The Teaching & Learning Summer 2019 Conference | Academic Newsletter | Seneca Polytechnic

by Linda Facchini and Karen Spiers, the Teaching & Learning Centre

in the September 2019 issue

Nearly sixty faculty members participated in the Teaching & Learning Centre’s Summer Conference on August 22 and 23, focusing on student engagement. The conference featured a keynote speaker, demonstrations of digital tools, and micro-teaching sessions.

Marcy Slapcoff, Director of the Office of Science Education at McGill University, kicked off the conference Thursday morning with a presentation on design thinking strategies for student engagement. Marcy’s keynote address outlined the five elements of human-centered design thinking:

• Empathy: solving problems from the perspective of others
• Listening: observing and listening to the needs of others
• Creative confidence: working in teams to find innovative solutions
• Making it real: learning from trial and error
• Iteration: getting feedback, refining and improving

Simple, interactive activities illustrated each principle. Participants shared nicknames, conducted interviews, expressed concepts with drawings and created storyboards, as Marcy enthusiastically demonstrated how each activity could be incorporated into a lesson. In the afternoon, Marcy helped us further explore design thinking engagement strategies in a hands-on workshop. Examples of classroom exercises included assessments of background knowledge, alternative approaches to interviewing, mind-mapping, role play, and debriefing sessions. The resources that Marcy shared, as well as a recording of the keynote presentation, are available on the Teaching & Learning Summer Conference website.

Also on Thursday afternoon, the Teaching & Learning Centre team demonstrated several digital tools for online and in-class collaboration, including

• Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, for synchronous remote classroom learning and lecture capture
• Screencast-o-Matic, for recording lectures and screen capture
• Adobe Express* Videos, a simple video authoring tool
• Padlet, an online collaborative bulletin board
• Mentimeter*, for classroom polls and quizzes

Micro-teaching sessions took place on Thursday and Friday of the conference. These sessions were designed to help faculty increase student engagement by exploring strategies, tools, and resources that could be used inside and outside the classroom.

In preparation for Thursday’s micro-teaching session, faculty were provided with a lesson plan beforehand and asked to prepare a short, 15-minute lesson for which they would present and receive peer feedback on key areas such as organization of their lesson, presentation of material, interaction with students and content knowledge, as well as effectively using technology to engage students.

A closer look at student engagement theory on Friday morning rounded out the program, with a collaborative discussion on motivation and active learning principles and techniques. Participants shared thoughts on creating a suitable learning environment that was community-driven, appropriately challenging, and varied.

Friday’s micro-teaching session provided faculty with a new opportunity to create a lesson using material they were most familiar with while incorporating the peer feedback they had received on Thursday along with some of the new tools and strategies they learned throughout the conference sessions to enhance student engagement. Faculty then presented the new lessons to their peers in the afternoon and closed out the day with a second peer review and feedback about their lesson and engagement strategies.

Visit the Resources page of the Teaching & Learning Summer Conference website to see the presentations and resources shared by Marcy Slapcoff and Seneca’s Teaching & Learning Centre.

View the September 2019 issue of the Academic Newsletter.