Brown Bag Lunch

INTRO TO REFWORKS

brownbag — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:50:06 +0000

What

RefWorks is a web-based citation management program that enables you to download, organize and format references.

Learn how to import citations from databases (e.g. Web of Science, CAB Direct, PubMed, Google Scholar), and format the bibliography using a style of choice.

Additional features such as sharing citations and using RSS feeds will be demonstrated.

Sally Taylor will introduce you to this powerful technology and show you how you can apply it to your academic work.

When

Tuesday, February 24, 2009 from 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM (PT)

Where

Food, Nutrition and Health Bldg
Room 220
2205 East Mall
Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4
Canada

Brown Bag Lunch Feb 9, 2009 : The GRS Blog Project

brownbag — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:15:48 +0000

The GRS Blogging Project

Have you ever wondered how to engage an audience located all over the world? This Brown Bag will explore the use of blogs as a community builder for the Global Resource Systems course. Mary Ann, along with Brent Skura, used a course blog to connect alumni, students and faculty across several continents.

The GRS course blog has been in use for a term now. Come hear Mary Ann Keating talk about the challenges and the benefits of setting up a blog for a course.

Jan 27 Brown Bag - Introduction to The LFS Learning Centre

cyprien — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:09:30 +0000

Come and learn about the LFS Learning Centre. The Learning Centre has many resource to help you teach, learn and communicate better. Come find out how we can serve you better!

RSVP to duncan.mchugh(at)ubc.ca

Intelligent Pest Monitoring, presented by Saber Miresmailli

duncan — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:50:33 +0000

When: Tuesday, November 4th, 2008, from noon to 1pm

Where: MacMillan Building Room 3500 (2357 Main Mall)

Please RSVP to Duncan McHugh. Refreshments will be served. Feel free to forward this email to any interested parties.

Session description

Pest management programs are based on several practices among which pest identification and population monitoring are very important ones. Even in recent years, developing new control methods has been the center of attention for many researchers and far less has been done to develop more effective detection and identification tools that are the first steps for any pest control program.

Like other organisms, cultivated plants produce many symptoms and signals in response to biotic stress (viz. pathogen infection or herbivore attack). Detecting these signals at an early stage could be a key factor for successful pest control. Plants emit a wide array of volatiles, some of which are novel, when infected with pathogens or attacked by pests. Emission of these volatiles is part of an indirect defense mechanism that can help the plant to attract predators and parasitoids that will attack pests. Pests themselves or their presence / feeding symptoms have been the center of attention for most current pest monitoring practices. However, in this project I suggest a novel approach to pest monitoring by shifting the attention from the pest to the plant. If interpreted correctly, plant driven volatile chemical signals can provide more accurate information about the health of the plant.

By using well-developed mechanical olfaction technology (known as the ‘electronic nose’), we can follow these chemical cues to locate crop problems before they become visible to the naked eye of human scouts. This could enable a grower to take early action, preventing pest or disease dispersion and further damage by controlling the problem right at the source. Electronic noses are special biosensors that are able to detect different types of volatile chemicals at various concentration
based on their sensitivity. These sensors are used mostly in food processing plants to measure the quality of meats and other food products. They also have many applications in military and antiterrorism practices (by detecting explosives).

The sensors can be programmed to detect specific volatiles and monitor changes in the concentration and quality of these volatiles. Electronic chemosensors are very sensitive and can detect chemicals in concentrations as low as parts per trillion. In order to use biosensors in pest control programs, we need to have a database of plant volatiles emitted in response to pests and diseases. First we should collect plant volatile chemicals, analyze them and select a set of compounds as indicators. After documenting the variability of indicator compounds emitted from clean and infested plants, we can select the best sensor(s) to detect these variations and report changes. Based on these reports and a database, initial pest problems can be localized and appropriate action taken.

It is a fact that plant driven volatiles might vary due to several biotic (pests, diseases) and abiotic (light,temperature, moisture, stress) factors. Therefore, the pest induced-plant volatile database will be designed in such a way that enables me to segregate pest induced signals from nonpest induced signals and also can provide a flexible and robust range of acceptable signals. Many techniques have been developed in recent years (i.e. Neural networks, fuzzy logic, discriminant analysis, data mining, pattern recognition, etc.) which allows creation of such intelligent databases.

The PEPI Project: Putting podcasting into students’ hands

duncan — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:43:14 +0000

Celebrate Learning Week: Brown Bag Lunch on podcasting with Dr Andrew Riseman and Duncan McHugh

Where: Food, Nutrition and Health Building Room 220 (2250 East Mall)
When: Tuesday, September 30th, 2008, from noon to 1pm

Please RSVP to Duncan McHugh. Refreshments will be served. Feel free to forward this email to any interested parties.

Session description

The PEPI Project (Prototype of an Educational Podcasting Initiative) sought to take podcasting out of the lecture hall and put it into the hands of students. Agroecology students were paired with Journalism students to create audio stories about the UBC Farm. Dr Riseman and Duncan will discuss how the project unfolded, its successes and its challenges.

Virtual Worlds

duncan — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:55:54 +0000

The Faculty of Land and Food Systems’ Learning Centre is very pleased to announce the ninth session of its 2008 Brown Bag Lunch series!

Please join us next Wednesday for a seminar presented by Tim Wang, Manager of Instructional Development for the Faculty of Arts.

