2019-20 University of Calgary Teaching and Learning Grants recipients announced

Funded by the Provost's Office and supported by the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, the University of Calgary Teaching and Learning Grants seek to enhance learning experiences across campus. The grants were founded in 2014 through the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, aiming to support the implementation, critical examination and dissemination of evidence-based approaches to student learning. Since then, the grants have awarded nearly $3 million altogether. This year, approximately $780,000 was provided to a total of 39 projects. The latest group of recipients propose a wide range of ideas for compelling, research-integrated teaching practice.

• Pictured above, from left are associate dean Amy Burns, senior instructor Isabelle Barrette Ng, and manager Gareth McVicar received a 2019 University of Calgary Teaching and Learning Grant for their project, Strengths-Based Teaching: The Role of StrengthsQuest for Post-Secondary Students in Teaching Roles

Helping future educators develop their strengths

For her grant project, Dr. Amy Burns, associate dean of Undergraduate Programs in Education, has partnered with Dr. Isabelle Barrette Ng, senior instructor in the Department of Biological Sciences, and Gareth McVicar, manager of student leadership development in the Leadership and Student Engagement Office. The trio is putting their grant towards Strengths-Based Teaching: The Role of StrengthsQuest for Post-Secondary Students in Teaching Roles.

Their project employs CliftonStrengths, a tool that helps students identify and apply their talents. The University of Calgary began using this tool in 2013, facilitating strengths programming to over 12,000 students. The results have been positive, improving students’ self-perceptions and abilities to work in teams. Dr. Burns, Dr. Barrette-Ng and McVicar now aim to examine how CliftonStrengths could positively influence students in teaching roles, with an emphasis on helping student teachers better understand how their strengths manifest in their teaching practices.

“This project aims to ensure students with a teaching role know their strengths and are able to implement those strengths,” Dr. Burns explains. “This way, when a challenging situation occurs, they are able to draw on their strengths as opposed to revert to the way they have always done things in the past.”

McVicar describes CliftonStrengths as “a program that helps students discover and focus on their talents and what makes them stand out, as opposed to always focusing on their deficits.”

Dr. Barrette-Ng is excited by this program’s possibilities for helping future educators develop their self-perceptions. She says, “Through the use of CliftonStrengths, we also wish to support students who are developing their teaching practices increase their self-awareness and identify innate assumptions about teaching and learning.”

2019-20 Teaching and Learning Grants recipients

Strengths-Based Teaching: The Role of StrengthsQuest for Post-Secondary Students in Teaching Roles is one project among nearly 40 that promise cutting-edge new visions and approaches for teaching and learning at the University of Calgary.

Complete list of recipients:

Faculty of Arts

• Dr. Andrea Freeman, PhD: Employing Creativity and Humility in the Development of Group Learning Modules that Promote Collaboration and Facilitate Learner Knowledge.
• Dr. Rachel Friedman, PhD: Learner Profiles and Experiences in Beginners’ Arabic at the University of Calgary.
• Dr. Angela George, PhD and Dr. Eleonora Buonocore, PhD: Collaborative Experiential Learning in the Second Language Classroom.
• Dr. Jenny Godley, PhD, and Dr. Mark Migotti, PhD: Ten Years of ASHA – A Mixed Methods Evaluation of the Impact of an Interdisciplinary Honours Programme on Teaching and Learning at the University of Calgary.
• Dr. Mary Grantham O'Brien, PhD, and Dr. Elizabeth Ritter, PhD: How to Learn a Language.
• Dr. Faye Halpern, PhD, and Dr. Dawn Johnston, PhD: Launching Theory and Practice of Teaching and Learning: A New Course for Graduate Students in the Faculty of Arts.
• Rod T. Squance, DMA: Teaching and Learning Bi-Musicality: Using Traditional vs. Familiar Instruments in Post-secondary World Music Performance Pedagogy.
• Dr. Lisa Stowe, PhD: Developing and Implementing a Peer Mentoring Observation Protocol (PMOP).
• Dr. Samantha C. Thrift, PhD: Creative Assignment Design: A Feminist Pedagogical Framework for Student Learning.            

