scholarly journals Faculty Experience Teaching in an Interdisciplinary First-Year Seminar Program: The Case of the University of Guelph

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Murray ◽  
Peter Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Year ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Experience Teaching ◽  
Secondary Teaching ◽  
Il Y A ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First Year Seminar

First-year seminar programs have been a feature on the landscape of post-secondary teaching and learning in the United States, since they first appeared in the 1880s at Boston University (Mamrick, 2005). More recently, they have begun to appear at Canadian universities. For example, first-year seminars were introduced a decade ago at the University of Guelph, as a campus-wide initiative. To recognize the first decade that these unique, interdisciplinary seminars have been offered, faculty were surveyed to understand better the impact of the program on those teaching in it, as well as their perceptions of their students. The experience of the University of Guelph suggests first-year seminar programs can have a significant influence on the teaching and professional experience of faculty and encourages them to extend their networks beyond the department and across the campus. Significantly, seminars serve as sites for pedagogical experimentation that can influence departmental curricula. Faculty who teach a first-year seminar have high satisfaction and report myriad benefits to morale, teaching, and research. The salutary effects of a first-year seminar program are not local but would be transferable across post-secondary institutions. Aux États-Unis, on a beaucoup parlé des programmes de séminaires de première année dans le paysage de la pédagogie dans l’enseignement supérieur, depuis leur première apparition dans les années 1880 à l’Université de Boston (Mamrick, 2005). Plus récemment, ils ont commencé à apparaître dans les universités canadiennes. Par exemple, des séminaires de première année ont été introduits il y a dix ans à l’Université de Guelph en tant qu’initiative à l’échelle du campus. Afin de marquer la première décennie au cours de laquelle ces séminaires interdisciplinaires uniques ont été offerts, une enquête a été menée auprès des professeurs pour mieux comprendre les effets du programme sur les enseignants, ainsi que les perceptions de leurs étudiants. L’expérience de l’Université de Guelph suggère que les programmes de séminaires de première année peuvent avoir une influence importante sur l’enseignement et sur l’expérience professionnelle des professeurs et peuvent les encourager à élargir leur réseau au-delà du département et sur tout le campus. Il est significatif de constater que les séminaires servent de sites pour des expériences pédagogiques qui peuvent influencer les programmes d’études départementaux. Les professeurs qui enseignent un séminaire de première année en retirent une grande satisfaction et rapportent une myriade d’avantages pour le moral, l’enseignement, et la recherche. Les effets salutaires d’un programme de séminaires de première année ne sont pas ressentis uniquement au niveau local, ils sont transférables à tous les établissement d’enseignement supérieur.

scholarly journals Role-Playing Gamification Technologies with Adult Learners

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Kirsten Fantazir ◽  
Murray Bartley
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
First Year ◽  
Scholarship Of Teaching ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Criminal Justice Students ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
The Impact

The purpose of this quantitative scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research study was to examine the impact Classcraft had on adult criminal justice students in a face-to-face context in a western-Canadian institution. Specifically, the role-playing digital game was integrated into a first-year applied English and investigative writing course; learners earned points, received “real world” prizes, and completed random, content-related challenges with their teams. Using a survey with Likert-style and open-ended questions, it was determined that most elements of Classcraft motivated and engaged participants. The most impactful finding was that Classcraft promoted teamwork and problem-solving abilities. While little research has been conducted in adult post-secondary settings related to the implementation of Classcraft, it is evident more research is required in other post-secondary learning contexts.

scholarly journals A Systematic Approach to Evaluating Teaching and Learning Initiatives in Post-secondary Education

1969 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-76
Author(s):  
Cindy Ives ◽  
Lynn McAlpine ◽  
Terry Gandell
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Support Staff ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Evaluation Of Teaching ◽  
University Level ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Learning Interventions

This article describes a research-driven heuristic for the scholarly evaluation of teaching and learning interventions, which is systematic, collaborative, and discipline focused. We offer this guide to educational developers and other instructional support staff who are tracking the impact of interventions in teaching and learning with academic colleagues who lack backgrounds in educational evaluation or social-science research. Grounded in our experience in three different faculties, the framework may be modified to meet the needs of other contexts and disciplines. To aid such modification, we explicitly describe the thinking underlying the key decision-making points. We offer practical advice that may assist academics and academic developers with evaluation processes, thus addressing the scarcity in the literature of comprehensive, programmatic, scholarly, and systematic assessments of innovations in teaching and learning at the university level.  

