. You need to present to me why you did a good project. You need to provide me with the arguments why your project is good or not, and then I either accept the arguments or I challenge you,” he says.

The lesson was reinforced by a final showcase held in early April on the Mezzanine of the Surrey campus. Student groups invited passersby to try out the immersive environments they had built, which ranged from video games played inside curtain-shrouded boxes to a giant wearable head equipped with audio and video signals (see the “Related links” below). The interaction with end users was uncomfortable for some students, but also enabled them to see whether their projects worked as intended in the “real world.”

Continual adaptation

Riecke’s work was supported by an SFU Teaching and Learning Development Grant. He also received “incredible help” from Barbara Berry, an educational consultant in the Teaching and Learning Centre who, he says, challenged him similarly to the way he challenged his students. He hopes to apply some elements of his approach to other courses he teaches and feels that instructors in other disciplines could use parts of the approach.

In particular, he emphasizes the benefits of continually adapting courses in response to feedback from students: “I use … just-in-time teaching approaches sometimes, so I get immediate feedback every week. They really help me to tailor the course for them, and I think they appreciate that they do have an influence.”

Related links

Riecke has showcased the results of his students’ work on the iSPACE website:

Final showcase of projects (photos)

Final projects (videos and e-portfolios)

Bernhard Riecke’s web page

Sophie Lavieri (top right), a senior lecturer in Chemistry, presented a poster at the Symposium along with Dev Sharma (top left), also a senior lecturer in Chemistry. Cheryl Amundsen and Esma Emmioglu (bottom left), a professor and postdoctoral fellow respectively in Education, were also happy to share their research during the poster session. Nienke Van Houten (bottom right), a lecturer in Health Sciences, did double duty as a presenter and member of the Symposium Planning Committee.

The 2013 Symposium on Teaching and Learning took place on May 15 and 16 at SFU’s Burnaby campus. More than 190 SFU faculty, staff, and students registered for the event, which featured 15 concurrent sessions and 13 posters in addition to plenary sessions.

Gloria Rogers, a scholar with the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools and a well-known consultant in the area of quality assurance, learning outcomes, assessment, and accreditation, presented the keynote address. Rogers tackled questions related to the implementation of learning outcomes in a direct and pragmatic way. The title of her presentation—“Satisfying mandates while honouring faculty time: Is it possible?”—demonstrated an awareness of the practical issues that are intertwined with the philosophical questions of learning outcomes and assessment. She emphasized the importance of building the definition and evaluation of learning outcomes into existing curriculum development and review processes rather than creating new (and burdensome) administrative structures. She also noted that learning outcomes should be approached within the context of programs rather than as a means of evaluating individual courses. Her presentation will be made available to the SFU academic community as an archived webcast.

Another plenary session featured a panel discussion on “Embracing, managing, or resisting change.” SFU’s Russell Day, a senior lecturer in Psychology and co-facilitator of SFU’s Certificate Program in University Teaching and Learning, joined three panellists from other universities to facilitate a lively and provocative exchange that drew in audience members.

The concurrent sessions and posters covered a variety of areas, but many focused on new instructional approaches within the classroom. Among the approaches covered:

• Evidence-based teaching (Nienke van Houten, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Cindy Xin)
• Integrated, interdisciplinary, and project-based teaching in science (Uwe Kreis)
• Experiential learning and student-directed courses (Dan Burns, David Zandvliet, John Clague, Vance Williams)
• Active learning (David Kaufman)
• Team-based learning in science (Laura Hilton, Lynne Quarmby, Cindy Xin)

Many of the presentations and posters were developed with the help of Teaching and Learning Development Grants, which are administered by the Teaching and Learning Centre and the Institute for the Study of Teaching and Learning in the Disciplines (ISTLD). PDF versions of some posters will be made available on the ISTLD website and on SFU’s institutional Teaching and Learning website.

Related links

Institute for the Study of Teaching and Learning in the Disciplines

Teaching and Learning Centre

Symposium on Teaching and Learning

In November 2012 we spoke with Nicky Didicher, a senior lecturer in the Department of English, about her plan to teach a pilot course in Canvas in January 2013. Recently we checked back to see how she was finding the new learning management system (LMS).

Perhaps not surprisingly for someone who has used and felt at home in WebCT for a number of years, she admits to a certain amount of ambivalence. For now, she’s prepared to say that Canvas is “slightly better” than WebCT. “It just has different pluses and minuses.”

What she likes about Canvas

The “pluses” Didicher lists reflect Canvas’s simplicity and ease of use. Among her likes:

- The clean look of the user interface
- The ability to open and work in multiple courses simultaneously
- The ease of linking to files and external resources

Her students have also commented positively on the look of Canvas and the ability it gives them to view all courses in one place and to see their marks as a cumulative percentage.

