Taking Stock of Innovative Practices Combining Technology and Pedagogy within Quebec’s Private Colleges

In anticipation of an upcoming presentation of Profweb’s mission and services to the Directors of the ACPQ (Association des collèges privés du Québec), we have prepared a collection of Real Life Stories and articles related to the private colleges of Quebec. Submitted by teachers from the private colleges or members of the Profweb team, these publications highlight the inspiring contribution of the private colleges to advancing the use of education technology within the college network.

Real Life Stories

Studying Social Networks to Develop ICT Skills

Charles Laporte, LaSalle College, August 2016

Charles writes about his experience creating a new complementary course in 2015 entitled Social Media. He explains his approach and presents some examples of topics that were covered including performing web searches, credibility of sources and protecting your identity on the Internet.

Video Selfies in Class

Charles Laporte, LaSalle College, October 2015

Charles also had an idea to ask his student to use their mobile device to film themselves while presenting the solution to a problem in Linear algebra and vector geometry. His wish? To allow students to put mathematical operations into their own words.

Teaching Tourism… From Japan!

Ariane Arpin-Delorme, LaSalle College, January 2016

Ariane taught a class from Japan and another class from Kenya and South America. Her students participated at a distance in this adventure which was motivating and relevant to their task of planning travel itineraries and creating corporate events.

At sunset, with a family of giraffes in the background.

Using Action Research to Create an Inter-collegial Student Learning Community

Gina Lavine, Collège Laflèche and Susan MacNeil, Collège Mérici, November 2016

In this Real Life Story, Gina and Susan relate the key facts about their collaborative project entitled Action Research: Learning Communities in Sustainable Development. The teachers collaborated with multiple colleges and benefited from an Entente Canada-Québec grant which allowed them to build a portal for Action Research called CareEdu.

Getting Second Language Students Talking Together with Social Media

Gina Lavine, Collège Laflèche, March 2015

In this publication, Gina relates how she worked on a project that used social media (Facebook and Twitter) to allow English as a Second Language students to express themselves. By using tools that they were already using and very comfortable with, she helped students to reduce their shyness while learning a second language.

The Facebook page created for the course

Honestly Clicking

Veronica Ponce, Marianopolis, September 2011

As a Humanities and Philosophy teacher, Veronica had difficulty getting students to participate and react to questions that were more delicate and could embarrass students. In this Real Life Story, she shares her experience using ‘clickers’ to collect anonymous feedback from her class.

An Easy Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Weebly Site

Suzanne Roy and Marie-Stéfanie Taschereau, Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, January 2012

Suzanne and Marie-Stéfanie wrote about the user-friendly website creation tool Weebly, which is used for group work, content presentation and even the evaluation of students.

Les simulations numériques PhET

Pascal Larouche, Collège Laflèche, May 2013

In this Real Life Story entitled Les simulations numériques PhET: un solide outil pédagogique pour l’apprentissage de la physique, Pascal shares the history of the PhET project which began at the University of Colorado. The project has made Physics simulations available for teachers and students to illustrate essential concepts.

Articles

ACPQ Theme Day summaries (in French): Technology-assisted marking and Anti-plagiarism strategies

Catherine Rhéaume, Profweb, June 2016

Catherine Rhéaume penned 2 summaries from presentations that were part of the Theme Day that was organized by the ACPQ on June 1st, 2016. The day revolved around the theme of innovative practices for evaluating learning. Catherine attended 2 sessions: the first was on technology-assisted marking and the second was on anti-plagiarism strategies.

From Gamification to Transmedia Storytelling

Jean Desjardins, Collège Sainte-Anne, November 2015

In this article, Jean clarifies 2 distinct approaches: gamification and transmedia storytelling. He presents a taxonomy of game dynamics for gamifying learning as well as a number of examples of pedagogical activities that integrate the use of transmedia storytelling amongst various disciplines.

A Webzine about International Issues Earns the Innovation Award 2016 from the ACPQ

Caroline Villeneuve, Profweb, September 2016

In this article, Caroline summarizes the Monde68 project (participatory Webzine), that was developed at Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, and which earned a Prix de l’Innovation 2016 from the ACPQ. It is a web-based participatory platform for societal issues that is directed by a board comprised of teachers and Social Science students. News of the project was also carried by the cegeps.com college portal.