Our Rightful Place

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry L. Birdwhistell ◽  
Deirdre A. Scaggs
Keyword(s):  
Women Students ◽  
The United States ◽  
University Of Kentucky ◽  
Campus Environment ◽  
Rightful Place ◽  
Women's Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

Since women first entered the University of Kentucky (UK) in 1880 they have sought, demanded, and struggled for equality within the university. The period between 1880 and 1945 at UK witnessed women’s suffrage, two world wars, and an economic depression. It was during this time that women at UK worked to take their rightful place in the university’s life prior to the modern women’s movement of the 1960s and beyond. The history of women at UK is not about women triumphant, and it remains an untidy story. After pushing for admission into a male-centric campus environment, women created women’s spaces, women’s organizations, and a women’s culture often patterned on those of men. At times, it seemed that a goal was to create a woman’s college within the larger university. However, coeducation meant that women, by necessity, competed with men academically while still navigating the evolving social norms of relationships between the sexes. Both of those paths created opportunities, challenges, and problems for women students and faculty. By taking a more women-centric view of the campus, this study shows more clearly the impact that women had over time on the culture and environment. It also allows a comparison, and perhaps a contrast, of the experiences of UK women with other public universities across the United States.

scholarly journals The academic productivity and impact of the University of Toronto Neurosurgery Program as assessed by manuscripts published and their number of citations

2015 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
pp. 561-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Lozano ◽  
Joseph Tam ◽  
Abhaya V. Kulkarni ◽  
Andres M. Lozano
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Published Data ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Gini Coefficients ◽  
Academic Activity ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Number Of Publications ◽  
The University ◽  
Number Of Citations ◽  
The Impact

OBJECT Recent works have assessed academic output across neurosurgical programs using various analyses of accumulated citations as a proxy for academic activity and productivity. These assessments have emphasized North American neurosurgical training centers and have largely excluded centers outside the United States. Because of the long tradition and level of academic activity in neurosurgery at the University of Toronto, the authors sought to compare that program's publication and citation metrics with those of established programs in the US as documented in the literature. So as to not rely on historical achievements that may be of less relevance, they focused on recent works, that is, those published in the most recent complete 5-year period. METHODS The authors sought to make their data comparable to existing published data from other programs. To this end, they compiled a list of published papers by neurosurgical faculty at the University of Toronto for the period from 2009 through 2013 using the Scopus database. Individual author names were disambiguated; the total numbers of papers and citations were compiled on a yearly basis. They computed a number of indices, including the ih(5)-index (i.e., the number of citations the papers received over a 5-year period), the summed h-index of the current faculty over time, and a number of secondary measures, including the ig(5), ie(5), and i10(5)-indices. They also determined the impact of individual authors in driving the results using Gini coefficients. To address the issue of author ambiguity, which can be problematic in multicenter bibliometric analyses, they have provided a source dataset used to determine the ih(5) index for the Toronto program. RESULTS The University of Toronto Neurosurgery Program had approximately 29 full-time surgically active faculty per year (not including nonneurosurgical faculty) in the 5-year period from 2009 to 2013. These faculty published a total of 1217 papers in these 5 years. The total number of citations from these papers was 13,434. The ih(5)-index at the University of Toronto was 50. CONCLUSIONS On the basis of comparison with published bibliometric data of US programs, the University of Toronto ranks first in terms of number of publications, number of citations, and ih(5)-index among neurosurgical programs in North America and most likely in the world.

