WOW! 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 More“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.
Read MoreAbout a month ago, I blogged about how I was finally getting started on writing my dissertation and some of the challenges that I had overcome to get to that point - including writing my chapter outlines (or creating my roadmap) and establishing my timelines (or figuring out how long it would take me to hit each landmark).
While writing a dissertation or thesis comes with many challenges - everything from picking a topic to finding a supervisor, to doing a Boolean search or triple-checking your spelling, grammar or citations - early on in research and writing process, it’s important to get and stay organized. Having an organization system that you’re comfortable with is key. This applies to both researching and writing.
Everyone’s system will be a bit different, based on how we think, what tools we like to use, whether we like to read online or in print, and even how we envision the final presentation of our research. This post explores some of the tools that I’ve started using for this ginormous project
Read MoreAs you probably know by now, in mid-March post-secondary institutions across North America moved courses online to protect students, faculty and staff from the spread of COVID. Every university handled this process a little differently, and how professors chose to transition their class to an online format varied.
I think that from both a teaching and learning perspective there is a big difference between a class that is designed from the start to be taught and taken online and an offline class that has to be moved online due to unforeseen circumstances. In addition, for both professors and students, the transition to an online learning environment was also impacted by other factors. Among other things, I had students living in residence that were required to move, students from other countries trying to get back home before borders closed up, and students dealing with other effects stemming from the virus (including loss of employment, sick loved ones, and even children or siblings home from school that they had to care for).
I took all of this into consideration when transitioning my course to a virtual environment. Let me walk you through what I did!
Read MoreFor the past two semesters in the Popular Culture & Communication course that I teach at the University of Ottawa, one of the assignments that my students have been tasked with is visually representing their understanding of how popular culture (defined as broadly or narrowly as they conceptualize it) influences their behaviour, lifestyles, passions, interests and - ultimately - their identity.
Traditionally, these posters are displayed as part of an in-person fair, where students walk around and observe, reflect and appreciate the work of their peers. This year, due to the coronavirus outbreak and the closure of post-secondary institutions in Canada, our poster board fair was cancelled and the assignments were submitted electronically.
Not to be deterred, and after several requests from students who were excited to see the work of their classmates, I constructed a Virtual Art Exhibit showcasing their work. Want to see?
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