Where: MacMillan Building Room 350 (2357 Main Mall)
When: Wednesday, May 21st, 2008, from noon to 1pm

The e-Learning industry is at a cross point where rich media is merging with
the traditional content. More and more, educators are exploring the
possibilities offered by virtual worlds and 3D environments. This is simply
because avatar based learning is favored by the younger generation of
learners. This session will provide the audiences with real-life case
studies and projects in order to further examine the phenomena.

Bio:

Tim is a manager and a technology developer at Arts ISIT. He is dedicated to
experimenting with new media while creating innovative online teaching and
learning applications. With a programming background, Tim combines digital
media development with interactive software design. He is currently building
asynchronous learning object authoring tools in Web 2.0 technology and
creating learning resources in 3-D learning environments.

Please RSVP to Duncan McHugh. Refreshments will be served. Feel free to forward this email to any interested parties.

Utilising student data to enhance learning and teaching

duncan — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:38:01 +0000

The Faculty of Land and Food Systems’ Learning Centre is very pleased to announce the eighth session of its 2008 Brown Bag Lunch series!

Please join us next Wednesday for a seminar presented by Shane Dawson, Senior Research Fellow with the Centre for Learning Innovation at Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

Where: Food, Nutrition and Health Building Room 220 (2250 East Mall)
When: Wednesday, May 7th, 2008, from noon to 1pm

Please RSVP to Duncan McHugh. Refreshments will be served. Feel free to forward this email to any interested parties.

Session description:
The vast majority of Higher Education Institutions internationally, utilise learning management systems (LMS) to support student learning. Courses undertaken at the University of British Columbia for instance, are supported through the use of such a system – currently WebCT Vista. Increasingly such systems provide the essential infrastructure which mediates student access to learning resources, and facilitates student-student and student-lecturer interaction. LMS automatically collect data concerning student interaction with the resources and tools that are provided via the online environment. The unobtrusive yet ubiquitous nature of this data is currently under utilised as a resource for evaluating learning and teaching activities. This is in part due to the lack of conceptual frameworks which can validly and reliably articulate that data with broader pedagogical deliberations.

This presentation outlines an evaluative method that utilises data mining techniques to benchmark and evaluate teaching and learning practices. In this session I will demonstrate what interaction data is available, how this can be interpreted, what learning and teaching areas it might highlight and how to use the data for benchmarking, personal reflection and demonstrating course improvement. In so doing, the presentation draws on Land and Food Systems course data to illustrate how monitoring student online user-behaviour can inform teaching practice in a proactive just-in-time manner. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of over-the-horizon information analytics.

Profile:
Dr Shane Dawson is a Senior Research Fellow with the Centre for Learning Innovation at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. His research interests have focused on the application of data derived from institutional information and communication technologies (ICTs) to inform teaching practice. Shane’s work has lead to the development of specific ICT-collected lead indicators of student sense of community and course satisfaction. Shane now leads an international project furthering the potential for data derived from Learning Management Systems to assist educators and administrators in the evaluation and monitoring of student engagement. Shane is also involved in developing pedagogical models for enhancing creative capacity in undergraduate students. He is currently investigating social network visualisation tools as a potential resource for teaching staff to better understand and evaluate student creative capacity.

Back up, Archive and Survive!

duncan — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:56:12 +0000

The Faculty of Land and Food Systems’ Learning Centre is very pleased to announce the seventh session of its 2008 Brown Bag Lunch series!Please join us next Wednesday for a seminar presented by Edmund Seow, the Learning Centre’s very own Computer Systems Manager.

Where: MacMillan Building Room 350 (2357 Main Mall)

When: Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008, from noon to 1pm

Ever had your hard drive crash? Ever lose value documents? With the cost of backup storage decreasing, it’s never been easier to back up your data. The Learning Centre’s Edmund Seow will show you simple ways to back up your hard drive, effectively archive your files and keep you from ever losing your data again. Don’t delay; come to this session and start backing up today!

Refreshments will be served. Feel free to forward this email to any interested parties.

Future sessions include:

May 7th: Shane Dawson on WebCT usage and teaching style (FNH 220)
May 21st: Tim Wang on Virtual Worlds (MCML 350)

Easy Evaluations with CoursEval

duncan — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:54:46 +0000

The Faculty of Land and Food Systems’ Learning Centre is very pleased to announce the sixth session of its 2008 Brown Bag Lunch series!

Please join us next Wednesday for a seminar presented by Alison Wong, Web Applications Developer for UBC’s Office of Learning Technologies office.

Where: Food, Nutrition and Health Building Room 220 (2250 East Mall)
When: Wednesday, April 9th, 2008, from noon to 1pm

This workshop will discuss course evaluations using CoursEval, a new evaluation software that UBC has adopted. CoursEval makes it easier to collect and for students to provide feedback, share evaluations and provides great flexibility and tailoring of evaluation questions. CoursEval can also be used as a survey tool.

Please RSVP to Duncan McHugh. Refreshments will be served. Feel free to forward this email to any interested parties.

Future sessions include:

April 23th: Edmund Seow on backing up and archiving (MCML 350)
May 7th: Shane Dawson on WebCT usage and teaching style (FNH 220)
May 21st: Tim Wan (MCML 350)

Alan Levine archive

duncan — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 23:59:56 +0000

We were thrilled to have Alan Levine lead a session on digital storytelling using Web 2.0 tools a couple of weeks back. We’ve put a video of the session on line. It can be viewed here. Also, check out this Flickr album of photos from the session.