Instructor perspectives on undergraduate class size in Canada Invitation to participate (Français à suivre) I am inviting instructors at Canadian universities to participate in a short research survey about how instructors define undergraduate class size. The purpose of this study is to better understand how instructors across Canada think about categories such as small, medium, […]
Author: Gavan
Guiding the planning, design and use of active learning classrooms
By: Gavan Watson & Natasha Kenny Post 1 of 2 Dr. Natasha Kenny (University of Calgary) and I have collaborated on two posts focused on the planning, design and use of active learning classrooms. The development of these kind of learning spaces are a relatively recent development in Canadian Higher Education, with a majority of […]
When is a White Trillium not?
A post shared by Gavan Watson (@gavanwatson) on Apr 30, 2017 at 5:56am PDT Here’s a bit of a natural history mystery that I found yesterday: this green flower in a bed of White Trilliums (Trillium grandiflorum); something that I had never seen before. The few initial web references I found suggested this is caused […]
Synchronous, collaborative curriculum mapping with Google Sheets
Prideax’s (2003) description of three levels (the planned, the delivered, and the experienced)Â for examining curriculum is helpful for thinking about what kind of questions get asked about curricula. With a focus on the delivered curriculum, faculty members engage in curriculum mapping to see, over the course of a program, what gets taught, when it gets […]
Considerations for Podcasting as a Higher Education Assignment
This morning, I’m doing a quick scoping of the teaching and learning resources related to using Podcasts as an assessment tool in the Higher Education classroom. The intended outcome of this environmental scan is to see what the evidence suggests as best practice for designing and facilitating Podcasting assignments. My sources are varied, from Blog […]
Changing summer sounds
I’ve only just noticed a change since our move 100 kilometres south-west from Guelph to London: there’s a different Cicada that makes up the summer-time chorus. I’m very used to the song of the Dog-Day Cicada (Tibicen canicularis): it’s song has made up the entirety of my summer aural landscape in Southern Ontario. Now that male […]
Automatically Importing Notability notes into Evernote
In this earlier post, I outline why Notability is my preferred app for taking hand-written notes on my iPad. In concert with my handwritten notes, I’ve developed a paperless workflow that I use to automatically ((Well, as close to automatic as you can get–this process still requires opening Evernote in order to suck up the Notability notes)) import […]
Logitech Professional Presenter R800 and Yosemite (OS X 10.10)
Though not officially supported on OS X by Logitech, I followed these instructions and can confirm that the R800 works in OS X Yosemite with PowerPoint (for Mac 2011).
Introducing Colm Peter James Watson
Heather and I are overjoyed to welcome a new “Whiteson” into the world: Colm Peter James Watson. Almost two weeks late, Colm was born at 9:48 pm on Monday, May 26th (after just 3 hours of active labour and 45 minutes of being admitted–way to go Heather) weighing in at 8 lbs. 10 oz. We’re […]
My app of choice: hand-written notes and the iPad
As promised in my recent post outlining my favourite stylus to capture hand-written notes on the iPad, here’s my iOS app of choice for capturing those notes. I’ll cut to the chase: I only use the iOS app Notability. I like it for a number of reasons. Most important for hand-writing notes (in my opinion) is the […]