Highlights
Read our Winter 2023 highlights to learn about the work we are doing to achieve specific goals in our plan:
Faculty leadership
Christina Thorpe, head of the Psychology Department, Faculty of Science, accepted the invitation to be the inaugural faculty co-chair for Memorial’s Teaching and Learning Conference 2022.
As part of this role, Dr. Thorpe acted as a ceremonial faculty head and co-led the conference alongside a CITL co-chair. She also chaired the conference program planning committee with representatives from across the institution and led discussions and decisions about the conference program content and format.
Learning supports
Launched in 2021, the Academic Success Centre (ASC) serves students with an easy, virtual access point to navigate and connect with all Memorial’s learning services and support. Located in Memorial’s MUNUp site, the ASC has also been working to develop additional learning skills resources and workshops that help students succeed.
Technology decisions
Over the past few years, CITL has been working to build a Learning Technology Index designed to help instructors make informed decisions about using learning technologies.
The technologies in the index have been evaluated against a rubric for learning technology evaluation. The rubric supports a multi-dimensional evaluation of functional, technical, and social aspects of a resource or tool for supporting learning, regardless of delivery method.
Design institute
Brightspace is consistently used by instructors as the online learning environment for their courses at Memorial, yet the experience a student may have in one Brightspace course site versus another course site may differ dramatically. CITL's new Course Design Institute is a program developed for instructors who want to learn how to effectively design (or redesign) courses to be engaging, outcomes-based and learner-centred.
Scholarly teaching
Our new Teaching Enhancement through Scholarly Inquiry (TESI) program supports new and experienced educational practitioners through a collaborative, personally relevant, and active cohort-based learning program. At the centre of TESI is a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) project to be completed by participants on a proposed inquiry idea of their choice.
Inclusive spaces
In an effort to promote more consistent learning spaces and improve inclusivity of classroom systems and design, our classroom support team has developed a learning space rating system and conducted an assessment of all shared classroom spaces on the St. John's campus. Ratings can be used to assess a space before and after renovations, or to compare one space with another; they will also act as a baseline to measure against future upgrades and renovations.