March 2022

OTL Announcements

Learning Enhancement Fund (LEF) Call For Proposals Deadline Extended  

The LEF Call for Proposals deadline has been extended to March 11th, 2022 at 4:00pm. LEF proposals must be submitted via email to the Associate Vice President, Academic. Visit our website for more information and the submission forms. 

Share Your Advice for New Faculty  

As part of our New Faculty programming, we are inviting experienced instructors to share their teaching expertise. What do you wish you had known about teaching in university when you started? What advice do you have for balancing teaching with your own well-being and other priorities? Follow this link to contribute a few words of wisdom to new faculty by April 1st, 2022. Your advice will be shared with new faculty as part of OTL's New Faculty programming. 

Teaching Resources

Resources for Developing Effective Assessments 

As final exam season approaches, you may be working on refining your final course assessments. The OTL website has several resources related to assessment including:

• Assessing higher-order outcomes with multiple-choice questions 

• Recommendations for creating two-stage exams 

• Tips for designing effective take-home or open-book exams 

Programming for Graduate Students 

There are two more events happening this semester as part of the University Teaching Foundations program: SoTL Journal Club #31 on March 16th and a Seminar Series with guest speakers on March 30th. As we approach the end of the semester, graduate students may want to visit the Reflecting On Your First Semester section of the Guide for New TAs for ideas about reflecting on and documenting their teaching experiences. Grad students can email gtc@uoguelph.ca to be added to the Graduate Teaching Community listserv to stay up to date about upcoming programming. 

U of G SoTL Spotlight

Congratulations to several University of Guelph community members who recently presented at the Educational Developers Caucus Conference held at the University of Waterloo. The theme of this year’s conference was Educational Development in Canada: Who Are We Now and What is Next? U of G presenters included:  

• Christie Stewart and Sara Fulmer (Educational Developers, OTL): Course Design Institutes à la carte: The Benefits, Challenges, and Possibilities of Condensed Online CDI Formats 

• Jackie Hamilton (Director, Accreditation, Curriculum Development, and Learning Innovation, Gordon S. Lang School of Business): Understanding Early-Career Professionals: Exploring Definitions & Implications for Educational Development 

• Jennifer Reniers, Aron Fazekas, and Shehroze Saharan (Educational Developers and Educational Resource Developer, OTL): SoTL Snapshots: Increasing the Utility and Visibility of SoTL Literature through Clear Language Summaries 

• Brandon Sabourin (Educational Developer, OTL): A Comparison of Administrators’ and Sessional Instructors’ Perceptions of Educational Development   

SoTL Snapshot Collection: New Website 

Check out our enhanced SoTL Snapshot collection website for ideas and inspiration around innovative and evidence-based teaching strategies that you can incorporate into your courses, and to learn about “what’s new” in educational research. SoTL Snapshots are clear language summaries of peer-reviewed journal articles related to teaching and learning. Find a topic of interest by navigating through our 9 categories, which include Supporting Mental Health and Well-Being, Online and Blended Learning, and Assessment of Student Learning.