Teaching & Learning Update

MESSAGE FROM THE VP, ACADEMIC

Some thoughts on teaching and learningEarlier this year, I attended the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) workshop on undergraduate education (see page 3). And while the event and the report generated from it painted a somewhat disheartening picture of teaching and learning nationally, we at SFU are moving in the right direction.

It was obvious when I consulted prior to the 2010-13 Academic Plan that teaching and learning is highly valued at SFU, and this is reflected in many of the current plan’s goals. We are moving forward with the plan, incorporating the recommendations of the Task Force on Teaching and Learning.

The AUCC report suggests that faculty member “resistance to change” may hinder new approaches to undergraduate teaching, but that’s clearly not the case at SFU. Our faculty members are actively involved in projects such as “Honeycomb” (page 3), and a recent review of SFU curricular-based experiential education opportunities (page 2) reveals that our faculty members have pioneered stimulating educational experiences. These are only two of many positive stories about teaching and learning here.

As we move towards NWCCU accreditation we are inevitably drawn into debate about the role of learning outcomes in the American post-secondary system. U.S. assessment and accountability expert, Peter Ewell, who spoke here Sept. 28, says defining and assessing learning outcomes is typically focused on two somewhat contradictory goals—accountability to government and giving students the best possible educational experience.

I’m mainly interested in the latter, and I believe we can build a logical set of activities around the development and use of learning outcomes to further improve the educational experience at SFU.

By learning outcomes I mean a conscious definition of what we expect students to learn while studying here, and systematic collection of data to assess how well we are meeting our goals. For example, a department might decide that students should understand certain theoretical concepts and would ensure that this was reflected in the curriculum; the instructor would design assignments to assess student understanding of the concepts; aggregate data on student performance would be collected. Over the next few years, we will work to incorporate learning outcomes and their assessment into all of our programs.

As we do so, we must address three other priorities. First, it’s time for a thorough overhaul of the way we evaluate courses and instructors. We’ve given that responsibility to the Senate Committee on University Teaching and Learning, which will complete its work during the current academic year. This gives us the opportunity to update our practices, link student assessments to a course’s purpose, employ new technologies to reduce workloads and make sure results are useful to faculty members.

However, we know that diverse learning outcomes require diverse teaching methods, and there are opportunities to add new approaches that reflect research into effective teaching methods. Therefore, we will continue to encourage faculty members to experiment with new methods and we will encourage professional development through the work of the Teaching and Learning Centre.

See VP’s Message, page 2.

This is the third issue of ViewPointAcademic, a newsletter produced by the office of the Vice President Academic (VPA) to keep members of the Simon Fraser University community abreast of current and future VPA initiatives. The issue addresses NWCCU accreditation site-evaluation developments on pages 1 and 4. But the issue’s main theme is teaching and learning, key components of both the 2010–13 academic plan and the accreditation project.

ViewPointAcademic THURSDAY OCTOBER 6, 2011NEWSLETTER OF THE VICE PRESIDENT, ACADEMIC, SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

SUPPLEMENT

NWCCU Visit, October 12–14A Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) evaluation committee will be on campus Oct. 12–14 meeting with senior administrators and hosting open forums with faculty, staff and students to assess how well SFU is meeting NWCCU accreditation standards.

The committee will tour university facilities and evaluate how SFU fulfills its mission and how community members are contributing to the mission before writing its report.

We encourage you to participate, all of which will be video-linked from Burnaby to the Surrey and Vancouver campuses. Times and locations: www.sfu.ca/vpacademic/accreditation/sitevisit/ForumsFall11.html

Please familiarize yourselves with SFU’s mission and core themes and come prepared to respond to how you and your unit are helping to achieve them. SFU’s self-evaluation report: www.sfu.ca/vpacademic/accreditation.html.

SFU MISSION STATEMENTSFU’s mission is to advance knowledge through teaching, research, and engagement with the community.

