Werklund School of Education Pedagogy Vignettes

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This collection provides a sample of teaching and learning approaches from the Werklund School of Education Pedagogy Series. For more information about the Vignette Collection, contact The Office of Teaching and Learning in the Werklund School of Education tandl@ucalgary.ca.

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  • ItemOpen Access
    Learning by Podcast: Flipped Learning in EDUC 551
    (2024-09-05) Tingle, Elizabeth; Zak, Michelle; Barbeau, Kheana; Russell-Mayhew, Shelly
    This interactive audio-visual presentation depicts how an undergraduate BEd course on Comprehensive School Health and Wellness was re-designed with a flipped learning approach utilizing podcast lectures. Funding from the Taylor Institute catalyzed the creation of a course podcast series available on public platforms called The Podclass: Conversations on School Health. Listen to a student's experience of the course and explore the preliminary findings from a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning study that took a closer look at how students who identify as belonging to an equity-deserving group experienced this pedagogical approach. Recommendations for podcast-based learning are also included for those who may want to experiment with this instructional strategy.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Teaching Handwriting to Young Children: An Open Educational Resource for Teachers and Parents
    (2024-09-05) Roessingh, Hetty
    Good handwriting plays a key role in children’s writing efforts and in turn their academic achievement. Teachers identify the need for good learning resources in their ability to provide handwriting instruction to young learners. This article describes the design and development of a learning resource, Teaching Handwriting to Young Children: A resource for teachers and parents, a collaborative effort between the author and volunteers from the Bow Valley Calligraphy Guild. They are provided as an Open Educational Resource (OER) through Creative Commons Licensing and available free of charge on our institutionally supported PRISM platform, thus ensuring accessibility and affording dissemination of the resource for intended users. These include early childhood educators (ECE) who work with increasing diversity in today’s classrooms, faculty who work in initial teacher preparation (ITP) programs, and parents who homeschool their young children.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Establishing and Sustaining Positive Classroom Cultures and Flow Using Online Modules
    (2024-09-04) Bene, Rose; McNeilly, Elizabeth
    This article provides an overview of the authors' action research/design thinking project investigating whether the completion of online modules on “classroom flow” contributed to preservice teachers’ self-efficacy in establishing positive classroom cultures and addressing students’ off-task behaviours. Preservice teachers from two post-secondary institutions participated in a survey and two focus group discussions. Participants in the second focus group completed the online modules on “classroom flow” which focused on strategies of classroom management that align with student-centred approaches to teaching and learning. Findings indicated that preservice teachers in both focus groups were adept at aligning student-centered approaches to minor off-task behaviours in the classroom, but struggled to identify student-centered approaches when off-task behaviours intensified. At this point, they were more likely to revert to teacher-centered approaches to classroom management. Interestingly, participants in the second focus group who had completed the online modules had the language to identify and differentiate categories of off-task behaviours and were able to offer a wider set of strategies to restore "flow" in the classroom than the first focus group. This suggests that pre-service teachers might benefit from having the opportunity to use these online modules to practice student-centered classroom management for increasingly challenging situations.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Creating and using podcasting for student engagement: A Vignette
    (2023-08-14) Kendrick, Astrid; Scott, David
    The purpose of this three-year Taylor Teaching and Learning Grant funded pilot study was to learn whether, and to what extent, the introduction of podcasts and podcasting into teacher education classes improved the educational experience for online students. A survey and individual interviews were analyzed through the lens of Garrison et al.’s (2000) model of community inquiry, which involves three elements essential to educational experiences in online environments: cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence. Among the key findings was that aligning instructional purpose with student podcasting had the greatest influence on student engagement.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Crafting AI Terms of Use for Higher Education
    (2023-08-03) Sabbaghan, Soroush