The challenges she is facing

The “minuses,” for Didicher, tend to be connected to cases in which Canvas requires her to modify practices that she developed and used in WebCT. For example, unlike WebCT, Canvas provides only a single discussion board. That restricts Didicher’s ability to create multiple discussion groups as she has in the past. Another example is the peer review function in Canvas. Didicher likes the function, which allows students to give feedback on one another’s assignments. However, the tool works only with completed assignments, and she would like her students to be able to comment on draft versions.

For SFU’s Canvas implementation team, the feedback from Didicher and other instructors involved in the pilot project has been valuable in determining priorities for system development. The team recently identified options that will allow instructors and students to organize their discussions in more sophisticated ways, and other capabilities are being added on a regular basis.

The conversion process

What about the process of moving her course content from WebCT to Canvas? Didicher’s PowerPoint files transferred smoothly, but a glitch caused the apostrophes in her HTML content to disappear. More significantly, a glossary she created in WebCT to provide definitions of highlighted words in her course material couldn’t be converted. Fortunately, she says she has received excellent support from the learning technology specialists in the Teaching and Learning Centre.

The implementation team will be hiring additional support staff during the summer semester to help instructors who plan to use Canvas for their courses in fall 2013.

Final thoughts

Given the adjustments that she has had to make, Didicher is glad that she had the chance to test Canvas in a class of 11 students before moving her large courses of 250+ students over in the fall semester.

“I’m by no means technology-friendly,” says Didicher, despite her experience with learning management systems. “I use technology for pedagogical reasons, not personal reasons. [But] if I have to do a slight amount of learning in order to make the classroom experience better, that’s okay.”

Related links

One-on-one Canvas help for instructors: Contact Learn Tech in the Teaching and Learning Centre

Canvas support website for instructors and students: www.sfu.ca/canvas

This post is reprinted from the SFU News blog. Read the original post here.

With mid-terms over, Natalia Kouzniak is again holding “crying sessions” in her office with students taking first- and second-year calculus courses who complain that they can’t do math.

“I spend 15-20 hours a week in my office explaining to students why math is useful, how to study it, what was insufficient in their studying,” says the SFU Surrey senior math lecturer.

“My teaching philosophy and goal is to help students unlock their potential – to get students who say ‘I’m not good enough at math’ to become good enough.”

Her students would agree the 2012 SFU Excellence in Teaching award winner meets that goal.

They are effusive in their praise of her teaching and encouragement, often noting high grades in courses such as calculus and differential equations they struggled with or failed in the past.

“First-year math requires perseverance and good teaching,” she says. “I’m a very strict instructor, but I always give students a second chance.”

Kouzniak takes her passion for math far beyond the classroom. She coordinates work at the Surrey campus Mathematics Open Lab drop-in centre for first- and second-year math students and participates in a number of outreach activities.

She organizes a popular math camp each summer as well, and helped found a Surrey math meet-and-greet for high school students to visit first-year math classes on campus.

She also visits local high schools to promote math at SFU and discuss the transition to university.

“Natalia believes in her students, which makes them believe in themselves,” says a nominator. “Her dedication and commitment to her students is phenomenal.”

This post is reprinted from the SFU News blog. Read the original post here.

“I thought this course was going to be boring, but it was a lot more interesting than I expected it to be.”

That’s a comment Beedie School of Business senior lecturer Anne Macdonald has heard many times in the past, and it illustrates why she’s been named an SFU 2012 Excellence in Teaching award winner.

Macdonald continually strives to engage her students, using stories in the news as examples to help them relate to the subject material.

She is so passionate about accounting she believes the subject should be compulsory for all students, regardless of their concentration.

“It gives students such a wonderful grounding in the language of business and really helps them understand issues they may face in all walks of life,” she says.

“They may not end up as accountants, they may not even be in a business role, but accounting develops important skills they can use in the future.”

An SFU alumna, Macdonald arrived late to teaching as a profession. Upon switching careers, she quickly found her way back to SFU when she began teaching at the Beedie School of Business in 1998. It is an affiliation that is more than just a job to her.

“I first came to SFU as an undergraduate and actually had my wedding reception at the Diamond Alumni Centre at the Burnaby Mountain campus. When I returned to SFU to teach it felt like coming home.”

Macdonald concentrates on making her classes interesting. But does she ever find herself bored teaching the same thing over and over again?

“Every semester there is something new, with new students bringing a fresh perspective,” she says.

“Just when I think I have heard it all, a student will surprise me with a new outlook and I think to myself, ‘I’ve never looked at it that way before, but yes, you are correct.’ ”

This post is reprinted from the SFU News blog. Read the original post here.

Carl Schwarz shows up for class year-round in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts.

The relaxed dress code suits the popular statistics professor, who spends much of his time examining peculiar problems and using numbers to explain them.

But it belies his passion for convincing students that statistics are interesting, even exciting – a goal that is central to Schwarz’s teaching philosophy.

And his enthusiasm for that goal, combined with his devotion to involving students in real-life research, helped earn him a 2012 SFU Excellence in Teaching award.

Teaching is not about standing in front of the class and lecturing, says Schwarz; it’s about introducing students to realistic problems.

“Some students say my assignments are long and hard, but students have to get their hands dirty,” he says, adding long hours of study and practice are the only route to success.

