Author: Kim Pfeifer

by Jen Wrye, Teach­ing and Learn­ing Fac­ul­ty Devel­op­er Last spring, two groups of fac­ul­ty at NIC par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Cen­tre for Teach­ing and Learn­ing Innovation’s inau­gur­al Team-based Learn­ing (TBL) Course Redesign Insti­tute. The ses­sions focused on the prin­ci­ples of team-based learn­ing, as well as stu­dent learn­ing, engage­ment, and metacog­ni­tive skills more gen­er­al­ly. I had a…

By Kather­ine Car­pen­ter, Teach­ing and Learn­ing Fac­ul­ty Devel­op­er, Cen­tre for Teach­ing and Learn­ing Inno­va­tion, North Island Col­lege “Time pres­sure rewards stu­dents who think fast and shal­low — and pun­ish­es those who think slow and deep,” Adam Grant Using timed tests as way to assess learn­ing has been under scruti­ny for some time. While sum­ma­tive assess­ments…

Assess­ment is an essen­tial dimen­sion of our learn­ing expe­ri­ences. In addi­tion to deter­min­ing and cer­ti­fy­ing the degree to which learn­ing out­comes have been met, assess­ment “directs atten­tion to what is impor­tant. It acts as an incen­tive for study. And it has a pow­er­ful effect on what stu­dents do and how they do it.” (Boud &…

Instruc­tors require four kinds of knowl­edge to be an effec­tive edu­ca­tor. Col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty instruc­tors most often come to the posi­tion with­out strengths in all four knowl­edge areas. When instruc­tors are build­ing their pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment plan they should con­sid­er a bal­anced approach of all four com­po­nents and a vari­ety of for­mats such as con­fer­ences, work­shops,…

Sex­u­al Vio­lence is some­thing that has an impact on our entire com­mu­ni­ty; accord­ing to Sta­tis­tics Cana­da, 71% of Cana­di­an post-sec­ondary stu­dents expe­ri­enced unwant­ed sex­u­al­ized behav­ior in 2019. Fur­ther, accord­ing to the Cana­di­an Labour Con­gress, near­ly 50% of work­ers have expe­ri­enced sex­u­al harass­ment and/or sex­u­al vio­lence in 2018 and 2019. This is a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for…

As of Jan­u­ary 1, 2023, NIC is insti­tut­ing a 2‑year Bright­space course and Kaltura video reten­tion process to pro­tect and stream­line course and stu­dent data as well as pro­vide orga­nized and effi­cient col­lec­tions of cours­es and videos. This also applies to Blue­Jeans record­ings of online class­es. Per a NIC Pol­i­cy 1–05 NIC is only required…

“Tech­nol­o­gy Inte­gra­tions into Bright­space” NIC’s Approval Process for Tech­nol­o­gy Inte­gra­tions for Dig­i­tal Learn­ing Envi­ron­ments (Bright­space) There is a new deci­­sion-mak­ing process involved in approv­ing a third-par­­ty tech­nol­o­gy inte­gra­tion (e.g., a text­book pub­lish­er, web tool, social media plat­form) for con­nec­tion into NIC’s dig­i­tal learn­ing envi­ron­ment – Bright­space. Instruc­tor requests for integrating/adding in/making a con­nec­tion link with­in…

For many of you the term is com­ing to a close, class­es have end­ed, will be end­ing soon or you are wind­ing down a recent unit or mod­ule. One of the most impact­ful books I have ever read is called, “Becom­ing a Crit­i­cal­ly Reflec­tive Teacher” by Stephen Brook­field. The first edi­tion of this book came…