Introduction to Business

In this course, the blended approach helps students interact in small group discussions in-class and online and to play a computer based business strategy simulation game throughout the term.

This is an introductory capstone course in business which explores the various functional areas of: Accounting, Finance, Marketing, Organizational Design, Leadership, Operations Management and Human Resource Management; along with the impacts of ethics and globalization on business. Class time is used for mini lectures interspersed with engaging students in small group discussions and confirming broad based understanding of core course concepts through the use of a course response system (i.e. “clickers”). In teams, over 8 weeks, students play a computer based business strategy simulation game which supports their learning about the inter-relationship of the various functional elements of a business and allows students to experience the benefits of teamwork.

Lectures are recorded and are available as online podcasts. Team based interactive on-line discussions allow students to re-enforce difficult concepts covered in the course, providing the opportunity to each student to be involved in course-related topics and support their individual learning through having to support and explain their understanding. After completion of the simulation game, each team uses their experiences to complete a major reflection on what they have learned. Students can use team wikis to assemble material during the playing of the game, for use in the preparation of their reflection.

Visual Communication

Blending in-class and online tutorials gives students the opportunity to develop the computing skills they need to engage in course activities.

This course provides an introduction to computing techniques in architecture. Students engage in the use of the desktop computer in architectural practice and are instructed in the conceptual foundations for computer use in architecture, graphic applications for the computer and basic skills for two-dimensional drawing and three-dimensional modeling.

Students access all course materials online. The course consists of a series of face-to-face lectures, in-class tutorials, and online tutorials. Each major topic covered in the course is divided into brief online tutorials which delve into specific functions and processes. The tutorials enable students to cover the course material independently and work on exercises in parallel with the instructions and lessons.

Genetics

A blended approach helps the students get the most out of their face-to-face problem-solving tutorial tutorials.

This course introduces students to the basics of heredity. Students learn how traits are transmitted and become familiar with the fundamentals of gene expression, regulation and mutation in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. DNA, chromosome and genomic structure and organization are also central topics.

Problem solving is an important aspect of the course and face-to-face tutorials provide students with opportunities work on problems in a smaller group with the guidance of a teaching assistant. In addition, online “mini-tasks” and video tutorials help students engage in some aspects of the problem solving independently. There are 3 lectures a week and enhanced podcasts of these lectures are available online to help students review difficult concepts and reinforce the in-class experience.

Biophysical Evaluation Lab

Students prepare for the lab and review key concepts through interactive animations.

This laboratory course provides exposure to practical measurement skills which are relevant to field settings in Kinesiology. The laboratories are designed so that students acquire the skills to measure cardiovascular function, neuromuscular function and body composition and work toward to gaining the knowledge to evaluate human motion accurately.

Students work in small groups in the lab with access to teaching assistants who can answer their questions. Each lab has a specific set of objectives and students complete an online quiz to test their level of preparedness prior to the lab. In addition simple interactive learning tools help students understand the terminology of motion.

Sport Injury Management Lab

Interacting with online learning objects helps prepare students for the hands-on lab, and is particularly helpful as the number of students in this blended course increases.

This lab provides exposure and training in the management of injuries in an athletic population. Techniques include musculoskeletal assessment, emergency treatment, taping and splinting supports, heating, icing, stretching, and fitting protective equipment. Students learn to perform a basic musculoskeletal assessment, basic taping and wrapping techniques. They must demonstrate the basics of on-field emergency care of injured athletes and confidently palpate a number of major anatomical structures. Students also develop an understanding of the basics of massage techniques and mechanisms of common athletic injuries.

Students prepare for a weekly face-to-face lab through an online learning object which incorporates video, audio and quizzes. Other online video demonstrations and audio explanations created by the instructor introduce students to what they will learn in the lab and summarize what they should have learned in the lab. Online quizzes are used weekly for assessment purposes.

Organic Chemistry Lab

Online instructional videos and self-assessments help students prepare for the lab experience by reviewing the concepts that underlie the experiment and the procedures that will be used.

Students in this laboratory course carry out several experiments in organic synthesis including: the separation of a three component mixture containing an acid, a base, and a neutral substance; the synthesis of acetanilide from aniline; the synthesis of benzoic acid by a Grignard reaction; and more.

Before each lab students are expected to read about the experimental procedures and watch online instructional videos of the procedures that they will be performing in the lab. In lab they also see a short face-to-face presentation about the procedures for that day. The students are assessed on their level of preparedness through pre-lab online quizzes. Their successful completion of the quiz requirement automatically generates a confirmation page that students bring to lab and that becomes part of their lab report.

