Month: June 2024

Brianna is a faculty member in the Sport Management Program at Camosun College, which began in 2020, teaching one class online, then becoming full-time in 2021. Teaching was a long-term goal for Brianna who has extensive experience working in sport all over the world. From working internationally with projects such as FIFA World Cup Soccer, the Olympics, Grassroot Soccer in Africa and more, while also completing her master’s degree  One day, after re-evaluating her life goals, she decided “to use my experience, while still working in sport, to mentor the next generation of people who want to be in this industry I love so much.”

I asked Brianna what she enjoyed about teaching, and she said, “I loved helping people younger than myself realize their potential within their own career. My ultimate goal is to be the best teacher I can be, and at an applied school like Camosun, that means not just teaching, but also participating and leading by example.” It also includes bringing her own projects back to the classroom as well. “I worked on a triathlon a couple of years ago and had students come and work with me. And last year, I went down to California and worked on an event called the Homeless World Cup, a Soccer World Cup for individuals who are unhoused, and we are having a school screening of the movie that was made about it.”

I asked Brianna about how she works with students. “My philosophy is ‘your success is my success. Part of that is connecting individually with the students.  “I take time to get to know each of my students with a goal of creating community feel in the classroom. I try to create a safe space where all voices are heard and create as many applied experiences in assignments and lectures as I can. Ideally, students will walk out with something in hand that they could go and use in an interview, for example.”

I was curious about the applied experiences Brianna was referring to, so she took some time to tell me about one.  “In the project management and sports marketing class I partner every year with a different sports team in the city. The team [this past term, Brianna was excited to welcome Invictus Games as the partner] comes to class and provides the class a fake RFP along with a budget and an outline of what they want the students to achieve. Students then work through the whole term creating an entire marketing pitch on the given concept and how they’d market it. Then at the end of the term, the team comes back and votes on the winner.” And throughout the term, Brianna models how to build a relationship with a stakeholder group. She was especially excited this last term as “one of the individuals coming from Invictus Games to vote on the winning project was a previous student of mine who won two years ago for this same project. Because he now works for Invictus Games in a senior role students get to see someone who once was in their shoes only two years ago” which goes a long way to convince students how important a project like this can be for their lives after college. Brianna sees this applied learning piece as an important component that separates Camosun College from other schools.  “There is no textbook that could teach this – we are bringing in guest speakers, having them engage in real-life situations…that’s how they’re learning.”

Another element of the classroom that excites Brianna is the presence of international students. “Many of our diploma students are international. Right now, we have students from India, Japan, Austria, which is great because sport systems around the world are so different.” It’s important to include those voices, work with people from different cultures with all those diverse experiences.

I asked Brianna about her experiences teaching online when she started, and moving back to in person considering how important the classroom community is to her. While she did not enjoy teaching online, she said “I understand the importance of it and would love to explore a blended model. Many students have full-time jobs which makes building community challenging because it’s hard to get a full class showing up.” But in the end, Brianna wants the classroom “to be a place where students can have fun – I want them to feel like they want to be there.”

I wondered what moments Brianna holds in mind from her teaching. “I love graduation and seeing my students walk across the stage with smiles on their faces.  And I also love writing reference letters for them and then hearing from them when they have gotten great jobs because my goal is to help them succeed.” And finally, I asked her, as a newer faculty member, what advice she might have for other new instructors coming to teach at Camosun.  “Be open to learning, to continue growing, to making mistakes and getting feedback. And connect with your students – if you create a relationship with them, you’ll have a better experience.”

 

“Julia volunteered her time to teach us, as we had a shortage of instructors for the Practical Nursing program and took on the task of teaching pathophysiology and professional practice. She shows how much she cares for the future of nursing and wants us to succeed. I appreciate her dedication to our group.”

