FEATURE: Dr.Karen McGarry
Leadership in Teaching and Learning Fellowship & Research
MacPherson Institute, McMaster University
Part of MacPherson Institute’s core business is to engage faculty in scholarly exploration, innovation, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of teaching and learning practices. One concrete way to achieve this goal is through MacPherson Institute’s new 2-year Fellowship program - Leadership in Teaching & Learning. The Fellowship program is grounded in the evidence-based philosophy that faculty involvement is key to leading change that enhances students’ learning experiences in higher education. Leading change in teaching and learning, a contextual and complex process at its core is fostered through collegial efforts and implementation of new ideas and innovations within courses and programs.
Karen McGarry is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at McMaster. Her research interests include the study of high performance sport and spectacle, popular culture, and educational anthropology, with a focus upon multicultural education.
Transforming Lecture-based Pedagogy and Encouraging Active Learning among McMaster Undergraduates
This project focuses upon faculty and student experiences of active learning classrooms (ALC) at McMaster, with three major goals. First, it aims to identify potential barriers to ALC use at McMaster among Social Sciences and Humanities faculty members and determine the types of resources that faculty need/desire to transform a lecture-based course into an ALC. Second, the project will explore the efficacy of McMaster’s new ALC’s as pedagogical tools by examining student and Instructor perceptions and experiences of their use of ALC spaces. Third, this project will devise a variety of ALC support solutions (eg. a video that highlights examples of how faculty at McMaster have effectively used the ALC classrooms, a manual linked to the MacPherson Institute website which includes examples of ALC syllabi, and a community of practice working group) to help faculty overcome barriers to ALC use and effectively and confidently use these new spaces