Politics of Sustainable Community

Students have the opportunity to interact with course concepts and then discuss them online in this blended course.

The Politics of Sustainable Communities considers a variety of contemporary issues and challenges. Topics include local environmental politics, political communications, political accountability, political ecology and the quest for a healthy community. This course looks at some of the contemporary issues regarding local governance and sustainability and is oriented towards helping students develop an understanding of sustainable communities and to explore a variety of factors, specifically how institutions and political processes work.

Online modules present practical applications of such concepts as environmental ethics, social justice, participatory democracy, rights vs. responsibilities and sustainable community development though readings and videos which students discuss online before or after a weekly face-to-face class. Students from Nanjing University and the University of Northern British Columbia have participated in the on-line discussions comparing and contrasting their ideas of sustainable communities and local governance and sharing information about how their own cities are run.

Ontario Natural History

Students prepare in advance for an intensive eight day field course though online activities.

This course is an introduction to natural history, the art and science of identifying organisms and observing their behavior and ecological interactions. Students reside in an Ontario biodiversity hotspot for an eight-day period to learn about local species, human history and conservation initiatives and to complete a project on a group of organisms and an ecological “pattern”.

Students work independently online over a period of about a month to prepare for the intensive hands-on field course. Each week, they read 1-2 chapters from a course textbook, and then complete a corresponding quiz and short assignment. They also develop a proposal for an independent research project to be completed in the field.

Integrated Patient Focused Care

Class time is reduced as students to work independently on foundational course concepts and then work with the instructor on problem solving in a group tutorial.

IPFC1 is an integrated course focusing on pharmacokinetics and foundational material that are key to the comprehension of case studies in subsequent IPFC courses. The pharmacokinetics component of IPFC1 examines how the fate of drugs in the body is influenced by physiological and biochemical processes using a mathematical description of the events which transpire following drug administration.

The Pharmacokinetics component of IPFC1 is almost completely delivered online and represents 7 hours of “class time” per week within the IPFC1 schedule. Students access online presentations, do activities online, and receive problem-sets and assignments in the LEARN environment. Once a week there is a 1-hour face-to-face tutorial where the instructor works through an assigned problem set and answers questions. An online discussion board is also provided as a forum to ask questions of peers and the course instructor.

American Government & Politics

In this course, the blended approach gives students the opportunity to discuss course topics through current events in small groups online.

This course provides an introduction to American government and politics with the aim of helping students develop an appreciation of the American political context necessary to understand current events in American politics.

In addition to attending two face-to-face lectures a week and completing a major assignment during the term, students deepen their understanding of course topics through online discussions of current events. Students are divided into small groups that choose online news articles, videos and interviews which they discuss with respect to why they think these particular events are interesting/important and what those events suggest about the essence of American politics. Podcasts of lectures are also made available to students.

Probability

Blending face-to-face lectures with online resources and self-assessments helps students prepare before lecture and review concepts after lecture.

This core course provides fundamental ideas on probability underlying all later courses in statistics. It covers the laws of probability, discrete and continuous random variables, expectation and central limit theorem.

The interesting online aspects of the course lie in the pre- and post-chapter engagement with students through LEARN and MapleTA. Each course chapter has a short "warm-up" page outlining the notions and main ideas of the chapter along with examples. At the end of the page students can check their understanding and get immediate feedback with an automatically graded quiz. Afterwards, while reading the chapter and attending lectures, a review page is made available that gives students a concept checklist, demo applets and another feedback quiz to test their understanding.

Written Communication

Written expression, with a focus on German grammar, is achieved through a blend of in class and online tasks and through tasks that rely on collaborative knowledge construction in group projects.

Students develop grammatical and vocabulary skills though writing practice and discussion on topics of everyday life as well as on political, social and cultural aspects of the German-speaking countries.

This course balances classroom contact with face-to-face interaction among students and with the instructor, small-group student meetings outside of class time, individual consultations with the instructor during office hours, and on the other, technology-mediated discussions and exchanges. Collaborative activities are central to the course and all students engage in three small group projects (the verb project, the noun project and the sentence project). Each group creates: a grammar card (Grammatikkarte), a text (Text) on one of three topics given, and a portfolio (Portfolio).

Stratigraphy

Class time is reduced and students work independently on course concepts through online lectures. Instructor led question-and -answer periods support this independent learning. Small group discussions and labs are conducted face-to-face throughout the term.