Julia L, one of this year’s Teacher Recognition award recipients, has been a faculty member at Camosun for 12 years but has been teaching for 25. Before becoming an instructor, Julia was educated in Victoria and attended Camosun and UVIC as part of her nursing education. She then moved to Mississauga, Ontario where she worked in a teaching hospital. “I was an orthopedic nurse but when I had children, the shift work became impossible, so I went back to school to study gerontology, which has always been a love of mine.” She then worked in a day center for people with Alzheimer’s disease and dementias. “I worked there for several years before I began to feel the need for another change,” at which point she met some people who convinced her to go and teach at Humber College. “They were starting a bridging program to upgrade Personal Support Workers’ education. So I started teaching evening classes for Humber, and later for Sheridan College. From there, I worked my way up to full time at Humber, coordinating the Personal Support Worker program.”

In 2009 Julia returned to Victoria and started a job at the University of Victoria, coordinating Health Sciences programs in Continuing Studies.  “I wasn’t teaching, but I was using all the key components of what makes good education. However, I missed being in the classroom.” Eventually, Julia decided to check out Camosun College’s Health Care Assistant (HCA) program, which was similar to the one she coordinated in Ontario. “They were looking for people to teach evening classes, so I interviewed and started teaching at Camosun. Over time I was given more courses, in evenings and during the summer, and eventually left UVIC completely for Camosun.” In addition to teaching in the HCA program, Julia also has taught in the Practical Nursing program.

“Throughout my years at Camosun I’ve taught many, many courses, labs, field practicums, I’ve done curriculum development, and worked with accreditation, and during COVID I taught online and worked with one of the first groups of students allowed back on campus in the lab under heavy COVID restrictions. It was a challenge but what an opportunity to exercise our creatitvity!”

I asked Julia what she enjoys most about teaching. “It’s the people. I have been so fortunate to have worked with some of the very best people on the planet and that has made work a joy! When you present heavier topics, it takes work to make it interesting for students, especially when working with challenging topics such as death and dying. Teaching can be exhausting for me, however when you try something new and creative and it works, the students get it, they’re having fun, they’re all engaged…that’s magic to me. That’s Disneyland. It is worth every milligram of effort you put into your classes. I always also hope that I’m making a positive difference for all. I love hearing back from students who have graduated and knowing that I’ve somehow helped them along the way to achieve a job that they are enjoying. There’s no better reward.”

I asked Julia if the past few years, after the COVID move to online teaching, had an impact on her teaching.  “At that time, I found it so challenging to keep them engaged. But I learned that we have to keep working at it.  At the time, I was teaching HCA’s and Practical Nursing courses and engagement was challenging, especially in Collaborate with their cameras off. I couldn’t see their facial expressions, I couldn’t read the class which was frustrating. So, I started putting up the white board at the start of the class, and wrote student names on it asking them to write down five points from last class, one at a time.  And they loved that.” Julia brought that whiteboard activity into the in-person classroom. “The classes move very quickly and there is a huge amount of material students need to understand. So, I divided them into pairs, and each pair was responsible to give a summary on the board in the classroom [although they could opt out if they wanted to very few chose to do so]. At the start of the class, they had 15 minutes to summarize what they thought were the main points from the last class, (I could fill in the gaps afterwards, if necessary). Students are brilliant when you give them the opportunity to take charge of their learning! They would come in early and fill the boards with review material. They asked each other questions and then at the end of the course they voted on whose presentation they thought was most useful – not the best presentation, but the most useful. Other students would also correct presenters if they saw something inaccurate – it was a peer review rather than a teacher review. We had a lot of fun with that exercise.”

But one thing Julia has noticed since coming back in person is the rise in anxiety levels of students.  “We do a lot of testing, and many students are struggling. COVID changed how we teach, but I think our teaching perhaps needs to change even more. We need to look at how do we deal with the anxieties and ask questions like, is testing still the best way to assess students?”