    The use of AI for educational purposes has triggered a revolution in education (Chaudhry & Kazim, 2022; Yueh & Chiang, 2020). The increasing adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education underscores the necessity of formulating ethical guidelines that promote responsible and advantageous usage of these groundbreaking instruments by learners (Lim et al., 2022). Regrettably, the ethical dimensions of AI applications in education have been mostly disregarded in educational research (Yu & Yu, 2023) due to the rapid advancement in AI technology. Despite the challenges, educational researchers and higher education institutions have a responsibility to provide ongoing guidance so that AI technologies can be implemented in an ethical manner. In pursuit of the stated objective, this paper begins by first encapsulating the salient principles outlined in IEEE's Ethically Aligned Design (EAD2v2) Standards (2018), which serves as a crucial reference for the ethical development and deployment of AI and autonomous systems. Then, the highly influential Fjeld et al.’s (2020) paper – a Berkman Klein Center’s (a Harvard University research centre) publication is explained. Drawing from the insights offered by these two prominent frameworks, a comprehensive and interdisciplinary foundation for the ethical utilization of AI by learners is synthesized. The objective is to provide a balanced and holistic approach to the employment of AI by students in higher education. By adhering to the synthesized guidelines, it is hoped that AI technologies will be employed in ways that advance the noble objectives of education while safeguarding the ethical, social, and human values at its core.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Virtual Exchange for Future Teachers: A Project-based Learning Design
    (2022-08-02) Dressler, Roswita; Jardine, Lyliam
    Virtual Exchange (VE) has received more attention recently, due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. Although VE is not new (O’Dowd, 2020), its home is usually in second language programs, rather than education faculties where the focus is less on language learning and more on expanding pedagogical content knowledge (Rets et al., 2020). However, instructors of pre-service teachers still see a need to support language learning while designing for learning around second language teaching (Tedick & Lyster, 2020). During Feb. - Mar. 2021, future language teachers from Spain and Canada took part in a VE that provided experiential learning about second language pedagogy in different cultural contexts while working on improving their Spanish and English respectively. Students in Canada studying to become Spanish as Foreign Language teachers were partnered with students in Spain who were becoming English as Foreign Language teachers. Embedded in a course in both countries, student partners met during an overlapping portion of their respective semesters, both synchronously and asynchronously through a combined course shell. A bilingual TA was hired to support the VE and students had language practice, as the Zoom sessions alternated between using Spanish and English. The design for the courses were built around project-based learning (Stoller, 2006) all modelled around a Choiceboard. Project-based learning allowed students to follow their interests through choices in how to demonstrate their learning in the form of final products. Classwork and partner projects resulted in a meaningful global learning experience. The VE projects involved researching and sharing specific topics of L2 pedagogy and language use (e.g., common teaching approaches; the role of other languages in the classroom; dialect awareness), including one multi-modal assignment. As a result, this VE addressed an ongoing goal of internationalizing this introductory teaching specialization course. The VE also provided intercultural communication and language practice for the students and a design partnership among the Canadian instructor and TA with the Spanish partner instructors.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Audio-walks: Moving digital learning off-screen and into balance
    (2022-07-19) Poitras Pratt, Yvonne
    As an Indigenous scholar who teaches undergraduate and graduate-level Indigenous education courses, I often challenge myself to bring Indigenous pedagogy and practices, both theoretical and praxis-based, into my classes (see Louie et al., 2017; Poitras Pratt, 2020). In the context of what has been life-altering physical, emotional, and psychological challenges over the past several years, I have placed an increased focus on the collective wellbeing of students as a requisite priority. With public health restrictions as a factor in how and where we teach, educators and students alike have had to face not only hours of screentime but also any lingering anxieties they might have had in using digital technologies. In this vignette, I share my own attempt at bringing a greater sense of wellbeing and balance into my online teaching and learning spaces by introducing you to my emerging practice of audio-walks. My hope is that you will see how Indigenizing principles can support the use of digital technologies to achieve a more balanced learning environment.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Using a student-centered online professional learning approach to support preservice teacher development in digital assessment practices
    (2022-07-19) Delanoy, Nadia; Walz, Jodie
    This vignette describes the collaboration between the Werklund School of Education (WSE) and an urban school district to offer a student-centered digital assessment professional learning series aimed at preservice teachers. Specifically, by prioritizing preservice teacher assessment development, the collaboration between an adjunct assistant professor and education consultant in educational technology resulted in a rich design of online professional learning. The core intentions were to support preservice teachers’ learning about assessment practices within the digital age, while connecting the learned theories to their practice. In this vignette, we will outline our considerations in the design focus of student centeredness related to the professional learning, how this work supported technology-enhanced practice in a highly interactive learning series, as well as some participant feedback collected at the end of the series.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Moving from Discussion Boards to Jamboard
