Are you an interdisciplinary instructor? Do you have an interest in interdisciplinary learning?

The Interdisciplinary Community of Practice (ICoP) at UBC is looking for new co-facilitators to lead and organize the ICoP going forward.

You will have the freedom to create events that you think will serve the ICoP, and take the ICoP in the direction you deem fit.

If interested please email ctlt.icop@ubc.ca for more information, or with any questions you may have.

All the best, Conor Douglas (current ICoP facilitator).

Are you an interdisciplinary instructor? Do you have an interest in interdisciplinary learning?

The Interdisciplinary Community of Practice (ICoP) at UBC is looking for new co-facilitators to lead and organize the ICoP going forward.

You will have the freedom to create events that you think will serve the ICoP, and take the ICoP in the direction you deem fit.

If interested please email ctlt.icop@ubc.ca for more information, or with any questions you may have.

All the best, Conor Douglas (current ICoP facilitator).

Dear past and present Interdisciplinary Community of Practice Members,

We wanted to draw your attention to two upcoming events relating to UBC’s developing partnership with edX and the edX platform and tools that may be of interest. The first is a general information session on how edX is contributing to our strategy for  flexible learning. The second is a two day intensive workshop for people with an interest in designing and developing within the edX platform. More information and registration links to both events are provided below.

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Open Session: The UBC edX Project and Flexible Learning

March 16th, 9:00 to 10:30

Neville Scarfe Building Room 100

Please join us for an information session on the UBC edX project. The session will cover:

• edX itself, including both the technical platform and the community
• UBC’s goals in participating in the edX consortium and how those support UBC’s Flexible Learning Strategy
• what UBC faculty and staff are already doing with edX, including MOOCs, Professional Education and on campus credit courses
• how you can explore using edX for your courses
• process and funding opportunities for developing materials using edX

Speakers will include:

Professor Angela Redish (Vice Provost and Associate Vice President, Enrolment and Academic Facilities)

Professor Gregor Kiczales ( UBC edX Project Lead &  Provost’s Fellow for Flexible Learning Strategy)

Professor Simon Bates (Academic Director, Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology)

Melanie MacFarlane (edX)

If you would like to attend this session please RSVP here: http://events.ctlt.ubc.ca/event-registration/?ee=937.

Note this 90-minute session will be followed by a 1.5 day workshop for those who want to learn more about edX and developing content for online platforms. More details about the longer workshop are available at its registration page: http://events.ctlt.ubc.ca/event-registration/?ee=895.

Date: March 5, 2015
Time: 1:15 – 3:15 pm
Location: Dodson Room 302 of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (1961 East Mall, Vancouver V6T 1Z1)

Please register here (http://events.ctlt.ubc.ca/event-registration/?ee=867) as seating is limited.

Overview: There is no one correct way for teaching in an interdisciplinary context. What is more, interdisciplinarity presents particular challenges in teaching and learning. To address these dynamics the Interdisciplinary Community of Practice (ICoP) has organized this panel with faculty members and students from across campus to share their experiences (and models) of interdisciplinary teaching and learning.  Our hope is that this session will open up discussions on different ways of interdisciplinary teaching, and raise awareness of how participants might be able to navigate this specific kind of instruction. Each speaker will share their experiences and models for interdisciplinary teaching and learning, and  Q&A will follow. Confirmed Speakers include:

-Dr. Christina Hendricks (ArtsOne, UBC)
-Prof. Marcello M. Veiga (Norman B Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, UBC)
-Dr. Tatiana Teslenko (APSC, Mechanical Engineering, UBC)
-Barak Herrera (Chair of the  Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Network)

Moderator: Dr. Conor Douglas (Interdisciplinary Community of Practice Facilitator)

Refreshments will be provided through support of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Network (IGSN). Faculty, students, and staff are welcome.

Dear Members of the Interdisciplinary Community of Practice (ICoP) at UBC,

this is a reminder to please visit the event page here to register for our first meeting of the academic year on Thursday September 25th from 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm in the Irving K Barber Learning Centre, Fraser River Room (Room 2.27).

Given that this is the first meeting of the year, and in the new ICoP structure, we invite participants to help us explore the meaning of ‘interdisciplinarity’. There are many neologisms that are often conflated with interdisciplinarity (i.e. multidisciplinary, crossdisciplinary, nondisciplinary, transdisciplinary) it is our hope to explore what interdisciplinarity is, and what sets it apart –if anything- from other practices.

If you are having problems copy and paste the link into your browser: http://events.ctlt.ubc.ca/event-registration/?category_name=Interdisciplinary%20CoP

All the best, and see you on Thursday

The ICoP co-facilitators.

Dear Members of the Interdisciplinary Community of Practice,

In preparation for the coming academic year we are putting together a list of activities related to interdisciplinary that we would like to invite you to participate in as a presenter!

