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Updates from the Community
McMaster University
Highlights
- Host International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) 9th Annual Conference in Oct 2012 – just under 600 delegates
- Update Desire2Learn platform to version 10, and introduced ePortfolios across campus
- Ran three ISW’s and one FDW since our last COED meeting in 2011
- Co-hosted second annual President’s Retreat to gather teaching award winning faculty to a day of conversations and discussions around T&L priorities at Mac
- Hosted the 3rd Annual Research on Teaching and Learning conference in December, 2011. Over 190 delegates from across the country and abroad.
New Initiatives
- Inaugural Paul R MacPherson Teaching Fellow named (allows winning faculty member to work for a portion of their time (typically over a one-year period) in the Centre for Leadership in Learning, where they complete a T&L project). The project is underway
- Hosted an OISE B.Ed. intern for one month (April-May) who helped to update and edit our Teaching Assistant’s Guidebook
- New Graduate Student Certificate Programs in Teaching and Learning developed (based on needs assessment research conducted at McMaster last year). Implementation to begin in January 2013.
- Piloting two new online elective courses. CLL is involved to learn how we can best support the movement to online teaching and learning
Challenges
- Loss of centre director, Sue Vajoczki, to cancer – limited leadership in our centre for the past 11 months
OCAD University
Highlights
- Manager hired for the new Faculty & Curriculum Development Centre.
- Building on our program of Professional Development for Instructors.
- Beginning the process of course re/design for hybrid and online learning and growing these offerings.
- Evaluating the recently implemented campus-wide Student Feedback on Courses model and refining it moving forward.
- Successfully launched the new Canvas LMS (by Instructure) across campus for Fall 2012 – initial training reached approximately 50% of faculty.
- Heavily engaged in preparation and implementation of the IQAP and new Academic Plan.
- Supporting curriculum review and development initiatives.
New Initiatives
- Hiring an educational developer to facilitate and support course re/design for hybrid and online learning.
- Implementing an online registration system for workshops and events.
- Building a professional development series for instructors teaching with the new Canvas LMS.
- Supporting two focused curriculum projects — one is the development of a curriculum matrix (a form of a visual map) for the Industrial Design Program and another is the pilot of faculty/student e-Portfolios as a curriculum development tool.
Challenges
- Budget, staffing, space, and resource constraints.
- Multiple strategic priorities allocated to the Centre and tight timelines.
University of Ottawa
Highlights
- New Director, Centre for University Teaching
- New ½ position in graduate curriculum development
- Launch of two Chairs in University Teaching
- Promotion of teaching and learning via University-wide campaign featuring ambassadors from each faculty
- Migration of learning management system to BlackBoard Learn
- 3rd Summer Institute on Course Design in both French and English
New Initiatives
- Creation of workshops and online resources for Faculty on UID
- 1-day fall TA orientation with over 650 participants
- Development of website to support programs under review
Challenges
- The continued development of standardized curriculum development processes and procedures
- Online forum for part-time professors
University of Waterloo
Highlights
- New role within our Centre – Katherine Lithgow was promoted to the newly created position of Senior Instructional Developer, Integrative Learning and will liaise closely with our Student Success Office
- Successfully supported our transition to D2L – ~3,000 course offerings in D2L now
- Expanded the focus of our Opportunities and New Directions (OND) conference and our recently launched Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement (LITE) grants to include both pedagogical scholarship and teaching practices – we have already awarded 12 grants – OND will occur on April 25, 2013, and will feature a “decoding the disciplines” theme
- Almost 150 graduate students have completed our Fundamentals of University Teaching program since its launch in Winter 2011
- More than 350,000 visits were made to our website last year – our website design is being overhauled this term to fit with Waterloo’s new web content management system so watch for some changes come December!
- Engaged in more than 8,000 consultations with 1,300 instructors in the past year
New Initiatives
- In response to the task force report on Innovative Teaching Practices to Promote Deep Learning, Teaching Fellows program launched this term – each Faculty has at least 1 Teaching Fellow (Engineering has named an Associate Dean, Teaching). The Faculties have customized the role according to their needs, but the Fellows have some similar goals to strive towards: facilitating instructor success and innovation, establishing communities of practice regarding teaching and learning, and working collaboratively with our Centre.
- Community of practice groups on large classes and peer review of teaching
- Condensed much of our faculty programming into one week this term – will repeat this format
- Launched new workshop series for new faculty members plus a Learning About Teaching Plan to encourage professional development in teaching and learning throughout the career
- Looking for more intentional ways to promote our services and better disseminate teaching and learning stories
Challenges
- Ongoing uncertainty around faculty-specific and institutional strategic plans – plans are rolling out very slowly so this had stalled our own planning for a while
- Very slow (read: no) movement from our internal plant operations services to get workshop space renovated to complete our move from last year
University of Western Ontario
Highlights
- Focused on academic integrity as a theme at the 2012 Fall Perspectives on Teaching Conference with Dr. Julia Christensen Hughes from University of Guelph as our keynote speaker.
- Introduced Mentoring Micro Grant Program to assist new faculty in accessing resources to support their career development.
- Hosted inaugural Western Institute for Research on Teaching and Learning, a three-day hands-on workshop designed to support faculty in the development of a research project on their own teaching.
- Created a new online journal called Teaching Innovation Projects (TIPS); published 20 articles by graduate students and have had over 6,000 downloads of articles from as far away as Sweden, Australia and Singapore.
- Hosted a conference focusing on graduate student mental health and graduate supervision.
- Offered three ISWs and one FDW
- Over 4,300 registrants in our 2011-12 programs which ranged in length from 2 to 40 hours
Initiatives
- Academic Integrity Survey of faculty, students and graduate students in October 2012. This will be a ten-year follow-up of the Canada-wide survey and will provide feedback to the Deans on where we are now on this essential issue.
- Developing a new faculty learning community on graduate supervision.
- New purple guide to be published: Western Guide to Working with TAs.
Challenges
- Demand for support in curriculum review and renewal exceeds our resources. More and more departments would like us to work with them more directly throughout the review process undefined facilitating departmental retreats, assisting them with curriculum mapping and working on developing good learning outcomes and pedagogically sound assessment tools, plus faculty would like to rely on us to review the materials they submit, etc. Given our current staffing complement, we can only act in a consultative manner.
