NBD, but I think that I might have given one of the best lectures of my post-secondary teaching career last week in my Introduction to Research Methods course. And, not surprisingly, it involved Sean Paul.
This is Part I of II, and an example of how incorporating popular culture into classrooms makes complex topics easier to understand and discuss.
Read MoreWOW! Is it almost the middle of September already? I can’t believe how quickly the summer went by. Before diving into some substantial content - I’ve been quiet for a while because I’ve been working on some big projects - I thought I’d take the time to give a bit of an update on what’s new and exciting.
Read on to hear about what’s been happening on the academic, professional and personal front, and to see what I have planned for the coming academic year!
Read MoreYes, 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!
Read MoreAs a Ph.D Candidate in the second semester of my fourth year of study with my admission scholarship quickly running out and my desire to finish my degree increasing exponentially, I’ve been working on developing a plan to write my dissertation. For the past 4-5 months, I’ve flip-flopped back and forth over which chapter to start with; I’ve also started reading for all of them and stopped, turning back to my data instead for inspiration. These months aren’t lost time by any means - among other things, I’ve come up with chapter titles, have a paper in progress because of a conference presentation that I did with my data set, and have figured out how I want to present my dissertation - but I recognize that continuing on without a solid plan won’t help me to make the progress that I want to make.
So… where to start?
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