Student Consultants at York University’s Teaching Commons Dear Faculty, It is our pleasure to introduce to you our team of Student Consultants on Learning and Teaching at York University's Teaching Commons. At our core, the Student Consultant team is a dynamic, interdisciplinary collective of students dedicated to offering faculty diverse and authentic student perspectives to […]
What do we mean by inclusivity? By Valérie Florentin and Lianne Fisher Valérie: After a few years spent teaching online, I felt the need to get some more education about new trends, so I took several workshops at the Teaching Commons and attended a few other pedagogy related activities outside of York. Because I’m largely […]
Redesigning with intention: Graduate student and teaching assistant programming at the Teaching Commons (Blog 2 of 5) This is the second in a series of blog posts. Read all blogs in the series! Download a copy of the video transcript (.txt) A visualization of the Record of Completion certificates for graduate students and teaching assistants […]
New Faculty Reflects on her Professional Growth By Gloria Orchard Over the last year or so, as a new faculty member, I have had the opportunity to participate and learn through a variety of teaching courses and workshops offered at the Teaching Commons here at York University. I found the Instructional Skills and the Course Design Intensive workshops […]
Inside the Student Experience: AI's Role in Academia by Robin Sutherland-Harris As part of the recent university-wide Summit on Generative AI in Higher Education, held October 18-20, 2023, we had the pleasure of hearing from several York University students at our Student Voices Panel. This panel discussion, hosted by Scott McLaren from the York University […]
Case Studies and the Case Study Method as Pedagogical Practice By James C. Simeon Case studies and the case study method are the standard pedagogical practice found in professional programs such as law, business, medicine, engineering, public policy, and public administration, among others. Case studies have been described in the following terms, Case studies is […]
Using Case Studies to Teach Refugee Status Determination (RSD) and Public Values and Ethics Through Globally Networked Learning (GNL)[1] By James C. Simeon It is uncontested that modern digital communications technology has permeated and transformed higher education. This is most evident by the number of online and hybrid courses that are offered at universities today.[2] […]
Interactive Syllabus By Shirley Roburn This blog is a repost from 2022, made relevant again in the context of Teaching Commons' upcoming workshops on the motivational syllabus. For more information on these workshops, please see the details below or register directly either for the workshop delivered in English or for the workshop delivered in French. […]
A Moodle course project: teaching music theory online By Diane Kolin Introduction My field is music. When one think of music, images of performers, concert places, in-person bands and orchestras, come to mind. But there are activities that can be studied in writing, in books, or online. Some of these consist of learning music theory. […]
Commonplace Book Assignments: Using Commonplacing in the Literature Classroom By Cheryl Cowdy and Natalie Neill “A commonplace book is at once a book form and a method of reading” (https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/collex/exhibits/book-use-book-theory-1500-1700/parts-and-wholes-matter-method/commonplace-thinking/) A commonplace book is a notebook that contains extracts from and reflections on one’s readings. It is part reading journal, part book of quotations. It […]