Academic — Blog — Jenn Dumoulin

Surviving and Thriving as an Online Teacher: A Few Tips & Tricks from my First Two Weeks

Yes, it’s true! I have two weeks of online teaching under my belt and guess what? It’s going pretty well! I miss the face-to-face interaction with students a lot (I also never realized how helpful non-verbal feedback is), but the chat function in our online teaching platform allows enough feedback to let me know how things are going. I also use polls and status updates which provide real-time responses to questions and class content.

To teach online successfully - and stress free - requires advance planning. In addition to preparing slides, notes and assignments, we need to find and set up other tools that make online teaching more interactive and enjoyable, as well as more effective. If you’re filming lectures, this also needs to be done well in advance so that they’re read to go live before you need them.

While planning is important, if not crucial, to the success of both in-person and online teaching, I’ve found several strategies to be helpful when it comes to navigating the world of online teaching. Read about them there!

TeachingJennifer DumoulinJuly 5, 2020Online Teaching, Online Learning, Ph.D, Teaching, Academic

How to Write a Dissertation: Just Keep Writing

“Wow! Time flies when you’re… sitting in front your desk for large chunks of time several days a week.” Does that sound… frustrated? Or pessimistic? It shouldn’t - sarcasm doesn’t travel well in text format. Let me re-phrase.

WOW! Times flies when you’ve been focused and diligently chipping away at the first chapter of your dissertation. That statement is true. Time flies and deadlines loom. It’s a fact of life. In just over two weeks, I’m aiming to submit a draft of the first chapter of my dissertation to my supervisor. And I couldn’t be happier!

I won’t say that it’s been easy getting here, but in the past month I’ve written more than 30 pages (and most of is decent, which is a HUGE win). I still have another 10-15 left, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel - and the week off that I plan to take before beginning Chapter 2. With that said, I thought I’d share some of the challenges and tips that I’ve used to overcome them along the way.

Ph.D, LifeJennifer DumoulinJune 12, 2020Dissertation, Wri, Ph, Academic

My experience as a uOGlobal Facilitator

This weekend, I volunteer as a uOGlobal Facilitator. ICYMI, the uOGlobal Recognition Program is a new initiative at the University of Ottawa that strives to provide domestic and international students with an opportunity to develop the skills needed to succeed in today’s global marketplace. You can learn more about uOGlobal and its program requirement here.

My first publication as a Ph.D Candidate!

Well, it finally happened! I’m published! Now, this isn’t the first time that I’ve been published – my Master’s thesis is available through the University of Ottawa’s research portal and I have a paper from law school buried in the depths of the Canadian Bar Association’s Military Law Section’s journal Sword & Scale.