Category: teaching and learning

Camosun Story #74: Nancy

Nancy became an instructor in the Visual Arts Department at Camosun in 1997 when she began teaching photography while completing her Master’s in art history. Currently, Nancy teaches several courses, including Modern Art History, Visual Culture, Digital Photography and Filmmaking, and Film Photography. Nancy told me that her current art practice revolves around creative writing, either on its own or in conjunction with photographs.

I sat down with Nancy to find out more about how Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has affected her teaching and her students, and she began by talking the impact GenAI has had on how she approaches her lecture-based courses. “I knew I had to start by looking at my exams. I typically provide an exam overview so that students can focus their studying and spend more time with course material. They could bring in these notes on paper or access the information from the desktop. I had open-book exams because my philosophy is that exams are opportunities for students to show off their knowledge. I use the D2L Quiz tool and allowed students to cut and paste in their answers which supports students who don’t have strong keyboarding skills and those who may struggle with English. But last summer when I was teach Modern art history, I noticed that about a third of the exam answers did not sound like students wrote them, so I felt I had to make a change. But rather than moving to pen and paper exams like some faculty have, I decided that students could bring in as much printed information as they wanted into the exam but would have to type their answers into D2L rather than copy and paste. In addition, I changed the kinds of questions I asked on the exam.”

In addition to changing her exams, GenAI also made Nancy rethink the research papers in her art history courses. Moving from her model students creating an essay proposal early in the term and handing in a final paper at the end of term, Nancy now starts with “a series of small, kickstart assignments working up to the essay proposal: a thesis statement, an outline, a bibliography of ten sources – all providing proof that students did their own work. I tell them that if I don’t think they’re doing their own work, we’re going to have a conversation.” In addition, Nancy provides a statement in her syllabi around GenAI and how it should and should not be used, not endorsing its use, but acknowledging its existence and potential as a tool.

In preparation for these changes to her assessments, Nancy decided it was important to learn how to use ChatGPT – to find out more about what it can and can’t do.  One of the first things she did was ask ChatGPT to help her revise a lecture on Russian Constructivism. “Normally writing a lecture takes 10 hours to research it, 10 hours to find the visuals and create the PowerPoint presentation, check everything for copyright, etc. So, I put everything into ChatGPT and in 10 seconds I had an outline for a lecture. I went through it, and it was pretty good – ChatGPT even included ideas I had not considered.” Nancy was elevated, but wondered, “if I’m using ChatGPT to generate lectures outlines, but telling students they can’t use it to generate ideas, am I a hypocrite? But I brought myself back to how I talk about GenAI with students, asking are you using it as a tool or a crutch?” Because in the end, as much as ChatGPT helped Nancy create her lecture outline, she still had to spend time reviewing the results before finishing it. For example, “I asked ChatGPT if other painters were painting the Death of Sardanapalus in the 1800s. It generated a list of well-known artists, the titles of the paintings, and even dates. But when I started to research these leads, all the information was fabricated.” It was an important lesson in the importance of checking ChatGPT’s work and letting students know to do the same. “I tell students if you’re going to use it, then you need to follow-up, which can be more work than just sitting in the library and typing in your keywords. And as instructors we need to understand how GenAI tools work so we can find a middle ground between ignoring it and letting its use go unchecked. Maybe someday we will see a shift in education where there is less emphasis placed on generating information and more on research and editing, where GenAI finds information and students are responsible for checking for its accuracy and then finessing the writing.”

I asked Nancy how her colleagues around the college are handling GenAI tool use in the classroom. “A tool like ChatGPT represents a big adjustment and people will embrace it slowly as they start to see what other people are doing with it. While some instructors are reverting to pen and paper assessment, a lot of people I talk to about ChatGPT are excited when I tell them how I created a rubric in 10 seconds and then spent 30 minutes to finalize it.”  What Nancy finds is that it’s in those hallway conversations where we share what we’ve tried, how we’ve failed, what we are doing to do differently, etc. that gives us courage to try something new or think about our teaching practice in a different way.

I was curious if Nancy had noticed any questions around AI in her photography classes. “I had a student last year who wondered why were not working with AI in our classes, which is a good question, but I still have to think about how it could be used creatively. If students are gathering information to create something, then AI is just another tool to support that. But using AI to create art is another thing. When I teach Photoshop [a tool which integrates AI] for example, I want students to think about why they choose AI generated effects, and not just say, ‘because it looks cool.’  Maybe another one of our roles as educators is to help students gain the language around the why.”

I’ve known Nancy for a few years now, and she is always ready to try new things to enhance her teaching, so I was happy to hear how she is embracing GenAI in these small ways. “New tools push me as an instructor, push me as an artist, push me as a human, and help me reevaluate and let go of my preconceptions. So often new things that are out of our control, like GenAI, cause people to shut down. But for me, when I start to panic, I think, okay, it’s just a tool. Let’s see what we can do with it.”

Leaving Wishful Thinking Behind: A Bookclub Reflection by Robin Fast

 

If on one side we have pessimism and anger, and on the other we have oblivious and blissful optimism, I tend to nestle comfortably and happily in the latter. I have been told, bizarrely, that this quality is a bit annoying. On closer examination, I must admit this quality may be the result of a luck-filled life – a life that, while touched, at times, by hardship, is insulated by a long list of privileges.  It may be easier to be hopeful when surrounded by good things. 

This winter, the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) Book Club participants read Critical Hope: How to Grapple with Complexity, Lead with Purpose, and Cultivate Transformative Social Change by Kari Grain.  

In the book, Grain, a teacher in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, suggests that “positivity can be toxic.”  I don’t appreciate this conclusion, but, sadly, I’ve come to agree with her. How helpful can positivity be – how helpful can hope be – without a plan, without action based on a critical understanding of what’s going on? And if there isn’t space for anger and frustration, an important source of motivation for change is eliminated.

Drawing on educational thinkers like Paulo Freire, Grain describes critical hope as “a dance, a negotiation, a heated entanglement between a critical awareness of the problem (or many problems) at hand and the spark of spirit that – sometimes in contradiction to our own experiences and sensibilities –  insists on hope.” 

Many of us see students struggling to live in an increasingly complex world that, while some might argue is not necessarily any more dangerous than the world experienced by previous generations, bombards us with a hopeless, overwhelming sea of bad news – all of it easily accessible 24/7, from that shiny rectangle in our pockets. Through Critical Hope, Grain offers solutions to the overwhelm and despair some of us may be experiencing by sharing principles, strategies, classroom activities, and local and global stories of critical hope in action. 

This blogpost will offer a small taste of a few of these ideas, and, hopefully, entice you to grab the library’s copy and take a larger bite. 

The Seven Principles of Critical Hope

In Critical Hope, Grain describes what she calls a “non-exhaustive” list of principles “meant to get at the core ideas underlying critical hope” based on what she has learnt from other thinkers, leaders, and teachers. So, here we go… 

  1. Hope is necessary, but hope alone is not enough.

Hope alone is naive. Knowledge isn’t action. The commitment, discipline, self reflection, and intentional action of praxis combined with hope is critical hope. 

  1. Critical hope is not something you have. It is something you practice.

Grain offers a slightly horrifying image of a surgeon that hasn’t planned or prepared. As I read I imagine hearing, as I lie on a table and drift off, “Let’s just see how it goes, shall we?” Planning and practice is critical to critical hope. Drawing on her experience learning to play music, she describes three components of practice: 

  • Practicing your part – What is your responsibility within the broader effort in which you are engaged? 
  • Practicing your art – What is the gift you bring and how can you use it to create change? 
  • Practicing asking questions – What’s going on in the larger system? What is beyond what you can see? 
  1. Critical hope is messy, uncomfortable, and full of contradictions.

Here, Grain asks “Why do you have no mud beneath your fingernails if your goal requires you to move earth?” Some of that dirt comes through the discomfort of challenging our comfort zones: cultural values, habits, common-sense conclusions,etc.. Without this examination, she suggests, we risk perpetuating oppression in our attempts to create positive change. 