We are an open, inclusive university whose foundation is intellectual and academic freedom. Our scholarship unites teaching and research: we celebrate discovery, diversity and dialogue. Our students and communities can expect teaching that is personal and learning opportunities that are lifelong. We champion the liberal arts and sciences and pioneering interdisciplinary and professional programs. We are a university where risks can be taken and bold initiatives embraced.

Upon these foundations, we will engage all our communities in building a robust and ethical society.

SFU CORE THEMES ❙ Teaching and Learning ❙ Research ❙ Student Experience and Success ❙ Community and Citizenship

See Accreditation Open Forums, page 4.

Stephanie Chu, who has been interim director of SFU’s Teaching and Learning Centre (TLC) since 2010, dropped the “interim” from her title Oct. 1, 2011.

“We’re delighted Stephanie has accepted this position on a permanent basis,” says VP Academic Jon Driver. “She is a great choice, given her background, experience and performance as interim director.”

“It’s a privilege for me to work with faculty members, instructors, students, staff and administrators as TLC’s director during an exciting period of transition for our team,” says Chu, who earned her Ph.D. in educational psychology at SFU in 2008 and is an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Education.

“And I’m looking forward to a continuing and strengthening our collaboration and partnership with community members to support the enhancement of teaching and learning at SFU. In time, I see the TLC as being instrumental in SFU’s teaching and learning directions and visible contributors to the field of educational development.”

In addition to her work as a program director in the former Learning and Instructional Development Centre, Chu served

as special projects advisor to the Associate Vice-President, Academic on the Teaching and Learning Task Force.

Chu also worked as an educational analyst at Surrey’s Technical University of British Columbia (TechBC) and as a learning design coordinator at the eLearning Innovation Centre during the transition of TechBC to form the core of SFU’s Surrey Campus in 2002.

She has contributed to the Educational Developers Caucus, Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and is active in a variety of professional organizations on both the national and provincial levels.

Stephanie Chu looks forward to the Teaching and Learning Centre’s evolving and instrumental role in SFU’s teaching and learning directions.

New Director ‘a great choice’ for TLC

2

Second, we will continue to focus on ways to diversify undergraduate education so teaching methods fit the learning outcomes defined for courses and programs. I avoid saying we should “improve” teaching at SFU, because that notion insults the dedication of faculty members and other instructors to teaching and learning, and is inconsistent with surveys that demonstrate high student satisfaction.

A third task still lies in the future: a serious audit of curricula in each unit, focusing on desired learning outcomes and the most appropriate ways to deliver and assess learning. We shouldn’t begin this task until we have taken a thorough look at the best way to implement a learning outcomes approach at SFU, and certainly not before we have a more robust process for evaluating courses and instructional methods. Additionally, I expect such an audit will be “bottom up” and the university will have to provide some guidance and resources to make it effective.

I look forward to working with you on these initiatives over the next few years.

JON DRIVER VP, ACADEMIC, AND PROVOST

Paul Budra says developing a student learning outcomes assessment program is a requirement for NWCUU accreditation, “but more importantly, it’s about clarity to our students.”

Deanna Rogers (left) and Jennifer McRae (right) were encouraged to approach Sarah Dench who gave them the green light and funding for their institution-wide survey.

Audit maps experiential education at SFU

SFU will soon have a catalogue of all curriculum-based experiential-education (EE) courses at the university, thanks to an exhaustive audit being done by recent graduates Deanna Rogers and Jennifer McRae for the VP Academic’s office.

The two Semester in Dialogue alums, who each earned bachelor’s degrees last year, have already compiled an inventory of for-credit courses considered to be experiential in approach in the Faculty of Environment (FENV) and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS). They also engaged with faculty and students to better understand the culture of experiential education that already exists.

Their success in this first phase and a subsequent report on the project led to its expansion to an audit of the remaining six faculties, which they expect to complete by March 2012.

Experiential education refers to learning through doing, allowing students to apply their theoretical knowledge inside and outside the classroom. It’s about “marrying theory and practice,” say McRae and Rogers.