Schwarz’s office door is open most weekdays from 9 am to 5 pm, and students know they are always welcome.

“If the same student comes to my office very day, it doesn’t bother me,” he says. “It shows they’re interested in the material.”

What frustrates him are the students who don’t come for help until the end of the semester, when it’s too late.

Over the past 10 years, Schwarz has been posting his course notes online to allay his irritation over the lack of texts covering the topics he wants to study and teach.

The site is a boon to students in many disciplines who use the information to study, create and model experiments, solve problems, and prepare journal articles.

“Schwarz does what many instructors are never able to do,” says a nominator. “He transforms knowledge and inspires students.”

By Stephanie Chow

This post is reprinted from the SFU News blog. Read the original post here.

PhD student Evgeny Vinnik (right) and his professor Arrvindh Shriraman (standing) have introduced a new approach this semester to teaching computing science CMPT 300, a course about modern computer operating systems and the services they provide.

Rather than applying rigid traditional teaching methods, they’re experimenting with a “flipped classroom” method that uses social media and interactive components such as YouTube and Google Group to deliver lectures.

Shriraman came up with the idea last semester after students asked him to post videos of his lectures online. Now he records and uploads videos of his lecture slides along with additional commentary to the course’s YouTube channel so students can watch it all before attending class.

“By pre-recording the videos we’re able to slash one hour of lectures and spend more time discussing interesting or complex concepts and organizing hands-on labs,” says Vinnik.

The duo has also arranged a private Google group for further dialogue and questions regarding assignments and course material.

“We want our students to be more engaged, to actively interact with the course material, because in this way knowledge is retained better,” says Vinnik.

While the course elements are virtually based, Shriraman says the “flipped classroom” is different than an online classroom because students do attend class regularly and the online material supplements class-based learning.

So far, he says students are positively responding and are more engaged in classroom conversations.

Related links

CMPT 300 videos on YouTube

By Vea Banana, TLC Communications Assistant

Even before SFU selected Canvas as its new learning management system (LMS), history professor Elise Chenier (above) had been looking for something to replace WebCT. Her search led her to the cloud-based version of Canvas. (SFU’s Canvas platform will be hosted on SFU servers and will have slightly different features than Canvas Cloud.) According to Chenier, what sets Canvas apart from other LMSs is the greater ability it gives her to customize and modify its modules and components so that they fit well with the courses that she is teaching.

SFU began piloting its own Canvas platform in January, but Chenier’s own experience goes back to fall 2013 when she taught two courses using Canvas Cloud. She used the LMS primarily to provide assignments and for its calendar and grading functions.

“It allows me to provide additional resources within the module of the week,” says Chenier, and that made it easier for students to find the information they needed for specific topics in the class. Since Chenier was using a cloud-based version of the LMS with content stored on servers outside Canada, she had to obtain consent from her students to ensure that no privacy laws were violated. Despite this extra step, she found that using Canvas was useful and rewarding for her students.

Chenier will continue to use Canvas and she’s looking forward to SFU’s LMS migration: “It’s so normal to use an LMS for classes now, it’s really needed. Nowadays, we manage so much information, and it’s almost expected for us to provide extra creative and scholarly materials to students. It’s just the matter of making that information available and readily accessible to students … I chose Canvas because it’s visually clean and both my students and I find that it’s so much easier to use.”

Canvas support at SFU

SFU recently launched a Canvas support website. Instructors interested in learning more about how to work with Canvas may also contact the learning technology specialists within the Teaching and Learning Centre by email at learntech@sfu.ca or by visiting www.sfu.ca/learntech.

Related links:

Canvas support website (www.sfu.ca/canvas)

Replace WebCT Project website

Learning technology specialists (Teaching and Learning Centre)

President Andrew Petter announced this morning (February 1, 2013) that Jon Driver will be reappointed for a second five-year term as Vice-President, Academic, and Provost, beginning on September 1, 2013. Driver has been a strong proponent of teaching and learning initiatives at SFU, including the WebCT Replacement Project, the Teaching and Course Evaluation Project, and the Learning Outcomes and Assessment Project. Here is the President’s full announcement:

To the Campus Community:

I am pleased to report that, following the unanimous advice of the Search Committee, the Board of Governors has approved my recommendation to reappoint Dr. Jonathan Driver as Vice-President Academic and Provost for a second five-year term commencing September 1, 2013.

Dr. Driver’s tenure as VP Academic has been characterized by accomplished and principled leadership and a collegial and collaborative approach. He has fostered a vibrant and inclusive culture to support teaching, learning and research at SFU, and has overseen the implementation of important new initiatives. He has also encouraged a deeper sense of institutional commitment and engagement amongst faculty, staff and students, and ably represents SFU in the external community.

Dr. Driver is an exceptional academic leader who has the necessary skills and attributes to position SFU for continued success in the future. I look forward to working with him in the years ahead.

I am grateful to the members of the Search Committee and to all members of the community who assisted the committee in its deliberations.