President&#039;s Teaching Award / en Two U of T professors honoured with President’s Teaching Award /news/two-u-t-professors-honoured-president-s-teaching-award <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Two U of T professors honoured with President’s Teaching Award</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/Untitled-1%20%281%29.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=F-3AjqtY 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/Untitled-1%20%281%29.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=p1QMeb4W 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/Untitled-1%20%281%29.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=6IMHk2Jn 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/Untitled-1%20%281%29.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=F-3AjqtY" alt="Photo of Michelle Craig and Paul Piunno"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>perry.king</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2019-05-31T17:02:17-04:00" title="Friday, May 31, 2019 - 17:02" class="datetime">Fri, 05/31/2019 - 17:02</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">Michelle Craig and Paul Piunno have been awarded this year's President's Teaching Award (photos by Perry King and Drew Lesiuczok)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/perry-king" hreflang="en">Perry King</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/university-professor" hreflang="en">University Professor</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/awards" hreflang="en">Awards</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/computer-science" hreflang="en">Computer Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-arts-science" hreflang="en">Faculty of Arts &amp; Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/meric-gertler" hreflang="en">Meric Gertler</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/president-s-teaching-award" hreflang="en">President's Teaching Award</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/teaching" hreflang="en">Teaching</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/u-t-mississauga" hreflang="en">U of T Mississauga</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-subheadline field--type-string-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Subheadline</div> <div class="field__item">Five professors also promoted to University Professor, U of T's highest rank for faculty</div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><strong>Michelle Craig</strong>’s work to improve and enhance learning materials in computer science has been internationally recognized. <strong>Paul Piunno</strong>’s teaching innovations have introduced undergraduate science students to interdisciplinary research.</p> <p>The two Ƶ professors, who have devoted their careers to enhancing the student experience, have been awarded this year’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.provost.utoronto.ca/awards-funding/#section_7">President’s Teaching Award</a>. The award recognizes sustained excellence in teaching, research in teaching and the integration of teaching and research.</p> <p>“Professors Craig and Piunno have brought great energy and creativity to their classrooms, enriching the education of our students and setting an inspiring example for other teachers,” said U of T President&nbsp;<strong>Meric Gertler</strong>.</p> <p>“On behalf of the Ƶ, I congratulate both of them on their achievements and on receiving this important recognition.”</p> <p>Winners of the teaching award receive an annual professional development allowance of $10,000 for five years, and are designated members of the U of T Teaching Academy for a minimum period of five years.&nbsp;The academy meets regularly&nbsp;to discuss matters relevant to teaching, offer advice to the vice-president and provost, as well as the director of&nbsp;Centre for Teaching Support &amp; Innovation (CTSI).&nbsp;</p> <h3><a href="/news/u-t-honours-four-exceptional-faculty-members-president-s-teaching-award">Read&nbsp;about last year’s winners</a></h3> <p>Craig, an associate professor, teaching stream, in the department of computer science, is particularly excited to begin contributing to the U of T Teaching Academy.</p> <p>“It means you have an opportunity to have a bigger impact on what we do here and raise the portfolio of teaching at the university,” said Craig, who joined U of T in 1990.</p> <p>Craig has been active in transforming computer science material for various audiences. She co-ordinated the cross-Canada Undergraduate Capstone Open-Source Projects program (UCOSP) to train promising software developers and the Computing for Medicine program to introduce computing to medical students. She is currently working with the National Center for Women &amp; Information Technology to develop EngageCSEdu, a peer-reviewed online repository for teaching materials. “A place for teaching-stream faculty to publish resources,” said Craig.</p> <p>She is most proud of her work in developing educational materials, leading a team that produced over 125 videos and over 200 exercises about <a href="https://mcs.utm.utoronto.ca/~pcrs/C-programming/index.shtml">C and Systems Programming</a> that have been viewed thousands of times by U of T students.</p> <p>She couldn’t do it alone, and said she was thankful to collaborate with many across her department.</p> <p>“The thing I’m most proud of was getting a whole bunch of people to agree to work on this stuff together,” said Craig, who read on camera for each video&nbsp;while other faculty and students filled in as script writers, editors and videographers.</p> <p>She believes strongly in producing high quality materials for her students. Collaborating on over 35 publications in computer science education, Craig also takes pride in applying scholarly rigour to her teaching methods and materials.</p> <p>“Assignments and curricular materials are what makes the student experience,” said Craig, who won an <a href="/news/meet-two-u-t-faculty-members-honoured-ocufa-outstanding-teaching">Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations teaching award</a>. Having a good relationship with students is important, she added, but “what makes the student’s experience in computer science is how well the materials guide them through the lessons and how frustrated they are when the instructions aren’t careful.</p> <p>“If they can get from Step A to Step B, and actually meet the learning objectives – and it hasn’t been too painful – that’s what I want to invest in.”&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Paul Piunno</strong>, an associate professor, teaching stream, in the department of chemical and physical sciences at U of T Mississauga, is also invested in engaging students and has done so through his team-based interdisciplinary pedagogy.</p> <p>Collaborating with colleagues in the department&nbsp;of biology and the department of&nbsp;chemical and physical sciences, Piunno launched <a href="/news/utm-students-gain-real-world-lab-experience">the Advanced Interdisciplinary Research Laboratory</a> (AIRLab) in 2012. An alternative to the traditional fourth-year independent research thesis course, AIRLab teams up students from different scientific disciplines – including chemistry, biology, physics and Earth sciences – and assigns a research problem related to their unique skill sets. The teams are given an academic year to work on the project.</p> <p>What makes AIRLab effective, Piunno said, is that it teaches students about what to expect in their future careers. “As much as we all think we’re training every student in our course to go to grad school and pursue a master’s and a PhD, a lot of students aren’t going to grad school – a lot of them are going into industry,” said Piunno.</p> <p>What’s very important to industry, he said, is critical thinking skills and the ability to work across disciplines, to “mesh as a team.” Piunno designed AIRLab with that in mind, drawing on his prior experience working with a U.S.-based life sciences company.</p> <p>“I had to get out there and put together a team of mechanical, optical, electrical and software engineers – I had a biology team and chemistry team and nobody on the team spoke each other’s language,” said Piunno, who worked on a patent for an RNA diagnostics tool as a PhD student.</p> <p>“In order to pull off this commercialization endeavor, they all had to jump in and row the boat in the same direction.”</p> <p>Drawing on that industry experience, and the need for teamwork and communications skills, Piunno wishes he had the skills he teaches his students when he was starting out.</p> <p>“A lot of the real-world challenges come from problems that have to address multiple disciplines, and you need multiple people to come together,” said Piunno, who has also developed a second-year interdisciplinary course that introduces field-based scientific research to undergraduates. &nbsp;</p> <p>Piunno is humbled to receive a President’s Teaching Award.</p> <p>“This is a crescendo of everything I’ve experienced throughout my career,” said Piunno. “The imposter syndrome is kicking in pretty hard right now.</p> <p>“I just enjoy doing what I do, and doing the best I can to be that professor that inspires, encourages and is always enthusiastic – and by that same token, hold my students to high standards and make sure that they’ve worked for their credit and learned something.”</p> <h3>Five new University Professors</h3> <p>U of T also announced faculty who were newly promoted to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/awards/uprofessors.htm">University Professor</a>, the highest rank for faculty at the university. The honour recognizes&nbsp;“unusual scholarly achievement and pre-eminence in a particular field of knowledge.”&nbsp;</p> <p>The new University Professors are:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Elizabeth Edwards</strong>, department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry and the department of cell and systems biology</li> <li><strong>Prabhat Jha</strong>,&nbsp;Dalla Lana School of Public Health</li> <li><strong>Anita McGahan</strong>,&nbsp;Rotman School of Management</li> <li><strong>James Retallack</strong>, department of history&nbsp;</li> <li><strong>Frances Shepherd</strong>, department of medicine&nbsp;</li> </ul> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Fri, 31 May 2019 21:02:17 +0000 perry.king 156777 at U of T faculty and staff to highlight teaching and learning projects at annual symposium /news/u-t-faculty-and-staff-highlight-teaching-and-learning-projects-annual-symposium <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">U of T faculty and staff to highlight teaching and learning projects at annual symposium</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/0J5A0534.