Teaching and Learning News

More than 30 people (see the photo) – program participants, instructors, mentors, administrators, and proud family members – attended a celebration to mark the conclusion of the fall 2012 Certificate Program in University Teaching and Learning (CPUTL) on December 4. The highly popular program, facilitated by educational consultants Erin Aspenlieder and Kathryn Ricketts of the Teaching and Learning Centre along with Russell Day, a senior lecturer in Psychology, is designed to prepare graduate students for post-secondary teaching careers, and the tributes offered by the participants suggest that the program organizers successfully practice what they preach.

Several students spoke of their experiences within the program. Scott Kristjanson, a graduate student in Computing Science, identified the importance of defining learning outcomes and aligning assessments with those outcomes as a key concept. He also singled out the program’s emphasis on participatory learning as an important influence on his thinking. John Birmingham, a PhD student in Communications, expressed appreciation for the program’s emphasis on developing a teaching philosophy. Pat Feindel, a PhD candidate in Anthropology, noted that the course had restored her enthusiasm for teaching “and in fact [had] instilled an excitement that wasn’t there before.” She quoted other colleagues to demonstrate the benefits of the course:

“It’s hugely practical.”

“It helps with first-time teaching nerves.”

“It challenges your basic assumptions about teaching and learning.”

“Exhausting, but well worth the exhaustion.”

“Moved me from a focus on content to student-centred learning.”

“Before this I was just googling ‘how to teach.’ ”

“I’ve come out of the dungeon into the light.”

Jon Driver, Vice-President, Academic, attended the ceremony to congratulate the graduates. He expressed pride in the program, which he had a role in establishing, and was pleased to note the interdisciplinary composition of the group. The program will run again in January.

Related links:

CPUTL web page

The role of a teaching assistant is complex. A handbook developed by Erin Aspenlieder and Daria Ahrensmeier of the Teaching and Learning Centre provides SFU TAs with information and resources to help them handle their multiple responsibilities with greater confidence. The handbook, titled A Guide for Teaching Assistants at SFU, was released in early October as a PDF file. It covers the many challenges and duties that TAs face and offers advice for dealing with common issues that can arise in labs, classrooms, tutorials, or in relationships with professors and students.

The book’s ten chapters address practical issues (for example, setting office hours and responding to email), pedagogical issues (for example, how to grade quickly and fairly and how to prepare for and lead a tutorial), and professional issues (for example, how to evaluate and improve one’s performance). The guide also includes links and references to a multitude of teaching resources both inside and outside SFU.

For more information about the handbook or about performing effectively as a TA, contact Erin Aspenlieder at erin_aspenlieder@sfu.ca or Daria Ahrensmeier at daria_ahrensmeier@sfu.ca.

Related links:

A Guide for Teaching Assistants at SFU (PDF)

Daria Ahrensmeier’s profile page >>

Erin Aspenlieder’s profile page >>

The Certificate Program in University Teaching and Learning teaches participants the skills they need to enhance their teaching.

Note: Application Deadline is June 6, 2011 for the Certificate Program in University Teaching & Learning for Graduate Students

For grad students who intend to teach, the prospect of standing in front of a large group of 18-year-olds explaining, say, the political machinations of Oliver Cromwell or the genetic structure of drosophila melanogaster, is a daunting task.

Although grad students are often experts in their fields, they usually have limited teaching experience. Offered by the Teaching and Learning Centre, the Certificate Program in University Teaching and Learning (CUTL) provides participants with the skills they will need to enhance their teaching practice. The only long-term program hosted by the Teaching and Learning Centre, the 13-session agenda is tailored to academics early in their career who hope to teach.

The Certificate Program’s aims are straightforward and include:

• Providing participants with the knowledge, skills, positive attitude, and confidence to promote learning in their students;
• Integrating learning and instructional theory with an individual’s knowledge of their subject, emphasizing a scholarly approach to teaching, and
• Preparing participants to provide educational leadership in their academic endeavours.

Facilitated by faculty members and Teaching and Learning Centre staff, the program guides its students through topics like syllabus development, teaching dossiers, student learning, effective feedback, and presentation skills. Hundreds of students have received the Certificate as part of their academic education. Vivian Neal, the program lead, calls it, “an important component of early instructor development because it is an opportunity to learn teaching methods based on evidence.”

Prospective participants must apply and the Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW), a three-day course, is a prerequisite for consideration. For more information on the next ISW in August, please visit the ISW website.

The application deadline is Monday, June 6, so get your applications in now!

Visit the Certificate Program in University Teaching and Learning website for more information.

Contact:

Program Coordinator: Andrea Hankinson

778.782.6570

Program Director & Instructor: Vivian Neal

778.782.7466

Teaching Assistants and Tutor Markers

All SFU graduate students are invited to the 15th Annual Spring Semester TA/TM Day.

Mark your calendar for Friday, January 7, 2011 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at SFU Burnaby and plan to take part in this annual teaching orientation program for current and future Teaching Assistants and Tutor Markers.

Don’t miss this opportunity for peer-based support. Come share your teaching strategies, best practices, challenges, successes, fears and concerns in a supportive environment that encourages your participation.

