Experiential Learning Community of Practice Monthly Meeting – The Gathering

Date and time: Tuesday, November 5, 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM

The Experiential Learning Community of Practice is a growing network of UM faculty, instructors, and staff passionate about experiential education.

Monthly meetings

Join our monthly meetings to build relationships with other CoP members, explore best practices and innovations, and participate in engaging conversations.

The Experiential Learning Gathering

Our CoP meets in person twice each academic year. Join The Gathering to spend “real” quality time with other members of our community. Everyone is welcome at this casual networking event. Grab a coffee, enjoy good conversation, and hear the latest experiential learning happenings at UM!

Register for this Experiential Learning Community of Practice monthly meeting

Better Together 2024

Dates and times: Tuesday, November 12, 2024, 1:00 – 4:00 pm and Wednesday, November 13, 2024, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm

Better Together is not a conference, symposium or lecture. It is an experiential learning environment, and everyone is welcome! Together we’ll learn, practice and be inspired about how to apply an entrepreneurial mindset to real campus challenges at UM.

Please visit the Better Together website for more event information.

Register for Better Together

Teaching and Learning Research Colloquium Series: Session 1

Date and time: Wednesday, November 13, 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM

The 2024/25 Teaching and Learning Research Colloquium Series shares the important work of University of Manitoba scholars and educators, whose research sheds light on student support needs, barriers to support seeking, and strategies for supporting students’ learning. Over a series of three research talks, faculty, instructors, and support staff will learn from and with each other about supporting diverse learners. Each talk will be followed by a discussion period and refreshments.

Session 1:

Not Left to Write: Reflections on Integrating Writing Tutors in the Undergraduate Classroom

For the past ten years, Dr. Kenneth MacKendrick (Religion Dept) and Kathy Block (Academic Learning Centre, ALC) have integrated ALC peer writing tutors in his undergraduate Religion classes. The goal has been to lower student anxiety about writing, increase student engagement, and build skills for clear communication in writing. Accessing grants such as the TLIF and TLEF, they have integrated peer tutors into the writing process for specific course assignments in classes with large enrolments, creating opportunities for students to talk about their ideas and drafts with experienced UofM students who are not evaluating their work. Each initiative has included an assessment in which students provide their feedback on the experience. In this colloquium, Ken and Kathy will share what they have learned about the impact of integrating writing tutors in the classroom, both for students and professors. Their observations will be based on their joint projects as well as other similar ALC course-specific initiatives.

Register for Session 1 of the Teaching and Learning Research Colloquium

Manitoba Academic Integrity Network (MAIN) Speaker Series

Date and time: November 20, 2024, 9:00 AM to 9:55 AM

The Centre is excited to host the 2024-2025 Manitoba Academic Integrity Network (MAIN) Speaker Series, a collection of six professional development opportunities related to academic integrity. A Certificate of Completion will be awarded to individuals who register and attend all six sessions in this series. Visit the Manitoba Academic Integrity Network Speaker Series website for more details.

Session 2: The New Frontier of Academic Integrity: Postplagiarism and Its Implications  

As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) increasingly permeates post-secondary education, traditional notions of plagiarism, authorship, and creativity are being profoundly challenged. This session explores the concept of postplagiarism, a paradigm shift that acknowledges the hybridization of human and AI-generated content. Based on a quantitative study involving students from multiple countries, the session will share students’ perceptions of postplagiarism, focusing on their acceptance of hybrid writing, the evolving role of creativity, and the necessity of redefining academic integrity in this new context. Attendees will gain insights into the implications of these shifts for educational policy and practice and the need for institutions to rethink their academic integrity frameworks in the face of rapid technological advancements.

Register for Session 2

Peer-peer Learning

Date and time: Thursday, November 21, 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

Peer-peer interaction, whether it be through case studies, group projects, discussions, or collaborative reports, is purported to result in engaging and effective learning. What characteristics make it so? Characterize your current peer-peer learning activities and explore two instructor-tested activities that might apply to your context.  Strategies to address challenges of your peer-peer learning experiences, whether they be online or face-to-face, will be shared.

Register for the Peer-peer Learning workshop

Experiential Learning Community of Practice Monthly Meeting – The Flipped Classroom as Experiential Learning

Date and time: Wednesday, November 27, 2:30 PM to 3:30 PM

The Experiential Learning Community of Practice is a growing network of UM faculty, instructors, and staff passionate about experiential education.

Monthly meetings

Join our monthly meetings to build relationships with other CoP members, explore best practices and innovations, and participate in engaging conversations.

The Flipped Classroom

At this session, we’ll explore The Flipped Classroom as a model for bringing experiential learning to courses.

Register for this Experiential Learning Community of Practice monthly meeting

We asked Colleen to share some thoughts about her approach to experiential learning.  

Colleen talked about the importance of engaging students with real-world problems that are relevant and familiar to them. During a student-driven assignment, Colleen asked Physical Education students to create projects that framed physical education as a preventative approach to healthcare.  