One of the cohorts Julia co-facilitates is the ESL HCA cohort which runs for an entire year rather than six months. “Students take HCA courses in the morning, Monday through Friday, and they have ELD (English Language Development) courses Monday to Thursday afternoons with Friday afternoons off. The ELD instructors work closely with the HCA instructors, sometimes coming to the labs, listening to the types of things students need to say and the kind of work they are doing.  Then the ELD instructors will go over terminology and the language skills students need in their classes. Classes are small, and we work at a slower pace.” Julia has co-facilitated this course with another HCA instructor, Heather, for years.  “We have a rhythm, and work with language skills alongside the practicum skills. They are dedicated students, who have been very successful.” What Julia and other instructors have discovered is that the methods they use with the HCA ESL classes can also be used to support other regular HCA courses where there are often large numbers of international students or students who have English as a second language.

One of Julia’s favourite memories to share from her years of teaching was “Moving from the Lansdowne campus to the new CHW building at Interurban and into new lab space. The building is a beautiful space to teach and learn in. We have been able to provide so many engaging experiences for students. We are so privileged to be able to engage in such a phenomenal place.” Another more recent highlight which provided much pride and joy was participating with the Practical Nursing students in this year’s IDE Festival. The students ‘rocked it! I was so proud of each and every one of them.”

I asked Julia, who is retiring this July, what advice she might have for new faculty coming to teach at Camosun. “Let the students guide their learning. Yes, we hold knowledge, but we need to be able to share that stage and share the load, and work in partnership with students. We can then become facilitators, not just instructors. Every time you run a course change it up a little. Put a little of yourself in your course, share some of your own stories and connect the content to something real.” As for final words for all of us, Julia says what she ultimately wishes for our students is that they will find a strong passion during their journey here, just as she has found throughout her journey of teaching.

Julia G is an instructor in the School of Business where she currently teaches web design, social media marketing, and other applied business technology courses.  Julia was first hired at the college (after starting her own web design business in 2012) to work on updating the college website, but it was not long before she moved into teaching after being hired by the computer science department in 2014.  She moved into the School of Business in 2016 and has been there ever since.

Julia is one of those people who is not afraid to try new things.  She has taught in pretty much every possible mode (in person, online asynchronous, online synchronous, Hyflex), she has written an open textbook for her course on maintaining an online presence (which is updated with the help of students), she works with Generative AI, integrates all kinds of interesting technologies to support student learning, and the list goes on.  Of course, I was immediately distracted by how students update her open textbook and started our conversation by asking about that.  “I use Hypothes.is [an online social annotation tool] and its commenting feature to allow students interested in making the textbook more robust to share their knowledge and expertise.  Some of those students have since been added right to the textbook’s Pressbook site so they can edit the book itself, and during my next SD period I will down and go through the textbook in more detail with them.” And as a bonus students receive editing attribution for their work.

Returning to my list of questions, I asked Julia what she likes best about teaching.  “I feel privileged to see people grow and learn, to see students take the information I’m trying to facilitate and the knowledge I’m trying to share and run with it. In addition, in many of my courses, students work with real clients from the community to build new websites for them – seeing students take what they have learned and apply it in real life contexts is what I love most about teaching.”

I asked Julia if she could talk a bit more about how students work with clients in her courses.  “I provide an expectations document for my students to ensure that the client’s expectations meet the students’ understanding that they, the students, own what they create during the class and if they choose to continue working with the client after the class, it would be (hopefully) on a paid basis – that this class experience is like a trial period working with the client.”  In the past, Julia herself sourced clients for her students.  “I worked with community childcare referrals, where the small business owners don’t often have the time or the know-how to put together a website for their daycare. But now I find students want to source their own clients and almost half my students this last term found their own clients to work with.” Julia believes when students find their own clients to work with, it motivates them to take their work more seriously.  In fact, “one of my students from last year was rehired by the client business to do some updates, and now she wants to build her own web design company – the course really spurred her passion for web design.”