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=EcIADroA 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/0J5A0534.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=M-4ab9xe 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/0J5A0534.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=pE2e15GW 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/0J5A0534.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=EcIADroA" alt="Photo of Melody Neumann and Michelle French"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>perry.king</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2019-05-27T16:38:23-04:00" title="Monday, May 27, 2019 - 16:38" class="datetime">Mon, 05/27/2019 - 16:38</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">Melody Neumann developed a U of T-supported educational app called Team Up! that's used by U of T Teaching Academy colleague Michelle French (photo by Perry King)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/perry-king" hreflang="en">Perry King</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/cell-and-systems-biology" hreflang="en">Cell and Systems Biology</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/biology" hreflang="en">Biology</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-arts-science" hreflang="en">Faculty of Arts &amp; Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/physiology" hreflang="en">Physiology</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/president-s-teaching-award" hreflang="en">President's Teaching Award</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/stem" hreflang="en">STEM</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/teaching" hreflang="en">Teaching</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/u-t-mississauga" hreflang="en">U of T Mississauga</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/undergraduate-students" hreflang="en">Undergraduate Students</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/undergraduate-education" hreflang="en">Undergraduate Education</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>One initiative uses an app that encourages active learning. Another wants to help students reframe how they think about failure. Yet another enhances&nbsp;knowledge of science by developing materials for high school students.</p> <p>As Ƶ faculty gather for tomorrow’s&nbsp;<a href="https://tls.utoronto.ca/">Teaching and Learning Symposium</a>&nbsp;at the Rotman School of Management's Desautels Hall, the U of T Teaching Academy and colleagues from across the university&nbsp;will highlight how these and other projects are contributing to enhancing the student experience.&nbsp;</p> <p>The academy,&nbsp;composed of past&nbsp;<a href="https://www.provost.utoronto.ca/awards-funding/presidents-teaching-award/#section_5">President’s Teaching Award</a>&nbsp;winners,&nbsp;is an advisory group that offers expertise and advice to U of T’s Office of the Vice-President &amp; Provost and&nbsp;the Centre for Teaching Support &amp; Innovation, or CTSI.</p> <p>“All three ideas represent innovation and experimentation of how to enhance our student experience and how to focus on things that we know make a difference for our students and the meaningfulness of their time at the Ƶ and the kind of skills and knowledge that they’re developing that are going to serve them well in life,” says&nbsp;<strong>Carol Rolheiser</strong>, CTSI’s director and an academy co-chair.</p> <p>“Part of what CTSI and the Teaching Academy are all about is we’re trying to influence the great teaching culture we have here, knowing we can always continue to improve.”&nbsp;</p> <p>The&nbsp;CTSI&nbsp;is U of T's&nbsp;hub for teaching and learning development. The centre&nbsp;serves&nbsp;instructors, graduate students and teaching assistants&nbsp;on all three campuses with&nbsp;leadership and support on all teaching related and student engagement issues – including through the teaching academy.&nbsp;</p> <p><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/0J5A0533.jpg" alt></p> <p><em>Professor Carol Rolheiser (photo by Perry King)</em></p> <p>The highlighted projects will open opportunities for further collaboration and encourage innovation, adds Rolheiser,&nbsp;a professor in the department of curriculum, teaching&nbsp;and learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE).</p> <p>One of the initiatives is a learning&nbsp;app called Team Up!, which has already been used by thousands of students.&nbsp;Invented by <strong>Melody Neumann</strong>, an associate professor, teaching stream, in the department of cell and systems biology, the game-like&nbsp;app was initially created to enhance a second-year, webinar-style course.</p> <p>“I wanted the students to work in groups, in their virtual breakout rooms, together on some kind of problem set,” says Neumann, who thought of the app as a “low-stakes” approach to developing teamwork skills and a connection to the course material. “I wanted [the students] to get immediate feedback while they were working on a problem set, and I wanted them to work together to build consensus before they would choose an answer.”</p> <p>Funded through internal grants, Team Up! was recently showcased to U of T President <strong>Meric Gertler</strong>&nbsp;and Vice-President and Provost <strong>Cheryl Regehr</strong> by <strong>Michelle French</strong>, an associate professor, teaching stream, in the department of physiology. Now available on mobile, tablet and desktop devices, the app is supported by&nbsp;the university’s online teaching and learning environment Quercus and&nbsp;fosters collaboration among students.&nbsp;It was used in 10 undergraduate courses by about 6,000 students this past school year.&nbsp;</p> <p>“We don’t know of any other app that allows this dynamic grouping function plus the immediate feedback,” says French, who won a President’s Teaching Award in 2017.</p> <p>In addition to building&nbsp;connections and workplace skills, French and Neumann emphasize that&nbsp;Team Up! also delivers cost savings since it’s an alternative to educational services like Top Hat and devices&nbsp;like clickers. &nbsp;“As someone who has used it in a few courses now, the financial savings [are] huge,” says French, who noted students collectively saved about $250,000 over the last school year alone.</p> <p>“As an instructor at the university, we all want to include more active learning in our classes and there are many different ways you can do it. This is one way where the barriers are really low,” added Neumann.</p> <p>Neumann and French want to build the app’s bandwidth capacity, expanding question types and opening&nbsp;the platform to more social sciences and humanities courses.</p> <p>It’s an app that <strong>Fiona Rawle</strong>&nbsp;says could come in handy as her own teaching project takes its next steps.&nbsp;<img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/UTM-Fiona-Rawle-7%20%281%29.JPG" alt></p> <p>Rawle (pictured right), an associate professor, teaching stream, in the department of biology at U of T Mississauga, has been developing an undergraduate course about failure. Her course, titled “Productive Failure: Teaching Students the Value of Failure in Science,” seeks to inform students about embracing failure, learn and bounce back from failure and recognize the value of failure in science and everyday life.</p> <p>“Failure is such a crucial component of science. To be a good scientist, you need to be good at failing, and that hasn’t been taught before in the concept of science,” says Rawle, <a href="/news/meet-two-u-t-faculty-members-honoured-ocufa-outstanding-teaching">who won a teaching award</a> from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations and a President’s Teaching Award in 2018.</p> <p>“Sometimes when we teach science, we teach how science was done, we teach about past experiments. I want to teach students how to think like a scientist and that means you have to be open to failure.”</p> <p>After an initial pilot was embedded within an introductory biology course at U of T Mississauga, Rawle has reframed the course for this coming fall semester to include material on failure.&nbsp;Instead of an initial lecture on biology content, students get a lecture on the science of learning, including&nbsp;how we learn from failure and why embracing failure is important.&nbsp;Rawle will be weaving in new case studies for students, unveiling a podcast – which will explore historical examples – and bringing in personal narratives of failure.&nbsp;</p> <p>Rawle hopes her students take away valuable practical skills. “When students graduate, we don’t want them to regurgitate a list of facts,” she says.</p> <p>“We want to ask good questions, seek out answers, to be critical thinkers and resilient learners.”</p> <p><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/Judith-Poe-02-v2jpg.jpg" alt></p> <p><em>Professor Judith Poë (photo by Drew Lesiuczok)</em></p> <p><strong>Judith Poë</strong>, professor, teaching stream, in the department of chemical and physical sciences at U of T Mississauga, hopes her Science Pedagogy Research Opportunity Program (ROP) participants – second- to fourth-year students – also learn key skills and teaching knowledge.</p> <p>In her initiative, Poë’s ROP students are challenged to pay attention to detail as they develop learning materials for Grade 11 and Grade 12 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) courses and facilitate in-class lessons.</p> <p>“Their attitude toward&nbsp;this work is quite different because it’s their creation and it’s going out there for the world, on the web, and it’s going to be used in real schools by real students,” says Poë, who won a President’s Teaching Award in 2007.</p> <p>Within the ROP, after her students learn about problem-based learning pedagogy, they select a topic, define their learning objectives and create a real-world scenario for their students to solve,&nbsp;which may include an accompanying experiment. They then work with a teacher, either in the high school or at the U of T Mississauga labs, to facilitate the high school students’ work on the problem.</p> <p>The high school students also prepare their problem for publishing on Poë’s <a href="https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/pbl/">pedagogy website</a>.</p> <p>The program has built a stronger relationship between U of T Mississauga and local high schools, Poë says, and the feedback from her students and high school teachers has been positive. “A measure of the success is the fact that the [high school] teachers keep coming back for more,” says Poë.</p> <p>“They’re seeing increased interest in the subject and increased critical thinking in the classroom.”</p> <p>Poë&nbsp; is considering expanding the program’s scope to include environmental science, and possibly transform the program into a full course.