Submitted by Alli on Wed, 02/06/2019 - 08:53
What is the TEAL Fellowship?
This Fellowship will support you as you create a vibrant, relevant, and effective learning experience for your students that not only prepares them to be leaders in their field but also gives them the opportunity to explore the full breadth of their university experience both inside and outside of the classroom.
The Purpose of the TEAL Fellowship
You, our faculty members, have already been recognized as university leaders in advancing innovative pedagogies. We lead the University with the building of the Myhal Centre, a building that will allow you to experiment with many types of technology-enabled teaching and technology-enhanced active learning. This Fellowship grew out of a series of needs, including the desire to deepen the learning of our students, who, as a group, are already academically strong and highly motivated students. As engineering instructors, you are producing the engineers of tomorrow and their skill set is expected to be bigger and broader than ever before. Attributes like creativity and entrepreneurial spirit are becoming as valued as the more traditional attributes of critical thinking and problem-solving. There’s an opportunity to use new and enhanced teaching tools to help students cultivate and practice these competencies and skills.
This Fellowship will support you as you create a vibrant, relevant, and effective learning experience for your students that not only prepares them to be leaders in their field but also gives them the opportunity to explore the full breadth of their university experience both inside and outside of the classroom.
The Fellowship exists to support you as you develop, implement, and evaluate your projects. We’re here to help you implement active learning in a way that works for you – it has to be effective, but it can’t be so difficult or require so much time, that it is impossible to do. Teaching is a deeply personal experience – this Fellowship is designed to preserve your vision for your course while supporting you through the process.
The Scope of the TEAL Fellowship
Implementing any new instructional strategy into your classroom can be a daunting task. Teaching in a TEAL room can mean a significant re-evaluation of personal and professional attitudes towards how you instruct in a classroom as well as how you interact with your students (moving from the “sage on the stage” to the “guide on the side.”)
By looking at your course design (or, re-design), learning about the pedagogy surrounding active learning, and exploring the possibilities of the room, we aim to provide you with the support and resources you need to successfully implement active learning in your classroom and to teach effectively in a TEAL classroom.
We’re aiming to make this faculty development program comprehensive, focusing not only on supporting your teaching development but also supporting your personal development. This is not always a comfortable or easy process. It can even be isolating (Bergquist & Phillips, 1975). This is one of the reasons that we stress the importance of our Community of Practice. Connecting socially to your peers will help make this process easier.
The TEAL Fellows Support Team
Tom Coyle | Vice Dean, Undergraduate
Cori Hanson | Assistant Director, Student Experience & Teaching Development
Areas of Support: Equity & inclusivity in the classroom; Creating accessible courses; Anti-oppressive pedagogy; Happy to meet and debrief throughout the process to talk about ideas you may have and/or discuss how implementing active learning in your course is going i.e. student reception, assessment or any other challenges and successes.
Mindy Thuna | Head, Engineering & Computer Science Librarian (ECSL)
Deborah Tihanyi | Director, Engineering Communication Program
Allison Van Beek | Manager, Education Technology Office
Areas of Support: Implementing Technology appropriately and effectively in the classroom; Designing activities and assessments using Technology; General testing and experimentation with new Tech ideas
Article Category: Technology Enhanced Active Learning Teaching