  1. Critical hope is intimately entangled with the body and the land.

Grain describes the “politics of the body,” and the contradictions in societal expectations, for example, women being policed for modesty while also being sexualized. She also describes the importance of decolonizing practices, rather than decolonization, focusing on the action as well as hope and challenging the reader to ask: How does the land affect my identity? What are the histories on this land? How can my current action impact the injustices of the past? 

  1. Critical hope requires bearing witness to social and historical trauma.

Acquiring “difficult knowledge” can make action “imperative.” It becomes an irritant like “a grain of sand in the oyster of imagination,” pushing us to ask, “Who am I now that I know this?” Grain describes this time, between acquiring knowledge and action, as a valuable liminal space, and an opportunity to reconceptualize ourselves and the world, to grapple with this new understanding and to prepare to act.   

  1. Critical hope requires interruptions and invitations.

Connecting critical hope to the role of educator and the classroom experience, Grain describes “Spider-Man moments,” those times when an opportunity exists for a big shift in perception. Perhaps a student has asked a challenging question, or perhaps they are struggling with new information and it is poking at their sense of self, their sense of self in relation to disparity or trauma. With all eyes on you, for a teacher, these moments can be “terrifying” and “whatever you do will be action.” Grain emphasizes the importance of leadership here, describing ways to prepare for and capitalize on these moments. She also suggests a context of radical hospitality — a “hospitality that welcomes all and also expects guests to respect the place and the people with whom they coexist.”

  1. Anger and grief have a seat at the table.

“Welcome each emotion as a treasured guest,” Grain advises. “Each has wisdom to offer.” The final principle focuses on the importance of accepting rage, anger, and grief, in ourselves and in others, as important components of critical hope. Rage and anger are indications of injustice. Grief is an indication of healing and can motivate us to ask questions like, what historical traumas do you need to heal from and what action do you need to take? Ignoring or discounting these emotions, Grain suggests, is an act of privilege not afforded to those most impacted by things such as systemic discrimination or global conflict. 

Bringing Critical Hope into the Classroom

Throughout the book are several helpful tools that can bring a pedagogy of critical hope into the classroom. Here are a couple of examples that I found particularly helpful. 

Grain writes that she regularly asks “students to begin the semester by writing a ‘positionality statement.’” This is a statement that describes “the position from which you view the world.” It is “an explicit recognition of your own identity and the ways your identity might affect how you listen, how you are perceived, how you move through the world, and what barriers you face or privileges you  have.” This self-reflection activity, touching on categorizations like “nationality, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, educational level, familial roles, occupation, physical ability, mental health, and age,”  can be difficult as it turns “the lens of learning inward” while requiring students, and teachers, to explicitly acknowledge things about themselves. I’ve left links at the end of this blog to a couple examples of how to carry out this activity with students. 

A second strategy, described by Grain in support of student learning, is a framework to cultivate psychological safety in the learning environment. She offers the SAFE framework as a way “for leaders and educators to help others access neural resources related to hope.” 

The ‘S’ in SAFE stands for social engagement system: using calm and engaged responses – a voice that conveys emotion and intention, listening, smiling, and engaging eyes-to communicate safety and care.

‘A’ for attentiveness: We are “mirrors for each other” and it is important to ensure our social signaling aligns with our intent. The “most important things a leader and educator can do are to be very present in their body and to have their attention focused on the social engagement signals of the people they are interacting with.”

‘F’ for fun and playfulness: By “introducing playfulness and fun, a leader triggers a social cue that says there are no threats in this moment, there are no goals to achieve, and we are here to create an emotional experience of happiness and connection,” creating an “environment that is conducive to helping others access the higher-order features of learning, flexible problem solving, creativity, and seeing multiple possibilities.” 

And finally, ‘E’ for Expressiveness: Using “facial gestures and voice in expressive ways” so that students don’t need to make guesses about and can accurately interpret our intentions.  🙂

Fostering Critical Hope

In addition to guiding principles and specific classroom strategies, the book includes several stories about people engaged, both at the micro and macro level,  in education or social-justice work that exemplify a practice of critical hope. Each story includes bits of wisdom as well as key considerations for fostering critical hope from the person sharing their experience. I’ll share one piece, from a man named Am Johal, an activist working in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, that stood out to me as relevant to anyone working, as we are, in a large, sometimes less-than-responsive organization.  

“Institutions are clumsy, slow, and problematic. But they are also sites of possibility. And if we lose sight of that, then we lose the capacity to think about making changes at a scale that can be important.” 

Instead of pessimism or optimism, perhaps I need to engage with what is, as well as with the steps for what’s next. 

If you are considering joining the next faculty book club, please see CETL’s Calendar of Upcoming Events.

Additional resources can be found with any of us at CETL and:

Camosun Story #73: Helen

Helen is a Co-op and Internship Coordinator (CIC) with the Technology programs at Camosun, as well as Chair for Cooperative Education.  Helen has been working in post secondary education for most of her career and explained, “I have always been interested in the teaching and learning process, even when I was in administrative or coordination roles. And I am particularly interested in experiential education and reflective learning, or work-integrated learning which is how co-op fits in.”

Part of Helen’s work as a CIC is to teach a Career Development Workplace Preparation Skills course, known as CDEV.  “CDEV is a competency-based course teaching students about career development that includes assessing one’s own interests, skills and abilities; understanding the world of work; and connecting with professionals, and opportunities, in industry.” Helen also noted that for her program area, CDEV is a requirement for graduation, meaning that not all students are keen to take it.

Because CDEV is required, Helen sometimes finds teaching it challenging. “Ideologically, I want people to learn, not just finish with a grade.  But it’s challenging to engage students meaningfully when they are motivated by the technology aspects of their program and are very busy in their courses.

Most of the assignments in CDEV are not graded – with the exception of the cover letter and resumé, with a requirement of achieving 70% or higher to complete the course.   A strong cover letter and resume is the biggest artifact coming out of CDEV for students.  After Helen heard about ungrading, she had a conversation with Robin Fast and thought it “might be a solution to some of the tensions I was experiencing” around student engagement and grading that assignment within a pass/fail course.  “I love to try out new things, so last fall I decided to scrap the itemized rubric for the cover letter and resumé and made it more qualitative. I still had grades, but used a binary method where One was ‘you’ve met the requirements’ and Zero was ‘you need to keep working on it.’”

Helen anticipated my next question; how did it go? “It’s a work in progress and I need to refine things for next time. What I found is that ungrading didn’t seem to give students enough direction. Part of me thinks I may have removed some incentives by removing the quantitative rubric. When it was clear that the requirement to pass was 70 out of 100, they had incentive to work harder, even though I would tell them not to do it for the grade.”

A piece of ungrading that supported the workplace preparation and student engagement aspects of CDEV was the feedback component, which in ungrading is typically formative and collaborative.  “Students need to learn how receive feedback and to be able to adapt based on feedback.   While I had always incorporated peer feedback into class activities, I required students to submit their feedback along with their application documents so I could help them be accountable to the feedback they received. And thanks to Robin, I implemented audio feedback for students, which was a way for me to provide personal commentary about their submissions.”  One problem she encountered was that while “students were allowed to resubmit their documents as many times as they needed to, many of them seemed to disregard the feedback that was given. It almost seemed that without a grade, feedback did not matter.”

One aspect of ungrading Helen particularly appreciates is the focus it brings to building relationships in the classroom. “I feel that this experience with ungrading enhanced my relationships with students and contributed to a wonderful communal learning experience. In fact, I heard more than once that the peer reviews and the discussions in class and enabled students to better connect with each other if I can get them to talk to the student next to them, that’s a win!”

Helen reminded me that “these students are in a grueling and competitive program, and I like to think that CDEV supports them to excel at a personal level, because CDEV is all about them. I believe if I can boost their confidence through CDEV, that will also be good for their career. And because their success is based on the choices they make, I’d like them to choose to be successful, not be reliant on a grade as a measure of success. That’s why ungrading appeals to me as a principle.”

