Learning: In Our Own Words Instructors Page

Welcome to the academic literacies video series: Learning: In Our Own Words! This series was developed as a unique in-house instructional tool to assist York University instructors (faculty, TAs, librarians, counselors, writing instructors etc.)  in the advancement of academic literacies instruction. It is a teaching tool meant to engage students in critical discussion (reflect, question, analyze and discuss) around their academic skills and experiences.

The following are the seven videos and teaching guides:

1. University Life:  Teaching Guide #1
2. Learning Skills:  Teaching Guide #2
3. Doing Research:  Teaching Guide #3
4. Choosing Sources: Teaching Guide #4
5. Google/Internet:  Teaching Guide #5
6. Libraries:  Teaching Guide #6
7. Writing + Citing: Teaching Guide #7

What?
This is a peer-to-peer learning tool that captures the student voice/experience (“real life, real students, real experiences”). In these videos students voice their individual experiences about a range of skills including research, writing and learning skills as well as adjusting to university life.

The content of the videos are student-driven and reflect the various topics and academic literacies skills and experiences that students themselves focused on. The students interviewed are predominantly enrolled in social sciences and humanities programs. To this end, some academic literacies skills are not discussed in the video (notably numeracy).

Why?
Numerous studies address the value of videos as an instructional tool (Berk, 2009, Blasco et al. 2006). Videos integrated into the classroom are not only engaging to students (especially digital natives), they also easily address a variety of learning styles (auditory, visual, kinetic) and can be used to teach critical thinking. We also believe that social learning or peer-based learning, where students learn from their peers, can also be an empowering and enriching way to engage learners.

How?
We have included a guide for each video to get you started on engaging your students with videos! Each guide consists of the following:
• a summary, including a transcript
• discussion “ice breakers” to start the conversation
• sample lesson plans to promote active learning

The videos can be viewed as a series from 1-7 or as stand alone videos tied to particular instructional goals. They can serve as launch pads to other videos in the series.

The guides in this toolkit provide only suggestions of possible discussion points that leaders can use to encourage students to engage in critical discussion of the video topics. Please feel free to contact us with suggestions and comments.

Norda Majekodunmi (nordam@yorku.ca) and Kent Murnaghan (kentm@yorku.ca)

Learning: In Our Own Words: Teaching Guides 1,3-7 by Norda Majekodunmi and Kent Murnaghan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.library.yorku.ca.