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Martha Koch - Prix d’excellence pour professeur à temps partiel 2013
>>>Martha: Working for the University of Ottawa for the last ten years is giving me the opportunity
to continue to pursue my interest in teaching and learning and also in education research.
So there’s a lot of terrific things about the experience that I’ve had here over the
years, I’ve worked with a lot of really terrific part-time and full-time professors
(over the years), I’ve always felt that I was a part of what was going on at the faculty.
You know I was able to be involved in course design work and in various comities for activities
taking place for the students and also in educational research.
>>>Christine Suurtamm: Martha has a very unique way of presenting materials or engaging students
in thinking about fairly complex ideas but in a way that they are able to deal with those
complex ideas. She’s very creative and she’s able to move people’s thinking, she has
a lot of integrity as well as a teacher so her student’s learning is always at the
forefront of what she does. >>>Charlotte Pashley: She’s really passionate
about learning, certainly about teaching and she wants every students in the classroom
to learn and to succeed at what they are doing and she tries to teach in ways that are approachable
and easy to understand. >>>Barbara Graves: I’ve known Martha for
a long time, when I was doing a post-doc about seventeen years ago at Carleton, Martha was
there on a research project and we worked together. She’s extremely knowledgeable,
her specific area is assessment a very complex area and she knows it well but she also has
the ability to engage her students with complex ideas in a way that they become extremely
meaningful. So it’s both the knowledge that she has and her ability to connect with the
students that she works with. >>>Martha: First thing that I really ask students
to do is to make a connection. Make connections between what it is we are doing in class,
issues and topics that we are digging into in class and their own experience. Whether
that’s an experience as an educational researcher or experience in teaching in their own classrooms.
So I’d really like them to make those kinds of connections, so that they see the value
of what we are exploring in the course work in terms of their own careers.
>>>Jimmy Pai: Well I think she’s very passionate about what she’s interested in which is
on the topic of assessment and she cares a lot about student’s learning in general,
not only the graduates students learning but also for us teachers our student’s learning
as well, so she’s very passionate about that and that really shows in what she does
in the classroom and the things that she comes up with, the things that she does.
>>>Martha: Another thing I think is really important is for the students to understand
the inherent complexity of the teaching and learning process. There aren’t any simple
answers and it’s an ongoing process for them as it is for me to continue to develop
our teaching and learning practice in many ways.
>>>Luisa Thuswaldner: She took the time actually to circulate before class and get to know
us as students and find out how we were doing and she took our experiences into the classroom
and adapted her teaching to incorporate what we brought to the classroom.
>>>Martha: Well it’s wonderful to be recognized that I’ve been teaching at the University
of Ottawa for quite a long time so it’s nice to be recognized for the contribution
that I’ve made at the faculty but I think what’s more important to me is that awards
like this really demonstrate in a very concrete way the value that the University places on
the importance of high quality teaching and for me that’s a really important maybe at
the heart out what should be happening at any faculty of education.