A professor in the Odette School of Business is opening his classroom to offer information on teaching with digital technologies while showcasing his students’ skills.

Werner H. Keller received a grant funded by the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities Virtual Learning Strategy (VLS) in March 2021 to develop digital content for Business Agreements, a seminar course offered to senior undergraduate business, MBA, and law students at the University.

The course promotes student engagement and experiential learning through readings, mini-video lectures, and short written assignments analyzing real-world business contracts that prepare students for in-class discussions.

“Prof. Keller brings more than 25 years of experience in law practice, 20 years of experience teaching business law, and eight years of experience in online teaching, and is the inaugural winner of the Dr. Alan Wright Award for Exemplary Digital Learning sponsored by our office,” says Nobuko Fujita, learning specialist in the Office of Open Learning, who co-authored an open-licensed course shell and Instructor Guide for the course.

“He has iteratively designed and refined this experiential learning course since 2014. Students engage with the course content and produce short written submissions before class to prepare for in-class discussions. This course has received consistently positive student feedback. Assignments, rubrics, discussion prompts, examples of student work, and instructor-only resources are all shared with an Ontario Commons License.”

Keller and Fujita are inviting faculty, staff, and graduate studies to join an informal session about teaching with digital technologies and pedagogies such as Pressbooks that were used to author the course materials. The session may also explore how to create, clone, or adopt accessible and equitable open education materials.

The session will take place at noon Tuesday, April 2, in room 321, Odette Building. Attendees are asked to register online before the event.

Those interested are also welcome to stay and observe three of Keller’s students present their final paper presentations at 1 p.m. to showcase the skills they’ve learned using the open educational resources developed for the course.