Balance Problems: Neoliberalism and New Music in the American University and Ensemble

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 749-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Robin
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
New Music ◽  
First Century ◽  
American University ◽  
Duke University ◽  
Contemporary Status ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

Between 2013 and 2015, the ensemble yMusic collaborated with graduate student composers in a residency at Duke University. This article positions the residency as a result of the transformation of the university and the new-music ensemble from a technocratic Cold War paradigm to their contemporary status under the market- and branding-oriented logics of neoliberalism. The works written for yMusic by the Duke composers were deeply informed by the ensemble's musical brand, including its idiosyncratic instrumentation, preexisting repertory, collaborative ethos, and relationship to popular music. In accounting for the impact of these institutional developments on the production of musical works, this article argues that the economic and ideological practices of neoliberalism have discernible aesthetic consequences for American new music. Given the key role of the ensemble and the university in the contemporary music landscape, the issues raised by my ethnographic and historical analysis have significant implications for new music in the twenty-first century, and for the way composers work in the United States and beyond.

scholarly journals Developing Faculty Communities of Practice to Expand the Use of Effective Pedagogical Techniques

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Hoyert ◽  
Cynthia O'Dell
Keyword(s):  
Student Success ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Faculty Members ◽  
Retention Rates ◽  
First Year ◽  
Scholarship Of Teaching ◽  
Pedagogical Techniques ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Faculty Group

The scholarship of teaching and learning literature is replete with examples of pedagogical techniques that have been demonstrated to be effective in improving learning, motivation, and student success. The extension of these techniques beyond the original context has tended to be slow, difficult, and incomplete. The following paper examines an intervention designed to encourage the exploration and use of a variety of pedagogical techniques by faculty in a traditional, four-year college faculty within the context of the AASCU Re-imagining the First Year Initiative. Small groups of six to eight faculty, joined and created communities of practice. The groups were known as Pedagogical Interest Groups, or PIGs for short. The faculty read about and analyzed a series of pedagogical techniques and committed to introducing at least one technique into their courses to further explore the techniques. When the techniques were successful, the faculty members redesigned entire classes to expand the impact. The communities of practice were successful in encouraging faculty to explore a wide variety of techniques. The average faculty group explored eight different pedagogical techniques. Faculty were able to use the opportunity to experiment with techniques with the support from their colleagues in their PIG. A dozen techniques were explored across the PIGs and dozens of class sections have been completely redesigned. To date, over 2000 students have experienced redesigned courses. Measures of student success, satisfaction, and interest in those sections have increased. The effort has been accompanied by a robust increase in the campus-wide retention rates. ​

scholarly journals Impact of first-year seminar on student engagement, awareness, and general attitudes toward higher education

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bothaina A. Al-Sheeb ◽  
Mahmoud Samir Abdulwahed ◽  
Abdel Magid Hamouda
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Student Engagement ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
First Year ◽  
Content Type ◽  
College Of Law ◽  
First Year Seminars ◽  
Campus Resources ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First Year Seminar

Purpose This study intends to add to the existing body of literature on the impact of a newly implemented first year seminar in the College of Law and Business. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects the course have on students in regard to three aspects: student awareness and utilization of resources, interaction patterns, as well as, general interests and attitudes toward higher education. Design/methodology/approach The methodology of the assessment included analysis of a survey that has been conducted by the end of Spring 2014 semester. A quasi-experimental design was implemented to measure the impact of the intervention on students’ awareness and utilization of resources, interactions, general interests, and attitudes toward higher education. Through the SPSS application, the Mann Whitney U Test, and χ2 tests were used to check for significant differences while comparing the means or frequencies for both groups. For the three questions, the authors have used the 90 percent confidence level and the standard significance level p-value of 0.05 or less for statistical analysis. Findings The results indicated that the course had a highly significant positive impact on student attitudes and awareness of campus resources but had less significant impact on student interactions and utilization of resources. The results in this study reveal a positive impact for the first-year seminar course on student satisfaction and attitudes toward higher education as well as their awareness of campus resources. However, in terms of the course impact on student interaction, results conveyed that students who have participated in the first-year seminar course show a slightly better interaction rate with instructors, academic advisors, and close friends than those in the control group. Research limitations/implications The main limitation of this study was that the sample was small. Nonetheless, it has provided valuable insights into the understanding of the social and academic impact of first-year seminars on student engagement; through the use of comparison groups, this study increased the validity of prior research. Practical implications The first-year seminar course evaluated in this study demonstrated the potential to support and enhance student social and academic engagement during the first year of college. Based on the results in this study, the study team recommended some revisions to the current first-year seminar model (UNIV P100 Skills for University Success). The team proposed three models for subsequent first-year seminars at this university. Originality/value This study adds to the existing literature by examining the impact of a newly implemented first-year seminar course at the College of Law and Business at this university on both academic and non-academic aspects from the students’ perspective. These aspects were selected as retention and GPA effects have been widely explored; therefore, the focus is on the less studied emotional and social factors associated with student success and retention. The results from this study can act as a guide for universities intending to introduce a first-year seminar course as it gives clear guidelines on design, content, and course implementation, which can be useful in enhancing general student motivation and attitudes toward academic study and higher education in general.

