August Teaching Institute 2023

Explore new ideas and develop new skills in teaching and learning.
August 15–⁠17, 2023

CTL’s August Teaching Institute (ATI) is an annual event hosted and facilitated by CTL’s Educational Developers and Lead Educational Developers - and sometimes friends! Presentations, workshops, conversations, and other input formats provide University of Alberta instructors with opportunities to explore new ideas and develop new skills in various aspects of teaching and learning.

The 2023 ATI will take place August 15–⁠17.

  • Tuesday and Wednesday (August 15 and 16) sessions will be delivered hybridly. This means you can attend on-site OR remotely via Zoom. If you are attending on-site, please join us at Edmonton Clinic Health Academy (ECHA) 2-420.
  • Thursday (August 17) will be delivered fully online via Zoom (no on-site attendance).

Register once to attend all three days. You are welcome to attend all of the sessions, or attend just the ones that are of interest.

Schedule

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

Join on-site in ECHA 2-420 or via the Zoom link in your calendar invitation.
10:00am- 10:30am Prayer
Daphie Pooyak, Traditional Knowledge Keeper
10:30am- 11:00am Welcome
Dr. Tommy Mayberry, Executive Director, Centre for Teaching and Learning
11:15am-12:45pm Session with Traditional Knowledge Keeper
Daphie Pooyak
1:00pm-2:00pm Fostering Authentic Indigenization: Navigating Challenges, Cultivating Ethical Spaces, and Embracing Transformative Growth
Andrea Menard (Lead Educational Developer, Indigenizing Curricula and Pedagogies, CTL)

Indigenizing process and practices is more than an alternative course; it’s a powerful, transformative journey and an irrefutable mandate for truth and reconciliation. This presentation will focus on the ‘good’ mistakes (embracing growth) and ‘bad’ mistakes (navigating pitfalls) on the Indigenization journey.
2:15pm-3:15pm Create a Dynamic Learning Environment with the 4Es: Enable, Engage, Elevate, and Extend
Mauricio Rivera-Quijano (Educational Developer, Online Design and Delivery, CTL)

Do your teaching strategies …enable new types of learning activities? …engage students in meaningful interactions? …elevate to include real-world skills? …extend the time, place, and ways students can master learning outcomes? In this presentation, we’ll explore new opportunities and challenges of traditional, online, and hybrid modalities within a 4E framework—the design and implementation of meaningful, authentic learning experiences for students.

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Join on-site in ECHA 2-420 or via the Zoom link in your calendar invitation.
9:00am- 9:50am Engage Students with Scholarly Communication Using Reading Lists
CJ de Jong (Head, Access Services, Library and Museums)

Connect students to the writings, authors, publications, and publishers beyond simply reading an article or a chapter on a list of resources. Help prepare students to be part of scholarly communication, to increase their connections with scholars and researchers, and to stay up-to-date with their field of study. Building a strong network of scholarly connections can help students in finding employment, selecting a supervisor for graduate work, and be involved in their community. Using Talis Aspire, this session will demonstrate how to quickly transform your reading list for engaging with scholarly communication.
10:00am- 11:00am Challenging Moments In and Outside the Classroom: Building Relationships and Mitigating Disruptive Conversations
Mandy Penney (Lead Educational Developer, Digital Pedagogies and Access, CTL) & Anita Parker (Lead Educational Developer, Online and Hybrid Instruction and Strategy, CTL)

We are amidst a challenging time in university teaching. Students are experiencing lasting negative cognitive, mental, and social effects from the pandemic. Instructors are burned out from adapting their materials and methods to and from online, blended, and in-person teaching. Important social justice issues woven into the classroom environment deserve attention and care. As a result, instructors are experiencing disruptive moments in their interactions with students, and with students interacting with each other. In this session, we will explore the complexities of these moments and develop a repertoire of proactive and reactive strategies to prevent and resolve conflict and to reestablish healthy teaching and learning relationships.
11:15am-12:15pm An Overview of CTL’s New Peer Review of Teaching Programme
Graeme Pate (Lead Educational Developer, Instructional Practice and Academic Development, CTL)

This presentation will provide an overview of CTL’s new Peer Review of Teaching programme by providing details and examples of how more experienced instructors can support colleagues in navigating a multi-faceted evaluation of their teaching.
12:30pm-1:30pm A Lesson Plan About a Lesson Plan in Online and Hybrid Teaching
Anita Parker (Lead Educational Developer, Online and Hybrid Instruction and Strategy, CTL)

Lesson planning is worth the effort, especially for online and hybrid synchronous teaching. Planning ahead is a way to connect outcomes, activities, assessments, previous and future lessons, and to make these connections explicit to students. In this interactive session, we will experience the unfolding of a lesson plan (about a lesson plan!) in real time in a hybrid environment, resulting in a flexible template that can be applied to any discipline and course.
1:45pm-2:45pm

