2010 Fall Meeting

Updates from the Community

Brock U (Giulia Forsythe)

• Highlights: New Director, Barry W.K. Joe joined CTLET. For the first time, this role will sit on Senior Administrative Council with VPAs
• Challenges: Developing an elearning plan that aligns with institutional strategic plan and provincial directions
• Advice Needed: Access Copyright, Contact North (may be covered at Dir Mtg- Nov19); Differentiation thoughts?

Carleton U (Maggie Cusson)

• Highlights: Teaching certificate in Rwanda, instructional designers for online courses, TA mentorship program
• Challenges: Taking on new projects (not meant to be whiny, just realistic)
• Advice Needed: Doing more with less – how to prioritize small but meaningful programs vs. larger initiatives
• Advice to Give: Find/share effective solutions for faculty/TAs where possible – free software and online tutorials vs. costly software & inhouse workshops

Carole Dence (Higher Ed Research/ Projects)

• Highlights: 3M Fellowship Consulting; Research Project “Making Teaching Count at Selected Canadian Universities”; AHED-UPESED Registry Project Rwanda

Durham College (Ruth Rodgers)

• Highlights: We “disentangled” from UOIT, and now serve Durham College exclusively. New name Centre for Academic and Faculty Enrichment (C.A.F.E.)
• Challenges: Resourcing increasing demand while losing staff
• Advice Needed: Changing PD formats to meet changing market needs
• Advice to Give: E-learning object creation—we’ve had some interesting projects

Georgian College

• Highlights: Hiring a new Instructional Designer
• Challenges: Demands for online courses
• Advice Needed: Online Course Development models
• Advice to Give: Take a long-term approach to all faculty development efforts (online learning, integrating technology, assessment strategies

U of Guelph (Janet Wolstenholme)

• Highlights: We have just started a community of Practice on grp work. Curriculum support has been on the increase and the graduate passport is a success

Humber ITAL (Theresa Steger)

• Highlights: The School of Health Sciences has an active Scholarship Work in Progress Committee whose mandate it is to advance Scholarship (Boyer)
• Challenges: A welcome challenge of connecting our work, without overlap, with the renewed Office of Teaching and Learning
• Advice Needed: Research related to teaching in higher education based on passion and professional strengths
• Advice to Give: Influencing the culture (community of learners) is important in addition to influencing pedagogical knowledge and skill

Lakehead U (Rhonda Koster)

• Highlights: Have hired a full-time director and (very) part-time coordinator
• Challenges: New to job, so everything is a challenge!! 🙂 Trying to figure out how the centre can be relevant to faculty/instructors at the institution
• Advice Needed: How have others determined their services and programs in relationship to their ‘clients’ (faculty/instructors & administration) needs?

McMaster U

• Highlights: Publication of three new teaching and learning resources – one for faculty; one for TAs; and one for those researching T&L
• Challenges: Tremendous interest from non-traditional partners in T&L initiatives on campus (i.e., resources & novel approaches)
• Advice Needed: Mechanisms to formally value & recognize T&L professional development for faculty & for TAs
• Advice to Give: Balance what you can do with what you want to do and with what has the greatest impact

UOIT (Maureen Wideman)

• Highlights: Took over all aspects of faculty development from our previous shared service model. Saw expansion of responsibilities – increase dept. size
• Challenges: Ensuring we could meet the needs of faculty around teaching & learning, technology, course development, etc.
• Advice Needed: Teaching certificates for TAs
• Advice to Give: Development of process for creating online courses

Queen’s U (Denise Stockley)

• Highlights: Lecture Capturing, NSERC-CREATE grant, Curriculum Redesign/IQAP
• Challenges: Lack of people resources to deal with the increased demands.
• Advice Needed: Coping strategies for the increased demands and limited resources

Ryerson U (Paola Borin)

• Highlights: John Paul Foxe is our new Educational Developer. Five new Teaching Chairs, New Professional Development in Teaching for Graduate Students
• Challenges: Defining a curriculum strategy for the university

Saint-Paul U (Andre Seguin)

• Highlights: Hire of first distance and continuing coordinator
• Advice to Give: Creation of online and continuing education programs

U Toronto (Pam Gravestock)

• Highlights: Course Evaluation Framework initiative; HEQCO research project re: TAs; PATH Conference; CTSI secondments.
• Challenges: Setting boundaries for our work (with our expanded mandate and office – a challenge and an opportunity)
• Advice Needed: What creative ways are other centres using to address increasing demands from faculty for individual consultations?
• Advice to Give: With the restructuring of our office, we had to rethink a lot of the approaches we take to our work -allowing us to be more creative

Trent U

• Highlights: Initiated and coordinated the first Trent University – Fleming College conference on teaching with technology.
• Challenges: Institutional financial deficit resulting in a reduction to the operating and staffing budgets

U Waterloo

• Highlights: Secured new position for curriculum work (welcome Veronica!), OND conference (2 days in 2011), strategic plan developed
• Challenges: Keeping up with the demand for curriculum support
• Advice Needed: Sustainable, meaningful models for assessing the impact of our work and how to engage students (and faculty) with increasingly large classes
• Advice to Give: Figure out what to stop doing!

U Western Ontario (Judy Purves)

• Highlights: 3 HEQCO grants (impact of programs on faculty & grad student dev); STLHE’s CJSoTL launch; ISW/FDW; Teaching Squares; see wiki for more
• Challenges: Budget cuts; new senior administration
• Advice Needed: How to get buy-in from administration re: SoTL; advice on equipment purchases (e.g. camera types for microteaching); invited speaker ideas
• Advice to Give: Mentoring program

Wilfrid Laurier U (Jeanette McDonald)

• Highlights: Started three new communities of practice- hiring a new curriculum person to support program reviews/devts-exploring lecture capture technologies to adopt at Laurier-eportfolio pilot-grad advising project complete – sharing fdbk-exploring cert. program for graduate students with Grad Studies/Student Affairs
• Challenges: Finding a cloning solution so my colleagues and I can duplicate ourselves to get all the work done that comes our way! Seriously, trying to orchestrate appropriate growth in our centre – what are they and who do we need in what role to make that happen. Finding appropriate mechanism to reach ppl and get those there that you want there
• Advice Needed: Less so advice, but a question. Ok a few questions. Does your centre/position specifically value and support individual SOTL/SOED work? How do you integrate SOTL/SOED into your practice? If SOTL/SOED is not formally a part of your job, how do you fit it in if you choose to?
• Advice to Give: Revision and refocus – do those things well that mean the most and have the greatest impact. (I’m just starting this process now – wish me luck!)

U Windsor (Michael K. Potter)

• Highlights: First cohort through UTC, 93 workshops with attendance up 40%, 1,100 instructors now using LMS, culture changing
• Challenges: Coping with the overwhelming, and ever-growing amount of work we have to do while fending off vicious attacks from certain faculty
• Advice Needed: Deflecting attacks by disgruntled faculty who aren’t interested in finding out what we actually do.
• Advice to Give: Systematize your work into rigorous program-length offerings and get external validation/review!

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