The Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) at SFU Burnaby is a 3- 4 day intensive workshop that was my first introduction to learning how to teach using an instructional model. It became and continues to be my foundation. I learned about developing learning objectives, aligning assessments to content, and using active learning approaches. What I valued most about the workshop is that you learn about teaching by participating in the methods used and then trying them on your own in practical lessons in small groups. The workshop encourages one to step out of one's teaching comfort zone, experiment with teaching, and safely receive feedback. The sense of community that is developed in a short time is impressive, and the experience lingers long after. I value the process so much that I took the Facilitator Development Workshop to lead others in the ISW. 

Whenever I feel stuck in my teaching or not engaging my students in the way I would like, I look to the lesson planning model and return to these basics. It never fails me. It has also inspired how I run some courses. For example, I have used the principles for establishing a classroom feedback culture in seminars and developing group agreements in multiple classes or tutorials.

From the ISW Website

"The Instructional Skills Workshop is offered within a small group setting and is designed to enhance the teaching effectiveness of both new and experienced educators. During the 3-4 day workshop, participants design and conduct three “mini-lessons” and receive verbal, written and video feedback from the other participants who have been learners in the mini-lessons. Using an intensive experiential learning approach, participants are provided with information on the theory and practice of teaching adult learners, the selection and writing of useful learning objectives with accompanying lesson plans, techniques for eliciting learner participation, and suggestions for evaluation of learning."

For more information: https://www.iswnetwork.ca/

More on the Lesson Planning Model 

https://teaching.uwo.ca/curriculum/coursedesign/planning-online-lessons.html

This is a four-day workshop offered by the SFU Teaching and Learning Center on course redesign. Its name has since changed to Rethinking Course Design. It uses backwards design principles and taught me the importance of course-level learning outcomes and alignment with assessment. I took many lesson design principles I learned at ISW and expanded them into a course-level view. 

I applied the approaches in the workshop to HSCI 212 - Perspectives on Infectious and Immunological Diseases. This was a course I inherited from other instructors, and I felt there was an overemphasis on guest lectures and a lack of connection across the course. Due to the various teaching styles, students found the content difficult to connect with and didn't know how to study for exams. This workshop helped me refocus disconnected course content and create more cohesion and consistency. I developed a novel "Disease Busters" assessment to combine course content; I describe this more in the course portfolios. My work on this course via this workshop made some substantive improvements and enhanced the student experience. 

I continue to use the learning I gained here whenever I take over a class. It informs how I think about a course and how I think the students should be assessed.

Workshop Objectives

• Apply principles of course design such as constructive alignment and backward design to enhance your course and support student learning.

• Articulate clear and appropriate learning outcomes for your course.

• Assess the strengths and weaknesses of various assessment methods in relationship to your specified learning outcomes.

• Assess the strengths and weaknesses of various instructional strategies in relationship to your specified learning outcomes and assessment methods.

• Review your course design considering principles of accessibility and inclusivity.

In February 2012, I attended a conference for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). There, I took a workshop on Scientific Teaching (Handelsman J et al., 2004). Though I valued my ISW experiences and rethinking teaching workshops, something felt "squishy" about these educational practices. It lacked the evidence-based approaches that I experienced in my STEM degrees. 

The idea that education could be evidence-based was new to me, and I was very excited to implement aspects of what I learned in my teaching. In July 2012, I collaborated with Kathleen Fitzpatrick in the Biological Sciences Department, and we applied to attend a week-long workshop on scientific teaching. we learned how to develop instructional modules using approaches that are known to enhance student engagement. Specifically, these used a case-based format that relied intensively on classroom response systems such as iClicker.  

• We developed an interactive case study module on the central dogma of molecular biology that was published as part of a case study repository.

• We committed as part of this workshop to share our experiences with colleagues within SFU.

• For this work, I was named National Academy Education Fellow for the Life Sciences 2012 – 2013.

• I started using iClickers and case studies in my courses.

This work informed my teaching in many ways. It introduced me to evidence-based teaching practice, educational scholarship, and case-based learning, which I still incorporate in many classes today. These cases are written by others or ones that I have written myself. I have also experimented with having students write case studies. 

