Hi Amy,
I would be pleased to send you a copy of the summary when it is done. I am hoping it can be the basis for ongoing contributions and a summary that is sent out maybe twice a year to everyone who contributes.
I have your email address and will send it to you. Anyone else want a copy?
I am not sure if I would be able to post it to this site after our online seminar is officially over, so anyone/everyone can see it. Vivian?
Alice
Alice Cassidy
Posts made by Alice Cassidy
Amy, that is a really interesting question and one that we need to always keep in mind as we plan what we do with students' money. The VP Students Office has been known to offer panels, usually in the Student Union Building and with pizza, where students are invited to ask questions of a panel about teaching and learning.
The couple of years that I sat on that panel I was often surprised to hear some students stand up and say "maybe you can have a place where faculty members go to become better teachers"... I get to of course reply, "we do".
This speaks to the need for teaching and learning centres to involve students in active ways, and to keep them in the loop. At TAG, we have an undergraduate student advisory committee, with whom we meet twice a year for dialogue. We also invite students to attend seminars, and even help lead some of them. Further, we invite undergrads to write a regular column called Student View in our newsletter. (I just presented on these things at the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education conference at the University of Alberta; when I get a summary of my and the audience's examples, I would be happy to send it along to each of you.)
Thanks for the CoP addition. Good to know.
On another note, I am not in the office tomorrow, and of course will be away from email on Canada Day too, so checking back to our online conversation on July 2.
Alice at UBC
The couple of years that I sat on that panel I was often surprised to hear some students stand up and say "maybe you can have a place where faculty members go to become better teachers"... I get to of course reply, "we do".
This speaks to the need for teaching and learning centres to involve students in active ways, and to keep them in the loop. At TAG, we have an undergraduate student advisory committee, with whom we meet twice a year for dialogue. We also invite students to attend seminars, and even help lead some of them. Further, we invite undergrads to write a regular column called Student View in our newsletter. (I just presented on these things at the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education conference at the University of Alberta; when I get a summary of my and the audience's examples, I would be happy to send it along to each of you.)
Thanks for the CoP addition. Good to know.
On another note, I am not in the office tomorrow, and of course will be away from email on Canada Day too, so checking back to our online conversation on July 2.
Alice at UBC
Hi Vivian and others, and welcome to my Alice colleague at Kwantlen. (folks, Alice Mac and I are famous for seeing each other at a conference or workshop and saying Hi Alice, Hi Alice. If you want to avoid confusion, Alice mac is at Kwantlen and I can be Alice C or just plain Alice. On the other hand, ambiguity is fun sometimes too, right Alice?)
Vivian, you asked me to say a bit more about our Communities of Practice. None of the 14 we have are exclusively online, but many of them have active communications online as part of the format. In fact, one of them, the Global Citizenship CoP, operates as a listserv so that as people join (by joing the list) they are automatically brought into 'easy touch' with all others in the group.
All of the ones that I am involved in, which is most of them, as a participant or organizer, use email (by us at TAG) to let them know about an upcoming event that relates to the CoP's topic, or to ask them what they want next. A subset of the CoP then register online for that event and show up and we see their smiling faces.
The main value of the CoP, I think, is that people really do feel like part of a community, and they know that when we send them an email, it is about what they are already interested in, be it community service learning, or graduate students, or undergraduate research. It saves them time as they don't have to look through a lot of emails to see what is of interest to them.
It would be great to have a listing of all the other kinds of Communities of this sort (like SCoPE) that we can link to, from TAG's site and to/from any others.
** Who out there knows of another one to add? I would be happy to summarize all the findings.**
I know of a Team-based Learning group that is active across North America for example.
On the funding contributed by student fees, I know that the University of Alberta, under the new presidency of Indira Samasekora (who was a great VP, Research here at UBC!) has started a fund that operates similiarly and in fact is also called the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund. About a year ago, I met students from the University of Calgary (and wrote an article in our TAG Newsletter after interviewing them and others involved in student government from UBC and the UK.
Shannon O'Connor, the then VP Academic for the Student Union at Calgary, told me about funding, for the past 4 years there, called Quality Money. Amongst other things, it provides grants to professors for innovative teaching. I must admit I don't know where the money came from though - student fees or? (The UBC fund was started about 20 years ago and since it was a levy on students' fees, they had to vote on it, and happily, they voted for it, as a way to improve teaching to help them and future students.)