Embrace the Change: Online, Asynchronous Approaches to Engage the 2025 Student
Cynthia Lambertson-Poon (Manager, Online Education) & Karen Klaib (Instructional Designer, Online Education)

This interactive one-hour session with the Online Education team will explore the transformative potential that online, asynchronous learning can offer to the next generation of students embarking on their university journey. We will examine the unique characteristics of the 2025 student and brainstorm creative shifts in the online space so that teaching is engaging and student-centered. We will also showcase samples from undergraduate courses that highlight research-based best practices in asynchronous online education.
2:45pm-3:30pm

CTL Fall and Winter Programming: You heard it here first!
At CTL, we have six key portfolio areas of pedagogy and practices, which are:

  • Indigenizing Curricula and Pedagogies
  • Critical Pedagogies and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity
  • Assessment and Evaluation
  • Digital Pedagogies and Access
  • Instructional Practice and Academic Development
  • Online and Hybrid Instruction and Strategy
In this session, each CTL team will describe their portfolio-specific programming for the 2023-24 academic year. You will have the opportunity to ask questions and give input about what is important for you and your teaching.

Thursday, August 17, 2023

Today’s sessions will all be delivered online. Please join us using the Zoom link in your calendar invitation.
10:00am- 11:00am Enhancing the Value of Student Perspectives on Teaching
Brad Ambury (Lead Educational Developer, Assessment and Evaluation, CTL) & Bradon Valgardson (Data Analyst, CTL)

In an ongoing effort to improve feedback quality and reduce bias, the University of Alberta has recently implemented changes to the Universal Rating of Instruction (USRIs), resulting in the new Student Perspective on Teaching (SPOTs). This session will provide insights, discuss prevalent myths, common shortcomings, and offer practical strategies on formal student feedback (such as SPOTs), so any instructor can utilize such data effectively in their teaching practice. In particular, this session aims to review how the SPOTs have changed formal feedback, and we will describe how formal evaluations such as SPOTs fit within the larger landscape of Multifaceted Teaching Evaluations.
11:15am-12:15pm

Let’s Chat: Enhancing Teaching/Learning through Informal Student Feedback
Brad Ambury (Lead Educational Developer, Assessment and Evaluation, CTL) & Dr. Dalbir Sehmby (Educational Developer, Writing and Multimodal Communication Pedagogies, CTL)

A Multi-Faceted Teaching Evaluation (MFTE) approach to gathering feedback about your teaching allows for a variety of voices and perspectives. Formal student feedback (USRI, SPOT) is complemented by more informal ways of gathering student feedback (about student learning, engagement, and experiences in your course). This session will guide you (professors of any experience level) through ways you can enhance instructor-student communication via “informal student feedback” opportunities and strategies. You will see models of informal student feedback and models of questions to ask students during and after a course that you can adapt for your course(s) to ensure a clear, collaborative, and constructive communication channel between yourself and your students.
12:30pm-1:30pm

Best Practices for Indigenizing a Course
Lori Ireland (Educational Developer, Indigenous Curriculum and Pedagogy, CTL)

This interactive webinar will showcase opportunities to incorporate Indigenous practices into your course. We will learn ways in which you can create an Indigenous inclusive course, from the course syllabus to in-classroom activities.
1:45pm-2:45pm

What’s New in eClass
Dave Laurie (Senior eClass Support Analyst, Information Services & Technology)

A major upgrade to eClass in June introduced new usability improvements and a modern look and feel. While the interface has changed, the bulk of the content construction processes, grading tools, and student activities are functionally equivalent. In this session, Dave Laurie will overview and answer questions about the new features before Fall term courses start.
3:00pm-3:45pm

The Morale and Well-Being of Instructors Matters
Dr. Cosette Lemelin (Assistant Director, Centre for Teaching and Learning)

The morale and well-being of instructors impacts their teaching and interactions with students. Ultimately, program quality is shaped by instructors facing emotionally demanding work and stressful circumstances in which resources are stark and expectations are high.

Morale or well-being literature in higher education tends to center around broad structural policies, processes, and resources impacting job satisfaction and morale; alternatively, such literature provides recommendations for individual academics to improve their coping skills and stress reduction. While valuable, these perspectives focus on the life-style or role of being an academic, and fail to consider morale and well-being in the context of the instructors' teaching.

Because “People are our greatest strength” and because “we must take deliberate steps to ensure we support the people of our University and create a culture where everyone can reach their potential,” instructors’ morale and well-being matter (University of Alberta Strategic Plan 2023-2033, consultation draft, Leading with Purpose, April 17th, 2023, p. 6).

In this closing keynote, Dr. Cosette Lemelin will share key findings, stories, and practical suggestions on instructor morale and well-being in the rich middle ground between the system and individual coping.