At first, students resisted the assignment “because they wanted to be told exactly what to do.” Colleen worked through those challenges with her students and was excited to report that “in the end, they created amazing things.”  

Colleen remembered a group of students created a proposal for a Fit For Life and Learning first-year course: 

“These students created this amazing course and I helped them pitch it to our former Dean, Jane Watkinson, who also thought the course was amazing because she decided to run the course as a pilot project. The students were involved in designing and marketing the course. 35 first-year students registered for the course! The best part is that these same students graduated from our program and are now educators and healthcare professionals who understand their role in supporting our health care system.” 

For Colleen, the key takeaway from that experience is the importance of “getting that passion out of our students.”: 

“It is important that we show them our passion and interest in experiential learning and share those experiences together. We want to tap into students’ ideas, curiosity, and creativity. Learning can and should be engaging and enjoyable!”

Colleen Plumton with Kevin Scott, Jack Haper, and Dave Bosiak at KinRec’s Supervised Fieldwork Program’s 40th Anniversary celebration.

Learn more

To learn more about Colleen’s work and the Supervised Fieldwork Experience program at the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation, visit their website! 

To learn more about the Office of Experiential Learning, visit our website. 

To attend an Experiential Learning workshop or event, visit our workshops and events page. 

A safe place to make mistakes

Giving students a safe space to take on real-world challenges is key for Instructor Katherine Isaac in the Faculty of Architecture’s Environmental Design program. In her Professional Practice course, students create a “request for proposal” (RFP) for an architecture project; they then role play and become the client who is receiving the RFP. This self- and peer-evaluation exercise allows learners to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their work “and to have reality-based conversations,” she says.

Instructor Jenna Tichon, whose statistics classes in the Faculty of Science are often large, shared how she has scaled up experiential learning techniques and uses authentic assessment and student self-reflection to help her learners succeed.

“I value that in university and science, people are able to say, ‘I think I’m making a mistake, I did something wrong, there might be an issue here.’” She believes that if that opportunity isn’t built into the learning experience, “the consequences of people not being able to speak up can be incredibly severe.”

Stepping outside one’s comfort zone

Encouraging students to overcome their reticence has been rewarding for Professor Peter Kulchyski of the Department of Indigenous Studies. His six-week “bush school” in Pangnirtung on Baffin Island is land-based education and community-based learning at its most challenging.

“I’m very deliberate about working with communities and seeing them differently,” he says. Students are encouraged to look for community strengths and avoid colonial-based thinking. His visitors are to be mindful of three things when interacting with community members: impacts on the learner, impacts on the setting being learned in and impacts on those who might receive the learners during the experience. 

We are ‘doing beings’

Senior Instructor Colleen Plumton in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management has been a proponent of experiential learning for more than 20 years, and she has seen how it can ignite students’ curiosity as a result. For those looking to try it, she says, “It comes from believing in our students and ourselves. Our students want this. Remember that we are doing beings, we are not sitting beings.”  

She encouraged instructors to seek out the help available through the Centre and the Office of Experiential Learning. “We have a collection of humans to support one another.”

Compelling stories and useful advice

Attendee Mona Maxwell, Education Developer with the Centre, summed up the value of hearing the panel’s collective knowledge. “I left feeling secure that the enduring impact that a well-crafted experiential learning activity can have on a learner justifies the extra effort and risk-taking needed to overcome the barriers to creating them,” she says. “The panel convinced me that experiential learning binds our discipline content and lifts it off the pages of the text, while creating learners who appreciate the autonomy, self-growth and sense of accomplishment of their experiential learning experience for years to come.”

Since 2017, the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning has hosted an annual Teaching Café to celebrate teaching innovation at the university. UM educators share their teaching strategies and discuss, in a roundtable format, the lessons they have learned. The Café is open to all UM faculty and instructors, and lunch is provided.

Learn more

Learn more about the Teaching and Learning Certificate.

Learn more about experiential learning.

“I’m entirely self-taught with a healthy dose of trial and error,” Szczerski added.

His journey continued with learning 3D CAD software to modify, design and print his own models. He now actively prints on filament and resin printers, and comfortably designs his own models for various purposes.

One of those purposes is to support faculty like Dr. Joy Stacey in Biological Sciences. Dr. Stacey teaches chordate and invertebrate labs and was intrigued about the potential of 3D printers in her teaching lab.

Dr. Stacey and Szczerski worked together to find high quality scans in public databases and then Szczerski assisted with editing the models to make them ready for printing. They targeted particular skulls that students were having the most trouble with learning. Dr. Stacey then devised a learning activity where students could paint their models as they learned to identify specific bones.

“Acquiring original bones or plastic copies is fairly expensive – usually a couple of hundred dollars each. But with 3D printing, we can get materials at less than two dollars per skull. That makes it feasible even for students to take them home as a good quality study aid,” Szczerski noted.  