Haskayne School of Business

• Dr. Alice de Koning, PhD, and Dr. John McArdle, PhD: Development of Street Challenge as an Experiential, Service Learning, Class Project, Fully Integrated with Course Outcomes and Process.
• Leighton Wilks, MBA, Brent Snider, MBA, Dr. Naor Cohen, PhD, Catherine Heggerud, MBA, and Candace Moody, CPA: Partial Information Exercise (PIE): Expanding the Interdisciplinary Pedagogy of Management Education.

Cumming School of Medicine

• Dr. Fabiola Aparicio-Ting, PhD, Dr. Lindsay McLaren, PhD, and Rita Henderson, PhD: A Structured Exploration of Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park: Designing an Experiential Learning Activity About Indigenous Health.
• Dr. Mayi Arcellana-Panlilio, PhD, Dr. Guido van Marle, PhD, and Carly Sabine Pontifex: Using a Novel Interactive-Visual Approach to Teach Regulation in Genetics.
• Dr. Marcia Clark, MD, Irina Charania, Michele Cowan, Dr. Kristin Fraser, PhD, Lindsey Logan, Rachel Jolley and Michael Chrusch: Comparing Simulation Debrief Quality of a Near-Peer Medical Student Based Versus Faculty‐led Simulation Debriefs.
• Dr. Guiseppina (Pina) Colarusso, PhD, and Dr. Grant Gordon, PhD: Creating a Blended Learning Opportunity in Digital Image Analysis for Graduate Students in the CSM.
• Dr. Lynden (Lindsay) Crowshoe, MD, Dr. Rita Henderson, PhD, Dr. Elaine Boyling, PhD, and Ana Rame: Indigenous Voices for Critical Education.
• Dr. Amanda Roze des Ordons, MD, Dr. Adam Bass, MD, Dr. Sarah Weeks, MD, Dr. David Keegan, MD, and Dr. Dana Saleh, MD: Peer Observation of Clinical Teaching: Exploring Experiences and Impact.
• Dr. Anthony Seto, MD, Jian Choo, Dr. Jodie Ornstein, MD, Dr. Elaine Poon, MD, Dr. Mackenzie Margetts, MD, Dr. Nazia Sharfuddin, MD, Dr. Mitchell Rohatensky, MD, Dr. Sean Crooks, MD, Dr. Lucas Streith, MD, William Kennedy, Dr. Nathan Zondervan, PhD, and Dr. Nicole Ertl, RN: 'BEEP-BEEP SIM': Gamified On-Call Simulation Training for Undergraduate Medical Students.

Libraries and Cultural Resources

• Dr. Katharine Alix Hayden, PhD, Susan Beatty and Cheryl Jeffs: Indigenizing Library Learning Spaces: A Photovoice Exploratory Study of Indigenous Students’ Learning Experiences.
• Rhiannon Jones: Developing MBA Skills: Library Workshop for Incoming Graduate Business Students.
• Dr. Zahra A. Premji, PhD, and Dr. Katharine Alix Hayden, PhD: Taking Evidence Syntheses to the Next Level: Creating a Workshop Series to Teach Students the Systematic Review Methodology.

