Academic & Digital Development

Claudia Krebs: Transformative education – a new map for learning

One of the greatest impacts on postsecondary education over the past decades has been the digital revolution. We have now arrived in a world where technology is the natural extension of our lives. Increasingly, universities leverage this technology to improve the education of students – to create a skilled and knowledgeable global citizenry.

At its best, education is a transformative experience for students: the knowledge and reasoning skills of learning, the emotional reactions to content, the acquired skills and competencies forever change the students’ outlook and interaction with the world. As educators, we carry the responsibility to help our students in these processes; pedagogy and technology are our allies in this journey.

With so many pedagogical and technological options on the table, how do we choose the right medium for the competencies we want our students to acquire? How do we design learning materials to best support our students? Can we provide a map for learning that will help students navigate this often confusing and overwhelming journey?

This talk will discuss effective ways to design materials for students - from simple to complex, from chalk talks to virtual reality – and how to integrate these materials into evolving curricula. 

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Paul Chapman: The Pros and Cons of Augmented and Virtual Realities for Learning and Teaching

Immersive technologies have been around for decades but recent technical advances have caused a huge surge in popularity within the last 24 months. Haven’t we been here before? Is this yet another failed push by the tech companies with gimmicky technology crying out for real-world applications? Or, have we reached a tipping point similar to the birth of the web in the early 90’s where it’s now time to get on board or be left behind? Given the huge investment in AR/VR by Facebook, Nokia, Microsoft and Samsung it’s imperative that we understand its potential and especially its application for learning and teaching.

This talk will initially give a quick overview of the current state of the art relating to AR/VR systems. We then consider some of the pros and cons of the technology with a particular focus on learning and teaching. Finally, we will make some bold predictions about where we think the technology will be in another 10 years.

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Adam Finkelstein: Space Matters: Supporting active learning anywhere

Students that engage in deep learning show greater educational gains and success at university. However, in order to create opportunities for meaningful, deep learning students need to be actively engaged in the classroom. While active learning can be implemented in any classroom, where we learn has a significant impact on how we learn. As educators, we need to be aware of the impact that learning spaces have on learning and how we best take advantage of them. We will examine evidence of the impact that space can have on learning and why space matters for not only active learning, but for all learning.

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