What is the future of ungrading for Helen?  “I’m going to keep it with some refinements. I think when you do something new you should give it more than just one try. Not everyone is comfortable with trying new things and possibly failing, but if something you try works out, then others may be willing to try it out too. In the end, our goals are to help our students succeed in their careers and prepare them for the real world.” And Helen believes many of ungrading aspects, like reflection and collaborative feedback, can support those goals.

Camosun Story #72: Robin and Ungrading

You may remember Robin from such stories as Camosun Story #7 (SO long ago) and Becoming Unravelled: a reflection.  Robin is both a faculty member in the Community, Family & Child Studies (CFCS) program as well as an Educational Developer in the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.  A few weeks ago, I sat down with Robin to talk about his journey into ungrading, foreshadowed by his Unravelled post.

“This journey for me began when I started with CETL last year. I facilitated the book club with a book about ungrading already assigned, and then wrote my reflection blog post. But for awhile now I’ve been grappling with how to make sure everything I do aligns with my principles of teaching and learning, and wondering how we can grade students for their efforts when grading is not at all an objective measurement of their learning.”

Robin’s work with the book club clarified that he was not alone in struggling with having to assign grades. “Students are supposed to make mistakes, try things out, and practice” and grading them at every step along the way may not encourage them to continue in that ongoing learning whether that grade is “good” or not.  And when Robin read the ungrading book he realized that he had already been doing quite a bit of ungrading. “For example, in the CFCS diploma, we have practicum courses that aren’t graded – those courses are assessed as complete or not complete and the assignments all align with that. Students are expected to meet learning outcomes to a level where they’re ready to practice independently in the community.  So, if an assignment doesn’t reflect that ability, we ask them to redo it and explain how they can improve.” But what Robin realized was that the other courses students take were not preparing them for that practicum learning experience, although within those graded courses, Robin was providing assignments that were NOT graded.  “For example, if students are doing presentations, they will for the most part receive an A because they are taking a risk by standing up and speaking and you don’t want to discourage them.”  But the conversations Robin had in book club helped him realize that ungrading was important for every assignment. As a result, Robin decided to move a class he had taught many times completely into the world of ungrading for the following Fall term.

“The course I ungraded is CFCS 110, Foundations for Practice, and is a first semester course in a two-year diploma program. Melissa (another ungrader) shared some examples of wording she used to describe ungrading to students, and I made some modifications to my course using those examples. I got rid of any of the one and done assignments and made sure all assignments were formative.” Robin noted that ungrading research discusses how ungrading is both positive for students and disruptive, because it is a radical change from how they are used to being assessed. Communicating clearly and regularly with students is, therefore, essential to build their comfort with ungrading.  “At the very beginning of the course, I described the ungrading process to students and gave them a document describing the reasons for ungrading, what some of the problems are with grading, and why this could be valuable to their learning. I explained that I would give them regular feedback on their assignments, but they wouldn’t receive a letter grade for their assignments. I also clarified how redoing assignments would work to meet the course expectations.”

Robin chose to provide audio feedback to students so that they could hear his voice explaining clearly what he saw that they were doing well in the assignment, and places that they could improve for the next assignment or for a resubmission if that was needed. “Audio feedback is easy to create, can be more detailed, and supports building a relationship with the learner much better than written feedback.”

Robin also met with students individually right before the midpoint of the course, taking class time to do so. “That took a couple weeks to complete.  I intended to meet again with each of them towards the end of the semester, but I did not manage that this time around.” While time consuming, Robin feels this piece of the switch to ungrading is critical, to build trust in the feedback process, and making sure he was always following through with his commitments to them.

Because self-reflection is an important component in ungrading, Robin had his students reflect on their progress at both the midpoint and the end of the course. “When you ask students to assign a letter grade for themselves, you reserve the right to adjust it, which opens the door to a conversation if there’s disagreement.”  Robin asks things like: How do you see yourself progressing over the semester? Have you responded to feedback from one assignment for the next? “In my past courses students have often been dragged down by a weak assignment at the beginning of the semester meaning their final grade may not reflect where they’ve come to by the end of the semester. None of that is a factor with the ungrading process because their letter grade is based on how they see themselves progressing and what they’ve learned by the end of the course.”

Whether you use ungrading or not, students need to receive a letter grade, and Robin wondered how students would assess themselves – would they all give themselves an A+?  “I came to two conclusions. First was that letter grades, no matter how hard we try, are subjective measures of something, and not necessarily learning, so why am I worried about what grade students are assigning? Second was that research says students are typically harder on themselves with their grades that we are, and I found that was true in many cases, where students assigned themselves a letter grade which was lower than I would have.”

Robin also puzzled over the disconnect between ungrading and having to assign a grade.  “If I tell students that the letter grade system is subjective for instructors to assign, how can I expect them to assign themselves a grade? So, I discussed that apparent contradiction with students and provided them with a clear rubric. And I know some ungrading instructors will build that rubric with students, so they have even more of an understanding of what it is that they’re working towards.” Another challenge Robin has with letter grades is how they turn education into something that is ranked.  “In real life, after they complete college, students will go to work, get feedback on the work they do, and use that feedback to improve – that’s the way our whole world works.  So why don’t we make sure that we’re aligning that with how we’re teaching here?”

Robin was happy with how his first foray into ungrading went. “I received positive feedback from students both during the course and at the end. In fact, I had one student tell me that she felt like she had never learned in school before, but now she felt like she was learning.  She could focus on the content and not worry about meeting the instructor’s expectations in order to get the right grade.”

Even beyond improving student learning, Robin found that “the process of reviewing student assignments and giving them feedback was so much more enjoyable and productive than it has been for me in the past. Being able to simply focus in on the feedback, and not have to worry about how my feedback connected with a letter grade, wasn’t only freeing, but it was much better aligned with how I see effective education.” And students were excited to receive his feedback.  “Students told me that in the past they have been anxious and worried about looking at their feedback, but now they were looking forward to it so that they could improve their next assignment.”

I asked Robin if he had spoken to any of his colleagues about ungrading. “Colleagues agree with me about the incongruity between letter grades and the work we’re trying to do as instructors. But they wonder: Will students be motivated? Will they be confused by the lack of grading? But the nice thing about ungrading is that there are many ways to implement it.” Although Robin cautions, implementing ungrading is more work for the students. “Students may be redoing an assignment instead of just moving on to the next one and reflecting on their experience and learning process. But I’ve never had such consistent attendance as I had this last semester, probably because the assignments were designed such that students needed to be in the classroom, engaging with the material and each other, in order to successfully complete them.”

I wondered what advice Robin might have for faculty wanting to try out some ungrading. “I’m really privileged because in my program, there are no multiple sections of classes and faculty are all working with the same cohort of students, so we don’t have the pressure for every course section to be similar. But I think there are some guiding principles that are helpful. First, be transparent. Talk with your students about what you’re doing and why, laying it out clearly for them and following through with your commitments to them.” Second, start small.  “Try revising one or two assignments to be ungraded rather than your entire course.”  And third, consider the time commitment. Set expectations on how often you meet with students and discuss feedback with them, as well as due dates for resubmitted assignment to help you manage your time.

What is the future of ungrading for Robin? “I have a hard time imagining myself not using it in the future. Next time I teach a letter grade course my plan is to ungrade it. If I can do it in a first semester course, I can do it anywhere else in the program. And I will continue to talk with my colleagues about if and where they might want to try ungrading out.”  But will he change anything?  “Yes. There were quite a few students at the end of the semester who still had to resubmit assignments, so I need to be clearer about the resubmission process to help students stay on track a bit better. And I want to find space for more individual meetings with students.”

In the end, Robin says he was surprised, but gratified, to see the shift in how students responded to assignment feedback.  “I didn’t change the way I was giving feedback – audio feedback, focusing on positives – I just removed the grade and thus the pressure on students. The only difference was removing that letter grade.”

