SciLIFT August Newsletter

The Science Education & Learning Innovation Facilitation Team (SciLIFT) exists to enrich the undergraduate learning experience through inspiring and empowering faculty to embrace proven instructional strategies and harness emerging learning technologies, ideologies, and innovations.

Feel free to share this newsletter with your colleagues, or ask them to join the e-mail list here.

Our Blog

If you want to read the latest Blogs, we invite you to visit the SciLIFT website.

Latest Blogs are: My Top Two Teaching Tips and The Role of the Instructor

We invite guest bloggers, please send an e-mail with proposed topic of your guest blog! We share exciting news also via Twitter, please follow SciLIFT.

Register

Back to Teaching Week

SciLIFT is planning a week-long series of teaching workshops, to be held from August 26-29. We invite graduate student teaching assistants, first-time instructors and experienced faculty members to come out and learn something new to incorporate into their teaching!

Workshops will run for approximately 60-90 minutes and will cover a range of topics, including:

Syllabus design and lesson planning

Using eClass

Active learning

Preparing an exam and delivering it on eClass

Assessment and rubric development

Interactive Learning Objects

Developing Concept Inventories

Access full schedule at SciLIFT's website.

Reinforcement Learning MOOC

Last month, the University of Alberta Faculty of Science, in partnership with Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (AMII), launched the first course in a four-part online specialization in Reinforcement Learning: Fundamentals of Reinforcement Learning. A foundational concept of Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning, for which the University of Alberta are ranked 3rd in the world, the Reinforcement Learning Specialization consists of four courses exploring the power of adaptive learning systems and artificial intelligence (AI). Spearheaded by Department of Computing Science Assistant Professors Drs. Martha and Adam White, supported by SciLIFT, and hosted on Coursera, the course already has over 4000 enrolled learners worldwide. For the full story, read the FoS Communications team’s news release here, or visit our FoS MOOC page to find out more about signing up!

For any questions about the Faculty of Science MOOCs, please contact Gavin Bradley, Science MOOC Coordinator: scimooc@ualberta.ca

Teaching and Learning Brown Bag

Save the dates!

For the Fall 2019, we will continue the Faculty of Science Teaching and Learning Brown Bags! The purpose of these talks is to increase awareness in the Faculty about the types of interesting, engaging, innovative, and (maybe even) effective teaching strategies, assignments, exercises, and projects that we use with our students. Our hope is that people who participate in these sessions might: learn about their colleagues’ teaching, be inspired to try a new technique (or revamp one for their own purposes), learn about some of the pitfalls people have experienced in trying to use new strategies (e.g., what not to do when using peer grading, or why their colleague will never use strategy X again), and enjoy the free pizza!

There will be one 1-hour session each month, held Fridays from 12-1 pm (location TBA). Please note the schedule for Fall 2019 (and click on each date to add the event to your Google calendar):

- September 13th (in Biological Sciences P 116)

- October 4th

- November 1st

- December 6th

We will update the speakers, topics, and locations as they are scheduled.

If you would like to present on your own teaching strategies, please email jpassey@ualberta.ca.

Students: If you would like to receive a letter of attendance for the Teaching and Learning Brown Bags (for professional development records, or the FGSR Graduate Teaching and Learning program), we are happy to provide one upon request for anyone who signs in at the sessions. Please contact Jennifer at jpassey@ualberta.ca .

Looking forward to seeing you all there,

Jennifer Passey and Anna Rissanen

BUGS MOOC

Last month saw the hugely successful launch of the Faculty of Science’s latest Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Bugs 101: Insect-Human Interactions! The course, created by Dr. Maya Evenden, Professor of Entomology in Biological Sciences, and her team, and supported by SciLIFT, provides online learners with an introduction to the biology, diversity, and ecology of insects and their roles in human society. Hosted on Coursera, the Bugs 101 launch, first reported by our own Faculty of Science Communications team was picked up by CBC, University Affairs, the Edmonton Journal, and Global News, leading to thousands of learner enrollments in the first few weeks!

For more information on how to enroll for free, head over to our Bugs 101 landing page and see what all the buzz is about!

For any questions about the Faculty of Science MOOCs, please contact Gavin Bradley, Science MOOC Coordinator: scimooc@ualberta.ca

Test analytics: Are your exams assessing what you think they are?

Are you looking to improve and refine your existing test? Students say your test is too hard, the faculty says it is too easy. How do you find that goldilocks zone? SciLIFT can help by individual consultations to get more out of your learning analytics.

Send us an e-mail to get more information! (john.hoang@ualberta.ca)

Add your resource here

Learning Repository

Faculty of Science will start a project on collecting and sharing learning resources with all instructors across the Faculty.

Do you have animations, videos, apps, websites, and other learning objects that might help your colleagues in teaching?
We encourage you to share teaching material that others can use by filling this form.

SciLIFT at Dean's Office will create a Learning Object Repository database.
The goal is to create a repository which can be accessed by all the faculty members that is easily searchable and useful. Please use searchable tag words, and provide context in the object description.
Feel free to share learning objects ranging from interactive images, graphs, pictures, video links, diagrams, etc. to research paper articles and even relevant lecture notes.

Stay Tuned for Teaching and Learning Journal Club

SciLIFT will start hosting Teaching and Learning Community of Practice meetings again in Fall 2019. Stay tuned for Journal Club announcements on pedagogy and science education literature!