What are Teaching Squares?
Teaching Squares attempts to enhance teaching and build community through a structured, non-evaluative process of classroom observation and shared reflection.
A Teaching Square consists of four faculty participants (ideally from different disciplines) who:
• Observe at least one class taught by each Square Partner (a total of 3 observations)
• Reflect on the class observation experience
• Share reflections with Square Partners
• Share Square observations with all participants as a whole
Your Teaching Squares experience offers you the opportunity to enhance your own teaching by observing your Square Partners in an actual classroom situation.
By participating in the Teaching Squares Project you will have an opportunity to:
• observe, analyze and celebrate good teaching
• increase your understanding of and appreciation for the work of colleagues
• experience the joy and confusion of being a student
• formulate a plan for enhancing your own teaching based on your observations and reflections and the shared reflections of your Square Partners.
Project Timeline
The Teaching Squares project extends over a period of several weeks. Setting dates in advance allows you to complete all components tasks with a minimal disruption to your normal schedule and without much administration.
Square Organizational Responsibilities
Each Square can set its own rules for operating. We have included our suggestions below.
You and your Square Partners will need to determine the:
1. Amount of notice required for a classroom visit
Since the purpose of Teaching Squares is to observe you Square Partners in their “natural” state, we suggest that 24 hours notice be given. A bit more notice guarantees that your Square Partner can return your email and confirm your visit.
2. Role of the visiting professor
We best fulfill our Teaching Squares goal by restricting our role to that of an observer. Most students are very curious about the presence of a visitor in the classroom. Feel free to introduce the visiting professor and explain the purpose for their visit and their role (observer or participant) in the class session.
3. Information exchange
The class that your Partner visits should be as “normal” as possible. The visiting Partner should understand that he/she may have missed some background information critical to understanding that day’s material. Some Squares prefer to exchange course information prior to the classroom visit or to deliver this information to the visiting professor at the time of the classroom visit.
5. Classroom visit duration
Class times can vary considerably. Observing an entire class session from start to finish offers the best (and least disruptive) experience for you, your Square Partner, and the students. If scheduling conflicts do not allow you to stay for an entire class, discuss with your Square Partner the least disruptive means of joining and leaving the class. We think that a visit of no less than an hour is required in order to adequately sample the classroom experience.
6. Square Share time and location
Your Square Share should occur before the final All Squares Celebration. We have found that setting the Square Share date at the organizational meeting greatly reduces both the time devoted to Square administration and the likelihood of a scheduling conflict. We strongly urge you to set your Square Share date as soon as possible and let facilitators know when the date is.
We strongly encourage you to consider conducting your Square Share in a relaxing location free from the possibility of interruption, perhaps even off campus.
The Square Share
After completing your classroom visits, you will need to organize your reflections to share with your colleagues.
Your Teaching Squares experience offers you the opportunity to improve your own teaching by observing your Square Partners in an actual classroom situation. It is NOT an invitation to offer feedback to improve your Partners’ teaching.
Keep your reflections positive and personal. Offering opinions (even positive ones) or direct observations on a Square Partner’s teaching creates a judgmental climate and undermines the trust necessary to the success of the Teaching Squares experience.
These questions may be helpful in shaping feedback:
1) What did you observe that you might use to make your own teaching more effective?
2) About Teaching Squares
• What are some specific things you liked about the project?
• What are some suggestions for improving the project?
3) How did your participation in Teaching Squares give you a greater appreciation of?
• Our students? Our colleagues? Our school (s)? The teaching profession?
If interested, please contact Roberta.burke@mohawkcollege.ca
August 27th, 2010
Tom Wujec presents some surprisingly deep research into the “marshmallow problem” — a seemingly simple team-building exercise that involves dry spaghetti, one yard of tape and a marshmallow. Who can build the tallest tower with these ingredients? And why does a surprising group always beat the average?
Could your team tap into individual’s strengths and innovation skills to win the Marshmallow Challenge?
Go here to view presentation.
Centre for Teaching and Learning, Cate Walker Hammond
August 20th, 2010
Your Career Wellbeing and Your Identity
People underestimate the impact of their career on their overall wellbeing
by Tom Rath and James K. Harter, Ph.D. Adapted from Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements (Gallup Press)
Do you like what you do each day?