Camosun Story #71: Sonja

Sonja is a faculty member in the School of Business where she teaches Introduction to Human Resources (HR), Employment Law, Labour Relations, and HR Trends.  Like many Camosun faculty, Sonja came to teaching after first working in her field.  She began studying HR at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) in her twenties when she finally felt ready to begin post-secondary studies, saying “BCIT was very different from a traditional university and opened my mind to higher education.” Sonja worked in HR departments in both the private and public sectors and eventually began to focus on labour relations.  “My main focus was on building relationships between people and through my work began to realize that the how was what mattered: how we handle people and issues within organizations is more important than the what we have to do, and how we do it brings the focus back on the people in our organizations.”

In 2013 Sonja came to Camosun College into the sole labour relations position at the college. “My focus remained the same – on building relationships so the unions and management could effectively discuss and resolve issues long-term,” something she feels she succeeded at. Sonja has always enjoyed training people not familiar with human resources or labour relations and “became more interested in teaching others the how: how to approach people; how to deal with difficult issues; how to find creative solutions without getting personal. And over the years I realized, hey, I like this education thing.”

AS Sonja worked to complete the Provincial Instructor Diploma Program (PIDP) and the then Dean of the School of Business asked her to teach a class. She said yes and was terrified, but said “after teaching my first class, I knew I was where I was supposed to be and that I would be saying goodbye to the full-time HR side of my life and starting on a new career path. And I haven’t regretted that decision for a single day.”

I asked Sonja to tell me more about why she loves teaching.  “I was always exhausted after training, but teaching does the opposite – it fills my bucket instead of emptying it.”  She even loves some of the aspects of marking “because you get to see where students are at. I’m both terrified and excited when I’m marking, and always wonder if I am getting the message across.”  But most of all Sonja enjoys how every semester is different. “Every semester is a project, because there are different students, meaning you’re building new relationships and connections, and the constant change in diversity within the classroom is a bonus for me. I like having to adjust how I’m explaining something and trying to make my courses more accessible.”

Sonja’s is passionate about making things more accessible for students. “My joy lies in making materials that are more easily accessed and used by multiple learners. Making sure we’re presenting materials in multiple ways, takes a lot of planning, but students really appreciate it.” But, as Sonja notes, it takes a village to provide those options for students. “In one semester I might have ten registered Centre for Accessible Learning (CAL) students in a class, but I might also have an additional five who have not registered with CAL but might need those supports – and every semester is different. So, building those relationships with the fabulous people in the Centre for Accessible Learning, the Office of Student Support, Counselling, and CETL is key.  If I didn’t have all those pieces working all together, I wouldn’t be successful.”

As we talked, Sonja mentioned the pivot to online in 2020, and I asked her what impact the past few years have had on her teaching. “Having to fly by the seat of your pants made me more willing to try things and make mistakes and forced me to learn how to break the system and then repair it! We also were reminded that instructors are content experts in just one area that students are not, and students can help with technological issues because they’re so tech savvy! But it’s important to remember that we are all learning together.”

Sonja also carried forward many of the lessons she learned during that time, for example all the planning that needs to go into online teaching. “I just developed an asynchronous employment law class, which is going well because of the amount of work that went into the planning. I met with an instructional designer in CETL, and we walked through the process of organizing the course and decided on templates and videos. Every week is chunked with video playlists that are transcribed so all learners can access them, and there are case studies so students can focus on real life situations where they have to apply the theory that they’ve learned in previous courses. I incorporated everything that I learned during COVID. But it takes time, and I never feel I have enough.” She recommends that faculty use their Scheduled Development for planning and building online and blended courses, so you aren’t working on a course build off the side of your desk at the same time you are teaching.

Now that Sonja has been teaching for a few years, I wondered if she had any memories that stood out for her. “I love the student engagement around real-life problems, for example running our collective bargaining simulation in class or running a panel interview. Students get into their roles and ask great questions. It’s the practice before they go out into the world, which is what educational experiences should be.  For the panel interview, they develop behavioral-based interview questions and perform that interview on video. For the bargaining simulation, they write their bargaining proposals (usually 3-4), which are graded, then exchange proposals and try to form a collective agreement. This process helps them understand how complicated it must be to bargain 100 proposals in several months.”  Sonja also appreciates the diversity of students she has in the classroom. “Students learn from International students where perhaps unions are illegal in their country – hearing perspectives like those mean our domestic learners are getting a much richer experience.”

One course Sonja is teaching is HR Trends.  “There’s no textbook for that class and we build the content together as a class. Students work towards presenting a symposium at the very end of the class and each student group presents for 45 minutes on an HR trend that they’ve been researching for the entire semester. The students are very creative with the assignments, which I love to see, but the course also piques their interest in different areas of HR meaning they get exposure to more than I might cover on my own.”

As always, my final question to Sonja was about what kind of advice she has for faculty just starting out at Camosun.  “Use the supports that are out there! Ask your Chair right away who to contact in CETL, and who the contacts are for student support, counseling, etc.  Remember you really can’t do your best work in a vacuum – build those relationships. And most of all, be kind to the people who support you, and be kind to yourself.”

Camosun Story #69: Tim

Over the past few months, CETL educational developers have been working with faculty across the college exploring the advantages and disadvantages of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in teaching and learning.  As we talked to more and more faculty, we discovered several who were already working GenAI into their assessments and talking about its implications with their students and I wanted to share some of their stories with you.  So here is the first of these interviews focused on using GenAI in the classroom with Tim, a full-time Instructor in the School of Business at Camosun who teaches everything from International Management to Marketing Research to Workplace Professionalism.

When I asked Tim how he is integrating GenAI into his teaching, he told me “I’d been teaching about AI for the last ten years or so when it became apparent that something like GenAI was imminent.  Up until recently, I’ve taught it in a very general way and stayed abreast of its development.  But with the rise of ChatGPT over the past year, I was asked, along with three other Instructors in the School of Business, if I would be willing to put some Professional Development time into figuring out what a good response to AI might be.  We were starting to see people misusing it from an academic honesty perspective.”

Tim spent quite a bit of time over summer 2023 keeping an eye on the various AIs releases (at one point there were about a dozen new English language AIs released every day of the week) and by the end of August, he had built a list categorizing about 80 in an Excel sheet that anyone can access.

As Tim explored, he concluded that “It’s a mistake to be afraid of AI. What I tell students, is: You’ve been told that AI is coming for your job. It’s not. Somebody who knows how to use AI is coming for your job. That means you had better get out ahead of the curve and learn how to use it effectively.”

Tim explained that his approach is to turn artificial intelligence into a Research Assistant. “When I went to college and grad school, the Internet as we know it didn’t exist. Instead, we spent time going to the library, digging through card catalogs, and writing notes on cue cards.  Took forever. The Internet changed all that. But while it’s become easy to find information, it’s hard to sift through because there’s so much out there. I think AI is most useful in an academic world as a Research Assistant because it can find information and put ideas together for you in minutes rather than in hours or more. That said, we still have to teach students how to determine what information is valid.”

In other words, Tim encourages students to use GenAI tools to find ideas but to personally review the sources and websites where the ideas come from.  “You have to be careful because AIs sometimes make things up. For example, I asked an AI tool to create a timeline of Camosun College history, and it did in two minutes. Beautifully presented. All the key events were there, but they were placed in the wrong years, and some were out by ten or more years. The AI had done the research, found the events, but when it couldn’t figure out when these events happened relevant to each other, it made things up and presented them as fact.  If I didn’t know Camosun’s history, I’d have believed it.” Lesson learned: “Use AI to do the initial research and collect basic information, but then go dig and make sure that the information was used correctly.”

I wondered how Tim supports with students as they work with AI tools in class and for assessments, and aside from warning them about plagiarism and checking original sources, he works with them to ensure they understand what they are presenting (in Tim’s classes, students present their papers live).  “I come from government where if the Minister of Advanced Education has a question in the middle of your presentation, she doesn’t wait until the end to ask.  So, to replicate real-world experiences, I interrupt students in the middle of their presentations and pepper them with questions to make sure they understand what they are presenting.  Demonstrating comprehension is critically important. It’s also important they understand that while AI will do the writing for them, if fail to develop their ability to write, they will harm their professional and personal development.” “In a very real sense, learning to write is learning to think.”