    (2022-07-19) Danyluk, Patricia
    Jamboard is a digital interactive whiteboard that allows learners to collaborate in real time. Jamboard was released by Google in 2017 and is one of the free products on Google’s G-suite. Prior to discovering Jamboard, I relied upon discussion boards in each of my classes. In my role as instructor, discussion boards provided me with insight into who was completing the course readings and acted as a form of assessment, both formative and summative. In this brief vignette, I discuss how Jamboards offer many of the advantages of discussion boards and provide students with the opportunity to interact with their instructor and peers. This results in a more enjoyable online course.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Instructors and Graduate TAs: A Vibrant Teaching and Learning Community
    (2021-05-09) Pletnyova, Anna
    This vignette discusses the author's experiences of work as a graduate TA and an instructor during her doctoral program, focusing on areas important for success in these two roles. The author argues that regular communications, effective collaboration and complementary roles are some of the crucial attributes of a constructive TA-instructor relationship.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Cognitive Apprenticeship in Online Teaching and Learning with Education Students
    (2021-05-08) Delanoy, Nadia; Mosher, Ronna
    In this vignette we share our work surrounding cognitive apprenticeship as it applies to online graduate and bachelor level learning and the instructor's experiences. We also delve into the literature to underscore the affordances that applying cognitive apprenticeship can have in relationship to richer instructor pedagogy and the student experience. We assert that using cognitive apprenticeship in the design and implementation of graduate courses can help instructors more aptly engage and empower students and help cultivate a recursivity of learning through feedback, scaffolding, and instructional fading (i.e. direct to nuanced instruction). We invite you on our journey to learn more about cognitive apprenticeship as it is applied here at Werklund.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Formative Assessment Strategies in Online Courses
    (2021-05-08) Dressler, Roswita
    In this video I discuss formative feedback in graduate online classes based on a study of my own teaching practice. I asked the graduate students to write a research proposal and, after completing a short project, a research report. They worked in groups of 3-4 (aka studio groups) and provided each other with feedback on drafts of both documents. As the instructor, I provided feedback on each student's draft, after their studio group had reviewed it. Two research assistants coded the drafts and final documents to determine the nature of the feedback students gave and how much (quantity) and to what extent (quality) did they take up that feedback. I was curious if they would prefer the feedback from the instructor or that of their peers. To learn what we found out, please watch the video.
  • ItemOpen Access
    A Collaborative Instructor and TA Approach to Online Teaching and Learning
    (2021-05-05) Delanoy, Nadia; Chen, Danni
    This vignette presents the reflections of Instructor Dr. Nadia Delanoy and Teaching Assistant (TA) Danni Chen on a semester-long collaborative approach to teaching and learning. We hope this reflection provides insight into the attitudes towards collaboration between instructor and TA. In the following, we outline our collaboration in the graduate course, EDER 619.89 Inclusive Education - A Shared Responsibility, the changes implemented with the class, and demonstrate how our collaboration contributed to continuous improvements to the student learning experience.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Using Indigenous Talking Circles in Online Environments
    (2021-05-10) Danyluk, Patricia; Hanson, Aubrey
    Talking circles online offer an opportunity for students to connect with one another during the course and in doing so enhance student satisfaction with the course. When facilitating a talking circle, the host must make it clear that they are drawing upon Indigenous knowledge systems. This requires educators to learn about the Indigenous peoples in the territory and ensure that they are respecting protocols and practices. Talking circles can be used to share feelings and thoughts, to connect with content, to build community, and as a form of assessment. The authors share their experiences using talking circles in synchronous sessions.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Universal Design Principles in Higher Education
    (2021-05-08) Sabbaghan, Soroush
    This vignette outlines online course design principles that provide multiple entry points for learning so that students, with all their diversities, can adapt activities to fit their needs, emergent abilities, and interests. Four principles drawn from Universal Design for Learning are discussed: 1) providing multiple means of representation, with spaces for unanticipated possibilities to emerge; 2) providing multiple means for students to express what they know and what they have learned; 3) offering ways into and explorations beyond planned experiences; and 4) permitting and nurturing specialized interests of individuals while enhancing possibilities for the collective. The vignette offers examples of implementations of the four principles in higher educational courses.
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