</p> <p>In the short term, because the ROP program is labour intensive, with much more “one-on-one” interaction compared to a standard lecture course, Poë wants to increase teaching help to accommodate the growing demand.</p> <p>“With appropriate personnel,” she says. “We could accommodate a great many more students.”&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Mon, 27 May 2019 20:38:23 +0000 perry.king 156756 at U of T honours four exceptional faculty members with President's Teaching Award /news/u-t-honours-four-exceptional-faculty-members-president-s-teaching-award <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">U of T honours four exceptional faculty members with President's Teaching Award</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/pier-lead.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=Nc08ey3P 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/pier-lead.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=mm3ZKrPv 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/pier-lead.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=fuDAk7Hq 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/pier-lead.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=Nc08ey3P" alt="Photo of Dr. Pier Bryden"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>geoff.vendeville</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2018-06-01T00:00:00-04:00" title="Friday, June 1, 2018 - 00:00" class="datetime">Fri, 06/01/2018 - 00:00</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">Dr. Pier Bryden, an associate professor and director of program integration at the Faculty of Medicine, is one of four professors who received the President's Teaching Award (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville) </div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/geoffrey-vendeville" hreflang="en">Geoffrey Vendeville</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/anthropology" hreflang="en">Anthropology</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/chemistry" hreflang="en">Chemistry</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-applied-science-engineering" hreflang="en">Faculty of Applied Science &amp; Engineering</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-arts-science" hreflang="en">Faculty of Arts &amp; Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-medicine" hreflang="en">Faculty of Medicine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/history" hreflang="en">History</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/humanities" hreflang="en">Humanities</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/leslie-dan-faculty-pharmacy" hreflang="en">Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/meric-gertler" hreflang="en">Meric Gertler</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/president-s-teaching-award" hreflang="en">President's Teaching Award</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/religion" hreflang="en">Religion</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/u-t-mississauga" hreflang="en">U of T Mississauga</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-subheadline field--type-string-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Subheadline</div> <div class="field__item"> University also announces five faculty members promoted to University Professor</div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Dr.<strong> Pier Bryden</strong> says her best professors all had one thing in common: They were able to focus on a narrow subject and extrapolate, explaining its wider significance. In her history studies at the Ƶ, she had a professor who could take a sentence from Dostoevsky&nbsp;and relate it to the Russian Revolution. Later, in medical school, she had lecturers who went from talking about symptoms to society.&nbsp;</p> <p>“Those were the teachers who always made me feel like my brain was stretching,” she recalls.&nbsp;</p> <p>As an educator, she tries to emulate the professors who inspired her, and&nbsp;her efforts have been recognized by the university community. The associate professor in the Faculty of Medicine and co-author of <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/review-david-goldbloom-and-pier-brydens-how-can-i-help-is-just-want-the-doctor-ordered/article28927336/">a popular book on psychiatry</a>, <em>How Can I Help? A Week in My Life as a Psychiatrist</em>, is one of the four winners of <a href="http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/awards/presidentaward/about_pta.htm">the President's Teaching Award</a> – the university's highest honour for excellence in teaching.</p> <p>Her fellow recipients are <strong>William Cluett</strong>, a professor in the Faculty of Applied Science &amp; Engineering, <strong>Jennifer Murdock</strong>, an associate professor,&nbsp;teaching stream&nbsp;in economics in the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science, and <strong>Fiona Rawle</strong>, an associate professor, teaching stream in the department of biology at U of T Mississauga.</p> <p>Cluett has been teaching at U of T for over 30 years. He's also contributed to the curriculum through academic leadership positions, including by developing and implementing the faculty's flagship first-year design and commmunications course, Engineering Strategies and Practice. He has also expanded summer research opportunities for students in Canada and abroad.&nbsp;</p> <p>After a few years as an economist in the anti-trust division of the U.S. Department of Justice and in economic consulting, Murdock joined U of T in 2004. She has helped recruit teaching-stream faculty and spearheaded important curriculum redesign and enhancement efforts for undergraduate economics and commerce programs.</p> <p>Rawle is the associate dean, undergraduate at U of T Mississauga and the lead author of the first and second editions of&nbsp;<em>CAMPBELL Biology</em>, an introductory biology textbook used widely in Canada. She says she approaches teaching like she does bench research,&nbsp;by taking an evidence-based approach.&nbsp;</p> <p>“I want to congratulate this year's four outstanding winners of the President’s Teaching Award,” said U of T President&nbsp;<strong>Meric Gertler</strong>. “They are an inspiration not only to their students, but to their colleagues as well.”</p> <h3><a href="http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/awards/presidentaward.htm">Read more about recipients of the President's Teaching Award</a></h3> <p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Arial&quot;,sans-serif;color:#333333"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p>Between 2013 and 2017, while Dr. Bryden was the pre-clerkship director for the MD program, she co-led the most extensive curriculum renewal of the program in more than two decades. This massive undertaking began with a simple aim:&nbsp;“We wanted to build a coherent narrative of what it is to become a doctor and to care for the different aspects of your patients,” she says.</p> <p>Her colleague, Dr. <strong>Marcus Law</strong>, an associate professor in the department of family and community medicine, describes it as <a href="https://uoftmedmagazine.utoronto.ca/2017/winter/">a&nbsp;“seismic shift” in medical education</a>&nbsp;– one that emphasizes frequent testing instead of make-or-break exams, self-directed learning and virtual patient cases that give students a taste for real clinical encounters.&nbsp;</p> <p>Dr. Bryden also worked with students and faculty to create a companion humanities curriculum for medical students in first and second year. Each week, students are given optional readings&nbsp;– a book chapter or Margaret Atwood poem, for example&nbsp;– to complement their medical education.&nbsp;</p> <p>Dr. Bryden, who has a bachelor's degree&nbsp;in history from U of T and a master's in politics from Oxford, says her background in the humanities helped her in medical school. She formed a book club with her classmates in which they read&nbsp;&nbsp;Abraham Verghese, Dostoevsky and other authors.&nbsp;“It really saved us because it kept us in touch with the larger world,” she says.</p> <p>Fellow award winner Rawle has also come up with creative strategies to engage students. She often holds her office hours outside the office, bringing her students on walking tours around the leafy campus where they discuss questions in depth&nbsp;– and occasionally spot deer and coyotes.&nbsp;</p> <p><img alt class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__8458 img__view_mode__media_original attr__format__media_original" height="500" src="/sites/default/files/fiona-rawle-embed.jpg" typeof="foaf:Image" width="750" loading="lazy"><br> <em>Fiona Rawle (right), an associate professor, teaching stream in the department of biology at U of T Mississauga, talks to students on her walking office hours (photo by Blake Eligh)</em></p> <p>In the classroom where she teaches genetics and molecular biology, she gets students up on their feet&nbsp;– even in classes as large as 500 students. To help students understand DNA, she asks her students to form one long, double-stranded DNA molecule. Their elbows act as bases and their hands represent phosphate molecules.</p> <p>“We do this in class and immediately the students understand the directionality of DNA, how DNA has a direction, and they start to understand prime notation, which are really tricky concepts,” she says.</p> <p>The in-class experiment seems to stick with the class: Rawle says she sometimes sees her students re-enact the demonstration in their seats during final exams&nbsp;to remember molecule structure.&nbsp;</p> <p>In her lectures, Rawle keeps students' attention by calling on them at random using cue cards with their names on them. She gives them the option to pass if they don't know the answer. Some of the cards have her own name on them, and if she calls on herself then students can ask her anything related to the course or not.&nbsp;</p> <p>The exercise is meant to show students that it's sometimes OK to be wrong. In fact, it's fundamental to scientific discovery.&nbsp;“Science is messy,” she says.&nbsp;“Some of the failures are the most interesting examples.”</p> <p>“Things like the discovery of penicillin, development of anesthesia, the invention of the pacemaker, or the invention of the Slinky – these things were actually ‘mistakes’&nbsp;or ‘accidents,’” she adds.</p> <p>In addition to teaching, Rawle is a member of U of T's tri-campus TIDE group (Toronto Initiative for Diversity and Excellence), which looks at unconscious bias and the role it plays in university hiring, promotions and evaluations.&nbsp;“Our role is to curate these evidence-based practices and resources, and train others at the university to be aware of that,”&nbsp;she explains.