Learning to Teach Day

November 12, 2011 Session Descriptions and Facilitator Biographies Session

Morning Plenary (TL01)

Session Description
What I Wish I'd Known When I First Started Teaching

Facilitator Biography
Dr. Richard Koestner is a professor in the Department of Psychology and a recipient of the Leo Yaffe Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Preparing and delivering effective presentations (TL02)

Does the thought of speaking in front of a group of people make you nervous? Would you like to give a lecture or scholarly presentation with confidence? This session will explain some highly effective strategies for preparing and delivering an informative and engaging talk without anxiety. The aim of this session is to share strategies for grading papers and essays in ways that are rigorous, fair, and efficient. We will examine the standards we apply intuitively when reading student work, experiment with designing and using rubrics to make these standards explicit, and talk about best practices in terms of generating constructive feedback for students. The session will provide tips on coordinating multiple TAs, and insuring that similar content is being delivered to complement the lectures/readings given by the instructor. It will also focus on what NOT to do.

Prof. Edith Zorychta is a professor in the Departments of Pathology, Pharmacology and Therapeutics and the Director of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, Department of Pathology. She has extensive experience teaching undergraduates in the Faculty of Science and graduate students in the Faculty of Medicine.

Grading in the Humanities and Social Sciences (TL02)

Alexander Deguise is a PhD student in the Department of History. He has been a TA for a variety of courses and is very passionate about teaching and learning issues. He has also been actively involved in academic policy discussions at McGill through his role as a member of Senate and the Academic Policy Committee.

Coordinating multiple sections/conferences /TAs (TL02)

Elia Nahas graduated from McGill with a major in Biology and a minor in Psychology. He received his Masters degree in Psychology and is currently working towards his PhD in Behavioural Neurosciences. He was also the recipient of Michael Quek Teaching Assistant Award for 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Learning to Teach Day

November 12, 2011 Session Descriptions and Facilitator Biographies

Leading Effective Discussions (TL02)

This interactive session will provide you with strategies for planning and conducting successful classroom discussions. Throughout the workshop, we will discuss and model effective ways to open, facilitate, and close discussions. We will also share ideas for managing participation effectively.

Dr. Mariela Tovar is an Educational Development Specialist at Teaching and Learning Services (TLS). Her areas of expertise include teaching and learning in higher education, the design of educational programs and educational evaluation. She is an experienced facilitator and has applied her skills in a variety of settings and disciplines including human rights education and environmental capacity building. At TLS Mariela leads projects designed to enhance teaching and learning at McGill and offers course design and teaching support to McGill faculty. Laura Gougeon is a graduate student with long experience as a teaching assistant. She has been working as graduate student assistant at TLS for over two years. Laura is also a fellow at MITI (Macdonald Innovations for Teaching Improvement), which delivers workshops to teaching assistants at Macdonald campus.

Giving Effective Face to Face Feedback (TL03)

Providing students with feedback during face-to-face interactions can create powerful learning opportunities. As an instructor, how can you frame comments in a way that is constructive and helps promote further learning and motivation? In this session, we will explore both the importance of face-to-face feedback and techniques for answering and asking questions in one-on-one and larger group settings.

Prof. Sujata Madan is a Faculty Lecturer in the Desautels Faculty of Management. She spends a good part of her day giving face-to-face feedback. Jason Harley is a Masters student in Educational Psychology. His research investigates learners affective responses to pedagogical agents tutorial prompts and feedback, which aim to facilitate students learning of complex biological content and self-regulatory skills.

Learning to Teach Day

November 12, 2011 Session Descriptions and Facilitator Biographies

Effective Approaches to Group Work (TL03)

Group work can be one of the biggest successes in your classroom and also one of the biggest headaches. The purpose of this workshop is to share research-derived strategies on how to use group work in your teaching setting and as a useful tool, without the headaches!

Philippe Gilchrist is a 3nd year PhD student in Clinical Psychology (Cardio vascular Psychophysiology and Psychopathology). He has been a licensed Psychologist since 2006. He has provided several public lectures in hospital settings, guest-lecturing at Concordia, as well as teaching (e.g., TA and supervising) in other academic and clinical environments. Sarny Balegh is a 2nd year Masters student in Experimental Psychology (Health Psychology). As part of her teaching experience, she had led numerous conference sessions with her students, and has lectured in front of classrooms of over 650 individuals. She has also helped supervise 3 Honours students in her lab.

Concept Mapping to Promote Teaching and Learning (TL03)

This session will discuss concept mapping as a method for engaging students in active and meaningful learning. In addition to exploring a wide range of applications for concept mapping in teaching, participants will create their own concept maps and be introduced to the software CmapTools.

April Colosimo is a liaison librarian in McGills Schulich Library of Science and Engineering. She uses concept mapping to help graduate students articulate their research and determine their information needs. She also teaches concept mapping as a design tool to librarians as well as students in the School of Information Studies of the McGill University Faculty of Education. She has delivered several conference presentations and workshops on concept mapping. Megan Fitzgibbons has successfully used concept mapping to improve students learning in the library setting. As a liaison librarian for Continuing Studies, Education, and Political Science, she uses information visualization tools to facilitate students' development of research skills in workshops and one-on-one consultations. She also uses concept mapping as a collaborative design tool with faculty and staff. Like April, she has presented on concept mapping at several academic conferences.

Learning to Teach Day

November 12, 2011 Session Descriptions and Facilitator Biographies

Communicating learning expectations to Undergraduates (TL03)

Undergraduate students, especially those fresh out of CEGEP or high school, are often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new and complex information presented to them. "What do the instructors expect of me? " "What do they want me to know?" Ironically, the instructors are often asking themselves the same questions. It's one thing to devise or inherit a course outline, quite another to make clear in your own mind and to articulate to your students precisely what you want them to get out of your class. This session on communicating learning expectations will deal with these and related issues. This session will be about activating students metacognition, the process of thinking about what you know, and how you are learning. We will look at strategies to use in the classroom to help students challenge their preconceptions, evaluate their level of understanding, and identify which topics or concepts they may need to revisit.

Prof. David Ragsdale is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the Montreal Neurological Institute. He teaches courses for undergraduates, graduate students and medical students at McGill. Dr. Ragsdale is also Associate Director of the McGill Integrated Graduate Program in Neuroscience.

Strategies for helping students think about learning (TL03)

Corey Chivers is a PhD Candidate in Biology who is passionate about teaching and learning. He has extensive experience as a TA, as well as a workshop facilitator. In addition to running biannual teaching workshops aimed specifically at science graduate students, Corey has designed and facilitated a series of Statistics workshops for students and faculty in his department. Corey takes an evidencebased approach to teaching and learning, and is always experimenting with new techniques to help students maximize their potential. Joan Butterworth runs the Leadership Training Program within McGills First-Year Office, Student Services where she has been integrating her expertise in theatre and improvisation to leadership and leadership skills. She also gives improv workshops as a positive form of creative expression as well as an exercise for cognitive flexibility and exploration. Joan has a B.A. from McGill as well as a Masters degree in Educational Technology from Concordia University.

Afternoon Plenary Where do we go from here? (TL04)

How do we synthesize our experience of the day? Performance, theatre and improvisation provide a distinct and universal perspective for teaching and can help us integrate new strategies and approaches. This interactive, playful and stimulating session will help you build your next steps to becoming a teacher.