Jan Kietzmann on Designing SFU Mobile

Jan Kietzmann in the Beedie School of Business, was a co-applicant with Ted Kirkpatrick (Applied Science), John Bowes (FCAT) and Rob Cameron (Applied Science) for one of SFU’s newest teaching grants. They have been awarded the $10,000 large teaching grant, which will be used to support and develop a project titled “Designing SFU Mobile”. SFU Mobile will be a 15-credit, cohort based, multidisciplinary course to be offered at the Surrey campus in Summer 2012. It will be co-taught by Faculty from Business, Computing Science and Interactive Arts and Technology and will draw students from those majors.

The course design draws from the successful model of SFU’s Semester in Dialogue program but adds new elements. Where the Dialogue program emphasizes dialogue as a field of study and practice in its own right (students enrol in DIAL courses), SFU Mobile will emphasize the skills students have learned in their respective disciplines, demanding that they coordinate their talents with other specialists in service of a larger goal, receiving 400-level credit in their own department. SFU Mobile will also emphasize product development, delivering road maps, concept demonstrations, and business plans.

The distinctly different intent of SFU Mobile, its heterogenous participants, its aim of building on and polishing the disparate disciplinary skills of the participating students, will require developing a distinctly different structure and outcomes than have been used for the Semester in Dialogue. The Teaching and Learning Development Grant is crucial for this process. Critical is the hiring of an inquiry team (different from the teaching team) to help facilitate development of the original learning outcomes, and independently evaluate the success of both the course activities and the stated learning outcomes. During the actual course, the inquiry team will maintain some distance from the instructors. This will allow the inquiry team to maintain a disinterested perspective on the decisions of the instructional team. It will also be important in sustaining the students’ confidence that they can express concerns to the inquiry team without any affect on their relationship to the instructional team and their ultimate grades. After the course is concluded, the instructional and inquiry teams will collaborate to evaluate the course.

About Teaching & Learning Grants
These grants were created to recognize teaching development as scholarly activity and to stimulate the development, implementation, and investigation of innovative teaching and learning at SFU. Learn more about these grants and how you can apply at: http://www.sfu.ca/teachlearn/tlgrants.html