University of Waterloo Teaching and Learning Conference: 2018

Conference poster

Motivating Our Students and Ourselves

April 26, 2018 

How do you motivate your students to learn? And what keeps you motivated as an instructor? On April 26, 2018, instructors, staff, and students from across campus and beyond shared their practices and research related to motivating teaching and learning at our 10th annual Teaching and Learning Conference. 

Keynote—Motivating durable learning: Focused attention and instructional design

Joe Kim
Keynote speaker, Joe Kim, Associate Professor in Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University, co-ordinates the innovative McMaster Introductory Psychology program, which combines traditional lectures with interactive online resources and small group tutorials.

Abstract

Cognitive scientists have been systematically studying processes such as attention, memory and learning for more than 150 years. This rich resource of knowledge has been only recently applied to developing evidence-based interventions in education. A key focus of this research has been to promote learning that is durable – extending beyond short-term testing into long-term retention of information that remains with the student after the final exam. In this presentation, I will discuss three key factors that instructors can implement to promote durable learning: 

  1. Learning relies on sustained attention. In the class, instructors can implement methods to reduce mind wandering and students can engage in practices to promote effortful and focused attention.
  2. Design of teaching materials directly guides learning.  Perhaps the largest impact an instructor can make on learning is to offer thoughtfully designed class materials that adhere to multimedia learning principles. Slide design that reduces cognitive load can promote student learning.
  3. Study habits such as retrieval practice strengthen long-term retention. Instructors can implement effective assessment design into the course structure and students can learn to take an active role in learning and testing.

A key message in applying cognitive principles to instructional design is that both instructors and students have important parts to play in developing habits that promote durable learning.

Keynote session slides are available on Joe Kim's website.

Igniting Our Practice

Brian Forrest

Photo of Brian Forrest
Brian Forrest is a Professor in the Department of Pure Mathematics and is currently the Mathematics Faculty's Teaching Fellow. He came to the University of Waterloo in 1989 after completing his Ph.D. at the University of Alberta and after spending two years as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Queen's University. In addition to teaching a variety of courses at all levels on campus, he has over the last 15 years been involved in the development and delivery of numerous fully online course.

In his Igniting Our Practice session, Dr. Forrest will present a problem that he gives in the first lecture of his introductory Calculus classes that encourages students to use their intuition as a guide in approaching the content of the course.

Sarah Tolmie

Photo of Sarah Tolmie
Sarah Tolmie has a PhD from Cambridge and teaches medieval literature, general British literature, and creative writing in the English department at UW. She is the author of academic articles on Middle English and Middle Scots literature, but has concentrated since 2014 on creative writing. She has published three books of poetry: The Art of Dying, forthcoming from MQUP in 2018, Trio, published by MQUP in 2015, and Sonnet in a Blue Dress, a chapbook with Baseline Press in 2014. Her prose fictions include the dual-novella collection Two Travelers, the short story collection NoFood, and the novel The Stone Boatmen, published by Aqueduct Press in 2016, 2015 and 2014 respectively. A historical novel about the 17th-century microscopist Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek is now in the hands of her agent, and one about the 15th-century English poet Thomas Hoccleve is in progress.

In her Igniting Our Practice session, Metaphors Are Us, Dr. Tolmie will lead conference participants in two live, interactive exercises to prove that we make metaphors all the time, simply as part of thinking.

Resources

Contact

Visit our official conference website to learn about current and future conferences.

For questions about the conference, please contact Kyle Scholz at the Centre for Teaching Excellence.

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