This might be the most basic, yet important, wellbeing question we can ask ourselves. Yet only 20% of people can give a strong “yes” in response.
At a fundamental level, we all need something to do, and ideally something to look forward to, when we wake up every day. What you spend your time doing each day shapes your identity, whether you are a student, parent, volunteer, retiree, or have a more conventional job.
We spend the majority of our waking hours during the week doing something we consider a career, occupation, vocation, or job. When people first meet, they ask each other, “What do you do?” If your answer to that question is something you find fulfilling and meaningful, you are likely thriving in Career Wellbeing.
People usually underestimate the influence of their career on their overall wellbeing. But Career Wellbeing is arguably the most essential of the five elements of wellbeing. If you don’t have the opportunity to regularly do something you enjoy — even if it’s more of a passion or interest than something you get paid to do — the odds of your having high wellbeing in other areas diminish rapidly. People with high Career Wellbeing are more than twice as likely to be thriving in their lives overall.
Imagine that you have great social relationships, financial security, and good physical health — but you don’t like what you do every day. Chances are, much of your social time is spent worrying or complaining about your lousy job. And this causes stress, taking a toll on your physical health. If your Career Wellbeing is low, it’s easy to see how it can cause deterioration in other areas over time.
Losing your identity
To appreciate how much our careers shape our identity and wellbeing, consider what happens when someone loses a job and remains unemployed for a full year. A landmark study published in The Economic Journal revealed that unemployment might be the only major life event from which people do not fully recover within five years. This study followed 130,000 people for several decades, allowing researchers to look at the way major life events such as marriage, divorce, birth of a child, or death of a spouse affect our life satisfaction over time.
One of the more encouraging findings was that, even in the face of some of life’s most tragic events like the death of a spouse, after a few years, people do recover to the same level of wellbeing they had before their spouse passed away. But this was not the case for those who were unemployed for a prolonged period of time — particularly not for men. Our wellbeing actually recovers more rapidly from the death of a spouse than it does from a sustained period of unemployment.
This doesn’t mean that getting fired will harm your wellbeing forever. The same study also found that being laid off from a job in the last year did not result in any significant long-term changes. The key is to avoid sustained periods of unemployment (more than a year) when you are actively looking for a job but unable to find one. In addition to the obvious loss of income from prolonged unemployment, the lack of regular social contact and the daily boredom might be even more detrimental to your wellbeing.
You don’t need to earn a paycheck to have thriving Career Wellbeing. But you do need to find something that you enjoy doing.
You don’t need to earn a paycheck to have thriving Career Wellbeing. But you do need to find something that you enjoy doing — and have an opportunity to do it every day. Whether that means working in an office, volunteering, raising your children, or starting your own business, what matters most is being engaged in the career or occupation you choose.
Waiting for the bell to ring
Think back to when you were in school sitting through a class in which you had very little interest. Perhaps your eyes were fixed on the clock or you were staring blankly into space. You probably remember the anticipation of waiting for the bell to ring so you could get up from your desk and move on to whatever was next. More than two-thirds of workers around the world experience a similar feeling by the end of a typical workday.
To explore why so many people are disengaged at work, we recruited 168 employees and studied their engagement, heart rate, stress levels, and various emotions throughout the day. Before the study began, we collected data about each employee’s level of engagement. We examined the differences between employees who were generally engaged in their jobs and those who were not. As part of the experiment, the participants carried a handheld device that alerted them at various points in the day when we would ask them what they were doing, who they were with, and several other questions about their mood.
We also asked each participant to wear a small heart rate monitor. At the end of each day, these monitors, which were smaller than a quarter and attached to the chest like a sticker, were connected to a computer to download data. This allowed us to study the relationship between fluctuations in heart rate and various events throughout the day.
Saliva samples were also collected to gauge stress levels throughout the day (via the stress hormone, cortisol). Whenever the handheld device beeped and requested an entry in the electronic journal, participants were asked to spit into a small tube. The cortisol levels in the saliva provided us with a direct physiological measure of stress levels at various points each day.
