2019 ETUG Spring Conference and 25th Anniversary

Students today require a set of skills that go beyond the mastery of core subjects. These 21st Century skills include critical thinking, communication, collaboration and technological literacy, all part of a framework educators must provide students today, to ensure a successful future for tomorrow.


The Qmod team has traveled the world collaborating with teachers, students and product developers with the intention to produce engaging learning experiences for the classroom. From this, Qmod has identified that without a doubt, sustainable energy education is a global objective, and an excellent foundation to teaching a variety 21st Century skills.


For the ETUG Explore and Create format, Qmod plans to present a workshop focused on the potentials of sustainable energy. Through a hands-on discovery process, participants will power objects, code and consider real world solutions utilizing solar panels, hand generators and even batteries made from natural sources.

Argumentation plays an essential role in everyday life and professional contexts. Enhancing students’ ability to construct and evaluate arguments is one of the central goals of education. However, instructors find it challenging to teach argumentation. Many students have a poor grasp of the fundamentals of argument and struggle with argumentative writing assignments. In our workshop, we’ll introduce an open-source tool called the Dialectical Map (DMap) that provides an innovative solution to teaching argumentation.


The DMap is a web-based visualization tool that prompts students to construct arguments and counterarguments in response to a claim and to weigh conflicting perspectives for a reasoned conclusion. It visualizes the structure of argument and engages students in argument-based inquiries. The activity of building a dialectical map strengthens students’ understanding of the key components of an argument and how they relate to each other. Beyond that, it encourages deep processing of learning materials.


The DMap was first developed at Simon Fraser University as part of award-winning research by Dr. Hui Niu. The most recent version of the tool has been incorporated in SFU undergraduate biology, education, and criminology courses. Our internal evaluations found the DMap tool is popular with students and instructors, and laboratory research indicates that using the tool not only enhances argumentation skills but also deepens subject area knowledge.


In this 60-minute workshop, you will get hands-on experience constructing arguments with the DMap tool. After you have tried out the tool, we will discuss how to teach argumentation with the DMap and how to incorporate it in your class.

If you are interested, please bring your laptop to this workshop.