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.”