The researchers are gathering information from five sources—a faculty survey, a review of undergraduate and graduate course outlines, a course verification process, and consultations with faculty members, administrators, and students.

The EE project began in 2010 as a pilot led by Centre for Dialogue

assistant professor Janet Moore with McRae serving as her research assistant. Rogers later joined the project, and the two were encouraged to approach Sarah Dench, director of university curriculum and institutional liaison in the VP Academic’s office, who gave them the green light and funding for an institution-wide survey.

“Jenn and Deanna’s project aligns perfectly with our current academic plan’s goal of providing more experiential education opportunities and recognizing all of them for credit, in addition to SFU’s widely respected co-operative education program,” says Dench.

The pair’s “overwhelming conclusion” so far, from their report on FENV and FASS, is that “not only is there strong interest in growing EE amongst faculty members, but a lot is already happening.”

They found that 71 per cent of FENV courses and 40 per cent in FASS have EE components falling under one or more of six broad practices: reflective experiences, field-based experiences, creative-based experiences, community-based experiences, collaborative experiences and directed studies/readings.

Their biggest surprise so far: “SFU profs are engaged and committed to exploring new ways of teaching, and at a research-focused university students don’t always assume that will be the case,” says Rogers. “We were blown away by how passionate professors are about their teaching.”

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY NEWS  ❙  VIEW POINT ACADEMIC  ❙  THURSDAY OCTOBER 6, 2011 SUPPLEMENT

Faculty members and academic administrators got a taste of some of the issues the university is facing in terms of student learning outcomes assessment during a presentation Sept. 28 at the Burnaby campus by U.S. assessment and accountability expert, Peter Ewell (above).

Ewell, vice-president of the Colorado-based National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, began by saying assessments of what students learn in university are typically used for improvement or accountability, and occasionally both.

He went on to outline the reasons why, since the early days of the “assessment movement” in the U.S. in the mid-1980s, these two purposes of outcomes assessment have not rested comfortably together.

“You are in a privileged position for taking on this complicated issue at a late stage of its development,” he said, “because you can see what everybody else has done wrong and harness some that have been done right.”

Ewell summarized what has and hasn’t changed and over the past two decades of student learning outcomes assessment and the shifting expectations of policy makers, accreditors, higher-education leaders, students, and government officials about student and institutional performance.

After describing how various kinds of aggregated information can and should be used for improvement and accountability at the program and institutional level, he pointed to ways institutions such as SFU can productively manage the persistent tensions accompanying improvement and accountability. And manage them while faculty and staff members do the important work of documenting, reporting, and building on what students have gained from their post-secondary experience.

VP Academic Jon Driver has tapped arts and social sciences faculty associate dean, Paul Budra, to head a new working group to evaluate the learning outcomes of academic programs and courses to ensure they are clearly defined and communicated to students.

Budra says developing a coherent and comprehensive program of student learning outcomes assessment is a requirement for NWCCU accreditation.

“But more importantly, it’s about clarity to our students. They want learning outcomes so they know what they are getting from courses, and out of their degree programs.”

He adds, a more sophisticated assessment system will also help faculties and departments justify expenditures and align their programming with the goals of the current academic plan.

Budra says the group’s membership and terms of reference are still being finalized. But he says in order to accomplish its objectives, the working group will:

❙ Review the current curricular assessment processes and course and program learning outcomes.

❙ Identify the criteria necessary to determine effective models for curricular assessment.

❙ Review best-practice curricular assessment processes at other universities.

❙ Provide academic units with guidance, referral to resources, tools and training to implement and assess ongoing improvements against outcomes.

❙ Identify academic units appropriate for piloting any new processes identified.

❙ Make recommendations to the VP Academic and deans regarding assessment processes and planning.Budra attended a conference on using

assessment to improve and account for student learning in Texas last spring with other SFU faculty and academic administrators involved in assessment and accreditation.

And he says the group will continue to look south for inspiration. “The Americans have been doing this for a long time so they have all sorts of best practices and models in place.

