From the French Side: Tutoring Tools, Flipped Classrooms, College Research Challenges, Robots and Augmented Reality

A flurry of activity on the French side of Profweb in January and February has accompanied the flurries of snow and cold temperatures. While we have had to cradle our coffee, tea and hot chocolate to keep warm, at least there has been some amazing reading to heat up our semester. The following are articles that were published in French only, but that will certainly be of interest to our bilingual readership.

A New Tutoring and Communication Skills Web Resource from CCDMD

The Profweb team checked out and summarized the features of a new resource that will certainly be useful for Student Success Centres as well as Teachers who are providing workshops at the centres. The tool, entitled Tutorat – Se former à la relation d’aide par les pairs includes video capsules, self-evaluation grids, and reference guides, all in one place. The web site’s primary objective? To allow budding tutors to recognize the essential skills that are required for successful communication in a support relationship.

Here are some of the enticing titles from the video capsules site:

• Breaking the ice
• Rage and disillusionment
• Learning to learn
• Flying on their own wings

Team Teaching in a Flipped Classroom

Isabelle Picard and Alexandre Deschambeault, two Teachers from Cégep Limoilou contributed a Real Life Story about their team teaching flipped classroom experiment for a biology course in the nursing program.

They believe that this style of teaching allows for a more coherent representation of the various notions for the students while allowing them to learn at their own pace. It also contributes to their motivation as the teaching is catered to the needs of each sub-group of students in the class. While the teachers have not yet submitted their final report, they observed that students have developed superior learning strategies, and that the knowledge acquired is more persistent. They also maintain that students are more autonomous in the learning process.

Check out Isabelle and Alexandre’s interesting story to read about how they organized their student’s learning before, during and after their time in class.

The Challenges of Conducting Research in the College Network

Andréanne Turgeon, Profweb’s Project Coordinator submitted an interesting summary of a meeting with the Association pour la recherche au collégial (ARC). On January 9th, 24 colleges and 10 Ministries or other organizations attended the Belles rencontres de l’ARC to discuss their research needs and aspirations.

The first half of the meeting was devoted to a roundtable discussion and an ensuing debate on research in social science, including some of the challenges that researchers face. It is worth checking out Andréanne’s article to see a synopsis of a presentation by Jean-Marc Mangin on the impact of social science research – which is an increasingly important factor when looking for funding. You can also check out the wishlist that was established following the end-of-day brainstorming activity led by Robert Poulin, Director General of College Training at the MESRS.

Robotics for Learning

Christophe Reverd from La Vitrine Technologie Éducation (VTÉ) offers some insight into the increasing use of robotics to increase student engagement. In his article on pedagocial use of robots, he states that robotics allow students to consolidate their comprehension of abstract concepts such as the diameter of a wheel and the distance travelled, detecting obstacles, and wave frequencies.

Chock full of links to related web sites, articles and videos, Christophe relates that students at VTÉ’s home college, Bois-de-Boulogne, are drawn to the on-campus robotics club. This article makes for an interesting read!

Augmenting Reality

This month’s From the French Side concludes with an article contributed by Profweb’s Marc-André Laflamme on Augmented Reality, providing a brief history, and detailing some of its potential pedagogical uses.

Later in the article, Marc-André covers some of the tools required to get started with Augmented Reality. He rounds out his article with a case study from Mathieu Fortin, a Teacher at the Cégep Sainte-Foy who has been using Augmented Reality in his Physics courses, and a demonstration of Augmented Reality from Pierre Julien-Guay at La Vitrine Technologie-Éducation.

Bonne lecture!