</p> <p>At the same time as the university celebrates the recipients of the President's Teaching Award, it has also announced the list of faculty who were promoted to <a href="http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/awards/uprofessors.htm">University Professor</a>, the highest designation for faculty at the university, which recognizes&nbsp;“unusual scholarly achievement and pre-eminence in a particular field of knowledge.”&nbsp;</p> <p>The new University Professors are:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Shana Kelley</strong>, in the departments of chemistry, pharmaceutical sciences and biochemistry,&nbsp;has invented, investigated and translated into practice nanotechnologies for the elucidation of disease biology&nbsp;</li> <li><strong>John Kloppenborg</strong>, in&nbsp;U of T's department for the study of religion, is a specialist in Christian origins&nbsp;&nbsp;</li> <li><strong>Tania Li</strong>,&nbsp;in the department of anthropology,&nbsp;has researched urban cultural politics in Singapore and Indonesia Indigenous highland communities&nbsp;</li> <li>Dr. <strong>Stephen Scherer</strong>, in the Faculty of Medicine, who is also senior scientist at SickKids and co-founder of Canada's first human genome centre&nbsp;</li> <li><strong>Douglas Stephan</strong>, in the department of chemistry, whose research focuses on making new molecules and studying their use as catalysts for the preparation of desirable compounds and materials</li> </ul> <h3><a href="http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/awards/uprofessors.htm">Read more about the University Professors</a></h3> <p><font face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14px;">&nbsp;</span></font></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Fri, 01 Jun 2018 04:00:00 +0000 geoff.vendeville 136226 at U of T celebrates exemplary teaching /news/u-t-celebrates-exemplary-teaching <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">U of T celebrates exemplary teaching</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2016-11-16-President%27s%20Teaching%20Awards_27-lead.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=Jawg12CX 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2016-11-16-President%27s%20Teaching%20Awards_27-lead.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=ADuv2yIR 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2016-11-16-President%27s%20Teaching%20Awards_27-lead.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=8Ox4COiR 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2016-11-16-President%27s%20Teaching%20Awards_27-lead.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=Jawg12CX" alt="Photo of 2016 President's Teaching Award recipients"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>ullahnor</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2016-11-16T11:41:34-05:00" title="Wednesday, November 16, 2016 - 11:41" class="datetime">Wed, 11/16/2016 - 11:41</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">U of T's Jonathan Rose (left) Alison Gibbs and James D. Thomson (right) are the recipients of the 2016 President's Teaching Award</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/geoffrey-vendeville" hreflang="en">Geoffrey Vendeville</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-legacy field--type-string field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Author legacy</div> <div class="field__item">Geoffrey Vendeville</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/president-s-teaching-award" hreflang="en">President's Teaching Award</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/president-meric-gertler" hreflang="en">President Meric Gertler</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/provost-cheryl-regehr" hreflang="en">Provost Cheryl Regehr</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/education" hreflang="en">Education</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/professors" hreflang="en">Professors</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-arts-science" hreflang="en">Faculty of Arts &amp; Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-applied-science-engineering" hreflang="en">Faculty of Applied Science &amp; Engineering</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/innovation-education" hreflang="en">innovation in education</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>One tries to make sense of the world through statistics. The other is a coding wiz. And the third focuses on explaining the relationship between plants and animals.</p> <p><strong>Alison Gibbs</strong>, an associate professor (teaching stream)&nbsp;in the department of&nbsp;statistical sciences;&nbsp;<strong>Jonathan Rose</strong>, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering;&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong>James D. Thomson</strong>, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, received&nbsp;the 2016 President's Teaching Award&nbsp;– the Ƶ's highest honour for excellence in teaching.&nbsp;</p> <p>While the three&nbsp;come from different backgrounds, they share a devotion to their students.</p> <p>“It’s not about teaching. It’s about learning,” Gibbs said.</p> <p>Gibbs and Thomson are from the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science. Rose is from the Faculty of Applied Science &amp; Engineering. All three&nbsp;were honoured Tuesday night at a ceremony&nbsp;marking the 10th anniversary of the first university-wide teaching award. U of T President <strong>Meric Gertler </strong>and Vice-President and Provost <strong>Cheryl Regehr </strong>presented the awards.</p> <p><img alt="photo of president and provost with Thomson" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__2537 img__view_mode__media_original attr__format__media_original" src="/sites/default/files/2016-11-16-President%27s%20Teaching%20Awards-embed3.jpg" style="width: 750px; height: 500px; margin: 10px;" typeof="foaf:Image"><br> <em>President Meric Gertler (right) and Provost Cheryl Regehr (left) present Professor James D. Thomson with the award (photo by Johnny Guatto)</em></p> <p>Thomson co-teaches an introductory biology course on adaptation and biodiversity that&nbsp;is so popular that enrolment often exceeds the seats in Convocation Hall. To accomodate the 1,900 students who typically sign up, the class has&nbsp;morning and evening sessions.&nbsp;</p> <p>Thomson has also taken students as far as Vietnam to study flowers and pollinators, and he&nbsp;wrote a textbook called&nbsp;<em>The Struggle for Existence</em>,&nbsp;a nod to Charles Darwin.</p> <p>Known for his dry sense of humour, he tries not to recycle jokes for students.</p> <p>“If some little witticism occurs to me while I’m phrasing a sentence, I’m willing to take a bit of a flier and throw it in. Usually, those pretty much fall flat,” he said with a laugh.</p> <h3><a href="/news/innovations-teaching-james-thomson">Read more about Thomson</a></h3> <p><img alt="photo of Rose with students" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__2538 img__view_mode__media_original attr__format__media_original" src="/sites/default/files/2016-11-16-President%27s%20Teaching%20Awards-embed4.jpg" style="width: 750px; height: 500px; margin: 10px;" typeof="foaf:Image"><br> <em>Professor Jonathan Rose at the 2016 President's Teaching Award ceremony with some of his students&nbsp;(photo by Johnny Guatto)</em></p> <p>Rose encourages his computer engineering students to tackle practical problems&nbsp;– and many have by developing prototypes of useful apps. He teaches <a href="http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~jayar/ece1778.2016w/project-videos-reports-code.html">a graduate-level mobile app development course</a> that has led students to build more than 110 prototypes. Last year’s projects include an app designed to help autistic kids find suitable playmates and another that translates Russian opera lyrics for singers who can’t read Cyrillic.</p> <p>“He cares really deeply for students, not only at the top of the class but also students at the lower end of the class,” said <strong>Braiden Brousseau</strong>, a PhD candidate in computer engineering and one of Rose’s teaching assistants. “He goes out of his way so many times to make sure no one is left behind.”</p> <h3><a href="/news/innovations-teaching-jonathan-rose">Read more about Rose</a></h3> <p><img alt="photo of Gibbs at lectern" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__2535 img__view_mode__media_original attr__format__media_original" src="/sites/default/files/2016-11-16-alison-gibbs-embed.jpg" style="width: 750px; height: 500px; margin: 10px;" typeof="foaf:Image"><br> <em>Alison Gibbs, associate professor of statistics (teaching stream) speaking at the award ceremony Tuesday (photo by Johnny Guatto)</em></p> <p>Gibbs&nbsp;is leading the charge to renew the statistics curriculum at U of T. She&nbsp;has developed a capstone course pairing up fourth-year statistics students with&nbsp;research students in other fields.</p> <p>She&nbsp;says the key to good teaching is to see the material through the eyes of students. Whenever she’s lecturing, she draws on practical examples to show the power of statistics –&nbsp;and, sometimes, the&nbsp;blind spots.</p> <p>“When you look at the world through data –&nbsp;the world’s a fuzzy place. It’s like looking at the world through rippled glass,” she said. “But then the idea of statistics is to help you try to make sense of what you can say about what’s hiding behind the glass, and what you can’t say.”</p> <h3><a href="/news/innovations-teaching-alison-gibbs">Read more about Gibbs</a></h3> <p>The President’s Teaching Award winners receive an annual professional development allowance of $10,000 for five years. They are also designated as members of the Ƶ Teaching Academy for a minimum of five years.&nbsp;</p> <h3><a href="/news/u-t-honours-great-teaching-research">Read more about the President's Teaching Award</a></h3> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Wed, 16 Nov 2016 16:41:34 +0000 ullahnor 102431 at Innovations in teaching: Alison Gibbs /news/innovations-teaching-alison-gibbs <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Innovations in teaching: Alison Gibbs</span> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>lavende4</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2016-06-21T10:13:22-04:00" title="Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - 10:13" class="datetime">Tue, 06/21/2016 - 10:13</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">President’s Teaching Award recipient Alison Gibbs (Diana Tyszko photo)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/arthur-kaptainis" hreflang="en">Arthur Kaptainis</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-legacy field--type-string field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Author legacy</div> <div class="field__item">Arthur Kaptainis</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-arts-science" hreflang="en">Faculty of Arts &amp; Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/president-s-teaching-award" hreflang="en">President's Teaching Award</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/statistical-sciences" hreflang="en">Statistical Sciences</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/teaching" hreflang="en">Teaching</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-subheadline field--type-string-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Subheadline</div> <div class="field__item">Statistical science associate professor is having too much fun to go back to traditional lecturing</div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>No point in calling <strong>Alison Gibbs</strong> at home to congratulate her on being one of the 2016 winners of the <a href="http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/Awards/presidentaward.htm">President’s Teaching Award</a>.