Blog

I blog about educational development, facilitation, and teaching. 

As of March 2018, I am blogging more regularly at isabeauiqbal.com (my coaching site). I will still occasionally blog here.

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Please click on the tags at the bottom of the page (in the black shaded area) if you would like to find a post on a particular theme. For example, to find posts I have tagged with “educational development”, you would click on that word at the bottom of this page.

Photo credit: Colors by Jon Cornwell (CC BY)

  • Meeting ground rules

    Facilitation techniques are about designing and managing group interactions so that people truly collaborate and make sound decisions. (Bens, 1997)   I recently attended a full day session on building facilitation skills for meetings. Despite the large amount of time I spend in meetings—as a participant and as a facilitator-participant, I have never formally learned…

  • Determining priorities: 3 helpful images

    This post presents 3 images that you might find helpful as you work at determining priorities for your work, family, health and otherwise.   Urgent/Important Matrix     Impact/Effort Matrix   Importance/Feasibility Matrix  

  • Assessing team process in student learning teams

    This blog post was inspired by a session on assessing team processes that I attended at the Festival of Learning. The session presenters were from Royal Roads University (RRU) where teamwork is the pillar of most programs.  Because teamwork is such an integral part of their course and program design, and because teamwork also presents many challenges,…

  • Social media profiles: Best practices for mastering your digital footprint

    At the Festival of Learning, I attended Dr. Greg Chan’s sessions: Web Visibility Matters Web Authorship Incubator This was a terrific opportunity to spend a day exploring web visibility in my professional life and planning for changes in my online portfolio. Below are a list of links and random ideas related to the workshop and my learning.…

  • Facilitating effective meetings: Creating desired meeting results

    A facilitator is one who contributes structure and process to interactions so groups are able to function effectively and make high-quality decisions.* (Bens, 2012) I recently attended a full day session on building facilitation skills for meetings. Despite the large amount of time I spend in meetings—as a participant and as a facilitator-participant—I have never…