Knowing Julia is always up for changing the way she teaches her courses I wondered if the last three years had had much of an impact on how she approaches her teaching. “I’ve changed a lot around how I present and create content since the pandemic, and online teaching has become my preference. I have three children and having the flexibility to teach asynchronously by preparing my content in advance and connecting with my students on Discord has decreased my stress level because I no longer have to run to multiple campuses to be in person for a set amount of time.”  In addition, Julia has begun teaching Hyflex.  “In all my courses, I use a Hyflex methodology where students can come to campus or choose not to. All of my material is in D2L published the Friday before the week starts, to encourage students to take responsibility for their learning and to allow me to focus on what we do in class, using in-person time to get my students to contribute their knowledge of, for example, web design. And because I have such diverse classrooms, we can share that diversity of knowledge with each other creating a more holistic learning experience.”

I have long been interested in Julia’s Hyflex model and asked if students appreciate the flexibility it gives them.  “I’d say a number of them are. Options for students are very important right now as they navigate work and life balance. I try to keep my online courses consistent week by week in terms of the amount of content, so I don’t overwhelm my online students. And because I want my students to come at the content from their own interests, a lot of my content is very reflective. For example, students will submit assignments and reflect on the context around the work that they’re submitting to give me a sense of how this course is meeting their needs. I find those reflections give me a sense of whether I’m overwhelming them, whether the content is appropriate for their goals, how the content leaves them feeling, in what spaces they’re working on the content, etc.  All this information helps me chunk my content to make it easily digestible, exciting, and student focused.”

Julia’s Hyflex methodology is not a true Hyflex, where some students are in the classroom and others online at the same time.  Her model blends an in-person group with an online, asynchronous group – but everyone is within one D2L site, and students know in advance that they have the option to come in person, or attend online, as it works for them. “There is definitely something lost if you’re not coming in person and I try to encourage my online students if they are struggling in the course, to come to the in-person sessions if they can. That doesn’t happen often, but the other way around does, where my in-person students decide that they can accomplish the course online because they feel confident because the content and the instructions are clear.  Then they can save the commute to campus and spend their time working through the course at their own pace. If my classroom is half full, that tells me my students are self directed and wanting to do their work in a quiet space.”

I asked Julia if she had some memories from her years of teaching to share.  “There have been quite a few students who have helped me take stock of my practice and rethink the things I do and how I do them. Just before the pandemic I had a student in the web design course who had some visual impairments, could not type very quickly, and struggled to keep up with the pace of my lectures and demos. I reworked the course to meet their needs – it was a humbling experience and something that I took very seriously.  I spent a lot of time with this student to make my courses accessible for them, and so they would be accessible for others in the future. That student pushed me to think outside of my box and to put accessibility first in my courses which is something that has been really important for me.”

And to help build some of that accessibility and make sure her content is working for all her students, Julie is exploring ungrading.  “I know that some students sit there quietly, not telling me that they’re struggling – I want their voices to be heard too. I’m piloting a little ungrading in some of my assessments this semester, and part of that is a five-minute check-in with each of my students. They have to fill out a survey in advance so that they have a sense of where they’re at, and then we can have a brief discussion about the results and where I think that they are at in terms of their learning, as in ‘Well, you started from knowing nothing about this subject and now, here you are.’ I can’t know if my course is working unless I connect with all my students and make sure it’s working for them in any given semester.  Being able to pivot and create new content and new experiences for my students is really what it’s all about.”

As we headed towards the end of our time together, I asked Julia what advice she might have for new faculty coming to teach at Camosun.  “Connect with as many like-minded faculty as you can. Share what you create and ask people to share with you.  Some of the best experiences I’ve had at the college have been those collaborative moments where I sat down with my colleagues and we built something incredible together, sharing in the learning of creating something new. I would tell them that CETL is a great place to connect with people who are interested in learning new tools, new tricks, new ways to do things. Then when the time is right for you, build your passions into your courses, but go slow – don’t throw everything into a new course at once!”

Julia ended our conversation with these words: “This semester, the Hyflex and the ungrading, they’ve really stretched me, which is fine. I like to be stretched; I like to do new things. I think if I ever teach the same thing over and over again, year after year, it might be time to retire. For now, I believe that letting go and changing things (not everything) is a healthy way to approach teaching.”