Tim also teaches his students how to use various AI tools in his 400-level class.  “I teach them how to use ChatGPT and the one built into Bing which is the easiest to use, as well as how to get the tool to show you the original sources and provide APA citations.” “In my 400-level course, student teams do an hour-long group-presentation on a particular topic each week. I give them a Backgrounder on their topic, and their job is to boil it down to something that can be explained in an hour to people who know nothing about it. For example, for a recent presentation on Fake News, I had the student team use the Gamma AI tool to build a PowerPoint-like website.  It does the research, but also allows you to edit the results.”  Tim sees Gamma AI and other GenAI tools as the next step up from the Internet and says, “If we don’t get on board and learn how to use them, we will be left behind by those who do.”

In his lower-level classes, Tim’s approach to students using AI is a bit different.  “In the Market Research class students take after completing Intro level Statistics, AI can’t really help. Student teams conduct Primary Research, interviewing real clients from the community, design a survey, obtain ethics approval, collect data, and analyze it using Excel. Then we do Boardroom Simulations in the last two weeks of class where they present their Findings, Conclusions, the Options, and Recommendations to the Board, of which I am the Chair.  It’s great fun!”

In Tim’s Workplace Professionalism course, “students complete a series of short presentations on various topics, and AI can be very helpful in conducting secondary research.  I check their comprehension in real-time by asking questions during their presentations.  I think in the future academic research skills are likely to change much as they did when we learned to use the Internet.  This means we have to focus on comprehension and application.”

When I asked how students are reacting to AI, Tim said “They’re not afraid of it at all. They live on their screens, and this is just another way of getting something done. The industrious ones will use AI to build a framework and then they will do the deep dive themselves because they’re curious. The ones who are looking for shortcuts will not do the deep dive and just pretend they understand. That’s why it’s on us to check for comprehension.”

I wondered how Tim’s colleagues have been reacting to all of this.  “It depends on what you’re teaching. If I was still teaching Statistics, AI wouldn’t bother me at all because there are already thousands of videos online students can watch until they understand the concepts.  It’s when students must engage in research that it becomes dangerous. In fact, some of my colleagues are playing with the idea of accepting only peer-reviewed sources because it is more challenging for AI to work behind paywalls (although there are ways around this).”

As we reached the end of our conversation, I asked Tim what is in the future for GenAI and his classes, and he indicated he would still be teaching GenAI tools to his 400-level courses but said “we’ll see when I review their final papers this term whether I will have to begin checking for comprehension even more now.”

As for GenAI itself, Tim says “It’s not clear to me where AI is going to end up. On November 1, 50 countries (including Canada) – countries who recognize that AI has unintended consequences for economies – met at Bletchley Park and signed a declaration about how to regulate AI going forward. But regulations or not, we’re rapidly reaching the stage where you either use GenAI or get replaced by someone who knows how to use it. That’s why I’m teaching it.”

 

Camosun Story #68: Arloene

Arloene has been a faculty member in the Psychology department at Camosun College for 10 years, and this last spring was a recipient of a Camosun College Teacher Recognition Award.

Arloene reflected that if someone had told her 20 years ago that she would be here today, an instructor in the classroom, she would not have believed it.  In fact, she twice turned down requests to teach, but when she received a third request, she figured something must be going on.  “I had worked as a TA when I was in university, but at that time, teaching was just a means to an end.”  This time, once Arloene got into the classroom, she was hooked.

A few years later, a friend of Arloene’s mentioned that there was an opportunity to teach for Camosun through the South Island Partnership (SIP), and she decided to give it a try.  “I felt so out of my element because I had never been trained to teach, but here I was delivering curriculum. It was terrifying but gratifying at the same time.”  When she finished her term, she thought that would be the end. “It was too much work, but at the same time, it was fun. I was still working professionally as a therapist, but once I started teaching one course, then another, I ended up shifting to teaching full time.” Now Arloene is excited for the beginning of every new term.  “I see teaching as not that different from when I worked as a therapist, because it’s about growth and helping students to feel inspired.”

Today Arloene no longer teaches in the SIP program, but has continued at Camosun in the Psychology Department, teaching Counseling, Interpersonal Skills, and Developmental Psychology courses, among others.

I asked Arloene what she likes most about being in the classroom, and she said for her, it isn’t the teaching, but “the connections, the relationships, and getting to know people. And it’s the little hallway chats, running into students in the cafeteria, and just checking in hearing their excitement and their questions and their stories – I love the stories.”

But knowing that for a period of time we lost access to those hallway connection, I asked Arloene about the impact of the past three years on her teaching.  “It’s so funny because that first semester back in the classroom, I had students saying, oh, that’s what you looked like! While we were online, we lost those conversations and connections and the support that as humans we all need. I know some students enjoyed the online experience because of how it might have fit into their lives, but for me, the enriching parts of teaching are those connections.”  But Arloene has brought some of what she learned and used while she taught online into her teaching today.  “I’ve always done writing exercises and reflection journals, and those became especially useful online because those were their stories.  They were personal, and an essential piece to getting to know my students.  I also started using online discussion groups and today have more discussion groups in-person, but the discussions are less content-based than they might have been before.”

I was sure that Arloene would have many memories of her past students and their experiences, and indeed she did.  “In one my SIP classes we had a student with a lot of anxiety. But one of the requirements was doing an in-class presentation, and she did not want to do it. I am always gentle with requirements and honour that people have different ways of being and learning so try to provide alternatives. However, I’ve also feel that it’s good to challenge yourself. So, we worked with this student, provided support, and in the end, they gave an amazing presentation. It was fantastic to see someone go from self-doubt to challenging themselves and being successful.  All we did was give the student a gentle nudge, provide support, and give them the opportunity to do their best.”

Arloene had one more memory to share about the classroom community she values so much.  “I had a student with severe epilepsy who often in class would have a seizure. It was a class of 40, and we had a plan of what to do if she had an episode in class. Those students worked together and supported her – it was such a community where everyone came together, and she was able to complete the class.”

As we moved towards the end of our conversation, I asked Arloene what advice she might have for new faculty coming to Camosun.  “I would really encourage new instructors not to lose sight of what excites them. It’s easy to worry about the curriculum and the learning outcomes and forget about what sparks us. I know for myself there’s been a few times I was more concerned about outcomes than the excitement of the content.”

I was curious how Arloene keeps that spark going herself during those times when there is so much content to cover you lose track of the engagement.  “Sometimes when I’m talking in class, I tune out and go on autopilot because I’ve said this thing many times over the years.  That’s my little red flag to move away from talking too much, to having more opportunity for dialogue and hearing different opinions and perspectives.”

I appreciated Arloene sharing that, because one of the things we wonder in our Centre, with each other and with other faculty is, just what is our role these days as instructors? “That’s tricky because there’s so much content students need to learn, how do we help them not get overwhelmed or lose that foundation of critical thinking,” how do we help students navigate their way through all that information? Arloene tries to give her students opportunities to explore what is important to them which in turn “ignites interest from others because it may open up something they hadn’t thought about before that may be personally relevant.”

To conclude, Arloene reflected on her role as an educator: “I continue to be open to growth and the opportunities that life presents, particularly as aligned with my values. I hope that this affords me the opportunity to be a model for students to choose a meaningful life while being open to new directions.”

Camosun’s Showcase 2023: A Reflection (Elizabeth West, Deidre Murphy, Emily Schudel)

This fall we launched in-person, for the first time since its inception, our Camosun Showcase publication with a celebration for Camosun Showcase 2023, the sixth annual publication highlighting creative, professional and scholarly activities by instructors across the college.

Like many things at the college, Camosun Showcase started with an idea, followed by a series of enthusiasm-fueled conversations, to eventually become a full-blown college publication.