In addition, I became connected to a scholarship community (Society for Advancement of Biology Education Research, SABER). I eventually attended some of their conferences and shared my scholarship work in poster sessions.

Information on the National Institute on Science Teaching: https://www.nisthub.org/about

Information on Society for Advancement of Biology Education Research: https://saberbio.wildapricot.org/

Reference

Handelsman, J., Ebert-May, D., Beichner, R., Bruns, P., Chang, A., DeHaan, R., Gentile, J., Lauffer, S., Stewart, J., Tilghman, S. M., & Wood, W. B. Scientific Teaching. Science. 2004 Available from:  https://doi.org/science.304.5670.521

In August 2013, I attended a workshop on best practices in program assessment. I was a new member of the Undergraduate Studies Committee and I wanted to understand how the pedagogies I had learned in my other training scaled up to an entire program. We learned about the importance of program level outcomes, scaffolding curriculum and approaches to map the curriculum in relation to the learning outcomes. 

This information was foundational for how I interacted as a committee member. The principles were directly connected to other training I have in relation to outcomes and backward design at a course or lesson level. I strongly advocated for developing faculty-level undergraduate educational goals and mapping our curriculum. These initiatives were taken on by the Director,  Undergraduate Programs at the time (Mark Lechner), and I contributed to many of the initiatives that he put in place. The work that was done eventually led to revisions of our programs in my term as Director. 

In May 2014, I took a five-day workshop that develops facilitation skills and prepares participants to facilitate instructional skills workshops (ISW).

At the time, I had taken on the role of Faculty Teaching Fellow and was actively building a teaching community within our faculty. I wanted to help others enhance their teaching practice, and learning to be an ISW Facilitator seemed like an exceptional opportunity. 

This was a profound learning opportunity that extensively helped me build my facilitation skills. Not only did we provide feedback in mini-lesson learning cycles, but we also received feedback on our facilitation. 

As an outcome of this workshop, I facilitated 2-3 ISWs per year until I took on my role as Director, Undergraduate Programs. I had the joy of helping others develop their instruction practice. and became a mentor for graduate students who were developing teaching skills. 

This workshop influenced my own teaching because I learned the power of great questions. I became more confident in the identity of a facilitator and not just a lecturer. I have consistently brought these skills into the classes and meetings that I chair. 

More information on the FDWL https://www.iswnetwork.ca/events/fdw-february-2022/

In 2017, I was looking for ways to freshen up my teaching. I took a 15-hour workshop series on educational media that covered a wide range of topics, including making instructional videos, graphic design, photography, sound and other forms of technology to enhance media usage in education. 

I have always enjoyed learning new technology, and I have gained different skills and possibilities in how media can be used in instruction. The lessons in this course become especially valuable in the fall of 2020.  I was teaching a hybrid laboratory course for the first time, and students had limited time in the lab due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I designed and produced a series of 10 demonstration videos on how to perform specific experiments for the course and posted them on SFU Mediasite. These were critical for the lab's success, and other instructors still use those videos. 

Other Examples of Impact

• Learning about sound enhanced my ability to provide clear online lectures when we pivoted to remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• It opened my mind to value new forms of media. In some courses, I give students the option of multiple forms of submission for projects. This enhances their ability to be creative and use a platform that best suits their skills. 

• I included the idea of mixed media in how our Tenure Promotion Committee receives packages for teaching assessment.  I incorporated the idea of multi-media teaching narratives in the Teaching Assessment First-Aid workshop. 

• Even this website is an offshoot of some of the tools I learned there. 

This is a year-long program that includes 14 - 3 hour seminars and leads to an inquiry project. The goal of the program is "developed the knowledge and skills necessary to both identify colonialism within their discipline and teaching as well as enact changes to decentre it."

This program has impacted my teaching and view of self in many ways. I go into extensive detail on this on the page Decolonial Teaching. 

More information on the program: https://www.sfu.ca/istld/faculty/programs/dt.html

I have had a long-standing interest in translating science to lay audiences through journalism; I was an editor for my student newspaper in my undergrad. I had also done some TV interviews and taken a short workshop on media training; I was interested in enhancing my skills. I took the Emerging Leaders Program to develop my writing skills for a lay audience. This was conducted as a four-day workshop. 