And I’m hoping they will be helpful in starting to think about how we can adapt and apply similar practices and models here. Some departments are already doing learning outcomes evaluation. It’s part of their culture. But for others it will be a learning curve.”

VP’S MESSAGE, CONTINUED

Expert offers road map

SFU ASSESSMENT

Working group to assess learning outcomes

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY NEWS  ❙  VIEW POINT ACADEMIC  ❙  THURSDAY OCTOBER 6, 2011

The Honeycomb retreat’s 19 participants worked in groups to discuss what was happening in their classes and what they wanted to change.

SUPPLEMENT

Working group to assess learning outcomes

SFU is proceeding with a plan for implementing the recommendations of the Senate Committee on Teaching and Learning (SCUTL) report prepared in 2008.

The report, titled “Evaluating how we evaluate”, concluded, “There is a potential for valuable and useful information to be collected through student evaluations… but current forms and practices are hindering these well-intentioned efforts.”

It recommended that SFU should develop or obtain: ❙ New course and instructor evaluation forms ❙ A best-practices guide for conducting student

course and teaching evaluations ❙ A best-practices guide for using information collected through

student evaluations for administrative and operational purposes. ❙ Support for responding to student evaluations

of courses and instructors.The recommendations were adopted by the university’s Task Force on Teaching and Learning in January 2010 and VP Academic Jon Driver submitted a plan for implementing the recommendations to the senate in March 2011.

Driver’s plan called for SCUTL to provide project oversight, with input from instructors on any development of new evaluation methods. It also set parameters, calling for separate assessment tools for instructors and courses, a range of instruments suitable for different educational settings such as large classes, field work, etc.

The plan also stresses the need for core questions with customizable options, and best-practice guidelines for efficient and secure data collection and storage.

And it emphasizes the need to ensure “that new forms of evaluation do not create new workload for instructors and academic departments, and that they do not stifle creativity.”

The plan is now proceeding, and hiring of a researcher and writer is underway. The process is expected to last up to a year, and a website detailing progress will be launched in the coming weeks. Consultations within the SFU community will start shortly thereafter.

AUCC MEETING REPORT MISSED SOME ISSUES: DRIVERCanadian universities are not devoting enough attention to offering a quality teaching and learning environment for their undergraduate students, says a new report by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC).

The report, based on a workshop SFU’s VP Academic Jon Driver attended in Halifax last spring, notes many participants identified an overemphasis on research as a key reason universities had “lost their way.” Others pointed to faculty workload, the use of contract instructors, enrolment pressures, the rewards structure, and funding and revenue shortfalls. But Driver says although there is much to commend in the report, including an appendix devoted to SFU’s Semester in Dialogue, both it and the meeting failed to address some important issues.

He says the absence from the meeting of most of Canada’s large research-intensive universities and many large comprehensive universities meant some of the matters larger institutions must deal with were not on the workshop agenda or in the report.

“Perhaps the most obvious is the lack of discussion about the diversity of the student population, and in particular the need to integrate recent immigrants and EAL students into the undergraduate experience,” says Driver.

“There’s also a disturbing absence of any mention of research, except as a barrier to more involvement by faculty members. Most SFU faculty members would argue that their research programs inform and enliven their teaching and engage undergraduates through real examples of critical thinking.

“There was also no discussion about the need to encourage participation and retention by under-represented groups, including aboriginal students.”

And there was no critique of Canada’s lack of leadership for high-quality education, at the meeting or in the report, says Driver. “Our federal-provincial system devolves responsibility for post-secondary education to the provinces, so there is no real national attention to the critical question of educating the next generation.“

The AUCC has made a good start to a much-needed discussion on undergraduate learning, adds Driver. “But more attention is needed from more institutions if significant change is to occur.”