This course, a core course for Earth Sciences programs and for Geological Engineering, focusses on the nature, origin and interpretation of Earth materials used in deciphering geological history from a stratigraphic viewpoint. Labs involve the construction and/or interpretation of various types of geologic maps and cross‐sections and correlation of geological and geophysical data. Both labs and online course modules rely on examples drawn from real situations, especially from Canadian geology.

Students access narrated online presentations that are rich with geological field photos and geological maps. Students can meet with their instructor on a weekly basis to clarify concepts and pose questions. Several small group discussions are scheduled throughout the term and allow students to interact with each other as they work through individual assignments. Lab periods are led by teaching assistants and provide further opportunities for student collaboration. An online discussion board is also provided as a forum to ask questions of peers and the course instructor.

Health Systems in Society

Aspects of the Canadian health care system and current issues facing the pharmacists are presented to students through a variety of interactions in this course. Online lectures, video conferencing and face-to-face guest lectures are used to present course concepts. Students are assessed through individual assignments, small group online discussions and a midterm and exam.  

This course focuses on the Canadian health care system, including its structure, financing, regulation and policies.  Students apply the basic principles of public policy analysis, political science, economics, and quality measurement to relevant health care examples.

In this course, the instructor is at a distance (in Ottawa) while the students are on-campus in downtown Kitchener. The videoconferencing capabilities of the School of Pharmacy lecture halls are used to during class time to connect students with the instructor for lectures.  Some weeks concepts are presented through online narrated slide presentations that are accompanied by detailed speaker notes. Online discussion forums are an important vehicle for students’ questions to the instructor and discussion forums are also an integral component of one assessment. Guest lecturers from Waterloo and elsewhere are incorporated into the schedule each term to address current issues in our health system and federal pharmacy policy.

Engineering Economics

This course introduces engineering students to principles of engineering economics, including interest formulas and derivations, annual worth comparisons and benefit-cost ratio depreciation. Online lectures and instructor led classes are used to present course concepts and students have the opportunity to work through problems in tutorials with teaching assistants. Class time has been reduced in this course.

Narrated online presentations that follow the sequence and format of the textbook have been prepared by the instructor. The instructor meets with the class once a week to introduce new concepts and work through more complex problems with the class. Students solve practice problems individually in advance of tutorial time where teaching assistants help them understand the process of solving economics problems. Online discussion forums and office hours with the instructor and teaching assistants are also used to field student’s questions about content, assignments and problem solving.

Social Work in Health Care

The blended approach helps students learn how to develop their arguments for in-class debates.

This course provides an overview of social work in health care. Students analyse social work in the medical setting, concentrating on identification and treatment of emotional, family, and community aspects of illness. There is an emphasis on the concrete application of professional social work to health care while comparing medical and social work values and concepts of illness.

An objective of the course is to make students aware of specific current health issues that are relevant to those in helping professions and the instructor takes advantage of the online environment to link students to relevant materials each term. During the course students work in groups online to prepare arguments for and against a current topic, such as privately funded health care, and then students engage in a face-to face debate in class. The online environment also supports the discussion of other current topics and an online mid-term quiz.

Training and Development

Class time is used for hands-on, authentic learning activities while foundational course concepts are presented online through recorded lectures (slides with narration) such as this one, which provides an overview of the course, or this one, which pertains to the topic of "Development and Implementation of Training."

This course addresses the major aspects of training including its place within the rest of the organization's systems and processes, concepts of learning and motivation relevant to training, stages of training program development and implementation, training methods and special uses of training.

Students engage in group work in their weekly face-to-face classes. These learning activities help them practice the actual development of training materials and teaching methods, and they reinforce the foundational course concepts that students encounter in the online presentations. Student understanding of course concepts is assessed through weekly online quizzes.

Biogeochemical Microbiology

Students access video interviews of authors of the current literature in the field to deepen their understanding of course readings.

This course is a fourth year course examining topics in biogeochemical microbiology including: the beginnings of life on earth, principles of microbial physiology, nutrient cycles, the roles of microbes in aquatic and terrestrial biospheres, as well as methods for studying microbes in these environments.

Video tutorials (using Camtasia and a tablet PC) are used for the important and hard to grasp skills of balancing redox equations and calculating free energy yield. Students presentations of current literature are enhanced by video interviews of the international authors of these papers created for and embedded in the course. A ‘Biogeochemistry in the News’ blog is updated weekly by students and the instructor, and important updates are highlighted at the beginning of each lecture.