In 2016 Elizabeth West, faculty in the English Language Development Department, was a committee member and chair of the Camosun College Faculty Association Professional Development (PD) Committee, where she “had the very great privilege of reviewing fabulous projects that Camosun faculty submitted for PD funding.” The projects the PD Committee reviewed were from across the college and spanned all disciplines. Recognising that the wider college community did not have the opportunity to hear about these projects, Elizabeth “thought it would be terrific to somehow celebrate the work at Camosun and get the word out that Camosun faculty were contributing in so many creative, innovative, and scholarly ways” to the college.

Unbeknownst to Elizabeth, in Learning Services (retired) director Sybil Harrison was thinking the same thing. Having long recognized the tremendous efforts instructors put into their scholarly and creative endeavours, Sybil wondered how their work might best be celebrated and shared. Having put their heads together and “brainstorm[ed] various ways of doing this, [Elizabeth and Sybil] agreed that a book/publication would be the best way to tell these stories – [in other words] – something tangible.”

The first issue of Camosun Showcase was published in 2017 and included contributions from across the college. Faculty shared stories that underscored the creativity and passion they bring to their classrooms, including research projects focused on language learning, interdisciplinary education, and gender diversity in engineering, among a host of other topics. Field schools in Bolivia, a drama project in the School of Health and Human Services addressing issues of social justice and oppression, the 2017 S’TENISTOLW (Indigenous Education) Conference, Universal Design for Learning, and a welding project that culminated in the design and creation of welded armature for a 150-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton, were some of the other projects featured in the first issue. Elizabeth notes:

It was exciting to see the inaugural [issue of] Showcase in print with contributor bios, stories of projects, photos of contributors and the various projects – a mix of images and text. This was not something I curated alone: Stephanie Morris in Graphic Design, Allan Shook, photographer, and the expert printers in the Camosun Print Shop played a huge role – and of course, we had Sybil’s strong support and the inspiring faculty who took time from their busy schedules to write about their work for an audience outside their subject areas. This Showcase was informative, celebratory, visual, and colourful.

The 2018 and 2019 issues of Showcase integrated artwork from Camosun Visual Arts. Joseph Hoh contributed the cover in 2018, with John G. Boehme, Brad Muir, and Nancy Yakimoski’s terrific artwork featured throughout the publication. In 2019, Nancy Yakimoski contributed the art from her piece in Showcase on photography in the style of abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, for the cover of Showcase.

In 2020 Deidre Murphy, an Educational Developer in the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), joined the Showcase team as a co-project coordinator with Elizabeth, and Sean McLauglin came on board as graphic designer. The cover of the 2020 issue features the artwork of Melissa Mills from the Communications Department. 2020 also spanned the COVID pivot – all faculty stories and projects included were completed before COVID and the 2020 Showcase was finally produced in 2021.

By 2022, while the college had returned to in-person interactions, the pandemic had transformed much of how we do our work. Contributions for the 2022 edition came from both faculty and leadership, many of whom had conducted their work for the fifth issue of Showcase remotely during the pandemic, embracing the challenges and opportunities this disruption brought.

In 2023, the Showcase team increased to three with the addition of Emily Schudel, an instructional designer in eLearning and Chair of CETL, with Jenn Playford joining the team as our new graphic designer. As with previous years, the Showcase coordinators were awed and inspired by the range of stories featured in the 2023 issue. In Elizabeth’s words:

With Camosun Showcase 2023 we can see how this publication has evolved. More people know about it and our team is bigger, offering different perspectives and insights. In revisiting the past issues and reflecting on each one in preparation for our launch celebration, I have again been inspired by the range of the stories and the richness of the work at Camosun. These six editions form a record of Camosun professional, scholarly, and creative activity over time – each Showcase is a window on Camosun at a given time.

The stories in Showcase demonstrate how Camosun educators are simultaneously creative, inspiring, enthusiastic, innovative, inclusive, curious, and forward looking … They are problem solvers [and] critical thinkers, continuously thinking of ways to make students’ educational experiences more relevant, more interesting, more connected with community… and [able] to deal with the real-world complexities we [all] face. They look for ways to Indigenize curriculum in real and meaningful ways. They work collaboratively with other institutions locally, throughout Canada, and internationally.

In her introductory message to the 2022 issue of Showcase, Sybil Harrison quoted the late educator and author bell hooks: “As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence.” Sybil continued, writing, “Our work as educators is lifted up and amplified when we share it.” This is exemplified in Camosun Showcase, where we see the ‘classroom’ expanded to include the campus, the library, and the community, as well as the land, in-person and virtual learning and instruction across time zones, and at the local, national, and international level.

The stories in this edition are rich with faculty and student voices:

  • in Biology weaving Indigenous science into Western science curriculum so students see and experience the value of both;
  • in Business moving between online and in-person instruction with HyFlex instruction;
  • in Nursing enhancing health care education with virtual simulations and open-source electronic health records in medical settings;
  • in Academic and Career Foundations moving a 40-year classroom-based program online;
  • in Totem 2.0 an innovative and far-reaching project with Camosun Innovates, engineering students, and Carey Newman, renowned Indigenous artist;
  • in the South Island Partnership (SIP) that introduce high-school students to college courses;
  • in Curriculum Development and Program Renewal learn about preservice and in-service teacher training in Kenya.

When Emily thinks of the future for Showcase, she says, “I want to encourage everyone at Camosun to tell us about the amazing projects they are working on. Showcase is about Professional, Scholarly, and Creative activity, but I don’t like to think of these things as separate. I don’t believe that my creative life lives only at home and then I come to work and it’s all “professional” and “scholarly”. In fact, I believe we are creative in all aspects of our lives. I work with so many faculty who ask me, “Why would you want to talk to me or have me share my story because I don’t do anything innovative in the classroom.” Well, I can tell you all that every day you are in the classroom, or creating curriculum, or marking assignments, you are being creative. When I Googled “creativity”, I found several definitions that affirm this. For example, “Creativity is the ability to make or otherwise bring into existence something new, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form.” Isn’t that what we do every day as educators and students?”

Thank you to all the individuals who have so generously shared their stories with us over the last six years. We are inspired by your creativity, your commitment, and your passion, and look forward to many, many more!

Team-Based Learning (TBL): It’s not what you think it is…

Last spring, our Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) collaborated with the University of Victoria (UVic) and Royal Roads University (RRU) to run the first Team-Based Learning (TBL) Institute to be held in Victoria.  I sat down with Derek Murray and Monique Brewer who were Camosun’s drivers on this collaboration, as well as two of the Institute’s participants, Kerry-Ann Dompierre and Robin Fast, to find out more about TBL, how the collaborative Institute went, and what’s next for TBL at Camosun.

I first wanted to know how Monique and Derek got involved with TBL.  Monique, a fellow instructional designer in CETL and currently the Applied Learning Coordinator at Camosun, said “one of the biggest challenges I hear from faculty is related to group work – how to make groups work and ensure everyone is accountable for their work in a team. Then last year, Derek sent us information about a TBL Institute in Nanaimo.  I thought it would be a great Scheduled Development opportunity and signed up.”  It was only when Monique arrived that she realized that TBL “is more than just setting up teams with good instructions and clear accountability – it’s a whole pedagogical framework.”

Derek, an educational developer in CETL, told me “I’ve long had a fondness for collaborative learning and in 2018 I saw a notice about the Team-Based Learning Institute and was curious.  Like many other instructors, I wanted to include group work in my courses, but often had challenges getting students to work together. So, when I saw the Institute, I thought I may as well try it.”  After Derek completed the Institute, he decided to integrate TBL into the second-year course he was teaching at Capilano University. “Even though it was a lot of work to change the course to TBL and some students were resistant, that whole teaching experience was a blast.  And seeing students really work together as teams was amazing. I also noticed that many of the international students, who had in some of my other classes clustered themselves away from the domestic students, were now part of teams where they had to engage with people of different backgrounds. TBL provided a structure to make that happen in a way that was really equitable for the people involved.”  Then, in 2020, Derek taught one course using TBL and one course using active lecture, “two different sets of students, the same learning outcomes, but two different instructional styles. I tested to see if Team-Based Learning would lead to greater engagement and better higher achievement, and it did.”

