Pre-Conference Workshops – Register Here!

Title: Indigenous Learning Bundles: Engaging STLHE and 3M Teaching Fellows and Students in Continuing Reconciliation Work

Description: Building on the 2019 3M Truth and Reconciliation Retreat for 3M Teaching and Student Fellows in Winnipeg, this workshop project is a research and leadership opportunity for 3M students working with 3M teaching fellows toward classrooms that recognize and respect Indigenous approaches to teaching and learning. The project ensures the place of this important commitment to ongoing reconciliation in 3M’s and STLHE’s respective 35th and 40th year anniversaries. Highlighting the leadership, perspectives, and insights of students, the project comprises a pre-conference Interactive Workshop featuring a presentation by Professor Kahente Horn-Miller (Kanien:keha’ka /Mohawk) and her colleagues about Indigenous Learning Bundles, and participant discussion groups to imagine new institutional structures for higher education. The bundles, and their role in decolonizing the classroom, will be the focus of the 3M students’ research in preparing for their leadership roles in the workshop. Anticipated outcomes include concrete examples of moving toward active reconciliation in post-secondary settings

Presenters: Kahente Horn-Miller (Carleton), Renata Chiaradia (Carleton), Winona Tenasco (Carleton); Christl Verduyn (Mount Allison), Isabelle Barrette-Ng (Windsor), Mike Graeme (Victoria)

Title: Integrating effective peer review/critique into the college classroom

Description: Peer review/critique in the college classroom is rife with challenges including a lack of commitment and understanding by students and instructors alike. A significant body of literature suggests peer review/critique can be key in developing important higher-level skills, including collaborative, communication (Mulder et al, 2014, Nicol, 2010), and self-evaluative skills (Nicol et al, 2014). Our cross-disciplinary SoTL action research group has developed a three-part protocol for effective peer review/critique, addressing challenges of student engagement while enhancing student learning. This workshop will allow participants to experience the protocol first-hand, experiencing the benefits of giving and receiving feedback and exchanging diverse perspectives.   

Presenters: Summer Clark (Lesley U) ,   Liv Cummins (Lesley U),  Kimberly Lowe (Lesley U)

Title: Peer Observation of Teaching and Learning: An Experiential Training Model

Description: Faculty at Capilano University (CapU) have developed and implemented an evidence-informed, experiential training model for instructors and faculty leaders on effective practices for peer observation of teaching and learning. The training program promotes an equitable, inclusive, and supportive peer observation of teaching and learning practice and culture with the goal of cultivating a sustainable, growth-oriented approach to enhancing teaching and learning at the institution.

Participants in this interactive pre-conference workshop, will: Reflect on existing or envisioned peer observation of teaching and learning training practices or related professional development programs at their institutions. Consider the benefits of the training model offered at CapU. Experience key components of the training by simulating pre- and post-observation meetings. Give and receive feedback with peers on challenges they face in implementing peer observation training or related initiatives at their institutions. Consider what components of the training model they could incorporate into their peer observation of teaching and learning and/or faculty development practices to promote an equitable, inclusive, and supportive teaching and learning culture at their institution.

Presenters: Mary Giovannetti (Capilano U) and Derek Murray (Camosun College)

Title: Teaching Strategies for the “Learning Mind”

Description: Advances in educational cognition research have led to a set of recommended teaching strategies that promote lasting learning and mastery, Dunlosky et al (2013). Unfortunately, due to the complexities of teaching and learning, instructors often do not see the anticipated positive learning outcomes expected for these strategies. The goal of this workshop is to build participant confidence in using the recommended strategies. This goal is accomplished in two parts: Part 1 develops a working model of the “learning mind” and Part 2 uses the model to explain why the recommended strategies promote effective operation of the mind. Based on the work of Mayer (2009), the “learning mind” model has four essential sets of components: input/output, visual/verbal communication pathways, fast/slow thinking systems, Kahneman (2011), and working/long-term memories. By the end of Part 1, participants will be able to show how the components of the learning mind relate to each other and will be able to describe the psychological/neurological characteristics of each component during the learning process associated with an underlying change in the knowledge state of the long-term memory neural network, Zull (2002). Part 2 provides participants with practice in explaining how particular recommended strategies promote effective learning by aligning with operational characteristics of the learning mind, with practice in determining appropriate phases in the learning process for using particular strategies, and with practice in anticipating implementation challenges. 

