Central Montana Times

OTLE Presents the Seventh Annual Innovative Teaching & Learning Festival

the Office of Teaching and Learning Excellence (OTLE) hosted their seventh annual Innovative Teaching & Learning Festival (formerly the Media Festival) in the Hensler Auditorium. This festival gives other faculty members a chance to see and learn about new and innovative teaching techniques that are being used in other classrooms. Seven faculty members gave the following presentations: 

Grant Olson — Formative Assessment and Anxiety Management

Grant Olson explained how public speaking is one of the most feared classes students are required to take at University. Apart from the anxiety of standing and speaking in front of a group, they face the additional pressure they feel from a culture of education aimed at making a grade. In the past two years, Olson has worked to integrate approaches he found while working in the United Kingdom related to actor training and directing to lessen the anxiety of working for a grade while still allowing for summative assessment of acquired skills.

Casey Donoven — New Approaches in Gen Ed Math

M105 Contemporary Mathematics is Northern’s primary gen ed. math course for students who do not need algebra or statistics for their degree. Donoven discussed the strategies he has employed when making the course his own, including choosing material, designing labs, and implementing the course in Brightspace. Lastly, he followed up with using MyOpenMath, a free platform for math homework, that he talked about at last year’s 2022 festival.

Brandon Matson — Evaluation Program in a Management Class

Matson shared how one of the greatest challenges he faces in teaching a management class is knowing how to replicate a situation that a manager of a company would face. As a manager, you need to use some crucial practices to keep employees happy and to make them feel like they are a part of a bigger picture. Matson incorporated this idea into his course by teaching an evaluation program.

Amy Smith — Looking Through Lenses to Deepen Discussions

Amy Smith shared how students rarely engage in class discussions at a level that the instructor would like them to.  So, in this presentation she provided several techniques that she has found that encourages students to broaden their observations, extend their thinking, and expand their contributions to discussions. She helps them look through different lenses and discussed ways to engage students in meaningful classroom discussions.

Andy Bradshaw — Using a Tablet to Teach Wiring Diagrams

In this presentation, Bradshaw discussed how he is able to teach students to read and comprehend wiring diagrams by means of wirelessly projecting the screen of a tablet over the classroom projector.

Steven Don — The Interactive Syllabus

The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that exists between the faculty and the university (Northern) requires every class to have a course syllabus that helps students understand the course requirements and expectations. Traditionally they are a boring, paper or electronic copy that is handed out in class, emailed as a PDF or is a PDF that is part of the content sections in Brightspace. Don has developed an interactive version of the syllabus for each of his courses. This brief presentation introduced the audience to what he does in his interactive syllabus and how he created them.

Thomas Kline— Lecture before Lab

Kline shared how in the plumbing classroom, they go over many hands-on activities. Using technology to deliver "lectures" through Brightspace before the lab time, helps to cut back on the lecturing he has to do in the classroom. It helps his students get right to work when the students arrive. The students have already watched the video and have a basic understanding of the activity or skill they are trying to learn in the lab. He also shared what he does to make these videos using a multi-camera video production cart.  The cart makes it so you can do all of your editing in real time and do not have to edit them after the fact.  The cart is a real game changer and makes it easy to add custom videos to your toolbox.

Original source can be found here.