How about a Start, Stop, Continue Retrospective? By Geneviève Maheux-Pelletier, Interim Director of the Teaching Commons September is always an exciting and challenging time. Exciting because it brings renewal to our academic lives and challenging, well, for the same reason. New courses, new students, new initiatives, new committees, and the busyness of it all often […]
Experiential Education: A Pedagogical Approach for All Ages By Virginia Grimaldi I have been an educator for over a decade and have taught every age group from kindergarten to university, in four different continents. One pedagogical approach that I have found a lot of success with in my teaching practice on the whole is the […]
Learning outcomes for life: intentional, explicit and practiced By Peter Wolf, Higher Education Consultant (Originally posted and adapted from http://blog-en.heqco.ca/2016/01/peter-wolf-learning-outcomes-for-life-intentional-explicit-and-practiced/) Learning outcomes have been a key part of my professional life in higher education for the past 25 years. I completed a degree in social work at McGill University way back in the 80’s and haven’t […]
Using a Soft, Throwable Microphone to Support Interactive Learning in Large Lecture Courses By Natalie Neill At the Teaching in Focus conference in May, I spoke about the successful trial run that I conducted with the Catchbox – a foam-encased, throwable microphone – in one of my large lecture courses last year. As the new […]
Teaching in Focus 2019: Reflecting on Our Practice and Praxis By Lisa Endersby The annual Teaching in Focus (TIF) conference is a welcome opportunity to reflect on the act and art of teaching. This was particularly evident in this year’s conference theme, Intentionality in Your Teaching: From Practice to Praxis. Presenters and attendees were invited and […]
May Journal Club By Brian Nairn The Teaching Commons hosted the May 2019 meeting of the Journal Club this past Wednesday, May 8. Our discussion of Development of a New Framework to Guide, Assess, and Evaluate Student Reflections in a University Sustainability Course (https://teachingcommons.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/WhalenPaez_2019_Framework_to_Assess_Reflection.pdf) was an interesting exploration of experiential education and the challenges associated with assessing […]
Use Turnitin® as a learning tool Yelin Su, Educational Developer Academic integrity and plagiarism are great concerns in today’s post-secondary sector. There have been numerous studies reporting high percentages of plagiarism in higher education across the world (Bokosmaty, Ehrich, Eady, & Bell, 2019). Numerous software programs, free or paid, are available to detect and deter plagiarism […]
Retrospective, Part 2: Social Inequality and Teaching in the Academy [1] The Teaching Commons publishes a weekly blog since September 2015. Every contribution has enriched the dialogue about teaching and learning at York. As we are gearing up to Teaching in Focus, York’s yearly teaching and learning conference, we will be republishing some of the most […]
How do I teach popular culture without becoming a victim of it? Bridget Cauthery This winter term that has just come to an end is one that I will not likely forget any time soon. Yes one of my courses ballooned to 700 students across 20 sections, yes I had four new TAs to train […]
What is the effect of a first year seminar on students’ use of research resources? Natasha May The March Journal Club took place on March 13th and involved a discussion of the article Changes in First-Year Students’ Use of Research Resources: Impacts of an Interdisciplinary Seminar Program on Research and Literacy Learning Outcomes. This article focuses on […]