Journals @ The Mount
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Archaeological Evidence from the Kuragala Site, Sri Lanka
Get PDFThe Kuragala archaeological site is located in the Balangoda division of the Ratnapura district, southwestern Sri Lanka. This paper summarises archaeological investigations carried out in and around Kuragala indicating that human habitation in the region extended beyond 15,000 years into the past. Chronometric dating of the site and archaeological evidence show that Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene modern humans who followed a hunting and gathering subsistence pattern lived in this region. Archaeological finds and data from the Kuragala excavation include microlithic tools, bone tools, processed animal bones and beads, which indicate behavioural modernity among the inhabitants. This paper also discusses aspects of early historic occupation of the site based on the existence of human-modified drip-ledge caves and stone inscriptions.
(Sinhala Article
Who\u27s at the Research Table? An Undergraduate Student Podcast Challenges Faculty to Embrace Inclusion
No full textIn this reflection, a group of undergraduate research assistants and student changemakers use a podcast to explore which students are at the research table, and what barriers are keeping many others outside of it. This student-authored paper and SoTL-inspired auditory experience dives into multiple demographic topics such as gender, race, and socio-economic status in relation to student-faculty partnerships in the research realm. Both listeners and readers are encouraged to reflect on the recruitment process they use in finding their student partners, and how they can better serve priority populations and implement diversity and inclusion in their practice
Learning about our Disciplinary Reading through Interdisciplinary Conversations
Get PDFThis reflective essay explores some of what we have learned by participating in an interdisciplinary Scholarship of Teaching and Learning project about disciplinary reading. In dialogic form, we reflect on why we chose to get involved in this project, how this project has changed our understanding of reading in and across the disciplines, and how it affects our teaching practices going forward. We hope this form will reflect our excitement in these interdisciplinary conversations and will encourage readers to seek opportunities for their own interdisciplinary dialogues about reading. In our conclusion we offer a few framing suggestions for those who wish to set up more conversations about reading
 
Involving Students as Partners in a Course Redesign
Get PDFAs a team composed of student partners, a course instructor, and a distance learning program development specialist, we share our experiences of working together on a course development project. We used a collaborative autoethnographic approach to document and reflect on our experiences. Although our individual reflections reveal that our experiences of working together varied, we all valued working with each other and were engaged in the project. A change that we would make for future collaborations of this nature would be to invest more effort into team building and cohesion at the start of the project. We also found that individually, we all experienced our collaboration differently, which we believe is important to keep in mind when we think about inclusivity with respect to course instruction and design
Catalyzing Conversations: Critical Thinking Skills to Win the Battle for Truth in the Post-Truth Era
No full textThe Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is uniquely poised to address one of the greatest challenges in the “post-truth” era through catalyzing conversations that promote the effective development of critical thinking skills necessary for identifying and avoiding conspiracy theories. An interdisciplinary team of scientists, science communicators, public health nurses and educators has designed case studies, modules and activities that are curriculum-based for use in kindergarten to grade 12 classes to promote vaccine safety. Two serendipitous outcomes from this Building Resistance to Vaccine Misinformation program included: i) significant learning experiences for everyone in our team about the other disciplines, and ii) that the research assistants articulated their own emerging professional identities. Once this program receives ethics approval, we will work with education programs to beta-test the case studies, modules and activities then assess the impacts of this program through pre and post experience questionnaires and journaling.  
An Ecological Approach to Studying Sri Lanka’s Past: Contributions of Siran Deraniyagala
Get PDFAn appreciation of Siran Deraniyagala with a focus on zooarchaeology
An Evidence-Based Anthropological Exploration of Lanka\u27s People
No full textSri Lanka’s rich palaeoanthropological and archaeological record as well as the present demographic aspects have much to offer in aiding our understanding of the island’s ancient past and recent population structure. Sri Lanka has yielded skeletal evidence for the earliest anatomically modern humans from South Asia indicating very early settlement of the region. Following early hunter-gatherer dispersals over 50,000 years ago, agricultural populations expanded to the region with historic settlements and urbanisation creating complex societies in the last three millennia. Through circum-Indian Ocean trade networks in historic times and colonial expansion in the last 500 years, population diversification has continued with groups of multiple genetic and ethno-linguistic backgrounds arriving and settling in the island. These early and later migrants share a gene pool that connects them to descendants of today, who form Sri Lanka’s multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multi-religious society. Using an anthropological perspective, this article investigates how complex societal and biological diversity would have developed over time in island Lanka. An appreciation of deep time, beyond historic records, helps us recognize that human evolution and diversification has been shaped over thousands of years, while an evidence-based, scientific approach is proposed to eliminate flawed ethnocentric interpretations
Siran - Companion, Scholar and Visionary: A Personal Note
Get PDFAn appreciation of Siran Deraniyagala
Student Engagement in Concept Mapping: A Theoretical Analysis
No full textStudent engagement has been an important discourse in higher education, and researchers have determined that engagement in educational activities is vital for student retention. Retaining students in learning is crucial in a stressful healthcare environment, hence the need to identify the associated engagement factors. Concept mapping offers students a realistic venue for critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and engagement in educational activities. Building on the results obtained from a basic qualitative study where, interviews and journals were analyzed, we examined the theoretical basis for students’ engagement during concept mapping in a flipped clinical learning. Accordingly, this article discusses the factors that influenced engagement while concept mapping within a stressful healthcare clinical learning environment and explains how the process of mapping patient care improved students’ engagement in learning. The impacts of concept mapping process went beyond participation to self-direction, higher-level thinking, and greater impact on clinical decision making for the student participants
Signature Pedagogies -- A Cautionary Tale
Get PDFThe idea that each discipline in higher education has its own unique "signature pedagogy" has gained popularity since Lee Shulman first proposed the idea in 2005. But can the focus on signature pedagogies in SOTL work be a problem as well as a benefit? This essay explores both the history of signature pedagogies and the possible downside of the use of this concept to frame SOTL research and teaching informed by SOTL