Guest blog post by Nikolas Zelem, nzelem@uwaterloo.ca
My name is Nikolas Zelem, I’m a third-year student in the Honours Physics program here at the University of Waterloo. I’ve spent the last four months working with Diana as an Educational Research Assistant. Most of my time was spent working on tasks for the Enhancing Assessment Practices (EAP) project. I reviewed Faculty of Math course syllabi and co-conducted a survey of Faculty of Math students regarding assessments. Both tasks were in service of a larger goal, creating a webpage for the EAP project....
Guest post by Sean Speziale, Math Undergrad Group (sspeziale@uwaterloo.ca)
As I look upon the sleepy faces of my students, I try to remind myself that it’s 4:15 in the afternoon and week 12 of the term, to reassure myself that it’s not me or calculus that’s boring. Nevertheless I cannot help to think of what might motivate these students to embrace this opportunity for learning. It brought me back to July 2022 and the McMaster Conference on Education and Cognition (EdCog). There I attended a workshop led by Veronica Yan entitled Motivating...
Covidence is a fantactic research tool for individuals and teams conducting literature reviews: from systematic reviews, to streamlined Cochrane reviews, scoping reviews and more. The University of Waterloo Library now has an institutional subscription to Covidence, a web-based software that streamlines...
Guest post by Chelsea Uggenti, Statistics & Actuarial Science (cuggenti@uwaterloo.ca)
Last weekend I attended the CMS Winter Meeting in Toronto. It was my first time attending a CMS meeting and my first in-person conference since the pandemic; both of which did not disappoint! The energy and inspiration that was felt by all attendees – me included – was palpable each day.
I attended the conference specifically for the education sessions. These sessions, and the incredible educators from all over the...
Guest post by Carmen Bruni, Computer Science (cbruni@uwaterloo.ca)
CMS Toronto has come and gone. With every passing conference, I still find myself feeling reinvigorated and inspired to make our university a better place.
I thought I'd take this opportunity to briefly summarize some of the wonderful ideas that were presented at CMS in the session I co-organized with Amenda Chow (York) and Fok-Shuen Leung (UBC) in hopes that you as...
Guest post by Ty Ghaswala, CEMC and Pure Math (tghaswala@uwaterloo.ca)
This past weekend, I attended the CMS Winter meeting in Toronto, attending both research and education sessions. In particular, I attended a session about instructor training. One presentation in particular, by Vanessa Radzimksi from the University of the Fraser Valley, triggered a lot of thoughts about how (if at all)...
Guest post by Anton Mosunov, Math Undergraduate Group (amosunov@uwaterloo.ca)
In this blog post, I will tell you about some exciting work done by our working group at the Aug 7-12 Okanagan BIRS Workshop Teaching First-year University Mathematics Courses: Past, Present, and Future. Together with Lauren DeDieu, Chunlei Ge, Spectrum Han, Asia Matthews, Vilma Mesa, Anton Mosunov and Yas Yamin, I explored what virtues, knowledge, and skills a university mathematics instructor will need in 2030 to...
Guest post by Anton Mosunov, Math Undergraduate Group (amosunov@uwaterloo.ca)
In this blog post, I will tell you about one excellent talk that I’ve attended at the EdCog Conference at McMaster University on July 15 this year. The talk was by Bridgette Hard, and while she presented three case studies of pedagogical research, I will focus on only one of them — the one about technology multitasking in classrooms.
Guest post by Brian Ingalls, Applied Mathematics (bingalls@uwaterloo.ca)
Indigenous Science was in the news last month. The Globe and Mail reported on the Ford government’s decision to remove Indigenous Science content from the elementary school curriculum. This move was criticized by those who view the weaving of Indigenous knowledge systems into mainstream education as key to Canada’s reconciliation efforts (e.g. the ...