</p> <p>“I don’t know about your home line,” the associate professor (teaching stream) said in her office in Sidney Smith Hall. “But I rarely pick up mine.”</p> <p>Indeed, many Canadians no longer have such lines, a fact that is probably related to the failure of any polling company to predict the size of the Liberal majority in the federal election of last October.</p> <p>“We’re not getting a decent random sample anymore, because of the way technology is going,” Gibbs explained. “You need other sources of information.”</p> <p>Which is only one of the reasons this is an interesting time for the department of statistical sciences and for the study of statistics in general. Others have to do with the rapidly expanding range of activities to which statistics are newly relevant.</p> <p>“Every transaction in a business is now being recorded in a huge dataset,” Gibbs said. “Business people want to use that and leverage it to their advantage.”</p> <p>Medical research more than ever is an enterprise driven by statistics. English professors can study an author’s evolving vocabulary over time with statistical science. All this while the new analytical methods have changed the way baseball teams are recruited and managed.</p> <p>“Moneyball was brilliant,” said Gibbs, referring to the system adopted by the Oakland Athletics and documented in a 2011 movie and a book by Michael Lewis. “Figuring out measures other than the traditional ones, that really worked.”</p> <p>New applications have resulted in a rise in enrolment in STA courses at U of T from fewer than 500 four years ago to more than 2,000 in 2015-16. Only human biology courses in the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science have higher enrolment.</p> <p>The increase has required changes to the curriculum. Gibbs is described in her nomination letter as “the leading innovator of statistics education renewal in the department.”</p> <p>Gibbs is so enamoured of teaching that in 2002 she gave up a tenure-track position at another Canadian university to take a teaching job at U of T, where she had earned her MSc and PhD. Her present U of T appointments include associate chair of undergraduate studies in statistics and chair of the undergraduate curriculum committee.</p> <p>Nor are her activities confined to campus. Gibbs organized the “census at school” initiative of the Statistics Society of Canada, an effort to put high-school students in touch with StatsCan. On a global scale she is vice-president on the International Association of Statistical Education.</p> <p>In her department Gibbs has led the “inverted classroom” revolution that shifts basic information to online learning and uses class time for active problem-solving.</p> <p>“It’s really fun,” she says of the inverted model as it is applied to STA 220: The Practice of Statistics I. “I don’t think I could go back to straight lecture teaching ever again.”</p> <p>Peer instruction, as the technique is known, provides results in real time. If 80 percent of students get a question right, the other 20 percent are aware instantly of their need to revisit the material.</p> <p>“The most interesting peer-instruction questions are those which nearly everybody gets wrong, or that are spread evenly between right and wrong answers,” Gibbs said. “Then you get students talking to each other.”</p> <p>The tonic ingredient is the enthusiasm, for which Gibbs is widely praised in course evaluations.</p> <p>“I initially dreaded taking this class but it turned out to be my favourite class of the semester,” said one undergraduate. “It was all due to the excitement Gibbs had for statistics; it was infectious.”</p> <p><strong>Ashley Cohen</strong>, a double U of T alumna with a BSc in actuarial science and statistics and an MSc in statistics, credits Gibbs in part for her success after school.</p> <p>“Not only was her commitment to her teaching and her students exemplary,” Cohen says, “but many of the skills and techniques I learned in her classes have had a hugely positive and helpful impact on my professional career as a biostatistician.”</p> <p>While computers might seem to be a clear aid to data collection, the steady increase of computing power has created conditions that are “a little messier” than they once were. The need for careful instruction in statistical science has never been keener.</p> <p>“Computation is at an whole new scale now because the dataset is often so large that you can’t do it on your desktop,” Gibbs said. “A lot of people are looking at data where not a great deal of design has gone into the collection process.”</p> <p>While the interpretation of data now plays a larger role in many industries, it also is important to individuals and their private lives.</p> <p>“Even to be an informed consumer and an informed voter, we need to understand statistics,” Gibbs says. “To take ownership over your health care, you need to understand statistics.</p> <p>“Health studies seem to contradict each other. Back in the 1980s, the question was: Should I be eating oat bran?&nbsp;More recently it was Vitamin D.&nbsp;An issue now is colonoscopy and colon-cancer screening. There is evidence that just the stool sample test is sufficient. Colonoscopies are expensive and unpleasant. What’s the evidence that tells us we should do them?</p> <p>“There is a famous quotation by H.G. Wells about how the ability to compute and think in averages will be as important as the ability to read and write. This is becoming more and more true all the time. Because people are doing more and more with data.”</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Tue, 21 Jun 2016 14:13:22 +0000 lavende4 14374 at Innovations in teaching: James Thomson /news/innovations-teaching-james-thomson <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Innovations in teaching: James Thomson</span> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>lavende4</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2016-06-17T09:38:48-04:00" title="Friday, June 17, 2016 - 09:38" class="datetime">Fri, 06/17/2016 - 09:38</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">James Thomson in the West Elk Mountains of Colorado</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/arthur-kaptainis" hreflang="en">Arthur Kaptainis</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-legacy field--type-string field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Author legacy</div> <div class="field__item">Arthur Kaptainis</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-arts-science" hreflang="en">Faculty of Arts &amp; Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/president-s-teaching-award" hreflang="en">President's Teaching Award</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/ecology-environmental-biology" hreflang="en">Ecology &amp; Environmental Biology</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/teaching" hreflang="en">Teaching</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-subheadline field--type-string-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Subheadline</div> <div class="field__item">Burning pine cones in Convocation Hall, bringing students to Vietnam in search of plants and pollinators</div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Convocation is a time to celebrate U of T's students. Although they may&nbsp;<a href="http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/flipping-out-u-of-t-grad-cheered-for-convocation-somersault-1.2417128">make it look easy</a>, graduating from <a href="/news/find-a-story?keys&amp;field_topic_tid=All&amp;date_filter%5Bmin%5D%5Bdate%5D=&amp;date_filter%5Bmax%5D%5Bdate%5D=&amp;field_tag_tid_1=rankings%20">one of the top-ranked universities in the world</a> is a remarkable achievement.</p> <p>When the 18,000 members of the Class of 2016 cross the stage at Convocation Hall&nbsp;– including&nbsp;an estimated 13,500 grads this spring –&nbsp;they'll be looking back at years of exams, essays, lab and field work, experiential learning,&nbsp;volunteer stints, creativity and hard work.&nbsp;And almost zero snow days.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> On the stage with them – or following&nbsp;via <a href="http://uoft.strmstr.com/">live streams</a> and Instagram feeds –&nbsp;will be some of the professors and instructors who also invested countless hours in their students’ success.</p> <p>Who are the teachers who helped make this day possible?&nbsp;You can learn about some of them in our&nbsp;<a href="/news/inside-con-hall">Inside Con Hall&nbsp;</a>series&nbsp;from student writer&nbsp;<strong>Krisha Ravikantharaja</strong>.</p> <p>And you’ll meet a few more in&nbsp;this series on&nbsp;Innovations in Teaching.</p> <p>In this instalment,&nbsp;<em>U of T News</em>&nbsp;writer&nbsp;<strong>Arthur Kaptainis</strong>&nbsp;profiles Professor&nbsp;<strong>James Thomson</strong> of the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science.&nbsp;</p> <hr> <p>“Very conveniently, the university always plants beds of two species of Salvia,” said Professor <strong>James Thomson</strong>, one of three winners of the <a href="http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/Awards/presidentaward.htm">2016 President’s Teaching Awards</a>.</p> <p>“The blue-flowered one is adapted for bees and the red-flowered one for hummingbirds, so we can talk about those adaptations, and do choice experiments where we offer both types to the local bees.”</p> <p>The veteran of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology was talking about the expeditions he leads in the blocks surrounding the downtown Toronto campus&nbsp;as part of <em>EEB 440: Plant-Animal Interactions</em>.</p> <p>“To show how the red species is suited to fit a hummingbird, I bring along a mummified hummingbird in my shirt pocket,” he added. “Students generally are surprised by its appearance.”</p> <p>Thomson spoke to <em>U of T News</em>&nbsp;from the West Elk Mountains of Colorado, where he and his wife spend high-altitude (and snowy) early summers amid the flora and fauna of the Rockies.