9:00 am - 9:30 am

Registration sign-in

9:30 am - 9:50 am

Opening remarks by Dr. Tim Rahilly, President and Vice-Chancellor

Introduction by Dr. Lesley Brown, Provost and Vice-President, Academic 

9:50 am - 10:25 am

Perspectives on Educational Leadership

Yasmin Dean, Brenda Lang, Pamini Thangarajah 

(2018 Distinguished Faculty Award Recipients) 

12:20 pm - 12:55 pm

Lunch

Entertainment by Conservatory Musicians

12:55 pm - 1:20 pm

Becoming Educational Leaders with Students as Partners for Pedagogical Redesign

MRU’s first 3M Fellow Brett McCollum 

Teaching involves the weaving together of content knowledge with pedagogical expertise. However, when changes in society or technology impact learner behaviors, faculty must be prepared to respond with appropriate strategies. Embracing evidence-based pedagogy to respond to student needs means moving beyond what we feel is happening in our classrooms to documenting evidence of what we know is happening. It requires that we admit the limitations of our awareness and begin discussing how we can explore those territories of uncertainty in the classroom. 

Faculty, students, staff, and administration can work together as authentic partners, as advocated by Cook-Sather, Bovill, and Felten, to examine - and navigate - these territories of uncertainty. Furthermore, by applying the shared leadership structure of Pearce and Conger to these partnerships we can engage in educational leadership, impacting the practices of others within our spheres of influence for greater student success. Examples from my own work include the LibreTexts Open Education Resource project, the International Network for Chemistry Language Development, and Research Learning Plans.

3:15 pm - 3:35 pm

Teaching and Learning - A Student’s Perspective

Kaylie Fermin, Madison Hillstead, Juhene Khalil, Neldimar Khamvongsa, Ryynn Rathwell, Laura Reyes

An open discussion of the ideas that have come from the presentations of the day. This panel will provide insight from a student perspective, and speak about experiences that relate to these ideas presented.

3:35 pm - 4:00 pm

Closing Remarks

Dr. Jim Zimmer,Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President, Teaching and Learning

2019 Distinguished Faculty Awards announcement

Dr. Gaye Warthe (Associate Vice-President, Academic), Dr. Michael Quinn (Associate Vice-President, Research, Scholarship, and Community Engagement), with Dr. Lesley Brown, the Provost and Vice-President, Academic

4:00 pm - 4:30 pm

Cupcake Celebration!

Entertainment by Conservatory Musicians

“Cash” bar available - credit/debit only

10:30 am - 11 am

“I’m never teaching that course again!”

Julie Booke, Shannon Kell, Nadine Van Wyk

HPED 1000 Issues in Health and Physical Education (HPED), is a core course for all students in the HPED program. The course was initially designed to introduce students to the four majors and multiple instructors. Using High Impact Practices (Kuh, 2008) to guide the design, the course was scheduled as eight sections of 25 students, with rotating instructors. Sounds great, right? Wrong! Students hated it and instructors despised it! After working with ADC, we drastically redesigned the course where students now sit through a lecture with 100 students (we know…), followed by a tutorial with a class size of 25. This presentation will provide more details on how, why, and what changes were made and where we are at now…as we continue to work on creating an exceptional learning experience for all first year HPED students. 

11:15 am - 12:15 pm

Learning from Undergrad Research 

Carolina Alongi, Jaclyn Carter, Amanda Chodak, Leah Hamilton, Nadiya Hasan, Ada Jaarsma, Mahnoor Khan. Mike Lazar, Erica Navickas, Kenna Olsen Logan Pollon, Lia Serpentini

Three sets of undergrads will engage the audience, together with their faculty supervisors from Arts and Bissett, about “lessons” that educators might gain from undergrad research. Undergraduate research is widely acclaimed as a high impact teaching practice. This roundtable will explore its value, not only for undergrads themselves but also for us as faculty members. Each set of students will put forward some skills, concepts or questions that arose out of their own research programs. In the roundtable, we will reflect on the significance of these insights for our own teaching practices. In this way, we’ll solicit (and scrutinize) the feedback loops that undergrad research provide for teachers and for collaborative thinking about teaching.

