Category: Poster Session

Eric E Hall, Anthony Weaver, Caroline J Ketcham

High impact practices (HIPs), such as study abroad, internships, learning communities, and undergraduate research, have repeatedly been shown to positively affect academic success (Kuh, 2008), yet not all students have equal access to these experiences. One cohort who often have high time demands and resource constraints are student-athletes (SAs); limiting their opportunities to participate in HIPs and potentially negatively impacting their academic experiences and success. SAs face unique challenges, such as heavy time commitments to their sport including seasons that overlap multiple semesters and pressure to achieve athletic success, which can reduce access to and involvement in HIPs. Read More …

Melanie J Hamilton, Andy M Benoit

A growing number of faculty at colleges in Canada are developing their scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) skills. However, little is known about the college faculty experience (Simmons & Poole, 2016) of conceptualizing and developing a research proposal and the needed supports. According to Bazeley (2003), there is no single path to developing an academic research career, and most academics have different discipline paths to research experience. There are many interpretations in the literature about early career researchers (ECR); however, the European Research Commission uses the term Early-Stage researcher and defines it as “researchers in the first four years (full-time equivalent) of their research activity, including the period of research training.” (De Montfort University, 2018). Read More …

Bjarte Hannisdal, Einar Iversen

Data analysis and statistics play a key role in the geosciences, but have been nearly absent in traditional geology BSc curricula. At our department, geology students have historically been offered a one-week intensive lecture-based course at the MSc level. In 2017, the authors launched a major revision of both form and content of this course. Our goal is for students to adopt computational practices as a means of developing their expertise in solving authentic, ill-structured problems (Scherer et al., 2017, J. Geosci. Educ. 65).

As a first step we reoriented the form of instruction towards real-time problem-solving using the programming language R and the RStudio desktop interface. Read More …

Sadie Hebert, Jessamina Blum, Deena Wassenberg, Sehoya Cotner

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are laboratory experiences that involve students in five dimensions – use of scientific practices, discovery, broadly relevant work, collaboration, and iteration. Based on several learning theories including social activism, social cognitive, and situated learning, we know that participating in real-world, relevant, collaborative experiences that connect to the world outside of the classroom can lead to meaningful learning. In the CURE framework, real-world, relevant experiences come from the dimension of broadly relevant work. However, implementing the “broadly relevant work” dimension is logistically challenging in a large-enrollment, non-majors course and it is unclear if this dimension is necessary for positive student outcomes. Read More …

Melissa Hills, Kathy Davies, Carolyn Ives

Meiosis is the foundation of heredity, and a core concept in genetics. It is also one that is challenging to learn, and ingrained misconceptions are common amongst students. As meiosis is a dynamic process, traditional lecture formats alone are not effective in maximizing student learning of the concept. Meiosis, therefore, provides a useful test case to evaluate approaches to generate and sustain meaningful learning in biology. Video is frequently used as a learning tool in and out of the classroom. Students often rely on online videos on platforms such as YouTube; however, these videos can lack key detail, and some may reinforce existing misconceptions. Read More …

Rune Hjelsvold, Terje Stafseng

Academic competence and dedication are key components in cultivating an effective learning culture. However, non-orchestrated teaching, research, and administrative obligations limit the capabilities of faculty members to keep up with technological progressions and latest developments in their fields. Moreover, only a few studies have shown how teaching faculty, collectively and supported by higher management support, successfully contribute to the development of a learning culture.

This article studies the long-term effect of a three-year old project involving teaching faculty of five different bachelor programs in computer science. Faculty management initiated the process by inviting an expert from the software industry to work with faculty members to identify skills and knowledge, which were important in computer science practice, but were not properly addressed in the curricula. Read More …

Yao Hu, Qun Hao, Ya Zhou, Yifan Huang

Classroom is the basic and critical environment for higher education in common cases. However, this traditional face-to-face teaching and learning environment can hardly draw the attention of the students if the lecturer is not talkative. Some theoretical courses are complained to be boring and some other practical courses are not easy to understand if no demonstration experiments are involved. On the other hand, students in/from East Asia are often too shy to address their opinions and questions. Due to the low lecturer/student ratio, typically less than 1:100 in some engineering courses in Universities and Colleges, most of the students gave up the chance of one-to-one communication with the lecturers even when they were confused. Read More …

Donna Hurford, Yan Ding

We are two academic developers, one at a Chinese university and the other at a Danish university. Through the ‘International Network Project’ (Danish Ministry of Education and Research) we are intent on developing a new intercultural research partnership by exploring shared professional and academic interests. We are interested in exploring how our collaboration on these authentic, international projects (Leask, 2009) contributes to our intercultural learning and to review the potential of such international partnerships for academic developers.

