Spotlight on Teaching Faculty

In this panel session, three VIU instructors share stories about their experiences working with international students, highlighting the strategies they find most effective in setting students up for success.

It might start out as a niggling feeling that something isn’t quite right in your course. But when that niggling feeling doesn’t go away, and you investigate a little deeper, you may discover a disconnect between how you’ve been marking and what you actually want your students to experience and achieve. In this session, four VIU instructors discuss how their own niggling feelings led them to alter their teaching and their grading methods.

This semester, the Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning will be hosting sessions that bring faculty, staff and students together to talk about teaching and learning, informally and with refreshments. We are inviting instructors to share their stories, their strategies, their challenges, and their successes. It’s an opportunity to hear about what others are doing, get some new ideas, and share your thoughts with colleagues you might not usually connect with. Please think about joining us if you’d like to participate, as a speaker or a participant.

This semester, the Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning will be hosting sessions that bring faculty, staff and students together to talk about teaching and learning, informally and with refreshments. We are inviting instructors to share their stories, their strategies, their challenges, and their successes. It’s an opportunity to hear about what others are doing, get some new ideas, and share your thoughts with colleagues you might not usually connect with. Please think about joining us if you’d like to participate, as a speaker or a participant.

Presented by: Charlene Stewart, Instructor, Academic and Career Preparation and Students in Foundations for Success (FNFS 105)

Presented by: Eric Demers, Biology

Learning happens everywhere at VIU, not just in the classroom. For faculty member Eric Demers and his volunteer students, learning is happening at West Buttertubs Marsh, early in the morning, before many of us are even out of bed. Eric is a member in VIU’s biology department and a bird bander. His passion for providing learning opportunities for students, along with his passion for birds, has turned into a rich co-curricular opportunity for students and the community. 

Presented by: Louise Stern, Social Work, Faculty of Health and Human Services

Presented by: Jay Ruzesky, Department of Creative Writing and Journalism

Not all academic writing is boring, but a lot of it is, and it dates back to the seventeenth century and the belief that detailed, boring writing was more likely to imply painstaking experimental work. Across the curriculum student writers see essay writing as a painful chore and their professors see marking those essays as, well, a painful chore. Instead, the phrase “write an essay” ought to illicit untold volumes of pure joy. Let’s talk about that. 

Video Podcasts: Supporting First Year Students with Video Tutorials

Presented by: Wendy Sims, Biology Department, Faculty of Science