So, I suspect there are more places that do this sort of thing, in various formats. **Norm, maybe you can shed some light on the way it works at Calgary to augment what I have reported from Shannon.**
Alice
Vivian, you asked me to say a bit more about our Communities of Practice. None of the 14 we have are exclusively online, but many of them have active communications online as part of the format. In fact, one of them, the Global Citizenship CoP, operates as a listserv so that as people join (by joing the list) they are automatically brought into 'easy touch' with all others in the group.
All of the ones that I am involved in, which is most of them, as a participant or organizer, use email (by us at TAG) to let them know about an upcoming event that relates to the CoP's topic, or to ask them what they want next. A subset of the CoP then register online for that event and show up and we see their smiling faces.
The main value of the CoP, I think, is that people really do feel like part of a community, and they know that when we send them an email, it is about what they are already interested in, be it community service learning, or graduate students, or undergraduate research. It saves them time as they don't have to look through a lot of emails to see what is of interest to them.
It would be great to have a listing of all the other kinds of Communities of this sort (like SCoPE) that we can link to, from TAG's site and to/from any others.
** Who out there knows of another one to add? I would be happy to summarize all the findings.**
I know of a Team-based Learning group that is active across North America for example.
On the funding contributed by student fees, I know that the University of Alberta, under the new presidency of Indira Samasekora (who was a great VP, Research here at UBC!) has started a fund that operates similiarly and in fact is also called the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund. About a year ago, I met students from the University of Calgary (and wrote an article in our TAG Newsletter after interviewing them and others involved in student government from UBC and the UK.
Shannon O'Connor, the then VP Academic for the Student Union at Calgary, told me about funding, for the past 4 years there, called Quality Money. Amongst other things, it provides grants to professors for innovative teaching. I must admit I don't know where the money came from though - student fees or? (The UBC fund was started about 20 years ago and since it was a levy on students' fees, they had to vote on it, and happily, they voted for it, as a way to improve teaching to help them and future students.)
So, I suspect there are more places that do this sort of thing, in various formats. **Norm, maybe you can shed some light on the way it works at Calgary to augment what I have reported from Shannon.**
Alice
Check out the attached file, which describes TAG at UBC in about a page.
Hello to Sylvia and others,
You asked if anyone offers workshopt that are open to faculty outside of our institutions. At TAG, UBC, many of our seminars (including in the Fall and Spring as well as during our annual TAG Institute, which is often in May or June), we allow anyone to register who finds us online; again that is www.tag.ubc.ca
In addition, many of the 14 Communities of Practice are open to people from other institutions. So, you can go ahead and sign up online for any of those who interest you.
For some of our workshops, such as the 3-day Instructional Skills Workshop or related multi-day workshops with limited enrolment, we need to give first preference to UBC folks. For these, if there is a space, we charge non-UBC people to attend. For the 3-day ISW, the rate is currently $500, for example.
We often collaborate with other instituions whereby someone from our place comes to facilitate or lead something there for no fee, then we do an equivalent 'trade' at a future date. We have had arrangements like this with colleagues from SFU, UVic, and Kwantlen University College to name a few.
On the sharing workshop material, we do post some materials, including handouts or powerpoints, from some sessions. Check out our website for these. Our Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has a lot of such material presented by our Visiting Scholars over the past 3 years.
Cheers,
Alice
You asked if anyone offers workshopt that are open to faculty outside of our institutions. At TAG, UBC, many of our seminars (including in the Fall and Spring as well as during our annual TAG Institute, which is often in May or June), we allow anyone to register who finds us online; again that is www.tag.ubc.ca
In addition, many of the 14 Communities of Practice are open to people from other institutions. So, you can go ahead and sign up online for any of those who interest you.
For some of our workshops, such as the 3-day Instructional Skills Workshop or related multi-day workshops with limited enrolment, we need to give first preference to UBC folks. For these, if there is a space, we charge non-UBC people to attend. For the 3-day ISW, the rate is currently $500, for example.
We often collaborate with other instituions whereby someone from our place comes to facilitate or lead something there for no fee, then we do an equivalent 'trade' at a future date. We have had arrangements like this with colleagues from SFU, UVic, and Kwantlen University College to name a few.
On the sharing workshop material, we do post some materials, including handouts or powerpoints, from some sessions. Check out our website for these. Our Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has a lot of such material presented by our Visiting Scholars over the past 3 years.
Cheers,
Alice