Presenter: Gordon Stubley, 3M Fellow (U Waterloo)

Title: Building Multimodal, Nonlinear, and Interactive Learning Experiences: A Deep

Dive into the Tapestry Tool

Description: The current pandemic has made online content ubiquitous in postsecondary courses.  However, such content, and student interactions with that content, have seen little progress away from traditional videos. In consultation with myriad students, faculty, and learning designers, the open source Tapestry Tool (see tapestry-tool.com) was developed to allow for novel online multimodal course-content creation and engaging interaction; special emphasis was placed on facilitating student-faculty co-creation, and content reusability. The Tapestry Tool allows for the production of interactive, remixable, reusable, and extensible educational modules (aka ‘Tapestries’). The Tapestry Tool can be used by instructors or students to modify or create content, and to build interconnections amongst content.  Taken together, the Tapestry Tool will encourage non-linear, interactive, and evolving modes of teaching and learning.

During this workshop, through a variety of individual, small-group, and large-group activities (as described in the next section), participants will learn how to use the Tapestry Tool, and how to build Tapestries.  To that end, participants will be asked to bring a laptop to the workshop. They will also learn about novel use cases for the Tapestry Tool via the facilitators and through their interactions with fellow attendees.  Most importantly, participants will leave the workshop with new perspectives on online teaching and learning design.

Presenters: Steven Barnes (U British Columbia), Bita Jokar (U British Columbia) , Melanie Butt (U British Columbia) , Aidin Niavarani (U British Columbia)

Title: Identifying Complicity in Colonialism: Deploying Disrupting Interviews to Decolonize

Description: Anniversaries are a time to take stock. Thus, as Canadian institutions of higher education respond to the TRC’s Calls to Action, we must also take stock of how the University and its disciplines have been (and continue to be) implicated in colonialism, especially if we wish to develop different ways of teaching and learning. This workshop starts with a brief introduction to the Disrupting Interview and its relationship to the Decoding the Disciplines process. We outline guidelines for undertaking a Disrupting Interview, with an emphasis on relationship-building and its role in producing the “ethical space” (Ermine 2007) of the Disrupting Interview. Participants are then invited to brainstorm how the Disrupting Interview can help them identify potential complicit/colonial knowledge embedded in their discipline’s practices. We will model for the participants our own work with these interviews and how they can “unsettle” a participant and help lead to greater awareness of our complicity in colonial structures and processes. Drawing on our cross-institutional collaboration, we discuss methods for thinking about decolonizing practices at the personal and disciplinary level.

Presenters: Robin Attas (U Manitoba), Lee Easton (Mount Royal U), Gabrielle Lindstrom (U Calgary)

Michelle Yeo (Mount Royal U)

Title: CRICKET Hackathon: Co-creating an OER for Educational Developers and Instructional Designers

Description: A group of educational developers, learning technology professionals, instructional designers, administrators, and a librarian gathered to collaborate on the creation of a course (re)design open educational resource (OER) named CRICKET, or Course Renewal in a Kit, which was designed to be used and adapted for course design and related workshops. For this pre-conference session, we will share CRICKET, our process for creating it, and lessons learned (so far) that might benefit others who may wish to engage in OER creation at their own institutions. In addition, participants will also be invited to collaborate on CRICKET in the form of a hackathon—a facilitated, collaborative group event where people with shared knowledge come together to solve problems and come up with new solutions. As a hackathon, this session will invite hands-on resource creation by participants, and we will offer technical support to those users new to open educational resource creation or upload. Participants are encouraged to bring open resources to the workshop that they are willing to share; these resources can be works in progress, and presenters will assist in preparing them for upload. Those who do not have open resources to share will be invited to offer comment and feedback on the existing resources; time and guidance will be provided for this work. All contributors will be acknowledged on the front page of the resource. This workshop will also serve to bridge the field of educational development and curriculum development with the emerging field of OER while demonstrating how a range of faculty development professionals can collaborate to create meaningful open educational resources for their campus and beyond.

Presenters: Carolyn Ives(Thompson Rivers U) , Marie Bartlett (Thompson Rivers U), Brenna Clarke Gray(Thompson Rivers U) , Catharine Dishke Hondzel (Thompson Rivers U) , Brenda Smith (Thompson Rivers U)

Title: Using Learning Theory in Course Design to Enhance Learner Success

Description: As the COVID-19 pandemic forced a shift to online learning, the weaknesses of passive learning by traditional didactic methods in higher learning were exposed. This interactive workshop provides participants with an opportunity to explore ways to enhance learners’ success in keeping with an era of increased accountability and digital learning. Speakers will model teaching strategies informed by learning theory and describe neuroscientific and social processes of learning that can be applied to in-person, virtual, or hybrid classrooms. Through mini-lectures, web-based interactive polling, breakout sessions for small group peer interactions and large group reflections, this workshop will provide participants with creative suggestions on how to incorporate learning theory into their course design. By the end of this session, course directors and designers will have concrete ideas on how to improve their course design. This workshop is appropriate for all disciplines in higher learning and both novice and experienced attendees.

Presenters: Michelle Wong (U Toronto)  and Carilynne Yarascavitch (U Toronto)