After reviewing all of these data, it was clear that when people who are engaged in their jobs show up for work, they have an entirely different experience than those who are disengaged. For those who were engaged, happiness and interest throughout the day were significantly higher. Conversely, stress levels were substantially higher for those who were disengaged. Perhaps most strikingly, disengaged workers’ stress levels decreased and their happiness increased toward the end of the workday. People with low engagement and low Career Wellbeing are simply waiting for the workday to end.
The Five Essential Elements of Wellbeing
For more than 50 years, Gallup scientists have been exploring the demands of a life well-lived. More recently, in partnership with leading economists, psychologists, and other acclaimed scientists, Gallup has uncovered the common elements of wellbeing that transcend countries and cultures. This research revealed the universal elements of wellbeing that differentiate a thriving life from one spent suffering. They represent five broad categories that are essential to most people:
Career Wellbeing: how you occupy your time — or simply liking what you do every day
Social Wellbeing: having strong relationships and love in your life
Financial Wellbeing: effectively managing your economic life
Physical Wellbeing: having good health and enough energy to get things done on a daily basis
Community Wellbeing: the sense of engagement you have with the area where you live
References
Clark, A.E., Diener, E., Georgellis, Y., & Lucas, R.E. (2008). Lags and leads in life satisfaction: A test of the baseline hypothesis. The Economic Journal, 118(529), F222-F243.
Stone, A., & Harter, J.K. (2009). The experience of work: A momentary perspective. Omaha, NE: Gallup.
Global Practice Leader Tom Rath is the author of the bestsellers How Full Is Your Bucket?, StrengthsFinder 2.0, Strengths Based Leadership, and Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements.
Jim Harter, Ph.D., is Chief Scientist, Workplace Management and Wellbeing for Gallup’s workplace management practice. He is coauthor of the New York Times bestsellers 12: The Elements of Great Managing and Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements.Top of Form
Copyright © 2010 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.
Centre for Teaching and Learning, Cate Walker Hammond
August 13th, 2010
Greetings during this muggy summer.
I find that a framework often works for me and I thought I would pass along a couple that might work for those plotting out/developing their courses in eLearn. Moving courses online or from one platform to another is a great opportunity to check in with the content (activities, resources, assessments, etc.) and make sure there are opportunities in the course to tap into the strengths of every learner. Where previously you discovered the perfect article, you might want to add a complementary video or podcast for different learning preferences. Instead of writing an essay you might also include an option to create a video or present their research and conclusions in an alternate format - the same rubric could apply for assessment!
Two Frameworks
Summer is the time to travel and the time to garden, so we will frame the pedagogy and course development with this in mind.
A travel analogy for blueprinting the major components of your course:
1. Identify the destination: Where do you need the learner to be?
2. Inspire the learner: How to promote the journey?
3. Share the language: Is there common understanding of concepts?
4. Provide the tools: Which resources, texts, instructions, quizzes, checklists, guides?
5. Focus the context: How and when will they use what they know?
6. Assess the arrival: Is the journey complete/satisfactory? How do you know?
For those of you further along in eLearn, here’s a garden analogy for development that will ease re-development and rollover:
Perennials - survive year after year
- policies and procedures that you write once and use “forever”
- these chunks can be used in multiple courses
Annuals - require re-planting each year
- these include: applications of theories and root knowledge; assessments and activities; articles and readings
- update on an annual basis to ensure currency and relevance
Cut Flowers - only briefly survive
- these include current news and sites controlled by others
- if you don’t own it, it is subject to change
Transplanting - easier to move and maintain small pieces
- always keep the modular in mind!
I do hope these bits and bytes assist with your exploration of online learning and support!
If you want to follow up on these ideas or any teaching and learning questions and/or concerns, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Take care,
Peggy
CTL
August 5th, 2010
Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)
Practitioner Certificate 2010-2011
Red River College
Gain the requisite skills and abilities to effectively practice in the RPL field, or related fields such as adult learning, human resources, career and employment counseling and qualification recognition. Learn key functions such as advising, assessing and the facilitating of RPL practices and systems. This program is an expansion of RRC’s existing RPL courses and is designed for those entering the RPL field as well as experienced RPL practitioners. Opportunities to prove prior learning in the RPL field will be available for all courses.
