Tag Archives: Flexible Learning

New ideas!

We emailed our participants well ahead of time and set the deadline for online participation three days prior to the ISW. We had amazing success with all participants submitting on time and commenting on their peers comments. This translated into great mini-lessons starting from Day 1.

New ideas!

We created a new Dot-Mocracy Theme Session and it was extremely popular with the group: Classroom Climate and Student/Teacher Rapport

Learning Objectives were 1) Define classroom climate and identify 3 factors that influences classroom climate, and 2) Develop several strategies to create and maintain rapport with students.

The online components included basic definition and two scenarios of poorly handled classroom conflicts reported by real instructors. The participants were asked to select a scenario and to reflect on their own learning experience with respect to student-teacher rapport.

The in-class activities were scenario-based discussions for potential prevention and managing strategies. This was followed by gallery walk – the online contents were the prompts for this activity. (How can these strategies be incorporated into your own teaching practice? What are some potential pitfalls with this strategy that should be avoided?/Put checkmarks beside comments you agree with, and add further comments to either build or disagree with what has been said already).

The participants really enjoyed the “silent” gallery walk.

Flexible Learning

We had some difficulty getting full participation in the online components. The partial participation presented problems in the classroom sessions. We could not build on work that was not done. We discussed many ways of encouraging participation and are interested to hear more from others.
Possibilities to encourage participation as a central part of the course and make it essential for course completion. Possible consideration of clarifying the expectation when they come in to drop off deposit. Also when registering on the site and on the phone call.

The idea of doing something to a short deadline (the Thursday before the first session) and then reinforced by responses and comments by others.
Possible follow-up email to anyone who has not done the short term task (all in the week ahead of the first session) telling them that they need to do it to proceed with the course.
Once we get input from particiapnts we need to use it and incorporate it. Again this becomes challenging when only some did the work.

Flexible Learning in the ISW and the classroom!

As many of you know, our team has been pioneering the inclusion of Flexible Learning in the ISW.  Thank you to all of our facilitators that have contributed to making this project a success!  Additionally, one of our facilitators Jan has been involved with applying Flexible Learning to develop a unique new course.

Flexible Learning in the ISW implemented by our Graduate Facilitator Team has been recognized at every level at CTLT, including being highlighted on the CTLT home page.

Our team also joined with the Faculty Facilitator Team and the broad ISW community in BC to host a Professional Development Day, written up by a participant Sylvia on her blog!

Jan has been a TA twice now helping develop a new Flexible Learning course with Prof. Sens.  Check out how Flexible Learning has been implemented, combining two diverse fields into one dynamic course!