Keynote Address and Workshops with Emeritus Professor John Bean

Date(s): Friday, September 26
Time: 3:00 pm
Location: : Abbotsford Campus

UFV welcomes well-known writing and assessment scholar John Bean on Sept 26 for a keynote address and interactive workshops

Keynote Address: 9-10 am in B121: Using Short, Problem-Based Writing Assignments to Promote (and Assess) Students’ Growth as Disciplinary Thinkers and Writers

Event check-in begins at 8:30am. Coffee and tea will be provided.

This interactive keynote address has two goals: (1) to show how short, problem-based writing assignments can accelerate students’ growth from disciplinary novices to disciplinary experts and (2) to show how the use of rubrics to evaluate student writing can create a faculty-friendly approach to institutional outcomes assessment. Drawing on novice-expert theory, genre theory, and the principle of backward design of the curriculum, I will show how short writing assignments focused on authentic disciplinary problems teach disciplinary ways of arguing while deepening students’ engagement with course concepts. Using examples from a variety of disciplines, including Social Work, Economics, Chemistry, and English, I hope to show how attention to assignment sequencing within a course or curriculum—facilitated by faculty-owned assessment—can support more robust student learning.

Interactive Workshop: 10:30 am-12 pm or 1:30-3 pm in B121:Alternatives to the Research Paper: Designing Short, Low-Cost Writing Assignments that Promote Inquiry, Deep Learning, and Critical Thinking in Your Discipline

When asked to confront interesting and engaging problems, students come alive in the classroom. This interactive workshop focuses on ways to design short, problem-based writing assignments that will help students learn important concepts in your courses as well as skills of critical reading, analysis, and argument that are central to your discipline. The workshop will suggest three ways for incorporating these assignments into your course: as informal thinking pieces, as short formal assignments, or as tasks for small group problem-solving. We’ll also discuss low-cost ways of grading student performance and handling the paper load. Participants should leave the workshop with hands-on ideas that can be immediately applied to the classroom. Register online today!

Contact Sarah.McLean@ufv.ca for more info.

Registration includes your attendance to both the keynote and one of two workshops – both workshops are of the same content. NOTE: The morning workshop is almost full, but there are still plenty of seats for the afternoon workshop!

*John C. Bean is an emeritus professor of English at Seattle University, where he held the title of “Consulting Professor of Writing and Assessment.” He has an undergraduate degree from Stanford (1965) and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington (1972). He is the author of Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, 2nd edition (Jossey-Bass, 2011), as well as several widely-used composition textbooks. In 2010 his article “Messy Problems and Lay Audiences: Teaching Critical Thinking within the Finance Curriculum” (co-authored with colleagues from finance and economics) won the 2009 McGraw-Hill – Magna Publications Award for the year’s best “scholarly work on teaching and learning.”