A long-time Human Resources (HR) professional, Allison has been teaching in the Management & Human Resources Leadership (MHRL) program at Camosun for over eight years. “I started teaching at MacEwan University in their HR program when I got a little bored with my day job. But when we moved to Victoria, after talking to a Camosun instructor at a Christmas party, I sent the only cold email I’ve ever sent in my life to the MHRL department chair who asked me to send in my resume. then that summer, the chair called to see if I was still interested in teaching, and they loaded me up with two courses that fall. I taught as a term instructor for three semesters before becoming continuing, and eight years later, here we are.” And so, Allison moved from a full-time HR professional teaching part-time, to a full-time instructor continuing as an HR professional on the side.
Allison told me she loves teaching HR Management Foundations. “I had a section of Sport Management students last semester and they’re a hoot. I also teach Training and Development, Current Trends in HR Management, and Strategic Compensation.” And I wondered what she enjoyed most about teaching. “Oh, you should have been in class with me on Tuesday night, with my Current Trends in HR Management class. In this course, we don’t use a textbook – we build the curriculum together through research, guest speakers, etc. and the course culminates teams delivering a symposium on what they are interested in. The work of the three teams this semester was exceptional and in the room that night there was joy, there was magic, and there was learning. And the students do it all. I just hold the space for them, supporting them, answering their questions, and giving them ideas if they get stuck.”
I asked Allison more about how she mentors students in her courses. “I took my 400-level class to an event called DisruptHR where a number of speakers have 5 minutes each to talk about something they think is highly disruptive in human resources. We went as a class, which was a wonderful bonding experience, then debriefed during the next class. But the side benefit for me was running into 40 or 50 people I had crossed paths with at various stages of their learning. To see them now at this exciting HR event, making connections and succeeding in their HR careers, is about as good as it gets as a teacher. But I was also introducing my current students to these grads, who could ask them question about where they were working, and what they were doing. So, it was a both a good networking opportunity for my students and a glimpse into their futures.”
Allison also has past students come into the classroom to talk to her current students. “We’ve had graduates come to the Open House at the beginning of November, and three past students participated on a panel for my 400-level class. One works for an HR consulting firm helping various organizations, one started as s co-op students in government and is now leading strategic communication for an area in the provincial government, and the third one works for a small Victoria company as the sole HR person. The fact they have a full-time HR professional is amazing, and to hear what it’s like for her to be the only one driving all the HR work at her organization, was a big eye opener for students. Many students in the course wrote their panel reflections on the HR grad panel (the other panel was workplace leaders), because what was relevant for them in that moment was hearing from those graduates.”
Allison was recognized for her work with accessibility in 2024 and I asked about how she got here. “My father is a retired educational psychologist who worked in post secondary institutions. I remember dinner conversations about challenges students faced in those institutions, international students, new immigrants, Indigenous students, and at that time, we were also just starting to understand learning disabilities and my dad had to provide support for those students. So, I grew up understanding that you had to always consider what was going on for other people, and that the way you learned didn’t necessarily work for somebody else.” And her experience working in HR over the years has affirmed that everyone’s story is indeed a bit different, and you need to keep opening your mind so you can support them.
One example Allison shared was from her training and development course. “We teach students how to write training objectives. For the mid-term, I chose what I thought was a simple topic for them to create training objectives for: making a bed. Most students talked about folding hospital corners and making sure pillows were fluffed, but one student said that you have to follow the instructions and bang the nails in until things are secure. And I realized, oh, make a bed. I share that story with the training & development students, because you can think you’re giving them crystal-clear instructions, and someone will tell you about going to Home Depot to get the lumber to make the bed.” In the end, Allison says, “I have 35 unique individuals in my class, and all of them learn in different ways. My job is to support them as much as I’m able and I have a professional obligation to keep learning about people and adapting. As soon as I stop doing that as an instructor, I will have passed my best-before date.” I asked Allison how she supports that diversity in the classroom. “It can’t just be once a year during SD. It has to be every day. When a student is struggling, you need to pause and really listen to why are they struggling – don’t assume. You’ve got to pay attention. If something doesn’t seem to be connecting, check in with the student and respect what they tell you and ask yourself what’s within your sphere of control to change.”
