Nik is an instructor in Culinary Arts at Camosun, specifically working with the apprenticeship and foundation programs, and now the E-pprentice program. Nik was pointed out to me by a colleague as he is integrating self-reflection practices into the E-pprentice program (the online version of the apprenticeship program), practices that are not typically found in trades programs. I was intrigued, and very happy when he agreed to talk to me.
Nik finished his Red Seal in 1994/95, then moved to Europe for 18 years. When he returned to Canada, to his surprise, his instructor during his apprenticeship at Camosun in 1995 lined him up with a term appointment at Camosun, which became continuing in 2012, teaching the foundation and apprenticeship programs. When the E-pprentice instructor, Gilbert Noussitou, retired a few years back, Nik was asked to take over that program. “It was daunting at first,” Nik said, and as he began to teach the course, a quote from John Dewey, which he had heard while working on the Provincial Instructor Diploma Program (PIDP), stood out to him: We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on the experience. Reflecting on learning was what was missing from the E-pprentice program. “We were struggling with student engagement, buy-in and ownership of learning.” But Monique Brewer, then in Applied Learning, understood what he was trying to do and agreed to help.
Nik worked with Monique and Robin Fast from CETL to develop a critical reflection framework for the E-pprentice course, which incorporated STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) and SMART (Specific Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely) goals into the course revision plan, because “at the end of the day, we want students to develop metacognitive skills to promote self awareness and continuous learning.”
The original document outlining the assignment was complex, so Nik and his colleagues worked with Patricia and Kristina from E-learning, and the Multilingual Support Specialists (MSS) group to make it more accessible for students. “We started with a professional interview, due within the first two weeks of the course. Why a professional interview? Well, we wanted students to identify why they’re in the program, where they’re going, and how they’re going to get there. And what better way to think about that than to talk to someone in the industry. We gave them options for questions to ask, depending on what was important to them – work life balance, progression, etc., and created an overview and instructions,” which framed the reflection and self assessment components around the 5Rs Reflective Writing Scale (Bain et al., 2002), Reporting, Responding, Relating, Reasoning, and Restructuring. Then they created a rubric and a feedback tool for the assignment and were good to go. Nik now considers this to be the most important assignment in the course.
While Nik had originally created four reflective assignments, he decided in the end to integrate just three of them into the course. “I wanted to incorporate the interview because that would set the stage for success. The “SMART goal setting assignment gives students a framework to set and take ownership of their professional development goals for success in the program and culinary industry. The STAR story framework helps them to reflect on their skill growth throughout the program and articulate it to future employers.”
In addition to adding the reflective assignments, Nik worked (with Kristina) to create instructions for the course as a whole to make sure all the content and assignments were clear for all students, revised the content so it is in HTML format and easily accessible in D2L. He is, however, satisfied with what he has done to support students to own their own learning. “That’s what our idea was: to give students the opportunity to explore and stretch and to try new things, because that allows students to excel and build employability skills.
Culinary Arts has agreed to share the developed assignments with whomever in the college community would like to use them. They have been developed in a way that is easily transferable to other trades. Please reach out to CETL if you have questions or would like to talk to Nik more about his work.