Presenter:
Professor Ian McKillop (Faculty of Applied Health Sciences - School of Public Health and Health Systems)

Case-based learning is a student-centered approach for development problem solving and decision making skills. Exciting and challenging for both the professor and the student, the case-method immerses students in a first-person scenario that is usually fraught with conflicting and incomplete information but that nonetheless requires a solution be found. 

Pioneered 80 years ago by the Harvard Business School, the case-based method forms the backbone of many management programs today, and is increasingly viewed as an excellent method for developing problem solving skills in other domains.

One of the key attributes that allows the case method to be so effective is the rapid paced to-and-fro classroom discussion component - often executed in specially designed classrooms called case-rooms, and led by professors who have received special training in the case method.
 
At Waterloo, we were curious whether we could replicate the conditions necessary for success with the case method in our online Masters in Public Health program. In this session we will explore our experience in one course where the case method is used exclusively as the teaching method, and proved so successful that students were creating teaching-grade cases themselves by the end of the term.

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The goals of the seminars are (a) to raise awareness about opportunities available to students to participate in experiential learning, (b) to share how students are making connections between learning in the classroom and learning that takes place outside the academic environment (c) to highlight best practices outlining what instructors can do in the classroom to help foster students’ abilities to make these connections and (d) to encourage new ideas about how experiential learning might be more often and effectively integrated into teaching and learning.

Presenters:
Dr. Doris Jakobsh (Religious Studies - Arts)
Students from Fall 2010 RS 495: The Living Traditions of India
Devon Spier
Stephen Prentice
Amberlee Boulton
Zabeen Khamisa

“Nothing is easier than to have an experience and miss the meaning.” — William Sloan Coffin
“We don’t learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” — John Dewey

In the fall of 2010, students in RS 495: The Living Traditions of India travelled to India with Professor Doris Jakobsh.  During their travels, the students were required to complete a series of weekly reflective activities within their eportfolios, complete a number of readings and participate in group discussions.   A month after they had returned from their three month trip, they were required to reflect on their learning experience in their eportfolios by revisiting journal entries, reviewing artifacts from their trip and sharing their eportfolios with their classmates. 

During this session, Doris Jakobsh will share what she learned through this experience, the impact that learning in community had on the learning experience, and how the eportfolio activities facilitated this learning.  The students will describe how the time given to review and reflect upon the journal entries, how the addition of images and artifacts combined with the ability to share these reflections in their eportfolio had a significant impact on their learning experience.
 
Join us to learn more about the types of activities which helped students and instructor learn from each other during the three month experience and how the creation of their eportfolios allowed them to see their growth and development, and learn more about themselves as learners.

Register: Email Sharon Dahmer.

Presenter: Geoff Malleck (Economics - Faculty of Arts)

During this session we’ll explore ‘non-essential’ activities, i.e. those activities which occur outside the classroom and are not considered essential components of a university education, yet are truly vital to learning critical skills of life.

Examples of these activities include:

• varsity sports
• recreational sports
• Living/learning activities
• School clubs and organized activities
• Communities (ARBUS-Accounting, etc.)

Learning and development happen when we engage in these extracurricular activities; this is where we play AND learn at the same time.  How can we connect these learning experiences to the academic environment?  How can we truly integrate the essential learning that happens during these ‘non-essential’ extracurricular activities with the learning that takes place in the classroom so that both types of experiences are considered of equal importance and together become a fundamental part of  ‘Waterloo experience’?

In order for this to happen, Geoff Malleck argues that a paradigm shift is necessary.  The first step calls for a change in OUR attitude where these ‘non-essential’ activities become vital and indispensable.  It also demands that in addition to covering content, our curriculum must allow time and space for:

• Creativity and pondering
• Innovation and tinkering
• Entrepreneurship and doing
• Problem identification, problem solving and brainstorming
• Mistake making
• Networking
• Negotiation
• Reading for pleasure

How can we build upon and reward the experience of learning from mistakes?  What can we do to remove the fear associated with ‘making mistakes’ and instead focus on the importance of learning from experience?  What can we do to make students value this process?

How can we grade any of this?  Why grade?  Why not just experience?  How will ‘grade-obsessed’ students respond to ‘just doing’?

Join us for what promises to be a thought-provoking discussion.

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Presenters:
Toni Serafini (Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Studies: St. Jerome's University)
Carm De Santis (Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Studies: St. Jerome's University)
Mackenzie Turow (former SMF student)

One of the questions that often comes up with respect to experiential learning is, “how do we assess this learning?” Toni Serafini and Carm De Santis (SMF) will share their experiences with assessing these more challenging-to-assess learning experiences. They unpack how they have structured experiential learning within the context of a Capstone course in order to focus assessment on the goals of integration (across previous learning, self, and practicum) and critical self-reflection. Assignments are designed to tap each of these areas, and to link explicitly to the practicum component of the course. Students receive formative feedback throughout the course, which allows them to make constant (ongoing) adjustments across the term so as to gain the most from the practicum learning experience. Final assessment of student performance in the practicum involves evaluations from multiple stakeholders: practicum supervisor, student, and course instructor.

Toni and Carm will share a range of assignments (e.g., journals, theory and application paper, synthesis paper, class discussion) and how they are conceptualized to fit with the overarching goals of reflection and integration characteristic of a Capstone course. A former student will also share her experience of the practicum, and her thoughts about the benefits and/or challenges associated with the various ‘assessment approaches’ utilized in the Capstone course.

Please join us as we continue to explore strategies which you might consider incorporating into your classroom. What might be done in the classroom to build upon our students’ experiences outside the classroom? What might instructors do to help students integrate their learning? How can experiential learning be integrated more often and more effectively into teaching and learning?

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Presenters:
Sandra Loucks Campbell (School of Social Work, Renison University College)
Judene Pretti (Director WatPD)

The University of Waterloo's Sixth Decade Plan places significant emphasis on experiential learning. Deliberate effort is required to integrate the learning and the experience, but how can we help students integrate experience when we are offering a course in the online environment?

During this session, Judene Pretti and Sandra Loucks Campbell will describe the types of activities they have incorporated into their respective online courses to help students integrate experience. Judene will describe the types of activities included in the WatPD modules which are designed to help students reflect upon learning that takes place during co-op work terms. We'll also hear a student's perspective describing the impact that these WatPD activities have had on the work term experience.

Sandra Loucks Campbell will show us how she has been able to bring learning to life and teach interviewing skills in an online environment through the use of videotaped interviews. By referencing skills covered in the course, students are able to assess the extent to which the skills are covered in the interviews. Sandra will describe how this activity has enriched the course in a way that text would not.

Please join us as we continue to

• share how students are making connections between learning in the classroom with learning outside the classroom
• highlight best practices outlining what instructors can do in the classroom to help foster students’ abilities to make these connections and
• encourage new ideas about how experiential learning might be more often and effectively integrated into teaching and learning.
  
  
  Register