I also wondered how trying to support the diverse needs of students shows up in Allison’s assessments. “The assessments change all the time, sometimes just a tweak, but recently we made a massive change. About a third of our students were struggling with the assessments in HR Foundations, so we revised the structure and eliminated ambiguity where we could. We provide them with a template to complete, and every step of the template has a link to an example. While some people wonder if we are spoon-feeding, I don’t see it that way because we’ve seen students who were struggling succeed; students who might have failed before are now passing. The format of the assessments is rigid in some respects, but that rigidity helps them build good habits, and if we start them off with the best possible habits, then they have a solid foundation to lean on as they move forward.”
Allison has been doing a few new things with her teaching recently. Last fall, she piloted a new asynchronous online class. First, she told me that this particular course is her favourite to teach. “We coach students working in teams, and every semester without fail, seven of the nine teams hit it out of the ballpark. The eighth team does ok, but the ninth struggles. In the 2 two fully online pilot sections, there were seven slightly larger teams in each. Five did really well, one trundled along not too badly, and one struggled. I didn’t assume this pattern would be the same, but somehow that is how it turned out.” But overall, Allison said the asynchronous course went well. “While some content for this class works better in person than other content, if we can offer an asynchronous section of it once a year for students, I think that’s important, and it’s something that we can be proud of as our builds up our roster of high-quality asynchronous courses.”
Last year in one section of the new online course Allison piloted Bongo, a video assignments tool which integrates into D2L (note that we do not currently have a licence for this tool but are only investigating it with the support of a few faculty.) “Kristina Andrew knew that I had been considering a video final exam, and after participating in a Bongo demo, I wanted to try it in the pilot online training and development course for both the final exam and the team Training Project – to try to make the Training Project more engaging like it is in the in-person class classroom. I knew it would not be the same, but I wanted students to have the same sense of collaboration and learning from each other, in the online classroom, and Bongo seemed like a great solution.” Allison ended up with two sections of the online course, but because the Bongo pilot only allowed for one, Kristina introduced her to H5P as an alternate solution for the second section. “While Bongo is a video creation tool. H5P objects can create slides into which you can insert video. What I found fascinating is that the assignment in the H5P section has, in many ways, been more creative than in the Bongo section.”
But Allison also set up the final exam for the Bongo-pilot course using Bongo as well. “Students read a case incident, have two hours to practice, and their final submission is a three-minute video explaining their solution to the case incident.” Allison told me that if the final exam worked well (our interview was before the final exam), she would consider switching the final exam in all sections, online and in-person, to a video final exam.
For some additional context, Allison did give students a heads-up email about being a part of the Bongo and H5P pilots. “I told them about the pilot and warned them that no matter how well I’ve planned it, things are going to go wrong because it’s new technology. In addition, coordinating a team project in person is hard, and even more challenging in an asynchronous course with a heavy reliance on creating video. And I said, if this is not for you, the course will be in-person in the next term.” She also built in practice with the tools for both the team assignment and the final exam. A full final exam practice using the identical process to the actual final exam was included in both sections. And Allison’s impression of the pilot? “I will be cautiously optimistic and say that the pilot has gone pretty well.”
Finally, I asked Allison what advice she might have for new faculty coming to teach at Camosun. “I would tell them to breathe – it will be okay. You will feel completely overwhelmed for at least a few weeks, and that’s normal. We are here for you, to get you through. I’m proud to say that in our department our goal is to give each new instructor as much support as we can: syllabi, Master D2L courses, to-do lists built right into D2L. And then we connect with them when their first assignments come in, when their first quizzes are completed, etc. If you’re overwhelmed and disoriented, that is normal, and it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you! There’s so much to learn when you start so let us help you. We’re here to support students, but we’re also here to support each other.”