SFU is working to encourage debate about best practices in teaching and learning, in part through the efforts of eight university teaching fellows, or UTFs, one for each academic faculty. They are responsible for developing high-priority teaching and learning initiatives within their home faculties and for collaborating on university-wide projects. Pictured here (l to r) are: Faculty of Environment fellow, Janet Moore; Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences fellow, Adrienne Burk; Beedie School of Business fellow, Stephen Spector; and Faculty of Science fellow, Malgorzata Dubiel. Not present are: Faculty of Education fellow, Carolyn Mamchur; Faculty of Applied Sciences fellow, Ted Kirkpatrick; Faculty of Communication, Art & Technology fellow, Russell Taylor.

LACK OF STUDENT REPS LESSENED WORKSHOP’S IMPACT In spite of the organizers’ wish to have student input at the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) undergraduate education workshop in Halifax last spring, a low turnout reduced the impact of students’ contributions.

As a result, “a huge opportunity was lost to have a more fully informed discussion and a greater student ‘voice’ in the AUCC’s final report,” says VP Academic Jon Driver.

“Our student rep Deanna Rogers and the other 15 or so undergraduates there all made excellent contributions”, says Driver.

“It was the overall small number that was the problem. Many universities didn’t participate and not all that did brought students. Having more there could have provided important insights into the student experience of post-secondary learning.”

The lack of student input may also be a reason the final workshop report was “less galvanizing than it could have been,” he adds.

“They were talking about transforming undergraduate education and the people who know best what undergraduates want are the students,” says Rogers, a recent geography graduate who also earned a sustainable community development certificate and completed the Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue.

“I’ve been thinking critically about education and engaging with it and trying to understand pedagogy for the last couple of years, and I enjoyed the opportunity to share my insights and take part in the workshop.”

You would think renowned bee expert Mark Winston coined the name Honeycomb Project for the intra-faculty workshops and university-wide retreat he and Janet Moore designed to inspire innovation in community-based and experiential learning among SFU faculty members.

But you would be wrong. “Actually, it was Janet’s idea,” says Winston, a biology professor and also academic director and fellow at SFU’s Morris J Wosk Centre for Dialogue and founder of the centre’s Semester in Dialogue program in 2002.

“It’s a good metaphor for our project. The honeycomb is a place of great communication, idea transmission and collaboration between the different tasks and perspectives each individual bee brings to the hive.”

The pair’s two-hour workshops, from fall 2010 through spring 2011, and their subsequent two-day April retreat at Brew Creek Lodge near Whistler were intended to allow faculty members to connect with their own experiential learning first, says Winston.

“Then we encouraged them to apply what they’ve learned from their own experience into the kinds of experience they want to set up for their students inside and outside of the classroom.”

On the first day, the retreat’s 19 participants worked in small groups to discuss what was happening in their classes and what they wanted to change. On the second day they focused on moving new ideas into action, with each faculty member giving a short presentation in the afternoon and listening to feedback and suggestions from their peers.

Moore and Winston hope to turn the Honeycomb retreat into an annual event and they’ll be following up in the next few months to see what their first alumni have done with the experience.

But Winston says the project has already yielded unexpected benefits: “The most surprising thing for us was how many faculty members told us they hadn’t gotten together with other faculty—ever—to talk about teaching.

“Most of us are terrified to reveal how frightening it is to pursue a more experiential kind of classroom where you’re not in control of what might happen next. And part of our exercise was to share some ways to do that and make it an engaging environment for students.”

To download the final Honeycomb Project report, visit: www.sfu.ca/dialog/study+practice/honeycomb/finalreport.pdf.

JOLLY GOOD FELLOWS

Teaching evaluation reforms underway

Honeycomb project yields unexpected benefits

4

Research has always been a priority at SFU. And the current three-year academic plan adds a strong emphasis on teaching and learning.

It made perfect sense, then, when VP Academic Jon Driver connected the dots by announcing a grant program for research into teaching and learning this past January.

The program operates as a partnership between the Institute for the Study of Teaching and Learning in the Disciplines (ISTLD) and the Teaching and

Carolyn Sparrey, an assistant professor in Mechatronic Systems Engineering, is using her teaching and learning grant to develop a virtual lab for the study of biomechanical engineering.