</p> <p>Thomson has taken students as far afield as Vietnam in search of interesting flowers and pollinators, and keeps them busy in the laboratory during winter months with experiments involving bee colonies.</p> <p>“I fall into the ‘showing is better than telling’ school,” Thomson explained. “I certainly am a big believer in demonstrations as the best way to make a memorable point."</p> <p>He admits to having been influenced by an instructor at the University of Chicago who jumped chest-deep into an icy pond to demonstrate the architecture of a muskrat lodge. “He was being more dramatic than necessary,” Thomson writes in his teaching statement. “But the drama made the facts indelible.”</p> <p>Outdoor treks are not feasible for the more than 1,900 students who typically enrol in <em>BIO120: Adaption and Biodiversity</em>, but in-class demonstrations as magnified on a big screens are part of the teaching protocol.</p> <p>What better means of illustrating morphological adaptation than to burn a pine cone on camera and watch the release of seeds as the scales crack open?</p> <p>“Students in the front rows can smell the hot terpenoids,” Thomson writes, referring to compounds that give certain plants their scent.&nbsp;“Implanting unforgettable memories then gives me a fighting chance to instill some less dramatic considerations about how organisms are adapted to their environments.”</p> <p>Specific examples illuminate general principles. Potentially dry information about atmospheric circulation patterns is better retained if illustrated by the ability of the Wandering Albatross to exploit the westerly winds to which it is adapted.</p> <p>Enrolment in BIO120 regularly exceeds the capacity of Convocation Hall, so Thomson and University Professor <strong>Spender Barrett</strong> have convened an evening section in the Earth Sciences Centre to accommodate the spillover.</p> <p>It is a credit to their teaching ability that some students attend classes in both venues. “My reaction is basically surprise rather than satisfaction,” Thomson said of the implied compliment.</p> <p>Whether they attend both classes or settle for one, students experience a robust teaching style animated by humour as well as Thomson’s current research interests.</p> <p>“It has always been policy in BIO120 to encourage lecturers to incorporate their own research,” Thomson explained. “When I joined the course, I enthusiastically adopted this approach as a way to personalize the course and to get students thinking more about science as a process rather than a body of facts.”</p> <p>Not that Thomson is indifferent to the “telling” aspect of teaching. He is in the process of preparing the third edition of his custom-written textbook for BIO120, <em>Struggle for Existence</em>. “I tell my students that the lectures are my attempt to make the material memorable, and the book is my attempt to make it clear,” he writes.</p> <p>Student questionsare answered in tutorials or on the discussion board of the Blackboard app (which Thomson regularly monitors). In EEB 440, a class of about 30, questions are an essential part of classroom dynamics.</p> <p>“I consider answering questions to be as valuable as delivering my prepared material,” Thomson said. “My sometime co-instructor <strong>Megan Frederickson</strong> and I assign a portion of the course grade to participation, mostly to encourage questions and discussion.”</p> <p>And his students say it gets results.</p> <p>“Professor Thomson walked the class through the birth and development of new ideas in the scientific community,” <a href="/news/uoftgrad16-rhodes-scholar-jessica-phillips"><strong>Jessica Phillips</strong>,</a> an ecology and evolutionary biology&nbsp;specialist from University College and a 2016 Rhodes Scholar, said of EEB 440.</p> <p>“We saw the resistance and backlash to novel theories, and were taught to critically evaluate studies in the context of ideas that were being debated at the time. We were also encouraged to think of novel approaches and to test various theories.”</p> <p><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">In a letter of support for&nbsp;Thomson’s award,&nbsp;</span><strong>Christopher Boccia</strong>, a Victoria College major in ecology and evolutionary biology and new grad,wrote: “His presentations are always well-organized and his incorporation of humorous anecdotes and props make them both enjoyable and effective pedagogically, as his examples tend to clarify concepts and make them more memorable.”</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Fri, 17 Jun 2016 13:38:48 +0000 lavende4 14250 at U of T honours great teaching, research /news/u-t-honours-great-teaching-research <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">U of T honours great teaching, research</span> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>katie.fong</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2016-06-07T10:01:43-04:00" title="Tuesday, June 7, 2016 - 10:01" class="datetime">Tue, 06/07/2016 - 10:01</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">Alison Gibbs, James Thomson and Jonathan Rose are the recipients of the 2016 President's Teaching Awards</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/arthur-kaptainis" hreflang="en">Arthur Kaptainis</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-legacy field--type-string field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Author legacy</div> <div class="field__item">Arthur Kaptainis</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/president-s-teaching-award" hreflang="en">President's Teaching Award</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/university-professorships" hreflang="en">University Professorships</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>They’re renowned for their wit, creativity, ability to inspire students and colleagues – and an intense dedication to innovation in teaching.</p> <p>Two faculty members from the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science and one from the Faculty of Applied Science &amp; Engineering are the 2016 recipients of the President’s Teaching Award – <a href="http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/Awards/presidentaward.htm">the Ƶ’s highest honour for excellence in teaching</a>.</p> <p><strong>Alison Gibbs</strong> is an associate professor (teaching stream) in the department of statistical sciences. Professor <strong>Jonathan Rose</strong> hails from the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering while Professor <strong>James Thomson</strong> is appointed to the department of ecology and evolutionary biology.</p> <h2><a href="http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/awards/presidentaward/about_pta.htm">Read more about the Awards</a></h2> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>“Outstanding teachers bring creativity and energy to the challenge of education, constantly searching for ways to innovate and to improve the undergraduate experience,” said Ƶ president <strong>Meric Gertler</strong>. “We know that we need to help prepare&nbsp;our undergraduates for a lifetime of success and a lifetime of learning – and Alison Gibbs, James Thomson and Jonathan Rose are doing just that, tapping into their students’&nbsp;curiosity and helping them develop quantitative and qualitative skills.</p> <p>“They inspire their colleagues and motivate their students.”&nbsp;</p> <p>The associate chair for undergraduate studies in statistics, Gibbs earned both her MSc and PhD at U of T before undertaking postdoctoral studies at York University. Gibbs has been at the centre of curriculum renewal at a time of rapid enrolment growth. She led the creation of the applied statistics specialist program and the development of such innovative courses as Statistics: Making Sense of Data. A Massive Open Online Course, it has attracted of more than 60,000 active students and was made possible with funding from the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation.</p> <p>“Alison’s commitment to the ways statistics is taught ensures that the faculty and university remain leaders in statistical education,” said Professor <strong>David Cameron</strong>, dean of the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science.</p> <p>A triple alumnus of U of T, Rose was a pioneer in the area of field-programmable gate arrays before shifting his research concentration to software design. Among his courses is ECE 1778, a course in innovative app creation offered to graduate students from all areas and departments.&nbsp;<a href="http://news.engineering.utoronto.ca/jonathan-rose-receives-university-toronto-presidents-teaching-award/?_ga=1.185545578.2138705184.1460658088">Read more a</a><span style="line-height: 1.6;"><a href="http://news.engineering.utoronto.ca/jonathan-rose-receives-university-toronto-presidents-teaching-award/?_ga=1.185545578.2138705184.1460658088">bout Rose</a>.</span></p> <p>“Professor Rose consistently goes above and beyond in his efforts to give students the best possible learning experience,” write the signatories to his nomination letter.</p> <p>Thomson, who earned his PhD at the University of Wisconsin, is a world authority in pollination ecology, plant reproduction and bees. Student citations make reference not only to his clarity and helpfulness but his “dry sense of humour.” In 2013 he was one of the winners of the Outstanding Teaching Awards conferred by the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science.</p> <p>Also announced are the 2016 recipients of the Ƶ Early Career Teaching Award.</p> <p>They are: <a href="/news/innovations-teaching-inside-con-hall-christian-caron"><strong>Christian Caron</strong></a>, assistant professor (teaching stream) in the department of sociology in the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science, <strong>Alen Hadzovic</strong>, assistant professor (teaching stream) in the department of physical and environmental sciences at the Ƶ Scarborough and <a href="/news/watching-jeopardy-christmas-day"><strong>Anthony Niblett</strong></a>, assistant professor in the Faculty of Law.</p> <p><a href="/news/transforming-undergrad-experience-munk-one"><strong>Teresa Kramarz</strong></a>, assistant professor (teaching stream) at the Munk School of Global Affairs of the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science, is the winner of the 2016-17 Ƶ Teaching Fellowship.</p> <p>The university also announced that the Academic Board approved the appointment in 2016 of five<a href="http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/awards/uprofessors.htm"> University Professors</a>. The University Professor is the highest academic rank awarded by U of T, recognizing unusual scholarly achievement and pre-eminence in a particular field.