While I figured I knew the answer, I wanted to hear from Monique and Derek about why they decided to bring TBL to Camosun. Monique herself, having been the only participant from Camosun at her Institute, was curious to see if other Camosun faculty would be interested in trying TBL so she could work with them to co-facilitate or co-design a course since she is not in the classroom herself.  “I think it would be a much more engaged teaching environment and would work particularly well in the School of Business.”  As for Derek, one of his UVic colleagues was at the Institute with Monique, which led to further conversations with UVic and thoughts of doing a South Island Institute.  Derek and Monique brought RRU into the mix and the three institutional groups stated planning. “We connected with the folks at Vancouver Island University (VIU) who are the global leaders in TBL including Bill Roberson and Tine Reimers from VIU, as well as Jim Sibley from the University of British Columbia, who have led the TBL Institute at VIU for years.  But by the time we spoke to them, Bill had retired, and we found out that Jim was retiring in the following June. So, without them we wondered what would happen with TBL in B.C. and realized running our own Institute was no longer a nice to do, it was something we had to do.” So, the VIU group developed a facilitator package, and last May led the South Island Institute for 20 participants from Camosun, UVic, and RRU, including seven who were there as facilitators-in-training.

I turned to two of those first participants in the South Island TBL Institutes and asked what brought them to TBL.  Robin, who is both a faculty developer in CETL and an instructor in the Community, Family, and Child Studies (CFCS) program, said “I do a lot of group- and team-work in the courses I teach, and I think I’m pretty darn good at it. I work hard to create structure for students, so they don’t feel like they’re off on their own, and I thought that TBL would offer tools to enhance that structure.” Teamwork is central to the CFCS program, which is not the same for every program at Camosun.  “I, too, have spoken to many instructors about their struggles with teamwork and teams, and while my teamwork strategies help people, I know even with all that effort teamwork doesn’t always work, even in my own classes.” Robin thought TBL would both help him develop better skills and provide him with more tools to support other faculty. But to his surprise, after attending the Institute, Robin discovered “that I’ve been doing quite a few things wrong and found it was a huge benefit to me to learn this different structure. There are a lot of things from TBL I can integrate into my own teaching, and I really see how it could be valuable for other faculty at Camosun.”

Kerry, who is a Nursing instructor, the Simulation (SIM) Coordinator in the School of Health and Human Services, and an instructional designer in CETL, at first dismissed the idea of TBL because she thought it was about team teaching or similar to Problem-Based Learning.  But after doing some reading, she became intrigued. “I didn’t know until I participated in the Institute how similar TBL is to SIM design in terms of backward design. But what I found beautiful about TBL was how it brings students together to see each other’s humanity. Our program structure inadvertently creates competition between students, something which is counterproductive in healthcare. We need people to work collaboratively and to value each other’s perspectives.”  Like Robin, Kerry’s classes include a lot of active learning, but she says she learned a tremendous amount during the institute, discovering that TBL is “a pedagogy that brings students together who would not have normally mixed in a class, who then see each other’s perspectives, which I think could be transformational for healthcare education.”

By this point, I was getting a general picture of what TBL is, but I wanted to be able to better understand its approach.  Monique jumped in to explain that TBL “is a framework for teaching using a flipped learning model.  The ‘lecture’ takes place before class and teams then spend class time solving authentic, meaningful problems that are complex enough that they can’t be solved by an individual. The philosophy behind TBL is that teamwork typically sets students up for failure by saying, we know you’re all taking full time courses, you’re probably working, you have families, but please find time to meet outside of class to do this additional work. TBL provides a structure that’s divided into five to seven modules of learning. At the beginning of each module is a readiness assurance process that where students demonstrate both individually and as a group that they have read and understood the materials. The readiness process also helps students learn the materials if they haven’t fully understood them. Then the teams complete problem activities where they have to work together to address an issue. The framework around the teamwork is called the 4S model [Significant Problems, Same Problems, Specific Choice, Simultaneous Report], where each group is presented with the same significant problem and presents their answers simultaneously.” Then the real learning happens, during the instructor-facilitated debrief and discussion.

Derek calls TBL “a coherent set of protocols designed to harness the power of small group learning in the process of collaborative decision-making,” avoiding the confusion of calling this “team-based” learning when it’s not really about “group work” at all. “Group work is, in fact, the vehicle that supports decision-making – we can make better decisions collectively than we can individually. When teams work well, they make good decisions together, but when they don’t work well, one person’s decision can override the group. The TBL protocols not only help create teams that work well together so that they can solve challenging problems, but also build skills that help students make decisions in any context. You need to have a rationale, you need to have evidence, and you need to think critically. The 4S application activities are designed to hold students accountable to both the instructor and to themselves and their group. When they have that accountability and come prepared to do the work, they are engaged in the process and invested in the decision that gets made.”

Kerry and Robin added to Derek and Monique’s comments. Kerry said, “I think there are several different pedagogical approaches underlying TBL. It made me think of interdisciplinary learning, bringing multiple perspectives to group work, as well as transformational and experiential learning. But the protocols are what’s so magical in TBL because they’ve worked out the kinks in terms of creating good groups.”

One thing occurred to Robin during the Institute was that “team-based learning is not simply assigning groups to work together for a semester. The team is also the entire class with the instructor; students are never left on their own to do work. The protocols encourage folks to come to the class prepared, they make decisions in their small groups, then are brought back together for a spontaneous reveal of their answers. Finally, the instructor facilitates a discussion among the groups, bringing in additional ideas, and making connections between ideas. In TBL the real teamwork, the real learning, happens altogether in class, in that final discussion.”  And, as both Robin and Kerry noted, the Institute itself allowed them to both learn TBL while experiencing TBL.

Monique finished our discussion of the TBL model by saying “from an applied learning point of view, TBL drives home those key 21st century learning and employability skills: problem solving, critical thinking, communication, teamwork – those core competencies that students need for school and for work.”

I asked when and where does TBL work best in terms of courses, programs, and where students are at in their studies.  Derek shared that the TBL literature suggests content-heavy disciplines are well-suited, “but also disciplines that require a lot of application and decision making, for example, Nursing and Business.  The one area where, according to Jim Sibley and the folks at VIU, there does not seem to be a lot of uptake, is in writing intensive disciplines where so much of the work you do is internal. But I’m in a writing intensive discipline and I think TBL helps my students – I think it could be used by anyone in any discipline.”

Some of you might be thinking that revising your entire course to TBL sounds like a lot of work – I was, and I wondered if faculty could integrate pieces of it rather than committing to a complete revision.  Monique said that at her Institute, this was a topic of discussion “and the advice they gave was that the 4S activities are just really good active learning activities. So, you could generate some good 4S activities and run those in your class. And then if you’re confident, if you’re enjoying it, and it seems to be working, you could work through your Scheduled Development period to start revising your whole course.”

Robin also spoke to the potential benefits of bringing TBL elements into CETL workshops. “If I’m designing a workshop and have participants do a 4S activity as part of this workshop, all those faculty are being introduced to a tool they can use that is not related to the workshop topic at all. This might be a nice way to seed TBL through the college.”

Derek also believes the 4S activities can, in addition to improving student engagement, support stronger assessment practices in light of Generative Artificial Intelligence concerns. But the question then becomes how to support faculty to learn more about the 4S activities. “They support meaningful discussions around a real problem where students have to make a decision and bring all of their knowledge to bear, but we’d have to discuss how to pitch it because a workshop called “4S Activities” isn’t going to go anywhere.”

Robin jumped in with some ideas for “selling” such a workshop.  “We need to ask what the problem is that would draw faculty, and that’s probably:  Do you struggle with getting your students to come prepared to class? Do you want to find ways to engage students and support them to work together? I think those questions would bring instructors in.”

