Foundations of Pedagogy

Registration

The registration for the Winter 2023 FoP session is now closed.  Registration for the Winter 2024 session will open in December 2023.

Goal

At the end of the one-term course, you will be able to use concepts in evidence-based teaching to effectively teach a lesson in an undergraduate classroom, with emphasis on alignment of learning objectives, activities and assessment. The context is interdisciplinary and concepts are transferable to your home discipline. UBC graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from all disciplines are invited to participate.

Instructors

We teach FoP with different instructors each term. The Winter 2023 FoP session is taught by:

  • Kim Snowden, Assistant Professor, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice
  • Kabir Bhalla, PhD Candidate & Graduate Student Facilitator

Requirements

Successful completion involves participation in 7 out of 8 classes including pre-work, teaching one 10 minute mini-lesson and writing a first draft of your teaching portfolio. Upon completion, you will be awarded CIRTL Associate status.

There are no pre-requisites to participate in this course. The concepts are similar to what is covered in an ISW with more emphasis on theory. Previous students who had taken an ISW prior to FoP said that both courses complement each other well.

Resources

Impact on your career

“I just wanted to let you both know I was offered the position at XX State University!  I’m pretty excited & blown away with this opportunity, and can’t think of a better environment to have practiced and developed my example lesson than the Foundations of Pedagogy classroom.  Thank you again for your time / effort in running FOP, and especially for giving me that additional direction with the teaching exercise.  It’s been a crazy few months, and I’m super thankful to have been a part of CIRTL at UBC and to meet you all!” – FoP student

Course Schedule

Exemplary course schedule from September 2018. Final schedule subject to changes.

Week 1: Introduction to undergraduate teaching

Learning Objectives:

  • Formulate your individual teaching development goals
  • Reflect on your teaching teaching philosophy

Week 2: How People Learn (Theories of Learning)

Learning Objectives:

  • Relate theories of learning to your own experience.
  • Contrast novice and experts approaches to learning
  • Describe how students’ prior knowledge and metacognition influence learning

Pre-Reading:

Week 3: Designing Well Aligned Lessons

Learning Objectives:

  • Formulate a learning objective for your STEM mini lesson
  • Develop well aligned active learning and assessment techniques
  • Give and receive meaningful feedback on any lesson plan

Week 4: Learning Objectives

Learning Objectives:

  • Design realistic, achievable, measurable and student-centered learning objectives
  • Analyze any learning objective with respect to Bloom's Taxonomy.

Pre-Reading:

Week 5: Active Learning

Learning Objectives:

  • Describe several common STEM active learning strategies
  • Evaluate active learning strategies in light of theories of learning

Pre-Reading:

Week 6: Assessment that Support Student Learning

Learning Objectives:

  • Describe several assessment techniques and recognize their alignment with particular types of learning goals.
  • Evaluate assessment techniques as learning/feedback opportunities

Pre-Reading:

Week 7: Learning Through Diversity

Learning Objectives:

  • Define diversity, equity and inclusion, and their implications for the classroom
  • Implement strategies for creating equitable and inclusive classrooms

Pre-Reading:

Week 8: Teaching Portfolio

Learning Objectives:

  • Refine your statement of teaching philosophy
  • Identify at least one idea for each component of your teaching portfolio
  • Define at least 1 next-step to preparing your teaching portfolio0

Pre-Reading:

Time and Location

Workload: 8 sessions of 2 hours plus 2-3 h homework per week

Foundations of Pedagogy is offered once per semester. The next course will start in Fall 2023.