</p> <p>The 2016 appointments are:</p> <p><a href="/news/find-a-story?keys=Richard%20Florida&amp;field_topic_tid=All&amp;date_filter%5Bmin%5D%5Bdate%5D=&amp;date_filter%5Bmax%5D%5Bdate%5D=&amp;field_tag_tid_1"><strong>Richard Florida</strong></a>, an authority on cities, innovation and urban economic development at the Rotman School of Management; <a href="http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/~hull/BriefCV.pdf"><strong>John Hull</strong></a>, also of the Rotman School, whose research focuses on derivatives and risk management; <a href="/news/find-a-story?keys=Ato%20Quayson&amp;field_topic_tid=All&amp;date_filter%5Bmin%5D%5Bdate%5D=&amp;date_filter%5Bmax%5D%5Bdate%5D=&amp;field_tag_tid_1"><strong>Ato Quayson</strong></a>, of the department of English in the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science and director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, whose fields are African literature, postcolonial diaspora studies, urban studies and literary theory; <a href="/news/u-t-researchers-win-prestigious-killam-prizes"><strong>Arthur Ripstein</strong></a>, an expert in political philosophy and legal theory at the Faculty of Law; and <a href="/news/find-a-story?keys=Zandstra&amp;field_topic_tid=All&amp;date_filter%5Bmin%5D%5Bdate%5D=&amp;date_filter%5Bmax%5D%5Bdate%5D=&amp;field_tag_tid_1"><strong>Peter Zandstra</strong></a>, a researcher in stem-cell bioengineering who is cross-appointed to the <a href="http://news.engineering.utoronto.ca/peter-zandstra-named-university-professor-u-ts-highest-academic-rank/?_ga=1.151927930.2138705184.1460658088">Faculty of Applied Science &amp; Engineering </a>and the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (IBBME).</p> <p>“The Ƶ owes much of its reputation to the excellence of its professoriate,” said Professor <strong>Cheryl Regehr</strong>, U of T vice-president and provost. “I am delighted to have the opportunity to acknowledge the outstanding achievements of our finest faculty members by granting them the university’s most distinguished rank.”</p> <p>The President’s Teaching Awards are overseen by a committee chaired by the vice-president and provost. Nominations are forwarded through the office of the dean of the relevant faculty.<br> Terms of reference include “strong evidence of excellence in the classroom, innovation in the development and delivery of the curriculum, publication of textbooks or books or articles on pedagogy, participation in major conferences or meetings relating to pedagogy, local, national or international teaching recognition, and letters of reference attesting to the nominee’s outstanding leadership in teaching.”</p> <p>Winners receive an annual professional development allowance of $10,000 for five years. They are also designated as members of the Ƶ Teaching Academy for a minimum of five years.&nbsp;</p> <h3><a href="/news/innovations-teaching-diane-horton">Read about <strong>Diane Horton</strong>, winner of a 2015 President's Teaching Award</a>&nbsp;</h3> <h3><a href="/news/finding-right-chemistry-award-winning-teaching-innovative-prof">Read about <strong>Greg Evans</strong>, winner of a 2015 President's Teaching Award</a></h3> <h3><a href="/news/innovations-teaching-andrew-petersen">Read about <strong>Andrew Peterson</strong>, winner of a 2015 President's Teaching Award</a></h3> <h2>&nbsp;</h2> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Tue, 07 Jun 2016 14:01:43 +0000 katie.fong 14207 at Innovations in teaching: Andrew Petersen /news/innovations-teaching-andrew-petersen <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Innovations in teaching: Andrew Petersen</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2016-05-27-petersen-sized_0.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=QYzhFKj6 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2016-05-27-petersen-sized_0.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=J5uVOCXX 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2016-05-27-petersen-sized_0.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=2dnDAYiN 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2016-05-27-petersen-sized_0.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=QYzhFKj6" alt="photo of Andrew Petersen"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>katie.fong</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2016-06-03T16:10:43-04:00" title="Friday, June 3, 2016 - 16:10" class="datetime">Fri, 06/03/2016 - 16:10</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">(photo by Stephen Uhraney)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/arthur-kaptainis" hreflang="en">Arthur Kaptainis</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-legacy field--type-string field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Author legacy</div> <div class="field__item">Arthur Kaptainis</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/teaching" hreflang="en">Teaching</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/president-s-teaching-award" hreflang="en">President's Teaching Award</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Convocation is a time to celebrate U of T's students. Although they may <a href="http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/flipping-out-u-of-t-grad-cheered-for-convocation-somersault-1.2417128">make it look easy</a>, graduating from <a href="/news/find-a-story?keys&amp;field_topic_tid=All&amp;date_filter%5Bmin%5D%5Bdate%5D=&amp;date_filter%5Bmax%5D%5Bdate%5D=&amp;field_tag_tid_1=rankings%20">one of the top-ranked universities in the world</a> is a remarkable achievement.</p> <p>When the 18,000 members of the Class of 2016 cross the stage at Convocation Hall – including an estimated 13,500 grads this spring – they'll be looking back at years of exams, essays, lab and field work, experiential learning, volunteer stints, creativity and hard work. And almost zero snow days.<br> <br> On the stage with them – or <a href="http://uoft.strmstr.com/">following via live streams</a> and Instagram feeds – will be some of the professors and instructors who also invested countless hours in their students’ success.</p> <p>Who are the teachers who helped make this day possible? You can learn about some of them in our <em><a href="/news/inside-con-hall">Inside Con Hall series</a></em> from student writer <strong>Krisha Ravikantharaja</strong>.</p> <p>And you’ll meet a few more in this ongoing series on Innovations in Teaching.</p> <h3><a href="/news/innovations-teaching-diane-horton">Meet Diane Horton</a></h3> <h3><a href="/news/finding-right-chemistry-award-winning-teaching-innovative-prof">Meet Greg Evans</a></h3> <p>In this third instalment, <em>U of T News</em> writer <strong>Arthur Kaptainis</strong> profiles Professor <strong>Andrew Petersen</strong> of the Ƶ Mississauga.</p> <hr> <p>To hear <strong>Andrew Petersen</strong> tell it, computer science, as a subject to be taught, is a little like life. It has certain difficulties that we cannot avoid and others we definitely can.<br> <br> “Essential complexity is what you should be struggling with, what makes a problem really harder,” explained the associate professor (teaching stream) in the department of mathematical and computational sciences at the Ƶ Mississauga. “Accidental complexity is what we do ourselves when we make a problem harder.”<br> <br> Petersen’s determination to deal forthrightly with the first kind of complexity and wage steady war on the second type made him one of the three <a href="http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/Awards/presidentaward.htm">2015 winners of the President’s Teaching Award.</a> His dedication has also earned him the esteem of colleagues on all three campuses, where the Programming Course Resource System (PCRS), which he developed collaboratively with students, is a staple tool of undergraduate courses.<br> <br> <strong>Ioan Stefanovici</strong>, a PhD candidate in computer science and former teaching assistant, admires Petersen’s mastery of the topic material, ability to explain it at the level appropriate to any audience and – in particular – willingness to place it in a larger context.<br> <br> “He always goes beyond ‘today's lesson’ and relates the material to everything else in the field,” Stefanovici says. “This gives the new material an anchor and foundation.”</p> <p>One of the advantages of teaching in the online era is the quick availability of information about where a majority (or significant minority) of students are having trouble. Nevertheless, there are limits to what data, big or small, can tell us.<br> <br> “In the end you have to approach students and say, ‘Can you tell me what is going through your head?’” Petersen said over the telephone from New Zealand, where he is finishing a sabbatical.</p> <p>“You have to understand what is getting in the way. And you’re only going to understand when you ask them.”<br> <br> Such questions are more often teased out than posed bluntly. One of Petersen’s proven techniques is to undertake “live” programming in a large-enrolment introductory course.<br> <br> “When you’re doing something you learn more than when you’re hearing something,” Petersen says. “But this process also gives me an opportunity to discover what is working and is not working.”<br> <br> His twist is to leave out a line of programming and require students not simply to fill in the blank but also to exchange proposals with their fellow students. Individuals then present not their own solutions but the solutions of their neighbours.<br> <br> “First, they validate it, if they think it’s good,” Petersen says, by way of explaining the double benefit of this “anonymous” method. “Second, there won’t be any embarrassment if it doesn’t work, because it’s not theirs.”<br> <br> Petersen also makes sure to involve students in the upper rows as well as those who are seated, by accident or design, closer to the instructor.<br> <br> “You want to get a sense of whether they are participating,” he says. “You want to know if they can write that one line. Because if they can write that one line, they know what the structure is."<br> <br> In most computer science courses, some work happens outside the classroom, in accordance with the inverted teaching model. Petersen appreciates the benefits, which typically involve a video demonstration and a programming exercise. His own PCRS is an example of a product based on this teaching philosophy.<br> <br> “This allows us, when we work with students in class, to know with some confidence that they have attempted to apply their knowledge, to get their hands dirty,” Petersen says.<br> <br> Active problem-solving is the modus operandi even in one-on-one encounters.<br> <br> “When a student comes in during office hours, I normally end up asking rather than answering questions,” Petersen says. “If the student doesn’t understand question 27 on page 17, my response usually is, there is a whiteboard behind you. Getting the students to start working on the question shows me where they are having trouble.”