The Impact of Investigations and the Interactive Whiteboard on Students’ Mathematical Practice in Investigations Classrooms

2013 ◽  
pp. 263-279
Author(s):  
Linda Boland
Keyword(s):  
Common Core ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Mathematics Curriculum ◽  
Mathematical Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Interactive Whiteboard ◽  
Elementary School Mathematics ◽  
Core Content ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Impact

This chapter relates the classroom experiences of 44 teachers across the United States, implementing Investigations in Number, Data, and Space, an elementary school mathematics curriculum. These teachers participated in a “tryout” of Investigations for the Interactive Whiteboard with their students. Investigations for the Interactive Whiteboard was developed in collaboration by Pearson, TERC, and SMART Board. The teachers’ reactions showcase how the use of this technology enhanced the teaching and learning of mathematics. These vignettes illuminate the essence of Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice (CCSSI, 2010), which describe how students should engage with the mathematical skills and concepts of the Common Core Content. The use of the interactive whiteboard engaged all students, motivated them to participate beyond their norm, allowed modeling of the mathematics which opened access to all students, and encouraged students to explain, argue, and defend their ideas while listening to and critiquing others, the essences of the Standards for Mathematical Practice.

Technology Shaping Education in Rural Communities

2018 ◽  
pp. 184-204
Author(s):  
Jillian R. Powers ◽  
Ann T. Musgrove ◽  
Jessica A. Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Rural Teachers ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Grade Levels ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Impact Of Technology ◽  
The Impact

This chapter examines how technology has shaped the teaching and learning process for individuals residing in rural areas. Research on the history and unique needs of rural communities and the impact of technology in these areas is discussed. Educational experiences of students across all grade levels, from early childhood though post-secondary education, is examined. Examples of innovative and creative uses educational technologies in distance and face-to-face settings are described from the perspective of rural teachers and students.

Multidisciplinary Group Case-Based Learning Environment

2018 ◽  
pp. 262-277
Author(s):  
Despo Ktoridou ◽  
Epaminondas Epaminonda ◽  
Achilleas Karayiannis
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Core Element ◽  
Innovation And Technology ◽  
Case Based Learning ◽  
Market Opportunities ◽  
New Type ◽  
Multidisciplinary Group ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Case Based

Technological, economic, and social developments represent dynamic changes for businesses across industries, creating opportunities for young entrepreneurs to build profitable companies. A key consideration relates to the need to recognize market opportunities and understand when and how to capitalize on them, whether starting a new type of business or growing on existing ideas; entrepreneurial thinking is a central attribute in cultivating an answer to this consideration. This chapter examines the impact of case-based learning introduced in a multidisciplinary undergraduate course, “Management of Innovation and Technology,” at the University of Nicosia. A core element in this process are the students' and lecturers' experiences, benefits, and challenges of cultivating entrepreneurial thinking. The findings can be useful for academics teaching entrepreneurship-related topics and seeking ways to incorporate innovative approaches in their teaching and learning processes in order to motivate students towards the development of entrepreneurial thinking in their professional engagements.

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