T&L GRANTSHOW TO APPLYSmaller teaching and learning grants ($3K and under) are funded on a continuous basis, with no specific application deadlines, and are limited only by the allocated funds for each year. Larger grants are awarded on a competitive basis and adhere to bi-annual application deadlines. For more information, visit www.sfu.ca/teachlearn/tlgrants.html.

Between now and the end of 2013, SFU plans to move all of its courses based on WebCT, a virtual learning environment platform used for e-learning, to a new learning management system (LMS).

“It’s a major undertaking prompted by WebCT owner Blackboard Inc.’s decision to end support for the platform in January 2013,” says Associate VP Academic Bill Krane.

“Fortunately for us, the timing coincides with SFU’s current three-year academic plan, which calls for a stronger emphasis on teaching and learning. So we’re approaching the search for a new LMS as an opportunity to create an enhanced teaching and learning environment. This will include examining ways to improve the support for students and faculty who want to use the new LMS.”

SFU has used WebCT as its institutional learning management system since 2001. The platform now hosts close to 1,800 courses, and 80 to 85 per cent of SFU’s 24,000 undergraduates use the system. Some internal WebCT support will continue even after Blackboard’s cut-off date—for example, to maintain archived pages. However, the new LMS will become the primary host of SFU courses.

The replacement project will consist of three phases: ❙ An evaluation process from Sept. 2011 to Feb. 2012. ❙ A selection process and implementation

planning from March–August 2012. ❙ An implementation process from Sept. 2012 to Sept. 2013. ❙ The teaching and learning emphasis will have

a particular impact on the first phase.Martin Laba, in the School of Communication,

and teaching and learning needs coordinator, Rob Dainow, joined the team in September. Their mandate is to consult instructors, staff, students, and other constituents who will be affected by the change.

“Our discussions are above all about teaching and learning at SFU, now and in future,” says Laba, “to not only respond, but also to anticipate the needs and demands of a dynamic teaching and learning environment at this university.”

He adds, “The LMS initiative is an opportunity for us to take the widest view of teaching and learning, and to enable students, faculty, and staff alike to articulate and realize their aspirations for what a teaching and learning environment at SFU needs to be.”

A website with regular updates and options for providing input will be launched in October. Stay tuned for details.

Q: WHAT IS A LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM?A: It’s a software application, often web-based, for delivering and administering educational programs and courses. An LMS typically includes modules to handle tasks such as content delivery, communication between and among instructors and students, assignment submission, and evaluation and grading.

Q: WHO IS MANAGING SFU’S LMS REPLACEMENT PROJECT?A: An executive steering committee chaired by the VP Academic including members from various SFU constituencies will guide the effort. The Learning and Teaching Coordinating Committee, part of SFU’s governance structure for IT, will monitor activities and provide advice. A project team consisting of SFU faculty members, staff and external consultants will execute the three project phases.

Learning Centre (TLC), with funding from the University Priorities Fund and the VP Academic’s office.

Its primary purpose is to support faculty-led investigations of questions about teaching and learning with small grants of up to $3,000 and larger grants of up to $10,000.

And now that the first grants have been awarded (see recipient table, left), the fruits of the initiative are becoming evident. What’s striking about the list is the variety of academic units represented and the diversity of scholarly inquiry. The line-up ranges from Sarah Johnson’s proposed study of iClicker use in the Department of Physics to Charles Bingham’s evaluation of leadership experience in student-led cohorts in the Faculty of Education.

The two larger grants will go to instructors in the School of Engineering Science, but here too the investigations are diverse. Glen Chapman and Ash Parameswaran will look into “Enhancing student learning with tools to generate multiple problem sets,” while Kamal Gupta will consider “Experiential learning via hands-on robotics engineering and programming for senior undergraduates.”

Financial resources will be allocated primarily to the hiring of research assistants, data collection and analysis, and disseminating results, and in most cases projects are expected to be complete within a year.