<br> <br> Despite Petersen’s palpable success as an on-site and in-person instructor, the trend in computer science instruction has been toward more use of interactive technology. Will teachers and classrooms eventually be rendered obsolete?</p> <p>“I don’t know that I’ve got a good answer to that,” Petersen says. “Although the current state of instruction certainly relies on experienced people listening to students, identifying the obstacles and relying on their experience to provide ‘just in time’ teaching, there is a lot of hype about how much of this activity can be turned over to a robot in 20 or 30 years.</p> <p>“As professors, we think that educators are always going to be important. But as a computer scientist, I say: ‘I don’t know.’ Expert systems are getting pretty good. I don’t know what they’re going to be like in five years, let alone 20 years.</p> <p>“But I believe there will always be room for a human expert – curating the material that needs to be investigated; identifying what, specifically, students are asking questions about; and providing the right response as they ask those questions.”</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Fri, 03 Jun 2016 20:10:43 +0000 katie.fong 14200 at Innovations in teaching: Diane Horton /news/innovations-teaching-diane-horton <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Innovations in teaching: Diane Horton</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2016-05-13-_DianeHorton_lead.jpg?h=3fcbca33&amp;itok=WQcoKua0 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2016-05-13-_DianeHorton_lead.jpg?h=3fcbca33&amp;itok=Qq4n9LTh 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2016-05-13-_DianeHorton_lead.jpg?h=3fcbca33&amp;itok=m7XQ3v7J 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2016-05-13-_DianeHorton_lead.jpg?h=3fcbca33&amp;itok=WQcoKua0" alt="photo of Diane Horton at head of lecture hall"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>lanthierj</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2016-05-24T08:45:29-04:00" title="Tuesday, May 24, 2016 - 08:45" class="datetime">Tue, 05/24/2016 - 08:45</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">(all photos by Johnny Guatto)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/arthur-kaptainis" hreflang="en">Arthur Kaptainis</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-legacy field--type-string field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Author legacy</div> <div class="field__item">Arthur Kaptainis</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/president-s-teaching-award" hreflang="en">President's Teaching Award</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/teaching" hreflang="en">Teaching</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/learning" hreflang="en">Learning</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/computer-science" hreflang="en">Computer Science</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Convocation is a time to celebrate U of T's students. Although they may <a href="http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/flipping-out-u-of-t-grad-cheered-for-convocation-somersault-1.2417128">make it look easy</a>, graduating from one of the top-ranked universities in the world is a remarkable achievement.</p> <p>When an estimated 13,500 grads&nbsp;cross the stage at Convocation Hall in ceremonies&nbsp;beginning next week, they'll be looking back at years of exams, essays, lab and field work, experiential learning,&nbsp;volunteer stints, creativity and hard work.&nbsp;And almost zero snow days.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> On the stage with them – or following&nbsp;via live streams and Instagram feeds –&nbsp;will be some of the professors and instructors who also invested countless hours in their students’ success.</p> <p>Who are the teachers who helped make this day possible?&nbsp;You can learn about some of them in our <a href="/news/inside-con-hall"><em>Inside Con Hall </em>series</a> from student writer <strong>Krisha Ravikantharaja</strong>.</p> <p>And you’ll meet a few more in this series on <em>Innovations in Teaching</em>.</p> <p>In this first instalment, <em>U of T News</em> writer <strong>Arthur Kaptainis</strong> profiles <strong>Diane Horton</strong>, associate&nbsp;professor (teaching stream) in the department of computer science.&nbsp;</p> <hr> <p>Student weekends are not what they were in the era before inverted teaching.</p> <p>“On Sunday afternoon, even Saturday night, I get questions on my discussion board,” <strong>Diane Horton</strong>, associate professor (teaching stream) of computer science and one of three winners of the 2015 <a href="http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/Awards/presidentaward.htm">President’s Teaching Award</a>s, said in her office in the Bahen Centre.</p> <p>“Asking for clarification where they are stuck, on points that never used to come up before the midterm or the assignment. Now they come up right away because by Sunday night students have to be ready for the next week.”</p> <p>The central idea behind inverted teaching is to move core content to learning sources outside the class, typically videos. Class time is used to solve problems.</p> <p>“Instead of using classes to go over the definitions, rudimentary things that you can learn on your own, students are engaged in activities that exercise that knowledge and those skills,” Horton explained.</p> <p><img alt="photon of Horton and students" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__940 img__view_mode__media_original attr__format__media_original" src="/sites/default/files/2016-05-13-_DianeHorton_embed-three_0.jpg" style="width: 750px; height: 507px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" typeof="foaf:Image"></p> <p>There is an element of psychology in the system.“When you just listen to a presentation in a lecture, you are not necessarily absorbing very much. When you put pen to paper and try to do something with it, you realize ‘Oh, that seemed to make sense, but when I try to answer this question, I can’t.’”</p> <p>It might seem anachronistic to speak of pen and paper in the context of a computer science class, but Horton’s second-year course on software design starts with the algebra at the heart of programming language SQL (pronounced “sequel”). Greek letters are easier to render the old-fashioned way.</p> <p>When the exercises are ready, students use the Programming Course Resource System (PCRS), an online tool developed by undergraduates under the supervision of <strong>Andrew Petersen</strong>, another 2015 President’s Teaching Award winner.</p> <p>Inverted teaching (“flipped” is a synonym) normally inverts content and process. Horton also distinguishes accessible knowledge, which students can acquire on their own, from material that is more challenging. Class time is dedicated to the latter.&nbsp;</p> <p>“Imagine you’re teaching a kid how to build LEGO,” Horton says. “You’ve given him or her all those two-by-four little blocks.&nbsp;Putting them together is easy. Soon the kid will discover that a zigzag creates a strong wall and that if you create a crevasse, that’s a weak spot.</p> <p>“I let the students work on their own to create the wall. When they come to class they have another problem: build a corner.”</p> <p>Then the stakes are raised again. Build a roof.</p> <p>“Suddenly the hands go up and the prof is running round the room,” Horton said. “Students learn more that way. It’s very engaging.”</p> <p>Students agree. “Professor Horton leads you to the wall of knowledge, and gives you the tools to break through that wall on your own,” says <strong>Christopher Koehler</strong>, a second-year computer science specialist.</p> <p>“It is a refreshing experience to learn difficult concepts so easily in class instead of spending countless hours studying at home.”&nbsp;</p> <p><img alt="photo of Diane Horton at chalkboard" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__941 img__view_mode__media_original attr__format__media_original" src="/sites/default/files/2016-05-13_DianeHorton_embed-four.jpg" style="width: 750px; height: 500px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" typeof="foaf:Image"></p> <p>The innovative process is coupled with old-fashioned love of teaching. “She is very enthusiastic when it comes to teaching the course material,” according to <strong>Oscar Chen</strong>, a fourth-year specialist. “She was always available for office hours if any students had extra questions.”</p> <p><strong>Julia Gilenko</strong>, a second-year specialist, recalls how Horton managed to make a learning experience even out of a new computing program that was not performing up to expectations. “Diane is a very engaging lecturer who clearly enjoys the work she does,” she says.</p> <p>It is a source of both satisfaction and pride to Horton to teach in a computer science department that consistently places high in international rankings. Research-stream and teaching-stream faculty work in tandem. As associate chair for undergraduate studies from 2002 to 2007, Horton consulted broadly with her colleagues in redesigning the undergraduate curriculum.</p> <p>“I feel grateful to be working in this department,” she says. &nbsp;“Everywhere I look there are brilliant people.”</p> <p>Horton also feels that the resources available to teaching-stream faculty are better at U of T than in many other schools. Her teaching prize is not solely honorary. It comes with an $10,000 annual professional development award over five years.</p> <p>Perhaps the biggest bonus of working in an acclaimed department is a premium cohort of students. Applications have skyrocketed and entry standards with them.&nbsp;Many undergraduates are destined for careers as programmers but the diversity can be&nbsp;surprising. Two of&nbsp;three <a href="http://magazine.utoronto.ca/life-on-campus/grande-changement-three-national-ballet-dancers-patrick-lavoie-christopher-sralzer-james-leja-enrol-at-uoft/">forrmer dancers with the National Ballet of Canada now studying at U of T</a> have enrolled in&nbsp;computer science courses.&nbsp;</p> <p>“It’s great to have students coming from every direction,” Horton says. “They bring so much to us when they have an interest in linguistics &nbsp;or drama or psychology or physics. Whatever it is, they bring something with them.”</p> <p><img alt class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__938 img__view_mode__media_large attr__format__media_large" height="453" src="/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2016-05-13_DianeHorton_embed-one_0.jpg?itok=ulPBBL-M" typeof="foaf:Image" width="680" loading="lazy"></p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Tue, 24 May 2016 12:45:29 +0000 lanthierj 14066 at