1:20 pm - 1:50 pm

Critical Pedagogy Part 1. “Keep your politics out of my education”: Experiences of Teaching Critical Content

D.A. Dirks, Audra Foggin, Gabrielle Lindstrom, Mary-Lee Mulholland, Carmen Nielson, Irene Shankar

In this two part, cross-disciplinary panel, scholars working within critical pedagogy will address 1) their experiences of teaching critical content and 2) the possibilities for transformation offered within this pedagogical framework. In part 1, the panelists will both identify the barriers critical scholars encounter and speak to the institutional support required to complete this work.

1:55 pm - 2:25 pm

Critical Pedagogy Part 2. “This has nothing to do with me”: Working towards Transformation

D.A. Dirks, Audra Foggin, Gabrielle Lindstrom, Mary-Lee Mulholland, Carmen Nielson, Irene Shankar

In this two part, cross-disciplinary panel, scholars working within critical pedagogy will address 1) their experiences of teaching critical content and 2) the possibilities for transformation offered within this pedagogical framework. In part 2, the panelists will speak to the transformative potential offered within the classroom to challenge societal inequalities due to ongoing colonization, neoliberal policies and practices, and structural discrimination based on sexuality, gender, race, age, and ability. 

2:40 pm - 3:10 pm

Teaching and learning about harm reduction and the opioid crisis: Creating a community of learners

Christine Brownell, Telaina Sewers

In the Winter of 2018, Wellness Services and the School of Nursing & Midwifery embarked on a collaborative journey of sharing knowledge about the opioid crisis, harm reduction, and naloxone with the campus community. What were originally planned as formal workshops, organically developed into dynamic teaching and learning experiences in response to a continually evolving topic.

Inside the classroom, the traditional structures of teaching, where only facilitators share their knowledge, was dissolved, and instead, a community of learners was established. In this format, everyone learns together and from each other, including the workshop facilitators. Additionally, the learning of the facilitators is not confined to the classroom; they are constantly seeking out updated information on the evolving topic area.

This session will provide a discussion about the experiences, challenges, and successes of teaching and learning in a dynamic and flexible way, and creating a community of learners.

10:30 am - 11:00 am

Using Technology to Overcome Disability-related barriers 

Sarah Callaghan, Deb Steel

Have you ever wondered what kinds of assistive technology (AT) are available to students with disability-related barriers? This interactive session gives participants the ability to try different technologies students use to create a more accessible learning environment. 

11:15 am - 11:45 am

Who Defines Success? Experiences of MRU Students with Disabilities

Janet Arnold, Tracie Czerkawski, Janalee Morris  

Many factors impact the success of students, and it would seem that these are made more complicated by the presence of a disability-related barrier. Students tend to define success in a myriad of ways. Having a disability does not automatically indicate a lower rate of success, but might the way students with disabilities define success differ from those who do not experience disability related challenges? As part of a larger research project, members of the Accessibility Services team explored the question of success. The results indicated that students experiencing disability-related barriers define success in a more holistic manner than others. The research also concluded that these students continue to experience barriers to success with regards to maintaining balance, stigma and discrimination, and social interactions. 

11:50 am - 12:20 pm

Early Support: A Collaborative Tool Connecting Faculty & Staff to Support Student Success

Alena Boczek, Janet Miller, Sarah Rude

Early Support is an online referral program that allows faculty and staff to identify students who are struggling (e.g. those who may not be attending classes, who are not performing to expected standards, or who have disclosed personal circumstances that are impacting their learning). By referring these students to Early Support, faculty and staff play an integral role in ensuring that students are connected to the right resources at the right time. This presentation will include highlights of this collaborative program, including the results of a recent HREB study focused on assessing Early Support’s impact on students’ psychosocial factors, as well as the program’s important positive impacts on student retention rates.

1:20 pm - 1:50 pm

One step at a time - Incorporating Universal design in a Death and Dying class   

Janet Arnold

Building UDL principles into curriculum design makes learning work for the widest possible range of students. All students benefit when they are given multiple ways to become engaged in learning, learn new information, and express their comprehension. Efforts to incorporate UDL into the course “Topics in Death and Dying” resulted in some hits and misses. This presentation will offer strategies to enhance student engagement, demonstrate a variety of ways to share content, and discuss assessment models that provide options and opportunities for students to share their knowledge in a variety of ways.

1:55 pm - 2:25 pm

Helping Students "Make it Stick!"