Whilst academic development and its associated learning culture or cultures has a longer history in Danish than Chinese universities, identifying opportunities to better understand and develop our respective learning cultures is applicable in both contexts. Read More …

Olga Ioannidou, Andeas Hetmanek, Frank Fischer, Tina Seidel

As the world is faced with critical issues such as climate change, or the use of vaccines, the call for teaching scientific literacy to pre-service and in-service teachers and students is more prominent than ever. Socio-scientific argumentation (SSA) has been introduced to science education as an attempt to promote civic and scientific literacy (Sadler, 2007). Although teachers embraced the concept as beneficial for students’ learning, they report difficulties in teaching in SSA contexts, because they often do not feel confident and well-prepared to address the complexity of these issues (Juntunen & Aksela, 2014). Read More …

Mohammed Islam, Reza Taheri, Sarah McBane, Rahmat Talukder

The 1990 publication of “Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate” by Ernest Boyer paved the way for the eventual birth of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Reflective of the ISSOTL 2018 conference threads, but most specifically to “An inclusive learning culture“ and ”A culture that learns”, this poster will focus on the faculty perceptions of SoTL, their engagement in SoTL, and recognition of SoTL in US colleges/schools of pharmacy. SoTL is gaining momentum within academic pharmacy, as pharmacy curricula evolve along with the profession, creating multiple opportunities for faculty to pursue scholarship (McLaughlin et al., 2013; Peeters, 2013; Mehvar 2017). Read More …

Mari Karm, Anu Sarv, Airi Niilo, Ene Voolaid, Merje Miliste, James Groccia

Learning-centered approach to teaching and active student engagement becomes more and more valued in universities. Therefore, the goal of pedagogical courses should be supporting the development of learning-centered teaching. Åkerlind (2007) supports the position that the focus of teaching improvement is influenced by the teacher’s conception of teaching. If the teacher holds a content-centered approach, particular strategies are used to build up better content knowledge. On the contrary, in the learning-centered approach the purpose of teaching is to improve student learning and an emphasis is also placed on continuous improvement of one’s own teaching (Postareff & Lindblom-Ylänne, 2008, Eley, 2006). Read More …

John Keating, Laura Sahm, William Joynes, Sima Purohit

Background

It can be a daunting task for an undergraduate student to comprehend the structure of their curriculum and how it relates to the profession they wish to practise post-graduation. It is akin to arriving in a new city but without a map, or trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle without access to the puzzle image. Without signposting to students the reasons underpinning the design of their curriculum, their engagement can falter and learning suffer.

The Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland (PSI) Core Competency Framework (CCF) is the cornerstone of the PSI’s programme to reform/inform training and education of undergraduate and practising Irish pharmacists. Read More …

Caroline Ketcham, Anthony Weaver, Jillian Kinzie

Capstone experiences are a high impact practice that many institutions identify as ‘transformational’ experiences for their students. There is currently very little research on what constitutes a high-quality capstone experience. Particularly, what the various types of capstones experiences are and whether students from a variety of diverse backgrounds receive the transformational outcomes. This poster will highlight the 1st year outcomes of a multi-year, multi-institutional model of research on capstone experiences. Leaders guide participants through 3 years of team-oriented deep dive questions related to capstone experiences. Of primary interest is addressing how the landscape of capstone experiences is changing as our student and institutional needs continue to increase. Read More …

Kelly Keus, Neil Haave

Many students inhabit a learning culture in which the dominant study strategy is to memorize-regurgitate-purge which leads to superficial learning (Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014). In order to promote deep learning that connects to students’ life goals, we developed a learning philosophy (LP) assignment which promotes students’ metacognition of their learning. Metacognition is known to promote student learning outcomes (Coutinho, 2007; Girash, 2014; Tanner, 2012). Our study was designed to determine whether our LP assignment promoted students’ specific learning outcomes (i.e., exam performance) and whether student construction of their LP promoted their general learning outcomes (i.e., intellectual development) as indicated by their cognitive complexity. Read More …

Klodiana Kolomitro, Natasha Kenny, Suzanne Le-May Sheffield

The roles of educational developers have been redefined, reimagined, and repurposed. Beach et al. (2016) have witnessed, “mounting evidence that faculty development has become a more essential support for institutional strategic initiatives”(p. 1). Pressures are high on teaching and learning centres to do more with less as educational developers are being called upon to address institutional priorities and metrics of success and are increasingly functioning as organizational change agents. This paradigm shift has positioned developers with a unique role of becoming predictive in their work by anticipating and effecting institutional changes and new directions. Read More …

Nancy Krusen, Debra Rollins

The presentation reports outcomes of a first-trial objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) used to assess clinical competence. OSCEs are brief, multiple stations assessing a variety of clinical practice skills. The presentation analyzes the educational value of OSCE as a performance-based tool. The presentation supports a culture of learning, assuring skill prior to clinical practice placement. We describe task-specific checklist and global scores, descriptive statistics for seventeen OSCE stations, descriptive statistics for learner performance, phenomenological analysis of learner and rater feedback, and plans for additional research. Through formal presentation, small group discussion, and large group sharing, learners will be able to differentiate skill-specific and overall rating scales, deliberate reliability and validity of OSCE use, and seek additional resources for OSCE implementation. Read More …

Laura Lee, Catherine O’ Mahony

This research critically evaluates survey data gathered from staff who support student learning in Higher Education, on the topic of professional development (PD) in Teaching and Learning (T&L). As coordinators of PD activities for staff and postgraduate students, we are interested in exploring the following research questions:

• – To what extent do staff who support student learning engage in PD opportunities, including activities related to the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL)?
• – What are the interests and needs of staff in relation to PD in T&L?
• – Do factors such as employment status, position, and discipline influence the types of PD activities in T&L that staff engage in and have interest in, including activities specifically related to SoTL?
• – Are there barriers to participation in PD opportunities?

Read More …

Rose Leighton, Didi Griffioen

In today’s era of content abundance, education has to deal with changed practices for the dissemination of knowledge. Many digital resources are available, and they have the potential to take the place of textbooks. ‘The role of the classic textbook as the key, immutable reference point for any class subject, is rapidly fading’, says Good (2016). Educational publishers like Pearson see a decline in textbook use (Sweney, 2017), and a study at a Dutch university of applied sciences (Leighton, 2015) indicates that lecturers in higher education move away from textbooks towards a variety of materials, including powerpoint slides, websites, and videos. Read More …

Kristine Ludvigsen

This poster presents an intervention study of how we used Flinga, a shared online whiteboard (http://www.nordtouch.fi/) to support peer discussions in lectures. The overarching purpose of the study was to explore affordances of using Flinga to open dialogical spaces (Wegerif, 2013) in the context of lectures. When describing dialogical spaces, terms such as opening – how the dialogical space is enabled, widening – how many possible different voices and perspectives it allows for, and deepening – the extent of critical reflections on the perspectives it provides for, are crucial dimensions.

The research question that guides across two cases was: “What kind of affordances are there in collaborative whiteboard to support the dimensions of the opening, widening, and deepening dialogical spaces in lectures? Read More …

Sara Marcketti, Ann Marie VanDerZanden

In fall 2016, it was decided that our University’s 10 year contract with the Learning Management System (LMS) would come to an end and a new LMS would be adopted. The University decided upon a fast track adoption of the new LMS: Canvas, with the product on campus July 2017, a group of 300 early adopter instructors utilizing it in fall 2017, and the entirety of campus adopting the system in Spring 2018.

Our midwestern university’s Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) was placed in charge of the implementation. The poster will provide detailed methods of how we smoothly transitioned the campus. Read More …

Sara Marcketti, Ann Marie VanDerZanden, Joshua Mitchell

Much of the research published on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) has focused on one of the primary purposes of strengthening faculty teaching practices and improving student learning (Condone, Iverson, Manduca, Rutz, & Willett, 2016). While our Midwestern University values SoTL as indicated in its inclusion in the Faculty Handbook which governs faculty life, anecdotally, one often hears that those who conduct SoTL must do more to have their work “counted” towards promotion and tenure decisions. We sought to understand the association between engagement in SoTL activities and number of total outputs as counted in the promotion and tenure process. Read More …

Irma Meijerman

An important aspect of making SoTL an integral part of a learning culture within universities is a sustainable change owned by the teachers. Engaging teachers in SoTL, making SoTL an integral part of their approach to teaching, often means that they have to move beyond disciplinary research boundaries and get familiar with more social science research methods. SoTL- communities, where teachers collaborate with colleagues, and peer review each other’s projects, can be a driving force to support teachers in getting familiar with the approaches and methods of SoTL. Within Utrecht University, until now, very few teachers are involved in SoTL, and no institutional support or teacher development programs involving SoTL are offered. Read More …

Firas Moosvi, Hendrik Blok, Tiffany Potter, James Charbonneau, Letitia Englund, Andrew Gardener, Pan Luo, Ido Roll

Giving and receiving feedback has been identified as a key focus in redesigning assessments for long term learning (Boud, 2006) as peer feedback has been shown to improve motivation (White, 1998) and provide learning benefits (Jhangiani, 2016). However, challenges in implementation have prevented its widespread use. Leveraging the process of comparative judgement has the potential to facilitate peer feedback and assessment at scale. Performing an active comparative process facilitates students’ future learning by enabling them to go beyond identifying superficial features of a phenomenon (Bransford,1999; Schwartz,1998). Read More …

