A happy ending
Kudos to UPEI and thanks to Hope for Wildlife (“Bald eagle makes history at UPEI,” March-April 2023). 450 is a fortunate eagle!.
Leigh O’Brien
Dr. O’Brien is a recently retired professor of education from SUNY Geneseo, who participated in a Fulbright specialist experience at the University of Prince Edward Island in 2012. She is a birder and long-time supporter of Hope for Wildlife.
Relatable wisdom
Wow, what a great read (“The highs and lows of being a Black grad student,” published online)! Now I’ve got to look for those webinars –where I’m sure I’ll find much relatable wisdom, plus more of the gutsy, giving spirit that Dr. Asiedu clearly has in abundance.
Lucille Gnanasihamany
Ms. Gnanasihamany is a community engagement and communications consultant based in Kamloops, B.C.
The benefits of deep reading
I finally took the five to 10 minutes needed to sit and read this article (“What happens when we lose deep reading?” published online) carefully and slowly with no interruptions, after having attempted to finish it twice this week!
This article is spot on. The people mentioned in this article put into words the feelings of guilt, ineptitude and lack of self-control that whir around in my mind every day as I am bombarded with a gigantic number of emails from students, my university and businesses. The sheer number of e-communications (i.e. interruptions) in my inbox fills the time I would love to spend reading longer essays and books for professional development and pleasure – two goals that seem to be out of reach nowadays.
I am going to share this article far and wide with my friends and colleagues.
Rachel Vogel
Ms. Vogel is an English as a second language instructor at Université Laval.
Feedback is key when students partner with faculty
The relentless focus on pedagogic innovation is now starting to put huge pressures on institutional resources without any credible evidence of improvements in learning (“Co-designing the curriculum,” March-April 2023). It sure has a nice feel-good aura to it.
There are simpler ways of improving the curriculum, teaching techniques, learning assessments and feedback into ongoing improvements. The most basic teaching course will show that students are partners in all aspects of teaching and learning. So, the only question left is how to make that partnership functional. One of the simplest ways of making it functional is improving the student- and peer-evaluation of teaching, and the integration of that feedback into next year’s teaching.
Baljit Singh
Dr. Singh is vice-president, research, at the University of Saskatchewan.