Kristin Fulton

Working with students, we often found that they understood individual learning theories, but rarely applied them. Digging deeper, we discovered they needed a framework to connect the theories. Providing this framework was like giving them the instruction manual for a box of Ikea chair pieces; suddenly, they could put all the parts together productively.

For us, this high-impact framework was found in “Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning” (2014). It has transformed our program and the study habits of the students we work with. Students began using retrieval practice language regularly and policy compliance improved substantially.

In this session, we take a look at how we integrated the strategies from “Make It Stick” into our program to help students actually use these concepts. We’ll share our tools and practices, as well as brainstorm options for integrating Make It Stick into a variety of student support interactions. After all, nothing is better than seeing students succeed using strategies based on the latest research.

2:40 pm - 3:10 pm

Blending and Indigenizing Effective Coping and Self-Care Curriculum: Lessons Learned From Students

Deb Bennett, Tashi Tsering

During our presentation we will be sharing our experiences of blending and indigenizing the curriculum of an undergraduate studies course, UGST 1002: Change, Challenge and Choice: The Undergraduate Context and Beyond. This course presents current research and offers strategies related to physical and mental wellness, effective coping, and self-care.

We have learned a great deal from students while teaching this course. It has been a powerful process that has had an impact on our teaching and ways of understanding the student experience. Future curriculum development and delivery will be informed by the lessons students have taught us.

This presentation will offer learners and teachers the opportunity to have a dialogue about diverse ways of knowing and learning. Teaching and learning experiences will be honored by participant sharing of lessons learned from students.

10:30 am - 11:00 am

Benefits of Interprofessional Education in Undergraduate Learning  

Genevieve Currie, Scott Hughes, Lisa Semple

An innovative teaching and learning methodology was introduced to undergraduate students at MRU to foster connection and collaboration. This learning activity used an unfolding case study and was developed and implemented with a group of third year nursing students and other professional disciplines. The case study simulated a realistic team-meeting with interprofessionals and required creative interplay between the students in order to fulfill the activity. Analysis from the reflective papers submitted by students describes how participating in this learning activity provides them with new knowledge of and understanding about professional collaboration, insights into diverse perspectives about how to support families with complex needs, and new perspectives about themselves as preservice professionals. This presentation will conclude with a discussion of the benefits of participating in cross-disciplinary learning initiatives to both students and faculty, and describe next steps in expanding the activity to include additional professional disciplines. 

11:15 am - 11:45 am

Facilitating the Immersive ICU Experience: Teaching Using 360 Degree technology 

Joanne Bouma, Olive Fast, Holly Feist, Joan Harris

Students in N3102 are in their 3rd year of nursing school and are integrating their understanding of medical-surgical nursing of adults at a more complex level, and they are starting to look at connections between body systems, essentially how one system might impact another. This is the last class in this course, and we designed this learning experience to focus on our objectives around shock and multiple trauma because of the number of systems that are involved in managing the care of such a patient. Many of our students go into critical care settings such as the ER and ICU for their final preceptored practicum in 4th year, and we knew that they would benefit from an immersive experience like this. Even though the setting may be different, and the patient may be more complex, nurses approach the care of their patients in a similar and systematic way using the nursing process.

Students can also get overwhelmed in the ICU setting, often focusing too much on the tasks and losing sight of the person (and the family) for whom they are providing care. This scenario is based on a true story and highlights a mother’s perspective on her daughter’s recovery from a motor vehicle collision in Australia. The mother’s story is also juxtaposed with the nurse’s narrative as students are actually immersed in the ICU (complete with all sights and sounds) with a mannequin that is moulaged (or made up) like an actual trauma patient.

This is an interactive scenario where students are encouraged to ask questions and reflect on what this experience would be like for both the mother and the patient. As a nurse taking the care of the patient, students who have participated in the activity last semester have recounted how beneficial it is to know what impact they have on the recovery of their patients, and this kind of immersive experience really hits home to truly getting into the patient’s (and the family’s) shoes. 

11:50 am - 12:20 pm

Practicum – Learning Beyond the Classroom

Gina Adams, Joanne Bouma, Kevin O’Connor, Stephen Price, Dennis Valdez

In this panel, staff and faculty from the Faculty of Health, Community and Education will discuss the practicum and clinical experiential learning that are required components of each of the professional programs offered in the HCE. An explanation of how these experiences prepare students for practice, an overview of best practices being utilized, and how there is an intentional conversion of theory to practice. The assessment techniques used in these experiences will also be discussed. There will be time for the panel to respond to questions from the audience.

