Symposium on Teaching and Learning:
Embracing Change @ SFU
Symposium Encore Series | September to November 2013 | Burnaby campus
The Symposium Encore Series is a repeat offering of selected sessions from the 2013 Symposium on Teaching and Learning, which addressed the theme of Embracing Change.
If you were unable to attend the Symposium, or if you missed a session that you wanted to attend, this is your opportunity to catch up. Hear about the approaches your colleagues have been trying in the classroom and pick up new tools and ideas for your own teaching practice.
Registration
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: Late registrations are still being accepted.
COST: No cost
| Wednesday, May 15 | 8:30 am–5:30 pm Thursday, May 16 | 9:00 am–4:30 pm Burnaby campus |
Registraton closed. |
Program schedule
For an overview of the Symposium sessions, including titles and abstracts, please download the program schedule:
2013 Symposium on Teaching and Learning – Program Schedule (PDF)
Day 1 (May 15) – Opening keynote: Satisfying mandates while honouring faculty time: Is it possible?
Educational institutions and programs are being pressured and/or required by external forces to provide evidence of the quality of student learning. Accrediting agencies, government units, policy makers, and employers may have competing expectations and points of leverage, but it is clear that the pressure is on faculty to identify ways to describe and document student learning that satisfy these external groups while at the same time providing useful information for program improvement. This is being required at the same time at which educational budgets are shrinking and faculty workloads are increasing. In trying to satisfy the demands for “accountability,” it is important to capitalize on what faculty are already doing and develop processes that are systematic and efficient while being sensitive to faculty workloads. This session will provide examples of systematic processes, measurable learning outcomes, differences between classroom assessment and program assessment, data collection, and reporting that supports both a process to identify areas of needed improvement and the validation of student learning for external agencies.
Dr. Gloria Rogers, Senior Scholar, Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools
This year's keynote address will be presented by Dr. Gloria Rogers, a noted scholar and consultant on the assessment of student learning and continuous quality improvement of educational programs and institutional effectiveness.
Speaker's biography
Dr. Gloria Rogers is currently serving as a Senior Scholar for the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA), one of six regional accreditors of degree-granting post-secondary educational institutions in the United States. In this role she is a mentor for institutions participating in the HLC-facilitated Academy for Assessment of Student Learning and is the external evaluator on an HLC project funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education to explore the use of the Degree Qualifications Profile. In addition, she is presently teaching in the graduate program at Indiana State University.
Rogers has served as managing director for Professional Services at ABET, Inc.; senior educational manager for Optimal Global Solutions; and vice-president of institutional research, planning and assessment at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. During this time, she has been providing workshops, webinars, seminars, and institutes for the development of continuous quality improvement of educational programs and institutional effectiveness related to strategic planning for the past two decades. She has been an external evaluator for major science, math, engineering, and technology initiatives and has served on advisory committees and been a member of numerous review panels for the National Science Foundation. She has served as a reviewer for the Fulbright Senior Scholars program and has been a special editor for two issues of the International Journal of Engineering Education.
Rogers has organized fourteen symposia on program assessment and accreditation that have been attended by faculty from 500 institutions around the world. In addition, she has authored 35 assessment-related articles, given over 100 invited presentations at national and international conferences, and facilitated workshops/seminars at over 75 campuses. In addition to her local and national involvement in assessment and educational reform, she has given invited presentations, consultations, and workshops in 28 countries, including a Fulbright Senior Scholar assignment in Lima, Peru. In 2008 she was named a Fellow of the American Society of Engineering Education for her contributions to the engineering education profession.
Day 2 (May 16) plenary session – Embracing, Managing, or Resisting Change
 Heather Smith |
 Michael K. Potter |
 Cynthia Korpan |
 Russell Day |
A panel discussion with
- Heather Smith, Acting Director, Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, and Professor, International Studies, University of Northern British Columbia
- Michael K. Potter, Teaching and Learning Specialist and University Teaching Certificate Program Administrator, Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of Windsor
- Cynthia Korpan, TA Training Program Manager, Learning and Teaching Centre, University of Victoria
- Russell Day, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology, and Co-Facilitator, Certificate Program in University Teaching and Learning, Simon Fraser University
How can we work creatively and function effectively when our campuses are in a continual state of flux? In itself, change is neither positive nor negative, but will disrupt the status quo. As members of academic communities, we often find ourselves in positions of tension or conflict when changes are imminent, and we must reflect to find a way forward. Is this a change we should embrace? In that case, we must decide how to help others embrace and adapt to it. Is it an equivocal change, the effects of which are difficult to predict? Then we must help others manage and guide its effects. Is it a change that is likely to harm educational quality or our campus communities? If so, we must help others resist it productively. And what happens when a change could benefit some facets of higher education and the campus community, while harming others? Those changes present the most difficult challenges.
Panelists will share their own answers to these questions, drawing from experiences with a variety of post-secondary changes, past and present, before opening up the floor to contributions from participants.
Panelists' biographies
Heather Smith is the acting director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, and professor of International Studies at the University of Northern B.C. She is also a 3M National Teaching Fellow (2006) and winner of the Canadian Political Science Association Award for Excellence in Teaching (2012). Her areas of research include gender and Canadian foreign policy, decolonizing Canadian foreign policy, and climate change and Canadian foreign policy. She also publishes on teaching and learning with a disciplinary focus on teaching Canadian foreign policy.
Michael Potter is a teaching and learning specialist in the Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of Windsor, where he administers the University Teaching Certificate (UTC) Program, and past chair of the Council of Ontario Educational Developers (COED). Educated as a philosopher and moral psychologist, his present research focuses on affective learning, constructive alignment, and applications of pragmatist and anarchist philosophy to education.
Cynthia Korpan, M.A., is the TA Training Program manager at the Learning and Teaching Centre, University of Victoria. Cynthia plans and develops all the activities related to the campus-wide teaching assistant programming, including two yearly TA conferences, the Teaching Assistant Consultant Program, weekly workshops, and a TA preparation course, and co-teaches the new Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (LATHE) Graduate Certificate program. Cynthia is also chair of the Teaching Assistant and Graduate Student Advancement group.
Starting university at age 30 gave Russell Day (PhD, psychology) a different perspective on post-secondary education – his own life experiences suggesting that motivation and a willingness to take risks are essential for learning. Over the past 20+ years, he has offered a range of educational development workshops and seminars at institutions across Canada. At SFU, he is partially responsible for the Intro Psych Program (3000+ students annually) and regularly teaches classes of 440 students in a section. In recognition of his teaching, SFU awarded him an Excellence in Teaching Award in 2009. As an educational developer, he has been actively involved with the Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) network for the last 19 years, as a facilitator, a facilitator trainer, and International Advisory Committee member. After completing the UBC Faculty Certificate Program in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in 2004, he co-facilitated it for many years. For the last year, he has co-facilitated the SFU Graduate Certificate Program in University Teaching and Learning and been a director of the SFU Faculty Association. He is actively involved with the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE, past BC director), the STLHE Educational Developers Caucus, and local educational development organizations.
