Monthly Archives: January 2014

Coming Event! Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: What, Why, and How?

Title: The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: What, Why and How

Day/time: January 31, 2-3:30pm

Location Michael Smith Labs, Room 101

Will it be recorded and posted online? We hope so! We’re working on it, with the help of CTLT, and we’ll let you know.

Description: Have you heard of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, but are not sure exactly what it is or what it looks like? Or perhaps you know something about it but would like to know more? This event will start with a panel of three speakers, and will leave a good deal of time for discussion afterwards. 

Simon Bates, Director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology at UBC, will start off the panel by giving a presentation about the nature of SoTL.

Niamh Kelly, Associate Professor in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UBC, will speak about transitioning from disciplinary research to SoTL.

Gary Poole, Professor in the School of Population and Public Health, will speak about some of his research in SoTL, to give an example of SoTL work.

All are welcome to this free, public event! 

Speaker bios

Simon Bates joined UBC in the summer of 2012, and was previously Dean of Learning and Teaching and Professor of Physics Education at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has published extensively in the areas of physics education research and the role of technology in enhancing learning. As Academic Director of UBC’s Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, he is responsible for the provision of academic support services to the teaching and learning community, and part of the leadership team of the Flexible Learning Initiative, a major 5-year teaching and learning transformation program at UBC. He teaches on the Physics 101 course at UBC, a first year course on energy and waves delivered to 1700 non- majors annually

Niamh Kelly, a faculty member in Medicine, describes herself as an academic ‘cross dresser’: a medical microbiologist scientist, not an MD; a scientist who is researching teaching and learning, not science; a University science teacher who is designing curricular interventions for high school students. Through all of this Niamh is interested in cutting across barriers that exist between the humanities and sciences. Her research is focused on: (i) the difficulties associated with transitioning into the scholarship associated with teaching and learning when trained as a scientist; and, (ii) how integrating the arts into a high school biology curriculum influences students’ attitudes toward, and beliefs about, science.

Gary Poole is a professor and Associate Director of the School of Population and Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine and Senior Scholar in the Centre for Health Education Scholarship at the University of British Columbia. He is a past-president of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. In 2004, he established and directed the Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at UBC.  He is a 3M National Teaching Fellow and he has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.  His current scholarly work focuses on self-directed learning, with a focus on medical education.