The RPL Certificate (300 hours) includes 6 courses:
RPL Foundation
RPL Practitioner
RPL Special Issues (summer Institute – one week June 2011 )
Train the Trainer: Portfolio
RPL independent Study
RPL Practicum
RPL Capstone
Courses are delivered through Distance and/or Classroom Delivery
For more information, please email dblower@rrc.mb.ca
To register, visit www.rrc.ca/rplcertificate
August 4th, 2010
If you are adding content to your eLearn course, you might be wondering what’s legal and what’s not regarding copyright. Limbo is the name of the game right now as we wait for Bill C32 (the Copyright Modernization Act) to become law. In the meantime, your librarians can help! Check out our comprehensive guide that aims to tell you how you can use various types of materials in your courses and remain within the law.
Have questions? Give us a shout - copyright can be complicated and we’re here to help!
July 21st, 2010
When I was at the STLHE conference I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist from Kansas State University speak on the power of technology to enhance the learning environment. This is a fellow who spends his time in a remote village with no technology!
I am sure that many of you have seen the video that he had one of his classes produce, “ A Vision of Students Today”, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
Most faculty are just getting started with fundamentals of eLearning. Posting content is just phase 1 of this transition, providing improved access to information for students. Enriching the classroom learning is way beyond “posting resources/content” - it is far more about creating interactive learning environments for students.
Dr. Wesch gave a very simple example about how in past lectures, he would have given the students two articles to read and summarize in a discussion forum. He describes how with the use of LMS, each student finds a “related article” and posts a summary for all to read. This provides a richer learning experience resulting in 100 articles with 100 summaries – collective wisdom.
If students want content they can find it anywhere anytime. Faculty provide the context to make sense of the content. They help students sort through the multitude of information available and direct them to appropriate resources. The most important role for faculty is to create and facilitate learning activities, monitor discussions, explain concepts, synthesize information, teach students how to apply learning in real life situations, think critically, and evaluate student progress… This is phase 2 of the journey- integrating technology to enhance learning!
The eLearn team tried to get Dr. Wesch to speak at our college this past May but he was unavailable (new baby), maybe next year we will have the opportunity to hear his journey from content to context.
June 30th, 2010
When I was at the STLHE (Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education) conference I met Tara Lee, a math teacher from Nova Scotia Community College. She shared with me a survival strategy that she implemented for keeping up with email.
She teaches math online and found it difficult to keep up with the email questions in a timely way. So she told her students that she would give up to 5% bonus marks for correctly answering “math related” questions posted on the discussion group. She said that the result was beyond her expectation. She said that the students started teaching one another, expanding on someone else’s explanation, and pointing students to other resources on the internet that had good explanations of the math concept being learned. She NEVER answered one email question – just complimented students on their resourcefulness. She monitored that the “correct” answer was given and counted the number of opportunities and the individual responses to calculate the bonus marks.
While some students never bothered, majority of students achieved the 5% bonus marks. It was so successful that next year, she plans to increase participation to 10%.
June 30th, 2010
Posted by Ken Steele on Academica - Top 10, June 23, 2010
Jim Black on “Creating a Retention Culture”: Our strategic partner, Dr. Jim Black of SEM Works, has published a new white paper on Strategic Enrolment Management, available to readers of Academica’s Top Ten on our website. In it, he argues that student retention programs possess marginal power to impact retention outcomes without appropriate campus culture. He outlines 10 conditions for student success, including encouraging effort and practice, managing classroom behaviour, providing early feedback and in particular, developing personal connections with fellow students, and with faculty and staff mentors. To create cultural change, an institution must communicate “what’s in it for me?” — in a tangible way that meaningfully connects with the performance appraisal or tenure process for staff and faculty. Creating a Retention Culture (PDF)
June 28th, 2010
It may seem that big problems require big solutions, but advertising guru Rory Sutherland says many flashy, expensive fixes are just obscuring better, simpler answers. To illustrate, he uses behavioral economics and hilarious examples. Rory believes we SHOULD sweat the small stuff!
Rory Sutherland is a key player in the advertising revolution in brand identities, designing cutting-edge, interactive campaigns that blur the line between ad and entertainment. Astute…and oh so irreverant!
Go here to view presentation.
Centre for Teaching and Learning, Cate Walker Hammond
June 18th, 2010
Previous Posts