Thriving in the Classroom
The Centre for Teaching and Learning has created six eLearning modules in OWL to help instructors foster the learning conditions that help students thrive at Western.
Thriving Through Teamwork
This module encourages instructors to evaluate, revise and strengthen their existing team projects. The principal goal is to provide instructors with pedagogically-informed best practices and hands-on activities that they can quickly and readily apply in practical ways. It will also draw attention to thriving principles of engaged learning, social connectedness, positive perspective and diverse citizenship to strengthen and support best practices in teamwork design and practice.
Thriving and Metacognition
This module explores how faculty and instructors can build courses to support student metacognition in deep ways. The literature shows that when we demonstrate and encourage metacognition throughout a course, students are more engaged and are much more likely to thrive during their university years -- and beyond. This module will explore a process for building a course on a foundation of metacognition for increased student success and thriving.
Removing Barriers to Student Thriving: Trauma-informed Pedagogical Practices
This module on teaching for student thriving centers on raising awareness of trauma-informed pedagogical practices. Being aware of what trauma is and is not can help us introduce small, but powerful, curricular changes. These changes benefit everyone on campus, but those with trauma will benefit especially. Working, teaching, and responding to trauma-informed practices contributes to everyone's thriving at Western.
Difficult Dialogues and Sensitive Subjects in our Curricula
There are times when we want to or need to have difficult dialogues in the classroom. Having students tackle a sensitive subject that is pertinent to their learning requires significant preparation. Helping students wrestle with controversial topics can provide them with a better understanding of who they are and their relationships with other people.
Developing an Inclusive Teaching Practice
Inclusive teaching is about fostering a sense of belonging in your classroom, in your institution, and in your discipline. This belonging is related not only to social connectedness but also to learning environments where students feel that they are active participants in constructing knowledge and feel that their needs as a learner are being satisfied (Rovai, 2002; Schreiner, 2010). This module touches upon inclusive pedagogical strategies, both small and large, that anyone can implement in their own classroom as part of contributing to a thriving culture at Western.
Promoting a Positive Perspective
This module allows you to help students cultivate a positive perspective, even when it doesn't come naturally for them...or for you! The lessons in this module equip you to teach students how to respond to stressful moments in the classroom to promote thriving, reframe failure as an essential component of learning, defeat imposter syndrome, apply student strengths through partnerships that allow them to achieve their goals, and develop a growth mindset as a strategy for academic success.
In summary...
Participation in the workshops will enable instructors to take a strengths-based approach to student growth and development. In particular, instructors will:
- Design lessons and assignments that give students opportunities to practice goal-setting and academic determination.
- Initiate mental health and wellness conversations with students in order to encourage positive perspective and normalize help-seeking.
- Foster student engagement with sensitive topics in the online classroom through a trauma-informed instructional approach.
- Engage diverse students in the classroom by developing cultural sensitivity and humility as part of their teaching philosophy.
- Design and facilitate group assignments in ways that equip students with the skills needed to succeed in group collaborations