Monde68 homepage

Un atelier sur le wiki au Collège LaSalle

Martin Parrot, Profweb, March 2015

During his mandate as an Editor at Profweb, Martin attended a workshop on the use of a wiki that was led by 2 teachers from LaSalle College during a special day organized by Julie Anne Roy, their IT-Representative. Léonard Duguay, a teacher from Fashion, Arts and Design, as well as Charles Laporte, a mathematics teacher, co-presented this activity. Their goal was to sensitize their colleagues to the numerous potential applications for wikis.

Inspiring Portraits: The Two Lives of Murielle Cayouette

Caroline Villeneuve, Profweb, January 2016

Murielle is the subject of an article which presents her inspiring portrait. At the time of the interview in 2015, Murielle was teaching at multiple colleges including Collège Mérici and Collège O’Sullivan de Québec. She was also an Editor at Profweb. One of her contributions was the Real Life Story Becoming an Omnipresent Teacher with Wunderlist, a free on-line application for project management which makes managing everyday life a little bit easier.

PD Day at LaSalle College: Sharing Ideas and Collaborating!

Caroline Villeneuve, Profweb, February 2016

Caroline offered a sneak peak of the upcoming Ped Day at LaSalle College, with 10 workshops and a morning program the centred on the prevention of plagiarism. Ryan W. Moon covered the event, providing brief summaries of the workshops that he attended.

L’agentivité au service du développement professionnel

Samuel Turcotte, Université Laval, October 2016

During his internship with Profweb, Samuel attended a presentation from Michelle Deschênes, a Teacher-researcher at Collège O’Sullivan de Québec. She advanced the idea of a platform that could be used to promote agency for individuals and collectives. Michelle had already been the subject of a publication for her research on leveraging the web for professional development. As you may recall, she was the teacher that was awarded the ACPQ’s Prix de l’Innovation in 2015.

Creating More Accessibility to Classroom Content

Anika Maloni, Centennial College, October 2014

In this article, Anika explains that her college is moving towards the adoption of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approach. The college wants to provide both accessibility for the students and structure to their studies. This clearly implies the use of certain technologies for the future. For example, the teachers all requested a Web Space from Profweb to store their content on-line and make it more easily accessible to students.

Development of an e-Portal to Follow Student Physical Fitness throughout Their College Studies

Ryan W. Moon, Profweb, March 2016

In this article, Ryan writes about the initiative of 2 teachers at Marianopolis College (Josée Perron and Tony Iachetta) who are creating an electronic physical fitness profile portal that students can use across their three mandatory Phys. Ed. courses. The project was the recipient of a grant from the Entente-Canada Québec. It began in 2015-2016 in partnership with Vanier College and Champlain Regional College (Saint Lambert and Lennoxville campuses).

An excerpt from the fitness tests with fitness points and ratings based on performance

Digital Tools

GeoGebra: What’s That?

Charles Laporte, LaSalle College, February 2017

Charles presents GeoGebra, which was specifically designed for teaching and learning mathematics. GeoGebra functions both on computers and tablets. Charles also wrote a Real Life Story (in French) on how he uses it with students. The story reveals many interesting approaches.

The 3D Graphic View in GeoGebra is very useful.

In-depth Reports

Distance Education in the College Network: Current Issues and Practices

Andréanne Turgeon and Caroline Villeneuve, Profweb, September 2015

In this well-received In-depth Report, Andréanne and Caroline contacted a number of educational stakeholders from the college network to discuss topical issues in distance education, the challenges this mode of delivery represents for pedagogy and the potential solutions to increase its deployment in the college network. Among the interviewees, 2 were from private colleges: Geneviève Bernier (LaSalle College) and Martin Legault, an Education Advisor from Campus Notre-Dame-de-Foy. To learn more about Martin, you can read his Inspiring Portrait (in French).

Conclusion

We would like to thank our colleagues from the private colleges for sharing these inspiring publications! Profweb is pleased to have the opportunity to present our mission, services and perspectives for development to the ACPQ’s Directors on March 16th, 2017 at TAV College in Montreal. We hope that this meeting will reinforce the collaboration and synergy with our colleagues from the private colleges. Would you like to share a pedagogical innovation from your college? Please get in touch with us!