Werklund School of Education

• Dr. Amy Burns, PhD, Dr. Isabelle Barrette-Ng, PhD, and Gareth McVicar: Strengths-Based Teaching: The Role of StrengthsQuest for Post-Secondary Students in Teaching Roles
• Dr. Patricia Danyluk, PhD, Haboun Bair, Dr. Lynden (Lindsay) Crowshoe, MD, Dr. David Lertzman, PhD and Dr. Qiao Sun, PhD:  Creating Ethical Space for Indigenization of Academic Programs at U of C.
• Dr. Aubrey Hanson, PhD, and Victoria Bouvier: Exploring the Use of Iterative Student-Directed Reflexive Videos to Privilege an Oral Model of Learning in Classrooms and Deepen Student Learning.
• Dr. Brittany Harker Martin, PhD, Michael Holden and Dr. Dawn Johnston, PhD: Empirical Base for ACE: Measuring Effects of the Arts Co-curricular Enhancement Program.
• Dr. Kim Koh, PhD, Dr. Olive Chapman, PhD, and Brit Paris: Signature Pedagogies for Preservice Assessment Education: Does One Size Fit All?
• Dr. Kaori Wada, PhD, Dr. Anusha Kassan, PhD, Dr. Nancy Arthur, PhD, Julie Cohen, Dr. José Domene, PhD, Dr. Tanya Mudry, PhD, Dr. Shelly Russell-Mayhew, PhD and David Marulanda: Centering Student Learning Through Social Justice Pedagogy in Canadian Counselling Psychology: A Collective Case Study.

Faculty of Science

• Dr. Jennifer D. Adams, PhD, Dr. Jennifer Cuthbertson, PhD, Dr. Farideh Jalilehvand, PhD, Dr. Vivian Mozol, PhD and Dr. Mindi Summers, PhD: Advancing Creativity in Postsecondary STEM contexts.
• Dr. Isabelle Barrette-Ng, PhD, and Patrick Kelly: Teaching and Learning Using Flipped Learning Strategies – How are These Strategies Applied Within Different Disciplines in a Higher Education Context?
• Dr. Yuen-Ying Carpenter, PhD, and Dr. Lora Oehlberg, PhD: Relationships Between Student Visual Representations and Their Attitudes Towards Failure and Risk-Taking in Design.
• Dr. Jennifer Cuthbertson, PhD: Increasing Experiential Learning for Geoscience Students Through Fieldwork.
• Dr. Rodolfo Meyer, PhD, and Dr. Rajeev Nair, PhD: Teaching and Learning in the Field: Testing Digital Geological Mapping Methods.

Faculty of Nursing

• Dr. Frances Kalu, PhD, and Dr. Carolyn Wolsey, PhD (NURQ): Investigating Undergraduate Nursing Students’ Perceptions of Active Learning Strategies.
• Dr. Carla Ginn, PhD, Sarah Dewell, Dr. Karen Benzies, PhD: Building an Online Educational Hub for Genetic/Genomic Nursing Education, Practice, and Research.

Faculty of Law

• Sharon Mascher, LLM: The Infographic Colouring Brochure - Understanding Canadian Carbon Pricing.

The Faculty of Environmental Design (EVDS)

• Dr. Fabian Neuhaus, PhD, Dr. Enrica Dall’Ara, Dr. Graham Livesey, PhD and Dr. Mary-Ellen Taylor, PhD: Design Studio Matrix (DSM): Supporting the Decision-Making Process as Part of a Reflective Practice.

Schulich School of Engineering

• Dr. Ahmad Ghasemloonia, PhD, Dr. Qiao Sun, PhD, Dr. Eliana El Khoury, PhD: Enhancing Student-Centred Tutorials in Engineering Courses.

Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning

• Dr. Robin Mueller, PhD, Dr. AnneMarie Dorland, PhD, and Erin Kaipainen: Understanding the Extended Impact of Immersive Inquiry-Based Learning in Undergraduate Education: A Case Study of Global Challenges Courses at the University of Calgary.

Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (UCVM)

• Dr. Kent Hecker, PhD, Dr. Amy Warren, DVM, PhD, Dr. Emma Read, DVM, Dr. Rebecca Archer, DVM, Dr. Andrea Protzner, PhD, Dr. Suzette Cooke, MD, Dr. David Topps, MD, and Dr. Sarah Anderson, PhD: Are All Assessment Methods the Same? Studying the Use of Written Examinations to Measure Reasoning and Decision-Making.