Blended classroom

Two great science communication tools for conferences and teaching: smart screens and cell phones

Tom Gleeson 16th June 2014

A few weeks ago at the European Geosciences Union in Vienna I learned about two dead-easy and great science communication tools for conferences. These are great for any conference hall or meeting, but could be just as easily be used in the classroom to make a more exciting in class research presentations. For better or worse, most of us are carrying them (or looking at them!) right now: a smart s ...[Read More]

What busy profs would like to read in a blog post about active learning

Tom Gleeson 12th May 2014

During a great workshop today on active learning in engineering at McGill I asked two questions (using Socrative) , of the audience. Here is a summary of 24 answers I received: 1) I would like to read blog posts about: activities for large classes (18% of people) activities for small classes (30% of people) technology in active learning (22% of people) wacky or creative ideas for active learning(3 ...[Read More]

Surprises and lessons learned from co-teaching an inter-university graduate course

Grant Ferguson 12th May 2014

Contributed by Grant Ferguson, University of Saskatchewan grant.ferguson@usask.ca In an earlier blog post, Tom discussed some of the advantages and disadvantages of co-teaching a blended graduate course to students at McGill University, the University of Wisconsin – Madison and the University of Saskatchewan. This course wrapped up last month… we definitely learned a few things during ...[Read More]

Co-teaching a blended class across universities: why? and why not?

Tom Gleeson 25th March 2014

This term I am co-teaching a graduate class in advanced groundwater hydrology with Grant Ferguson (University of Saskatchewan) and Steve Loheide (University of Wisconsin – Madison). In co-developing and co-delivering this course we have learned a lot – I’ll start here with our initial motivations and write later about our pedagogic decisions, software tools and reflections after the course. It is ...[Read More]