Welcome
The Provost’s Office and the MacPherson Institute are pleased to introduce a new virtual panel series called Teaching Remotely: Shared Experiences. This series will bring together faculty, instructors and staff from across McMaster to share their experiences in developing and contributing to remote teaching.
Information Box Group
Thank you
We have come to the end of the first group of Virtual Panel: Teaching Remotely sessions. We’d like to thank the McMaster community, including all of our panelists, for attending and engaging with us in these important discussions.
If you’ve missed a session or would like to see the videos and resources we’ve captured you can find them on the second tab of this page.
We are planning a second group of sessions for the late fall. More information will be announced (through our website and the MacPherson Memo newsletter) in the future.
Information Box Group
Session 1: Challenges, Failures and Successes (June 25th, 2020)
The first panel session looked back at the hurdles, stumbles and triumphs experienced by teaching peers across campus during the spring/summer online transition.
The panelists were:
- Aadil Merali Juma, DeGroote School of Business
- Catherine Anderson, Department of Linguistics and Languages
- Adrianne Lickers Xavier, Faculty of Social Sciences
- Silvie Tan Halim, W Booth School of Engineering Practice and Technology
Session 2: Engaging Students & Creating Online Community (July 9th, 2020)
The second virtual panel focused on the ways in which faculty, instructors and staff have been able to successfully use methods, tools and resources to create engaged students and online communities in their remote teaching.
The panelists were:
- Amanda Montague: Postdoctoral Fellow, Lewis and Ruth Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship
- Mark Busser: Academic and Experiential Learning Coordinator, Faculty of Social Sciences
- Katie Moisse: Assistant Professor, School of Interdisciplinary Sciences
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Sashaina Singh, Office of Community Engagement
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Giancarlo Da-Re and Fawziya Isah, MSU
Download a summary of the student engagement and online community tools that were mentioned during this virtual panel session.
Session 3: Teaching Remotely - Inclusive Spaces (July 23rd, 2020)
There is a growing need to consider equitable, inclusive and diverse spaces to support the holistic growth of students from various backgrounds and experiences in our learning environments.
Our third virtual panel was about fostering inclusive spaces in your classroom, with your teaching and within student learning communities.
Our panelists were:
- Arig al Shaibah, Associate Vice-President, Equity and Inclusion
- Faiza Hirji, Associate Professor, Humanities
- Kalai Saravanamutt, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology
- Vanessa Watts, Assistant Professor, Social Sciences
- Anna Moro, Associate Professor, Humanities
- Alpha Abebe, Assistant Professor, Humanities
Session 4: Teaching Remotely - Accessible Teaching (August 6th, 2020)
We understand that there is a growing need to attend to accessible course design, content creation, and course delivery to support instructors in meeting the needs of students with disabilities, as well as students experiencing accessibility issues for potentially the first time, with the sudden and disruptive shift to online / virtual learning environments.
Our fourth virtual panel was about fostering increasingly accessible and disability-inclusive spaces in your classroom, with your teaching and within student learning communities.
Our moderators were:
- Kate Brown, Manager Accessibility Program-Equity and Inclusion Office
- Jessica Blackwood, Accessible Digital Media Specialist-Faculty of Science
Our panelists were:
- Allison Williams, Professor, School of Geography and Earth Sciences
- Li Wang, Assistant Professor, Department of Anesthesia
- Anne Pottier, Associate University Librarian
During this session, we experimented with a few accessibility tools. The video is captioned with MacVideo (Kaltura) automatic captioning. During the session we also useds Otter.ai captioning (a paid service) as well. Those captions will be available soon.
We also had Ai-Media provide a human-generated transcript of the session. You can read or download it here.
As with all of the sessions, this one had a lively chat where good questions were asked and resources and links were shared. You can view a copy of that here.
Session 5: Teaching Remotely - Taking a Large Course to an Online Format (August 13th, 2020)
There are many moving parts to consider as we pivot this Fall to a complete online teaching model for introductory psychology.
We had a discussion with key members of McMaster Introductory Psychology program transition team: Joe Kim (Course Designer), Michelle Cadieux (Course Coordinator), Thomas Samson-Williams (Head Teaching Assistant) and Joseph Oluwasola (Student).
This edition of our virtual panel series focused on transitioning a large course to an online format that includes both synchronous and asynchronous components.
Session 6: Teaching Remotely: Testing and Evaluation (August 20th, 2020)
In the online space we must re-think traditional methods of evaluation and testing. Fortunately, there are many individuals at the University developing authentic, meaningful and impactful ways to assess students in an online environment.
Panelists were:
- Elzbieta Grodek, Assistant Professor, French
- Colin McDonald, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
- Frances Tuer, Assistant Professor, DeGroote School of Business
- Felicia Vulcu, Assistant Professor, Biochemistry and Biomedical Science
Click here to download a copy of the panel chat transcript to find more.
Session 7: Teaching Remotely: Student Mental Health in a Remote Environment (September 3rd, 2020)
The overall student experience is dramatically different in a remote environment and student mental health plays a significant role in academic success. Stresses can be amplified and supports can be difficult to navigate.
Our panelists were
- Allison Drew-Hassling, Director – Student Affairs
- Jennifer Heisz, Associate Professor – Kinesiology
- Gillian Mulvale, Assistant Professor – DeGroote School of Business
We have compiled a list of student mental health resources that were mentioned during this session.