The Sessions Equip Participants to

• Own and articulate their authority as experts.

• Understand the essential elements and format of opinion commentary, including how to build a concise, persuasive and accessible argument that is likely to engage a lay audience.

• Increase their publication prospects by linking their expertise to the news.

• Submit their work to online and print editors.

• Understand how reporters, columnists and talk show hosts operate.

• Prepare for interviews (print/broadcast, friendly/hostile, long/short, live/taped).

• Craft concise and quotable messages.

• Bridge from asked questions to important issues and more nuanced context.

• Translate abstract issues into compelling stories and accessible analogies.

This workshop was a valuable learning experience, teaching me a series of skills I now apply in my teaching practice. However, I didn't publish an article from this workshop. Something about it didn't resonate with me, perhaps because I was teaching faculty in a room full of research faculty. I also felt that the topic I was working on didn't quite align with my interests. I recently took the disrupting colonialism series steeped with stories and strong personal voices. I was yearning for an experience that would offer more creativity and narrative. 

More information about the program here: https://www.sfu.ca/communicators-toolkit/media-news/media-training/emerging-thought-leaders.html

 I have always processed information and experiences by writing, though I mostly do it for my own purposes. I wanted to develop more engaging writing skills and a more unique voice in the narrative that I could apply to my courses. I was inspired by stories and wanted to be able to tell my own. I was on administrative leave in the spring of 2021, which gave me time to take a course on creative writing through SFU continuing studies. It is a ten-week online course with regular assignments that help challenge you in different areas of your writing. It was a lovely experience to develop a writing voice I knew had in me and get feedback from peers and the instructor. I'd like to do more of it, but it takes a lot of cognitive effort that I currently apply to other areas of my life. 

Impact on My Teaching and Leadership

• In teaching, it reinforces the strength of a narrative as an engagement tool and reinforces the use of case studies that tell stories about people. I tell students more of my own stories now.

• Getting students to think about narratives in different contexts, for example, in case studies that they write and in research papers. Even primary literature can be described as a narrative.

• Using evidence-based narratives as a core output in my Teaching Assessment First-Aid workshop to help instructors tell the story of their teaching.

More information about the course: https://www.sfu.ca/continuing-studies/courses/twsa/nonfiction-1.html

Our faculty does not currently have a formal structure for peer observation. Though I have not asked peers to come to my classes, I have received teaching feedback in other contexts such as the ISW. This is likely to change in the future.

In the Summer of 2022, I was designing my Teaching Assessment First Aid workshop to provide a process for faculty to show their teaching for assessment in their biennial reviews in the absence of course experience surveys.  

This workshop was part of the Inclusive Teaching Series at SFU. It provided approaches that could be used for peer observations and included in teaching dossiers and salary review packages. 

Although peer observation was not mandatory in the biennial reviews, it is likely to become a more significant part of the faculty teaching assessment framework. As an ISW facilitator, I have come to realize that peer observation and feedback can be quite personal, and the fear of being judged can discourage participation. Drawing from my experience as a facilitator, I was interested in learning how to make peer observation a collaborative process that is constructive, rather than a policing or punitive approach. I was curious to see how the workshop would help me in this regard.

The workshop was very useful in helping me consider implicit biases that I or others might face in a teaching assessment context. It provided specific rubrics that showed constructive inclusive ways to conduct peer observation. It set a good tone for my teaching assessment project. In addition, I was able to recruit the workshop facilitator, Bee Brigidi, PhD, to work with me on developing the Teaching Assessment First Aid workshop.

Workshop Description

Implicit biases are difficult to overcome yet we can each take steps towards (1) greater awareness of our own implicit biases; and (2) working to mitigate their effects. Instructors engaging in peer observation of teaching, whether for evaluative or formative purposes, can increase the awareness of their own implicit bias and even work to dismantle those biases through openness, effort, and sitting with discomfort. In this workshop, participants will engage with concrete strategies and tools to ethically apply to and critically prepare for their important roles in peer observation