Advance registration is not required, you may attend as many or as few sessions as you’d like, and your time at TA/TM Day counts toward your work hours for the spring semester.

For more information: http://www.tlc.sfu.ca/learning/enhancement/tatm/

Student Services produced the following videos of SFU students giving advice to their fellow students on how to achieve academic success.

In this video, SFU students give tips on how to take advantage of classes for a better academic experience.

(more…)

The Dean of Graduate Studies has created three new annual awards to recognize staff and faculty whose efforts greatly enhance the graduate student enterprise at SFU. 

The purpose of the Dean of Graduate Studies Award for Excellence in Service is to acknowledge outstanding contributions by members of the administrative and support staff of the University for Service to Graduate Studies.

The purpose of the Dean of Graduate Studies Award for Leadership is to recognize individuals who have made significant contributions to leadership in graduate student development, and the graduate student enterprise at SFU.

The purpose of the Dean of Graduate Studies Award in Supervision is to recognize excellence in the supervision of graduate students.

Nominations should be forwarded directly to the Office of the Dean of Graduate Studies (attn: Mary Ann Pope) and the deadline for receipt of nominations is November 15, 2010. The Terms of Reference and Nomination forms are available on the Graduate Studies website.

If you have any questions or wish to submit a nomination as a scanned attachment to an e-mail, please send to: gradstudies-dir-records@sfu.ca

—————–
Mary Ann Pope
Director, Graduate Admissions and Records
Dean of Graduate Studies Office
Tel: 778-782-3143
Fax: 778-782-3080

Are you curious about why students chose to study at SFU, what their favorite course was, or what advice they’d give to new students? You can find this out and more by reading the profiles of Featured Students in the Faculty of Health Sciences.

Lindsay Belvedere, BSc. in Health Sciences

Logen Krishnan, BA in Health Sciences

Summer Sheng, Master of Public Health

I offer a warm welcome and hearty congratulations to graduands, families and friends on this wonderful day. This is your day – one that you have earned!  It must feel like a superlative triumph – a glorious conclusion.  And it is!  But I hope you leave today also thinking that this is the most auspicious of beginnings.

“Education,” as W.B. Yeats observed, “is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” I see that flame burning brightly in each of your eyes today. It is the fire that will sustain you in the years ahead.

I was reminded of the power of that fire this past summer when Maureen and I were packing to move to our new home on Burnaby Mountain. As I was leafing through some files, I found a scrap of paper that my mother had sent me in the late ‘90s when I was Minister of Advanced Education.

On it was another quotation, this one from Nelson Mandela. It read: “Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mine worker can become the head of a mine, that the child of a farm worker can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”

Sadly, my mother is no longer with us. Yet this scrap of paper brought home how much she remains with me. She was a huge believer in education. She and my father not only implanted in me the value of universities, they also supported me at every stage of my educational journey. And here she still was, as I prepared to embark on another educational adventure, ready to provide me some wisdom that has lost nothing in the passage of time.

In a message beneath Mandela’s quote, penned in my mother’s distinctive script, was written: “I found this as I was cleaning up. I thought you might want to use it when you need more funds in your ministry.” I don’t recall whether it worked at the time. [Treasury Board, then as now, tends to be unmoved by such appeals.] Yet there are two wonderful lessons to be learned from this little piece of paper.

One is that we should stop once in a while to thank our mothers – and our fathers, our uncles and aunts – our spouses and everyone else who has believed in us and helped us get to where we are. There are many such people at this convocation today, fair bursting with pride at your accomplishments. Well … you should be proud of them, too. You stand on their shoulders, and you should always remember them as you admire the view.

The other lesson from my mother’s note is the one she intended at the time: that education, more than any other force, has the capacity to lift the human condition – to improve any individual and to advance every organization. Education prepares us to make a better job of our own lives, and to enrich the lives of those around us. In building our own capacity, we become better able to improve our workplace, our neighbourhood, our community – indeed the whole world.

This is an excerpt from President Andrew Petter’s convocation speech. The President’s speeches and statements, biography, and more are available on the President’s website.

Kirk Plangger, a marketing PhD student in the Faculty of Business Administration, attended the Experiential Classroom program at the Spears School of Business, Oklahoma State University from September 23 to 26, where he garnered the prize. Most of the participants in attendance were PhDs and seasoned university teachers from North America and around the world.

Plangger, who taught a detailed entrepreneurship case with two teaching colleagues to Oklahoma State undergraduate students, beat out 80 other delegates for the honour.

“We tried to make the case really interactive, friendly, and engaging,” said Plangger, who is a Teaching Assistant in the MBA, Executive MBA and Graduate Diploma in Business Administration programs at SFU.

See SFU Business News for the full story.

The Faculty of Science announces the recipients of the 2009/2010 Excellence in Teaching Awards, which recognise both faculty members and graduate students.

Recipients of the Faculty Award:

Elizabeth Elle, Department of Biological Sciences
Irina Kovalyova, Department of Molecular Biology & Biochemistry
Garry Mund, Department of Chemistry

Recipients of the Graduate Students Teaching Assistant Award:

Jefferson Chan, Department of Chemistry
Ricky Chu, Department of Physics
Chad Sisulak, Department of Earth Sciences
Stephanie Vlachos, Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry