Workshops on Effective Teaching

Facilitated by Sherri Steele and Ada Sharpe

Join a conversation and get some preliminary advice on required and optional processes when you believe an academic offence related to AI may have occurred.

Does your field require students to know how to leverage some aspects of generative AI? This session will be an opportunity to review and share ideas that allow students to choose between using AI or completing a task without it. We will dig into some of the challenges and considerations such a choice may give rise to as well as the benefits of starting to explore student AI use in assessments.

This workshop explores ways to boost the success of asynchronous online forums activities. We will consider how to foster meaningful responses and collaborative discussion in the forum. We will also review strategies for supporting students to make posts that are timely, respectful, and authentic. Faculty will benefit most from this workshop if they come with some prior knowledge of discussion forums; find self-guided resources by searching the eConestoga Faculty Support page.

In this workshop, we will focus on two key aspects of rubric design. We will examine strategies to a) prevent grade creep, and b) promote fairness and rigour in the marking of assessments. We will look at rubrics for 3 very different types of submissions: reports, case study analyses, and reflections.

In this workshop we’ll explore history related to how and why student –centred teaching has taken hold in post-secondary classrooms and discuss strategies to encourage active, collaborative, and inquiry-based learning.

This workshop will highlight the relationship between student-centred teaching and dialogic classroom interactions; authentic assessment; and critical thinking. Participants will address common misconceptions about student-centred pedagogies based on examples of constructivist teaching in action.

Are you interested in creating videos you can use and reuse in your courses? Conestoga has recently licensed Panopto, a full feature video service for exactly this! Create screenshares, role plays, equipment demonstrations, whiteboard diagram demonstrations and more. Use Panopto much like YouTube to create, edit, transcribe and share videos, but with the added benefit of unlimited storage and retention, and integration and analytics with your eConestoga courses. Work on a brief sample video, and gain some hands on experience building videos in Panopto. Learn some principles of educational video creation along side technical tips and leave with greater confidence in creating your own teaching and learning videos.

What motivates students to attend remote classes, whether live or asynchronous? What’s the difference between gaining students’ attention and earning their engagement? What are the signs and reasons for student disengagement? In this workshop, we will explore these questions and discuss strategies to promote engagement, build community, and ultimately support the retention of students who are continuously adapting to the realities of learning remotely.

Come to the Grand River land – the Pioneer Tower located at 300 Lookout Lane in Kitchener and experience land-based learning firsthand. Learn why the land is so central to Indigenous ways of knowing. Be prepared with walking shoes or boots, a blanket to sit on, a water bottle, and dress accordingly for the weather.

This workshop will help you to derive the benefits of using Bloom’s Taxonomy in your lesson planning and delivery. We will explore how low to high level thinking skills can be activated, practiced and measured using active learning strategies and formative assessments.

Students come with a variety of learning preferences, needs and backgrounds. This workshop will explore information and practical strategies to help you reach the wide variety of students in your class.

How do you manage your marking? Join this workshop to discuss what inspires your marking process, what tools help you to manage your marking time and volume, and how your marking strategies can have a meaningful impact on students. By the end of this workshop, you will take away some workable solutions to address a range of marking challenges.

In this workshop, you will learn some pro-active techniques for engaging students and creating a positive learning culture. Practical ideas and resources will be shared that can be implemented in your next class. Advice for what to do if incidents occur despite your planning will also be shared.

Does your course use online articles, .pdfs, OERs or websites as course readings? Hypothes.is lets you monitor and support students as they highlight and annotate readings, and allows you to build discussions right into the reading experience. Come test out this innovative pilot tool.

Whether intentional or not, hateful actions and words harm and exclude valuable members of our community. What should faculty do when a racist or hateful comment is made in their classroom? In this workshop, we will discuss practical examples of how faculty can respond swiftly and appropriately to racism and hate that may show up in teaching contexts.

You got an accommodation letter, and you’re sweating bullets. Will you be sued? Do you know what to do next? What if you mess up? What do accommodations mean for your work, anyway? Come to this workshop to learn about your obligations in the accommodation process, and get your questions directly answered by staff in Accessible Learning—your allies in the accommodation landscape!

In this session, we explore ways to deliver interactive lessons that engage students and support learning using some features of Zoom best suited for teaching and learning.  Learn tips and strategies for sharing Zoom links in eConestoga, pulling attendance lists, annotating and demonstrating on shared screens, supporting and monitoring breakout room, and recording your Zoom session.

Join us in a workshop exploring challenges Nigerian international students may experience while studying in Canadian Colleges. We will identify strategies for teaching Nigerian students and analyze experiences Nigerian students have had with assessment strategies in order to better support them. We will share ideas based on research and lived experiences.

Want to gamify an exam review period to help relieve anxiety and have students practice material? This session will provide two ways you can do this! You’ll experience the games and leave with some templates and ideas you can readily use in your own teaching.

If your course has students submitting videos or recordings, this workshop is for you! By the end of this workshop, you’ll have created a student assignment submission folder for your course. You’ll receive helpful information to add to your assignment description to support students in their submissions, and tips about how to connect students to college technical supports.