1:20 pm - 1:50 pm

Using Technology within an Experiential Learning Context  

Heather Pollard, Therese Wiart Jenkinson

The child development lab (CDL) is an environment that supports active experiential learning for the Bachelor of Child Studies Degree. During this presentation, Heather Pollard and Therese Wiart Jenkinson will share how they work with first year students, within the CDL, using technology as a tool to facilitate student learning. Key strategies involve documenting their experiences with children using pen, paper, video and photography. Students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes are scaffolded through facilitated discussions and work with their documentation. This experiential learning coupled with theory and practical application allows the student to begin to question and reflect on their learning at a deeper level. Culminating projects give students an opportunity to synthesize and make their teaching and learning through play visible.

1:55 pm - 2:25 pm

Multidisciplinary Curricular Integration in the Library’s Technology Rich and Creative Learning Spaces 

Kerry Harmer, Matt Laidlaw, Anna Nuhn, Erin Wainwright 

Members of the Library Maker Studio and Visualization teams will present examples of multidisciplinary curricular integration in the creative spaces in the library. Each team will present examples of how their respective technologies have supported innovations in teaching and learning across all of the faculties at MRU. The presenters will explain the ways in which experiential and hands-on learning has enhanced academic outcomes using a selection of courses as examples. Courses using one or more of the available technologies such as 3D printing, laser cutting, digital embroidery, virtual reality, media walls, immersive environments and more will be showcased. Presenters will conclude by explaining how faculty can use these spaces to create impactful learning experiences for their students. 

2:40 pm - 3:10 pm

Material Engagements: Data-Based Provocations on the MRU Campus  

Courtney Clarkson, Milena Radzikowska, Lucy Randal  

Materialization (or to materialize) is defined as “to invest or become invested with a physical shape or form”. Materialization is a process of transmutation: more alchemy than construction, with the results uncertain and in flux. I draw my inspiration from the Tangible Bits Group’s “painted bits” as graphical user interfaces: graspable objects, ambient media, and augmented surfaces; MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, an interdisciplinary initiative, and its studies of how to turn data into things, and things into data; and Chris Jordan’s attempts at creating deeper emotional engagement with statistical data by constructing super-sized images depicting, for example, the number of people currently in the US prison system, or the number of paper cups used each day on American flights. In Fall 2018, we had the opportunity to pilot maker components in one of our core 3-rd year, Information Design courses. In the first maker project, students were asked to turn data-based research into a physical, “real-world” based installation. In the second project, they devised and executed the gathering and displaying of data simultaneously, providing opportunities through Augmented Reality. This presentation will report on the pedagogical and design prototyping findings that emerged from our classroom activities. 

10:30 am - 11 am

Active Team-Based Learning: An innovative approach to education   

Dr. Nancy-Angel Doetzel  

Active team-based Learning in the class room is one of the growing practices of teaching and learning taking place within some universities. Educators are being encouraged to adopt pedagogies, policies, and practices that encourage an alternative to totally lecture-based learning. The main purpose of active team-based learning is to transform the classroom experience from acquiring knowledge to applying it. The time is now ripe for acknowledging which components of education, such as active team-based education, appears to be moving forward. “Educational innovation” addresses transforming the class room experience to help students to learn better. Implementing “active team-based learning” involves being very clear to students of the purpose of such an approach. Challenges can arise from educators and students being uncomfortable with a fresh way of teaching and learning. However, such innovations, such as active team-based learning allow educators to ‘do school’ differently, by shifting away from totally lecture-based pedagogies (Baepler, Walker, Brooks, Saichaie, Petersen, 2016).

Participants will leave this session with a deeper understanding of the impact of active-team based learning and some of the ways of implementing it into the class room. 

11:15 am - 11:45 am

Building Students' Writing Skills for Academic Success Synopsis 

Pameila Downie, Anita Hibbard, Lorry Kelly, Gerry Landreville, Sheri Marendiuk, Kalsey Root 

In this presentation, English Language Program Instructors (International Education) from each of our six levels will outline how the program builds academic writing skills throughout our spiraled curriculum.  The six presenters will offer a synopsis of ELP writing expectations, share student samples and assessment at each level thereby demonstrating writing development as our international and immigrant learners progress through our program. There will be an emphasis on how the tasks progress through more complex rhetorical patterns and how each one spirals into the pattern/s at the next level. We hope to show how this evolution of focus and scope from sentence accuracy and fluency to paragraphs, essays, and papers supported by research will lead our language learners to pathways of success in their writing assignments in credit classes as they prepare for their future careers.