Szczerski has also supported Dr. Carla Zelmer in Biological Sicences, who teaches flowering and non-flowering plants, by providing affordable models of plant cell organization. The models were enlarged and simplified in several ways to allows students a better visualization of the material.

Szczerski’s simple 3D printed add-ons also support the Buller Greenhouse with things like plant watering and bait traps to capture slugs.

Szczerski’s advice to others: “I think the best way to live life has always been to follow your passions and find ways to explore your own individuality and creativity. One never quite knows where things will go and many additional opportunities may be out there if you just start.”

Gallery of Carl Szczerski’s painted 3D models on display at the recent 3K Science Spark Pitch Competition from the Science Innovation Hub. Photo Credit: Mike Latschislaw

Get entrepreneurial at UM

For more information about how to bring an entrepreneurial mindset into your learning environment, get in touch with Janine Carmichael, Faculty Specialist: Entrepreneurship.

To spark your entrepreneurial spirit, visit The Stu Clark Centre for Entrepreneurship.

To move your invention or research into a practical application, visit Partnerships and Innovation.

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’ll want to check out the following events, hosted by the Office of Experiential Learning at the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning:

The Experiential Learning Gathering: Teaching Experientially in 2023

• May 2, 2023
• 9:30 am -12 pm, light refreshments provided
• Room 200A (The Cloister), St John’s

A growing number of instructors and faculty members are incorporating different forms of experiential learning into their courses. The aim of this series of gatherings is to create a vibrant, supportive and collaborative community of experiential learning practitioners at the UM.

Covid-19, the rise of A.I. and uncertainty about the role of post-secondary education in our rapidly changing world are transforming the way we think about experiential learning. Join colleagues from diverse faculties and backgrounds as we explore emerging trends, challenges, and opportunities for EL in 2023.

Please note, the Experiential Learning Gathering is not a component of the TLC program.

Register for the Experiential Learning Gathering here (only 8 spaces left!)

The Teaching Café: Journeys into Experiential Learning

• May 3
• 10 am -12:30 pm (Doors open at 9:30; lunch from 12:30 to 1:30 pm)
• Multi-purpose Room, UMSU University Centre

This year’s Teaching Café features a panel of faculty members and instructors from Statistics, Indigenous Studies, Architecture and Kinesiology and Recreation Management. The panel will explore the speakers’ unique journeys into experiential learning across their diverse teaching careers.

In addition to the panel, participants will have the opportunity to engage in small group discussions with panelists and connect with other participants over lunch.

Register for the Teaching Café here (only 10 spaces left!)

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’ll want to check out the following events, hosted by the Office of Experiential Learning at the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning:

The Experiential Learning Gathering: Teaching Experientially in 2023

• May 2, 2023
• 9:30 am -12 pm
• Room 200A (The Cloister), St John’s

A growing number of instructors and faculty members are incorporating different forms of experiential learning into their courses. The aim of this series of gatherings is to create a vibrant, supportive and collaborative community of experiential learning practitioners at the UM.

Covid-19, the rise of A.I. and uncertainty about the role of post-secondary education in our rapidly changing world are transforming the way we think about experiential learning. Join colleagues from diverse faculties and backgrounds as we explore emerging trends, challenges, and opportunities for EL in 2023.

Please note, the Experiential Learning Gathering is not a component of the TLC program.

Register for the Experiential Learning Gathering here (30 spaces available)

The Teaching Café: Journeys into Experiential Learning

• May 3
• 10 am -12:30 pm (Doors open at 9:30; lunch from 12:30 to 1:30 pm)
• Multi-purpose Room, UMSU University Centre

This year’s Teaching Café features a panel of faculty members and instructors from Statistics, Indigenous Studies, Architecture and Kinesiology and Recreation Management. The panel will explore the speakers’ unique journeys into experiential learning across their diverse teaching careers.

In addition to the panel, participants will have the opportunity to engage in small group discussions with panelists and connect with other participants over lunch.

Register for the Teaching Café here (80 spaces available)

Experiential Learning Institute: Beyond Learning by Doing

• June 8
• 9 am -4 pm
• Fort Garry Campus

There is much more to experiential learning than extracting knowledge from experience—from developing an experiential mindset, to acquiring new competencies and a reflective habit.

In this 1-day institute, participants will explore the pedagogy of experiential learning as a holistic approach to teaching that emphasizes the process of learning over its outcomes. Facilitating these holistic experiences for our students requires that we think about experiential learning “beyond learning by doing”–from how to prepare students to learn experientially, to incorporating competency development into the design of experiential learning activities.  

Along with these learning opportunities, the institute offers a space for experiential learning practitioners to come together to exchange ideas, find support and build community around their shared passion for teaching experientially.

To participate in the Experiential Learning Institute, get in touch with the Office of Experiential Learning at the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning or by visiting their website or emailing gerardo.villagran@umanitoba.ca.