Symposium Keynote – Changing Practices: Reflections on SoTL and Teaching
We are thrilled to announce that MRU scholars Karen Manarin and April McGrath will be giving the third Keynote at MRU’s annual Symposium on SoTL this year. Knowing their previous work, this is sure to be both thoughtful and thought-provoking. Here is the abstract:
If the scholarship of teaching and learning is conceptualized as an inquiry cycle or spiral beginning with a question about student learning in our classrooms, at some point we need to bring what we have learned back to the classroom. However, this rarely involves simple implementation of a planned intervention. In this presentation, Karen Manarin and April McGrath, faculty members from different disciplines and at different stages in their academic careers, discuss some of the ways engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning has affected their practice. They reflect on questions about disciplinary assumptions, assessment practices, instructor identity, and student relationships. Participants will be encouraged to share their experiences of how SoTL has changed or challenged their teaching practices.
Honourable mention for April McGrath, “Students’ Experiences Learning Statistics” poster at STLHE 2013
Congratulations to April, whose poster entitled “Students’ Experiences Learning Statistics” won an honourable mention at the 2013 Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) Conference. The abstract from the conference can be found here and is copied below:
Statistics is a core requirement for majors in different disciplines and pedagogical techniques developed to help students learn statistical concepts are valuable. Given the anxiety and self-efficacy struggles of many students when learning statistics (Onwuegbuzie & Wilson, 2003), it can be a challenging topic for instructors to teach. Research has focused on exploring the effectiveness of various pedagogical techniques to improve the learning of statistics (Christopher & Marek, 2009; Lesser & Pearl, 2008; Neumann, Hood, & Neumann, 2009; Segrist & Pawlow, 2007). One yet unexplored possibility is that the interaction between an instructor and student during office hours, followed by reflection on the part of the student, may also be a powerful pedagogical tool to help students succeed in learning statistics. Psychology students enrolled in two sections of an Introductory Statistics course volunteered for a research study (N = 45) that sought to determine the influence that office hour attendance and learning reflections can have on students’ statistics anxiety and their learning. As part of the requirement for this course, students attended one meeting with the professor and completed a learning reflection and study plan. The types of questions raised by students during their meetings and the themes found in their learning reflections will be presented. Student reaction to the scheduled meetings was positive and during meetings several participants expressed anxiety about the course and math in general. In line with past research, a negative relationship between anxiety and performance was found.
References
Christopher, C. N., & Marek, P. (2009). A palatable introduction to and demonstration of statistical main effects and interactions. Teaching of Psychology, 36, 130-133.
Lesser, L. M., & Pearl, D. K. (2008). Functional fun in statistics teaching: Resources, research and recommendations. Journal of Statistics Education, 16, 1-10.
Neumann, D. L., Hood, M., & Neumann, M. M. (2009). Statistics? You must be joking. Journal of Statistics Education, 17, 1-16.
Onwuegbuzie, A. J. & Wilson, V. A. (2003). Statistics anxiety: Nature, etiology, antecedents, effects, and treatments – a comprehensive review of the literature. Teaching in Higher Education, 8, 195-209.
Segrist, D. J., & Pawlow, L. A. (2007). The mixer: Introducing the concept of factor analysis. Teaching of Psychology, 34, 121-123.