The outcomes will be available to members of the university community and promise to be both exciting and practical.

As Driver said when he introduced the grant program, “Our faculty members often tell me that they see their work as going beyond providing content to transforming how students think and problem-solve.

“We hope to pinpoint what teaching methods best allow for this and match teaching practices to the purpose of a particular course or discipline.”

SUPPLEMENTSIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY NEWS  ❙  VIEW POINT ACADEMIC  ❙  THURSDAY OCTOBER 6, 2011 SUPPLEMENT

Grant winners

WebCT replacement will enhance teaching and learning

Martin Laba says the university’s move to a new learning management system should help users “articulate and realize their aspirations for what a teaching and learning environment at SFU needs to be.”

V I C E - P R E S I D E N T , A C A D E M I C

VIEWPOINT ACADEMICVP-ACADEMIC Dr. Jon Driver❙778.782.3925❙driver@sfu.caNEWSLETTER EDITOR Stuart Colcleugh❙778.782.3210❙colcleugh@sfu.caDESIGN The Design Group, External Relations

CHARLES BINGHAM FACULTY OF EDUCATION Evaluating Leadership Experience in Student-Led Cohorts $2,940

ADRIENNE BURK & DARA CULHANE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY Exploring Student Learning inAnthropological Ethnographic Methods$3,050 SUSAN CLEMENTS-VIVIAN SCHOOL OF INTERACTIVE ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY Performance and participation in medium sixed (72 students) lecture courses $2,572.40

ATOUSA HAJSHIRMOHAMMADI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING SCIENCEIncorporating Experiential Learning in Lower Level Engineering Science Courses $2,800

SARAH JOHNSON DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS A Study of the Implementation of Interactive Lecture Demonstrations Using iClickers $2,400

STEVE KLINE SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION A formative evaluation of the revisions to CMNS 363 as a research design course. $3,000

MARY-ELLEN KELM DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY Interactive, Engaged Discussion in History $2,960

CAROLYN MAMCHUR FACULTY OF EDUCATION Reflexivity in Online Distance Education $3,000

JOAN SHARP DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGYAssessing student learning gain and attitudinal change following learning objective-driven revision of a major’s biology laboratory course $2,900

CAROLYN SPARREY SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING SCIENCEDeveloping a virtual lab for the study of biomechanical engineering.$2,000

GLENN CHAPMAN & ASH PARAMESWARAN SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING SCIENCEEnhancing Student learning with Tools to Generate Multiple Problem Sets$9,600

KAMAL GUPTA SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING SCIENCEExperiential Learning via Hands on Robotics Engineering and Programming for Senior Undergraduates$8,820

FEATURETEACHING & LEARNING

OPEN FORUM FACULTYWednesday, October 12  ❙  11 amBurnaby  ❙  IRMACSSurrey  ❙  SUR 5380Harbour Centre  ❙  HC 1700

OPEN FORUM STAFFThursday, October 13  ❙  10 amBurnaby  ❙  IRMACSSurrey  ❙  SUR 5380Harbour Centre  ❙  HC 1700

OPEN FORUM TSSUThursday, October 13  ❙  10 amBurnaby  ❙  Halpern Centre, 126Surrey  ❙  SUR 3595Harbour Centre  ❙  HC 1900

OPEN FORUM STUDENTSThursday, October 13  ❙  1 pmBurnaby  ❙  IRMACSSurrey  ❙  SUR 5380Harbour Centre  ❙  HC 1700

ACCREDITATION OPEN FORUMSDuring their Oct. 12–14 visit, the NWCCU accreditation evaluation team will meet with SFU administrators and host four open forums at the Burnaby campus that will be video-linked to Surrey and Vancouver campuses.

Accreditation will make it easier to compare and share best practices with other institutions worldwide, improve international recognition and recruitment, and simplify relations with U.S. counterparts in matters such as scholarships, grants and athletics.

The Washington-based NWCCU is the regional authority on the educational quality and institutional effectiveness of post-secondary institutions.