News

The Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE) is starting a book club in the winter 2023 semester. Led by the CTE team (Dr. Conrad Van Dyk and Dr. Verena Roberts), the book club will focus on active learning in Higher Education contexts. 

Everyone is welcome to join the book club (instructors, staff, and students)

Every book club member will be provided with their own copy of the book, free of charge. All you have to do is commit to attending up to 4 lunch-time discussion sessions – to be scheduled based on participant schedules. (If you miss one, that would be fine)

We encourage everyone to come to the book club on campus (face-to-face), although we can make some accommodations to support a hybrid book club option if needed. 

Please register for the book club here: https://forms.gle/f8QMYBDcetc8TFGX6

We have two outstanding books to choose from: 

Davidson, Cathy N.: The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux

“Davidson is one of the most thoughtful voices from within academia calling for a more student-centered university. The New Education is a welcome collection of stories detailing how professors, administrators and students are designing paths through higher education that are relevant to our changing culture and society … At her best, Davidson writes in the tradition of Du Bois and Dewey, a pragmatist tradition that puts inquiry first and sees learning through the potential of the full, complex human beings students can become.”

 – The Washington Post

Lang, James: Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It

“Keeping students focused can be difficult in a world filled with distractions — which is why a renowned educator created a scientific solution to one of every teacher’s biggest problems.

Why is it so hard to get students to pay attention? Conventional wisdom blames iPhones, insisting that access to technology has ruined students’ ability to focus. The logical response is to ban electronics in class.

But acclaimed educator James M. Lang argues that this solution obscures a deeper problem: how we teach is often at odds with how students learn. Classrooms are designed to force students into long periods of intense focus, but emerging science reveals that the brain is wired for distraction. We learn best when able to actively seek and synthesize new information.

In Distracted, Lang rethinks the practice of teaching, revealing how educators can structure their classrooms less as distraction-free zones and more as environments where they can actively cultivate their students’ attention.

Brimming with ideas and grounded in new research, Distracted offers an innovative plan for the most important lesson of all: how to learn.”

– Basic Books

Please register for the book club here: https://forms.gle/f8QMYBDcetc8TFGX6

Kind regards, 

The CTE team