How to Hyperlink in PowerPoint

Okay… you’re giving a talk and have just received the two minutes remaining signal… but you have 10 PowerPoint slides to go! How do you get to the last slide–the one you really want to end on–without blasting through the next nine OR escaping and just moving to the final slide? Fortunately there is a [...]

Teaching Tip: Using Excel Spreadsheets to calculate final grades

Interested in finding out how to use formulas to calculate students’ final grades? This video by Kim Holland  has three step-by-step instructions on how to use Excel spreadsheets to calculate final grades.

Launch of The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

I am thrilled to be able to announce the publication of the inaugural issue of The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CJSoTL)/La revue canadienne sur l’avancement des connaissances en enseignement et en apprentissage (RCACEA).  It has been a long and winding road but the journal finally went live at 1:20pm on [...]

Opportunities and New Directions

The conference season is quickly approaching and there are a number of great conferences this Spring and Summer for those interested in Research on Teaching (RT).  One I would highly recommend attending is the University of Waterloo’s annual Opportunities and New Directions: A Research Conference on Teaching and Learning which is next week (i.e., Wednesday, [...]

My Slack Week: The Instructional Skills Workshop Experience

The name “Slack Week” has always struck me as such a misnomer.  Since the first year of my undergraduate degree (almost 25 years ago…) “Slack Week” has been an extremely busy study and/or work week for me.  This year was no exception.  In fact, this year it was particularly intensive as I was participating in [...]

Are Post-Secondary Institutions Academically Optimistic?

by Ken N. Meadows  A colleague and I were recently discussing the first year student experience.  He wondered if some members of the university community might inadvertently be conveying to first year students that the university is pessimistic about their academic ability.  Specifically, my colleague wondered if emphasizing the probable drop in grades from high [...]

Creativity in the Classroom – Natasha Patrito Hannon

In my last post (Rediscovering the Masters), I highlighted a paper by Richard Felder titled ‘Creating Creative Engineers’. This paper proposes a number of strategies to foster creative problem solving skills among students in the technical disciplines. As I revisit the syllabus for an upcoming course, Environmental Issues, I continue to ask myself whether I [...]

REDISCOVERING THE MASTERS: Richard Felder, Engineer & Educator – Natasha Patrito Hannon

This is the first of what I hope will become a monthly feature highlighting the work of scholars who have made significant contributions to teaching & learning in higher education. I begin with Richard M. Felder, emeritus professor of chemical engineering at North Carolina State University and, perhaps, the most prolific scholar of engineering education [...]

Writing for a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Journal – Ken N. Meadows

Last week, I attended the Sixth Annual Conference of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Bloomington, Indiana. The conference was a wonderful opportunity to connect with colleagues from around the world interested in research on teaching and to immerse myself in the latest thinking and research in the area. As [...]

Personal Questions – Nanda Dimitrov

How do you learn your students’ names? – I realized that one of the reasons is that I ask them a lot of personal questions…