Please see the dates and list of topics below.

Note that we are open to a variety of different (presentation) formats ranging from panel discussions, directed readings, stand-and-deliver lectures, group workshop, or other setups you think might work well.

PowerPoint will of course be available but we can also provide other presentation mediums (e.g. flipchart, whiteboard, TV, internet) for each meeting topic.

We have taken your feedback from our last meeting (April 29, 2014) to structure our activities, and our hope is that this notice will allow as many of you to participate as possible.

We invite you to submit your willingness to participate, the session you think you would like to contribute to, and some brief ideas of how you think the session might be best organized.
The Interdisciplinary Community of Practice (ICoP) is a diverse volunteer network of faculty, staff, and students across UBC who seek to support each other in our ability to teach and learn in this area.

Please take a minute to look at the proposed plans for 2014-2015 and send an email to ctlt.icop@ubc.ca with your expression of interest. A more complete and updated version of the 2014-2015 activities will be circulated in advance of the beginning of the Fall Term.

In kind regards,

The ICoP Co-Facilitators
Jackie Davis, Adriana Sedeno and Conor Douglas

SUGGESTED TOPICS AND DATES
September 25th (Thursday)
Topic: What is interdisciplinarity?
Time: 3:00-4:30pm
Place: I.K. Barber Learning Center Room 2.22A

Details: For the kick-off meeting of the academic year and the new ICoP structure we invite participants to help us explore the meaning of ‘interdisciplinarity’. There are many neologisms that are often conflated with interdisciplinarity (i.e. multidisciplinary, crossdisciplinary, nondisciplinary, transdisciplinary) it is our hope to explore what interdisciplinarity is, and what sets it apart –if anything- from other practices.

October 30th (Thursday)
Topic: Facilitating interdisciplinary exchanges across classrooms
Time: 3:00-4:30pm
Place: I.K. Barber Learning Center Room 2.22A

Details: This session looks to explore how can teaching and learning benefit from interdisciplinary exchanges. The hope is that our community can reflect on successful interdisciplinary teaching collaborations, and lay some structural ground work -in the form of information exchange and matchmaking- of how interdisciplinary teaching exchanges across UBC can be facilitated.

November 27th (Thursday)
Topic: Designing interdisciplinary curriculum
Time: 3:00-4:30pm
Place: I.K. Barber Learning Center Room 2.22A

Details: Our hope is that this session will provide some direction or best practices for interdisciplinary curriculum design, and help participants to identify early-on the challenges of such as task.

December – NO MEETING

2015
January 29th (Thursday)
Topic: Models for interdisciplinary teaching
Time: 3:00-4:30pm
Place: I.K. Barber Learning Center Room 2.22A

Details: There is no one correct way for teaching in an interdisciplinary context. What is more, interdisciplinarity presents particular challenges in teaching and learning. Our hope is that this session will open up discussions on different ways of interdisciplinary teaching, and raise awareness of how participants might be able to navigate this specific kind of instruction.

February 26th (Thursday)
Topic: Assessment/evaluation of interdisciplinary projects/courses

Time: 3:00-4:30pm
Place: I.K. Barber Learning Center Room 2.22A
Details: Teaching interdisciplinarity can be a challenge, but one way of helping can be conducting interdisciplinary projects. Our hope is that this session will not only explore how to set-up these projects, but more specifically our goals is how to explore how assessment can take place within interdisciplinary courses (and the projects there within).

April 30th (Thursday)
Topic: Administrative challenges of interdisciplinary teaching and learning.
Time: 3:00-4:30pm
Place: I.K. Barber Learning Center Room 2.22A

Details: The pedagogy of interdisciplinary teaching and learning is not the only challenge faced by instructors interested in interdisciplinairity. This session will explore some of the tasks that take place outside of the classroom that are relevant to interdisciplinary teaching. This includes balancing teaching load across faculties (and the concurrent budget implications), and UBC’s position on interdisciplinary teaching and learning.

May 28th (Thursday)
Topic: Linking interdisciplinary research and teaching
Time: 3:00-4:30pm
Place: I.K. Barber Learning Center Room 2.22A

Details: The three missions of the university are teaching, research, and community service, and it is broadly understood that these missions are best realized when there is a connection between them. This final ICoP session of the academic year will focus on how an academic’s research can be brought into the classroom, and the particular issues that are faced when doing so in an interdisciplinary context.

CTLT’s SoTL Journal Club offers a space to discuss literature on scholarship of teaching and learning. This meeting will be hosted by the Interdisciplinary Community of Practice co-facilitators Adriana Sedeno and Conor Douglas. We will discuss the article below that deals with both interdisciplinary teaching and team teaching: