Last January, before in-person undergraduate classes were cancelled in March 2020, my 8:30am Winter Semester Applied Plant Ecology lecture covered media literacy and science communication. We discussed where people get their news from, who is behind different media platforms, and the role of social media in public science education. I'm pretty sure it was […]
Science Education
Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles 8: #AdventBotany VLOGs & BLOGs
I've been touting the benefits of blogging for developing student writing skills, ever since 2006, when I learned how to write posts for the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability website, after I became its director. On my return to full-time teaching in 2014, I immediately added Blog writing assignments to all my Biology […]
Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles 7: How Humanizing Science Helps with Hallowe'en at Home
My favourite book by Charles Darwin is the one about worms (The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms: with observations on their habits: 1881). Today, Darwin is still a larger than life iconic figure, but thanks to his habit of writing in books, known as marginalia, we have insights into him as […]
Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles Part 6: Returning to my lab. feels like finding the Marie Celeste
Canadian higher education has mainly functioned virtually since March 2020, when campus buildings were closed. The residential population of York University during this pandemic has consisted of students and their families, for whom their campus apartments are their main homes, and international students who could not get home at the end of April, due to […]
Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles Part 3: All Zoomed Out
Zoom is the platform that somehow won the online meeting software wars during the COVID-19 pandemic. I've previously used it, Adobe, Skype, Bluejeans, Citrix, GoTo, and many other platforms for virtual meetings, including doctoral defences, and webinars going back to the mid 2000s. via GIFER I've been climbing the Zoom pandemic pedagogy mountain since March […]
Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles Part 2: creating good online courses takes resources
Since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down in-person classes across North America, conversations have proliferated about online learning and the time that it took to teachers to pivot to courses online. In early April, I decided I must come up with an online substitute for the cancelled in-person field courses that affected about […]
Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles Part 1: What is Exponential Growth Bias?
By the time the York University leadership cancelled in-person classes on Friday March 13, 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, I already knew that in-person April exams would inevitably be cancelled, along with in-person Summer Semester courses: the novel virus SARS-CoV-2 was entering its exponential growth phase by the time the pandemic was […]
My introduction to New Zealand's biodiversity with Dr. Victoria Metcalf
In the fortnight that I’ve been back in Toronto, I’ve been catching up with my online work now that I’m back on the rapid, reliable data upload and download side of the digital divide. I've finally started to digest and reflect on my pretty epic four-month trip to India, Bangladesh, Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan. […]
My #SciComm (not Cricket) Tour of India, Bangladesh, Australia & Pakistan
There truly is nothing like a well-planned and structured sabbatical for giving professors the intellectual and emotional space to reflect on and crystallize what their previous five to six years of long days and hard work has been most fundamentally about. This is why, in my view, where they still exist, the sabbatical should be […]
Wikipedia Editathon Chronicles Part 2
In Wikipedia Chronicles Part 1 (January 30, 2018) I posted about my plan to hold a Wikipedia edit-a-thon at Visva Bharati University, West Bengal, India. I held a mini Ada Lovelace Day Wikipedia Editathon for my third Science Communication Workshop on March 20th. During my time (January to March 2018) as a visiting professor, I […]
