Dr. Jeff Graham teaches psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, the place where one can see DeckChair, Graham’s online learning program, in action. It’s a tool he sees changing the landscape of education. The original program was developed in 2002, as a simple tool for running surveys and experiments with first-year psychology students. It …
Maureen Barry was used to teaching a small undergrad nursing class at U of T. A group of 30 or so students would gather around, and she’d hold up a syringe, or demonstrate in front of a mannequin, or whatever they were doing that day. It’s how things were always done—until her accelerated program got …
The infinite refrain of the unwilling math student is “when am I ever going to need to know this?” And no matter how dismissive it may be, if you’re teaching a college math course, it’s a useful question to answer. In pursuit of that answer, U of T statistical sciences professor Alison Gibbs helped introduce …
In Canada, placing French language students in university programs is a bit more complicated than other countries. With such a wide variety of French speakers, finding the right level for each one becomes more important, and more difficult. French Professor Jeffrey Steele wanted to design a placement test for incoming French students at U of …
Jodie Jenkinson, a Biomedical Communications professor at UTM, has a track record of success with the Instructional Technology Innovation Fund (ITIF) over the years. In a past round of the Fund, Jenkinson had collaborated to secure an ITIF grant with one of her former students on a project that resulted in an animation currently used …
When U of T Dentistry Professor Dorothy McComb won an ITIF grant as she was planning to retire, she turned the reigns over to newly-arrived colleague Anuradha Prakki. The only instructions? “Make something interactive.” Naturally, Prakki’s thoughts turned to the dental anatomy class for first-year students, which she had just begun teaching. The course is …
Microscopes are nothing if not a symbol of scientific progress. If someone is using a microscope, odds are they’re in the midst of some important work. And yet Mike Wiley, U of T anatomy professor, found that microscopes were a real hindrance for his first-year histology courses, which used them to study slides for organ …
The beginning of the millennium was a famous time for video gaming. Sony’s PS2 and Microsoft’s Xbox consoles signaled the final turn for gaming from rudimentary arcade stands to high-powered home machines. The most popular titles included classics like Grand Theft Auto Vice City, Madden NFL 2003, and Kingdom Hearts. But at the same time, …
If you’ve ever seen a mock-up drawing of what people in the past thought the future would look like—robot maids are usually involved—you know that technological advancement is hard to fully grasp. Sometimes, the best that real-world technology can offer is a bland placeholder (looking at you, vacuum cleaners) until further and more widespread innovation …
If I told you that the practice of holography produces holograms, well, technically, I’d be right. But I’d lack the poetic flair of U of T Optical Sciences professor Emmanuel Istrate. He calls them holograms too naturally, but he also has another phrase — Windows with Memory. It’s the perfect sequence of words to cut …
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