The Teaching and Learning Innovation Digest - May 2023

Our current teaching model is the “one-shot” session, where we come into the classroom at the
point of need, generally two weeks ahead of a major research project. I have heard from faculty
and students that these sessions are helpful, but when I think about the information landscape and
the critical thinking skills required, not only in college courses but in everyday life, I am convinced
Librarians possess a unique skill set that has the potential to help our students grow into critical users
of information. I am very interested in what options the Library could explore for more in-depth critical
thinking and information literacy instruction, possibly in the form of a series of asynchronous modules
or even a micro-credential. That is on my “wishlist”!
Further Reading:
MATHEMATICAL
DISCOURSE
An open-ended tool to re-engage in learning
Dr. Richard Williamson and Tongyu Zhang
Faculty and student, School of Advancement (SOA)
McDonald, E. (2023). Ontario college libraries: Meeting the challenge of the new normal. Open Shelf.
https://open-shelf.ca/230105-ocula-ontario-college-libraries-meeting-the-challenge-of-the-newnormal/
Library Services and Resources
Ask The Library: Centennial College Libraries have a number of ways to support students’ and faculty
work, in-person, online, and virtually.
eResources: We have hundreds of online databases covering many subject areas.
Page1+ Resource Search: Search our collection for books, articles, videos, and more.
Centennial College Libraries and Learning Centres YouTube channel: Features videos made by
Libraries staff showing how to access our services and use our resources.
With our full return to campus this year, we
consider what it means to come back together
and re-engage—reassemble, reconnect,
rework, reimagine, and rethink our teaching
practices, and our learning experiences as
students. During the height of the pandemic,
the learning environment at Centennial
College changed to suit the needs of the
situation. Classes were moved online through
Zoom or other communication software. In this
context, teachers tried to recreate a learning
environment that is similar to in-person classes
by incorporating as many participatory activities
as possible. Through this process, insight was
gained through the attempts of recreating the
in-person learning environment. These insights
not only benefit the online learning
environment, but they also help teachers
rethink improvements to in-person learning
through an understanding of the need for
student-centred learning. One of the insights
is that the quality of online interaction among
students was lacking in comparison to inperson
due to the often instructor-centred
approach. Through this experience, when
students and teachers return to classes,
professional practice can be re-thought and redesigned
to better fit learning for students.
This paper examines the concepts of
discourse, more specifically mathematical
discourse, in a postsecondary learning
environment with its purpose being
an additional process to improve
learning. Within the scope of this paper,
the word teachers is an umbrella term for
instructors, professors, and other educators.
It is important first to clarify what mathematical
discourse represents. “Participating in
mathematical discourse practices can
be understood in general as talking and
acting in the ways that mathematically
competent people talk and act when talking
about mathematics” (Moschkovich, 2003,
p. 326). Mathematical discourse is not a
novel idea, it has been in scholarly articles
since the early 1990s and it is still relevant
to this day. It has been around for years
and it provides evidence to support the
implementation of mathematical discourse
in the classroom. According to Gresham and
Shannon (2017), the usage of mathematical
discourse was shown to be of help to students
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