Leanne Morrow, Roxanne Ross, Asher Ghaffar

Finding effective teaching practices for engaging students in meaningful dialogue on academic integrity (AI) is a continual challenge for academic institutions. This poster presentation highlights a recent SoTL collaboration between the Student Success Centre, the Library and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Calgary looking to explore optimal ways to create meaningful learning for students engaging with the topic of AI. Using a traditional, writing skills-based instruction framework from Babcock and Thonus, (2012) and contrasting that with a framework focusing on scenario based, moral decision-making from Bandura (2002) the goal in this SoTL project was to explore the ways in which these two distinct frameworks helped students gain a deeper understanding of AI. Read More …

Phillip M Motley, Derek Lackaff

This research poster will share how we have attempted to develop an inclusive learning culture in a diverse professional graduate program in interactive media. We will draw on student interviews and programmatic evaluation data to explore (1) the role of the advising process; (2) the design of curricular and co-curricular opportunities; and (3) the messaging provided to students prior to and following admission. We reflect on facilitating meaningful learning experiences that allow students to pivot between academic and professional learning objectives, and demonstrate how best practices are not ad hoc, but programmatically designed and implemented by all faculty. Read More …

Victoria Myhand

This project is a comprehensive history of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning within the United States. I have been working with documents and visiting with noteworthy scholars who were involved in the foundation of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. We have been discussing memorable and pivotal moments during the foundation and establishment of SOTL over time, as well as specific instances which exemplify the learning culture SOTL strives to generate. I believe my project is quite serendipitous with this year’s conference theme. In discussing Toward a Learning Culture, it seems necessary to examine how the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning sprouted, and how the culture of learning and learners blossomed. Read More …

Tor Einar Møller, Laura De Luca Peña, Kristian A. Haaga, Henriette Linge, Bjarte Hannisdal

Student learning of dynamical interactions in complex Earth systems is a major challenge in geoscience education (Assaraf & Orion, 2005, J. Res. Sci. Teach. 42; Scherer et al., 2017, J. Geosci. Educ. 65). Students exposed to traditional teaching have been found to maintain their default perception of causal relationships as linear chains of events and to struggle with dynamical systems thinking (Raia, 2008, J. Geosci. Educ. 56).

The development of systems thinking goes hand-in-hand with computational thinking and practices (Weintrop et al. 2016, J. Sci. Educ. Technol. 25). Read More …

Genevieve Newton, Chris Ostrowski, Monica Sanago, Janice Miller-Young

SoTL Canada is a constituency of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and we are part of the SoTL Canada executive team, elected by its membership. Formed in 2012, SoTL Canada strives to provide “a targeted opportunity for SoTL scholars to form a community to share findings and challenges, engage in opportunities for broader dissemination of SoTL work, and consider ways to catalyze SoTL initiatives at the institutional, regional, national, and international levels.” Past projects include pre-conference workshops, a special issue of New Directions in Teaching and Learning about the history and impact of SoTL across Canada, and collaborative writing groups which resulted in a special issue of the Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Read More …

Kevin Nolan, Catharine White

Come hear about Coast Mountain College’s efforts to move towards a learning culture with a unique experiential professional development endeavor. Called ‘Paddles and Pedagogy’, 10 instructors and 1 faculty developer embarked on a six day sea kayak trip during which a course in experiential place-based learning was offered covering such topics as defining experiential place-based learning, why it matters, and how to design, deliver and evaluate in accordance to experiential principles. The journey was a transformative learning adventure for all involved. That this experience influenced change in teaching and connection to one another (the time travelling in the wilderness together created tight bonds with one another – we alternatively called ‘paddles and pedagogy’ ‘pooping with peers’ – come hear what happens when distance between colleagues is removed). Read More …

Ludmila Nunes, Erica Lott

How does a course redesign program impact development of a learning culture? And how can this impact be measured? We suggest that changes in learning outcomes (LO) proposed by faculty who went through an institution-wide course redesign program are: 1) an indicator of the program success; and 2) a measure of learning culture.

As Barr and Tagg (1995) conceptualized, the “shift from teaching to learning” implies that the measure of success in a learning institution shifts from a measure of quantity and quality of resources to a measure of quality of LOs. Thus, the way faculty conceptualize the LOs for their courses should reflect this change of focus towards a learning culture. Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956) can be used to categorize LOs into six categories that vary in terms of cognitive processes and go from concrete and simple to abstract and complex knowledge. Read More …

Bjørn Nyberg, Henk Keers

Two important topics in university education are the use of technology and the use of teaching methods (specifically active learning methodologies versus more traditional teaching methods). These topics have received considerable attention from both educators and policy makers. However, relatively little is known about these topics, and how they are related. In particular, it is useful to know which technologies are considered important, whether there is a preferred way to teach about and with certain technologies, whether there is any correlation with other factors (such as class size, age of teacher, geographic location, topic, etc.). Moreover, these issues are likely to be dependent on the field/topic. Read More …