11:50 am - 12:20 pm

Addressing the Needs of Non-native (English) Speakers in your Classroom 

Sheri Rhodes, Rebecca Young 

The degree of readiness for non-native (English) speakers (NNS) in credit programming can vary greatly. In this presentation, we will explore how NNS are prepared for the demands of undergraduate work through the English Language Program here at Mount Royal University. Building a solid foundation in academic English is key to success in credit studies; however, gaps in the skill areas (reading/writing/listening/speaking) as well as in the language systems (grammar/vocabulary/pronunciation) persist. We will identify what these gaps are and discuss some strategies faculty can employ to support NNS in their classes. These strategies will apply to classroom instruction, curriculum development, and assessment. 

1:20 pm - 1:50 pm

Integrating next generation digital learning resources in Teaching and Learning  

Pamini Thangarajah 

Both open-access and commercial, educational materials have become common in Higher Education during the past decade. Recently, Higher Education is making a shift toward open education resources (OERs) to reduce the financial barriers for students. In this session, I will discuss how to create OERs that cover the entire curriculum for our courses, by creating a new one or amalgamating form existing resources. Further, I will discuss success and how to overcome difficulties.  

1:55 pm - 2:25 pm

Teaching using Google Apps 

Leon Cygman 

MGMT-2262 Business Statistics I is a required course for Bachelor of Business Administration degree. I authored an OER statistics textbook and have used it in my class for four semesters. The book and the course are using Google applications and add-ons to complete the objectives. This approach is taken to provide students with modern tools to learn statistics. As there is a lack of spreadsheet in the business curriculum, this approach provide students with much needed knowledge. A Provost’s Teaching & Learning Enhancement Grants was awarded to provide tools to enhance the course materials and to provide tutorial support for students. The focus of this session to disseminate the results of this novel approach in teaching statistics. 

2:40 pm - 3:10 pm

Lightning Talks

Creativity in the Science Classroom - The University of Waterloo's Timeline of Elements

Kalen Keavey, Chris Lovallo

For the International Year of the Periodic Table (2019), The University of Waterloo held a contest, giving groups around the world the opportunity to create a tile representing the discovery of a chemical element. Mount Royal won the opportunity to create such a tile, and an assignment was created to have students in the first-year chemistry class design the tiles. This talk will discuss that assignment, show some examples of student work, and how it may be extended in the future. 

CSL and early literacy 

Jodi Nickel 

Year 2 Education students participate in up to 20 literacy tutoring sessions with a buddy during their weekly field experience in schools. These buddies who previously lagged behind peers and lacked reading strategies and self-confidence soared with the patient coaching of their tutors. MRU students also grew in confidence as they found ways to reach these young children and better understood the challenges of learning to read. Tutoring is a community service learning component in two education courses (fall and winter semesters); the courses provided the context for students to learn about literacy development and teaching strategies and to reflect upon their own professional growth through tutoring. This presentation will provide a window into the powerful impact of tutoring upon 90 children and 90 MRU students. 

Envisioning Learning Spaces at MRU

John Cheeseman, Luciana Santos

This presentation will focus on the literature surrounding effective classroom design.  Classrooms are often designed in compliance to minimum building codes related to safety regulations.  But what if we shifted our thinking and designed classrooms according to minimum learning codes guided by pedagogical principles? In this lightening presentation, we distil 30 years of classroom design research to share the key aspects of what a minimum learning code would look like.

Introducing Students to Research in Archives 

Peter Houston 

Over the past year, I have developed and taught archival instruction sessions with faculty colleagues that introduce history students to archival research concepts by having them conduct basic primary source research in the Mount Royal University Archives and Special Collections. I will explain how our goal of engaging students and have them learn about historical research and critical source analysis was successfully achieved by having them select a research topic and examine relevant original sources, which they used for graded assignments before commenting on their experience in a reflective paper.

Top 5 Open Education Myths

Erika Smith

What is Open Education (OE)? In this lightning talk, we’ll explore some common myths and misconceptions about OE and open educational resources in order to build awareness of the true possibilities these offer in higher education contexts.