Author Archives: agnieszka weinar

What and Why – my course in Canvas.

This was the first time I used Canvas and the second time I built a course. And the first one I did entirely alone. In my eyes this proves to me that all the effort I put in studying towards my MET Certificate was worth it. A year ago I did not know what pedagogy was, not to mention Powtoons or Snagit.

As regards my learning arch for the course I built for Assignment 4, it was organically related to all other assignments and tasks I performed in this ETEC course. In the last 2 months I sort of grew into building this test course. Continue reading →

Agnieszka on Canvas

 

This was my first time using Canvas. It was also my second time building a virtual classroom. And it was my first time doing the work totally alone (thanks to the Oak group for their support!).

My objective was quite simple: I wanted to build a short course for PhD students and early post-docs that would expose them to the theories and practicalities of the research-policy communication. My objectives were as follows:

Continue reading →

Ice-Breaker: an asynchronous activity

I took the design thinking approach to the course I am developing. It is a short course on Research-policy communication”. It is aimed at PhD students and fresh post-doctoral fellows (<2 years after the completion of their PhD). It is to be proposed to organisations such as MITACS and research universities as a complementary course for their students and fellows.

I am starting from scratch. Such a course has not been offered so far at all anywhere I have looked. As we are working on an Orientation Module, I decided that what is needed at this point in the course is an ice-breaker. At MET’s courses this is usually dealt with by asking the students to present themselves. I wanted to tackle the presentation less up-front, so I decided to propose an asynchronous activity. The students will share their thoughts about the way their research can bring change to the world. They are asked to find/take a picture that bests describes the reality that they want to see impacted by their research. Then they are asked to reflect in three sentences what it is about and how they think it can be changed. They are also invited to react to each other posts.

 

What is a rubric anyways…?

The completion of the assignment has been a real learning curve for me. First, I was not even sure what we were asked to do. I relied on my team-mates to clarify what a rubric for an LMS might look like while I took on another task, namely the preparation of the Précis. Second, when I finally got the grasp of what a rubric for LMS was and how to assess it (Pappas 2013, Kabassi et al. 2015, Rueckl 2017), I found myself not even wanting an LMS for this particular case study. Continue reading →

Flight Path: Agnieszka Weinar

I grew up in communist Poland and then in the post-communist Poland. It meant that I first saw a computer when I was 12 years old. I had my first computer when I was 20 years old and I started using email then. I still remember waiting for 20 minutes to upload my inbox. I have always found technology fascinating albeit a bit mysterious. As I developed a professional career in research and policymaking, technology has never been a big part of my daily tasks. Emailing, operating the MS Office suite: that was it. So, I guess this pathway makes me a digital immigrant (Prensky 2001). Continue reading →