News

Recipients of a 2017 Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement (LITE) Full Grant have launched a YouTube channel featuring 18 instructional videos with the support of the grant's funds. The channel, Engineering Models, was created in 2015; the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering's Wayne Brodland, Rania Al-Hammoud, and Kayleanna Giesigner recently added 10 LITE-grant funded videos to the channel to augment key experiential learning activities that students undertake in CIVE 104.

Laura Williams, CTE Graduate Instructional Developer and PhD Candidate in the Department of Kinesiology, has been awarded a 2018 Applied Health Sciences Teaching Assistant Award. The award recognizes Laura's efforts to enhance student learning in her work as Teaching Assistant and Tutorial Coordinator for KIN 232: Research Design and Statistics in Kinesiology.

As of August 1, 2018, CTE will be temporarily relocated to East Campus 3 (EC3), where we will be sharing the second floor with the Centre for Extended Learning (CEL). While the locations of offices and workshops will change, we look forward to continuing to serve our campus community by offering our regular programs and services. If you have any questions or concerns about the move, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

The Faculty of Environment's growth has necessitated this relocation; the search for a permanent home for our Centre is underway. Learn more about the move in the Daily Bulletin announcement from Mario Coniglio, Associate Vice-President, Academic, and Susan Tighe, Deputy Provost and Associate Vice-President, Integrated Planning and Budgeting: Centre for Teaching Excellence on the Move.

CTE is excited to share the latest publication in the Educational Development Guide Series, Centre Reviews: Strategies for Success, which is now available on the Educational Developers Caucus website. CTE’s Director, Donna Ellis, led the development of the Guide, with six co-authors from institutions across Canada. Centre reviews are becoming increasingly common in the field of educational development. They offer an important opportunity for members of a teaching and learning Centre to reflect critically on the direction and work of their Centre and to invite feedback from the communities and clients they serve. CTE undertook a Centre review in 2017; the Self-Study we developed for that external review distills several years of data as well as feedback solicited from numerous partners and stakeholders, and our Final Assessment Report responds to each of the recommendations made in the external review.

On April 26^th, faculty, staff, and students from across campus and beyond gathered to explore the roles motivation plays in how we learn and teach at the University of Waterloo’s 10^th annual Teaching and Learning Conference: Motivating Our Students and Ourselves.

CTE is pleased to announce that Dr. Kristin Brown has been offered and accepted a permanent position as our centre's Educational Research Associate.

Do you need dedicated time to start writing up your teaching and learning research? Would you benefit from discussing and getting feedback from your colleagues? Register for our Teaching and Learning Research Write-In on Tuesday, June 12 and get the time you need to focus on disseminating your teaching and learning research. Registration is required. 

On May 17, 2018, CTE held its annual PD Day. The day was a combination of fun team-building activities (a quasi Iron Chef competition at the Kitchener Market) followed by some bona fide learning sessions at the Kitchener Public Library! No fingers were lost during the kitchen challenge!

Each year, the Centre for Teaching Excellence and Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs recognize and celebrate the teaching development efforts of a Waterloo graduate student with the Certificate in University Teaching (CUT) Award. We’re excited to announce that the 2018 CUT Award has been awarded to Caitlin Scott from the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability. The award honours Caitlin's commitment to implementing feedback for the continuous improvement and development of her teaching, her thoughtful approach to assessing student learning, and the practice of reflection that she regularly brings to her work as an instructor. 

We sat down with Caitlin to get an inside look at her experience in the CUT program and into what she believes motivates meaningful teaching and learning. Caitlin is a PhD candidate in Social and Ecological Sustainability. Her research examines the role of corporate actors in governance at the intersection of health and the environment. As Caitlin discusses below, engaging students in the difficult and often disheartening subject of environmental politics is an important pedagogical challenge she must grapple with in her teaching.

The Office of the Associate Vice President, Academic and the Centre for Teaching Excellence are pleased to announce the recipients of the latest round of Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement (LITE) seed grants:

• Assessing Lifelong Learning in Work-Integrated Learning Reflections and Student Self-Assessments, Judene Pretti, Bob Sproule, and David Drewery
• Assessing the Learning that Occurs with Arts-Based Pedagogy: Learning About Social Justice, Trish Van Katwyk, Amir Al-Azraki, and Soheila Kolahdouz Asfahani
• ​Closing the Collaborative Skills Gap: Assessing the Effectiveness of a University-Wide Course Designed to Teach Students How to Collaborate in Diverse Groups, Kathryn Plaisance and Christine Logel
• Development and Assessment of Project-Based Laboratory in Chemical Engineering, Mingqian (John) Zhang, Cheryl Newton, Jason Grove, Mark Pritzker, and Marios Ioannidis
• ​Evaluating Comics as Pedagogical Tools in an Undergraduate Mathematics Course, Dan Wolczuk, Amanda Garcia, Joslin Goh, and Giuseppe Sellaroli
• ​Second Language Pronunciation Learning at a University Level, Svetlana Kaminskaïa and Dominique Louër
• ​Tackling Weight Bias in the Classroom: Developing Capacity for Weight-sensitive Instruction among Educators and Learners at the University of Waterloo, Rhona Hanning, Amanda Raffoul, Rachel Acton, Kirsten Lee, Katie Burns, and Katelyn Godin
• ​Teaching and Learning with Controversial Issues in Diverse Postsecondary  Classrooms, Christina Parker

Two rounds of seed grant funding are available each year, and the next annual deadline is fast approaching: June 1.