Share a story about your best learning experience (could be a formal course or something more personal). Why did you enjoy it?
My favorite learning experience happened this year in one of my Health Informatics courses. The class had quite an informal structure as it was taught online or in person, all depending on your comfort level. A heavy portion of the course marking came from in class participation (which by far is my least favorite thing to do). However this time it was quite different, due to informal structure, it almost made you want to participate and engage in the topic. Not only that but it allowed for us to use everyday examples that were happening around us as part of the content. At the end of the day this class was the most memorable, engaging and the only one I remember the material from. When it came to assignments, it used a cooperative learning approach which I mentioned in my last blog. Allowing to create excellent work at our own pace as a group and better, while being accountable for our own deadlines. Additionally the resources and presentations used in class were not overloaded with information, and anything unnecessary was glanced at rather than focused on for an entire class. The class in itself was heavily discussion based, not just with the instructor but your peers as well. This made it quite intriguing as the instructor would appreciate observing our banter. Although it was quite informal we were always on schedule in terms of materials, exams and assignments. This reflects our respect for our instructor as we could clearly see his passion for teaching us. With the icing on the cake of this course after 4 years of being in the instructor’s course we finally learned out of the blue that he participated as an engineer in both “Space Jam” and “Harry Potter” movies. Which was an absolute shock followed by a little sadness as he failed to mention this to us at any point prior to this course. This was the final seal of approval for the instructor from his students. This was also one of the only times when doing an end of term course survey, we could only mention how great the course was rather than the usual complaints and need improvement comments.