Derek also mentioned constant feedback as another selling feature of TBL.  “The 4S application activities generally start with an individual reflection about the problem, with students writing down their answers and rationale behind them. They then get into groups where they share their answers and rationale and build consensus. Through their group discussions, they are constantly receiving feedback on thinking skills, evidence-making skills, etc.   Then when they come to a consensus as a group and present their interpretation to and discuss it with the rest of the class (with the instructor facilitating), they get feedback again because not every group will have chosen the same answer. And finally, as a group, they give each other feedback and encouragement around how they are working together.  It’s that constant feedback amongst the learners in the group rather than it being back and forth with the instructor, that is key.” In this context, when the instructor goes to mark the more traditional assignments in the course, they have already seen the students in action – as Derek noted, you’ve seen their critical thinking skills in the classroom and can build from there, rather than feeling like you’re starting from scratch with each student on each assessment.

As we began to wind down our discussion, I wanted to know what was next in terms of TBL. Robin started us off. “My plan is to bring it to my professional practice course where there’s lots of application to field experience. It’s a first-year course, and because students don’t have field experience yet, they find some of the content hard to connect with meaning. TBL will be a great tool to support discussions around ethics and interprofessional practice, and I’m excited to give it a try.” And with Robin’s CETL hat on, he says that “the other piece is figuring out how to bring this to faculty in a way that is not too overwhelming – so you are not having to redesign course, but rather pulling in tools to support students digging into specific topics.”

Kerry is particularly excited because, while she was thought one of the biggest barriers to implementing TBL would be the team-teaching model in Nursing, her Program Lead is now encouraging her to go ahead with it as an individual instructor.  “I went to the Institute thinking about a medical surgical course that I taught in the winter term. It is a very content heavy course where engagement has gone way down, so I’m going to try to TBL-ify that course for the winter term. I’m excited about it.  As I said earlier, I think TBL could transform how we teach nurses, and I’m going to connect with Nursing programs at other institutions who have implemented TBL to learn from their experiences.”

As for Derek and Monique, they have plans to continue building on the institutional collaboration with UVic and RRU as well as to check-in with the Camosun participants from the spring Institute.  “Part of that check-in is encouraging people to continue, and part of it is ensuring that when faculty go to implement the model, they’re not setting themselves up for failure.  We also want to remind them that if they are not quite ready for a full implementation, they can focus on the 4S activities and bring the rest in later.” And of course, they will also be planning for next year’s Institute.

Monique will also be joining a faculty member’s TBL class in the fall so she can see it in action at Camosun, and “possibly do some co-teaching in winter term with a business faculty member if the right courses get assigned,” while Derek himself is playing around with the idea of making his January online synchronous course TBL. “I’m wondering if I want to make that leap because I’ve taught it online without TBL and it’s gone well, and I’ve taught it in person with TBL and it’s gone amazing.”  I guess I will be checking in with Derek next year to find out how it went!

 

Camosun Story #67: Andrea

Andrea has been a faculty member in the Pipe Trades and Women in Trades since 2018, and was one of the recipients of a Camosun College Teacher Recognition Award this past spring.

I was so interested in Andrea’s journey.  She originally completed training in the Culinary arts at Malaspina (now Vancouver Island University), but as time went by, she found she wanted something else.  I asked Andrea why plumbing? “I was looking for a change to a career with better hours and better pay. Honestly, culinary was great and I love cooking – it’s still something that I do all the time, but I needed a change.  I looked through the Camosun calendar at what was available in the trades because I like to work with my hands and thought, hey, plumbing sounds interesting. I’m going to give that a go. I put my name on the waiting list and got a last-minute seat, so I quit my job and moved to Victoria.”

Andrea apprenticed in Nanaimo and moved back to Victoria in 2013. “Then in 2018, there was a posting for a position that straddled being the women in trades homeroom instructor and a pipe trades instructor here at the college. I applied and got the position – obviously, I fit the bill to be a Women in Trades instructor.  It was a great opportunity and learning experience.”

When I asked Andrea what courses she teaches, she called herself the Swiss army knife of her department.  “I teach the plumbing week for Women in Trades, and I’ve taught the plumbing week for our youth sampler that ran for a while. I’ve also taught the plumbing week for Indigenous people in trades. Sometimes I’m the homeroom instructor for Women in Trades, although I haven’t done that in awhile.  And in the Pipe Trades department, I’ve taught everything from our Foundation training levels one through four, Plumbing and levels one and two, Gas Fitting, as well as Cross Connection Control.”

Andrea did talk a bit about her experience supporting Women in Trades. “I didn’t realize just how important and meaningful it was for female students coming into the program to have a female instructor until I was teaching in my first foundations class, where I had a group of 12: six females and six males. One of the students told me how nervous she was coming into the program as a woman, and what a relief it was to show up on the first day and have a female instructor – seeing herself reflected in somebody who’s been a plumber for a long time and now in a teaching role helped her believe that she could do it too.”

Andrea told me that what she enjoys most about teaching is getting to know her students.  “Getting to know their backgrounds, what they’re doing out in the field – I feel like I learn as much from them as they do from me because our industry is always changing.”  Andrea also loves watching their journeys.  “A student from the Women in Trades sampler went into Pipe Trade foundations, was then hired as a plumber in the field, and this past fall, obtained her red seal as a plumber. Seeing those students who come in green, find their passion, become more self confident, and then take on leadership roles is very rewarding to me.”  And coming full circle, “that same woman who got her red seal moved to Australia to do plumbing with her husband and donated two bags of tools to the Women in the Pipe Trade Foundation program as starter kits.”

And Andrea’s students span the gamut. “I’ve taught high-school students in the South Island Partnership Program, and I’ve had students that are 50 years old seeking a new career. While typically women who enter the program are choosing trades a second career, we’re seeing more and more young women enter the program which is really amazing. Then in the gas fitting programs that I’ve taught, students come from all over the province because we are the only institution offering level two gas training. So, I see a very diverse pool of students in my courses.”

I was curious about the dynamics of Andrea’s classroom with such diversity.  “I like to build a sense of community in my classes. We start off on day one talking about how we’re going to respectfully communicate and engage with each other, and then have conversations that draw upon experiences of students, because I think discussing things they’ve done and how those things relate to the topics we are working with enhances their learning. Sometimes the dynamics can be challenging with a broad spectrum of ages, but I find that the older students typically take on a mentorship role with the younger students – a kind of peer-teaching component which is important in my opinion.”

Like all faculty who have been teaching at Camosun since before 2020, Andrea saw her share of challenges when courses moved online teaching during the pandemic.  “I had a week of instruction time in the classroom right before the college shut down. There was a lot of uncertainty, stress, and anxiety, especially for the level four plumber students who were supposed to write their Red Seal certification exam. We didn’t know if the certification exam was going to happen, or even if the class would continue.” What became important to Andrea was having open conversations with students about how things were going for them. “Every morning when we went online for class, we’d spend about 30 minutes sharing stories of weird things we saw at the grocery store, or talking about what challenges they were facing, trying to take the anxiety out of the room a little bit. Like me, a lot of students had kids at home, so we were facing the same struggles which humanized the situation for us all.”

But also, like other faculty, Andrea found some good things that came out of that experience.  “I found that recording lessons was very beneficial to students because they could watch them over and over again.  I also kept online study space open for students after class to work together and bounce ideas off each other.” Something else Andrea found effective was bringing in guest speakers.  “With the Women and Trades program, we often bring in people from industry to speak about their experience. During the pandemic, we were able to bring in people from across Canada, including a crane operator and the first female site superintendent and Kamloops, to talk about their experiences. And we are continuing to bring in experts from outside using Zoom. The ability to connect students to people they would normally not have had the opportunity to connect with was a positive outcome.”

Some other cool COVID creations Andrea is still using include “instructional videos for the Women in Trades program about how to fix a toilet or how to clear hair out of the drain of your sink, and a project I developed for our students where they had to interview a trades person virtually. We pair students with people in the community who volunteer to be interviewed. Students record the interviews and share them so we can post them in the course and discuss them. This project creates connections between our students and people in the community who could become mentors or potential employers.”

Andrea’s students are inspirational.  “We had a female student from my very first foundations class, obtain her red seal this year and receive a Camosun award as well. She’d had so many barriers in front of her during her apprenticeship, as a single mom working hard to make a better life for her and her son, so to see her succeed was very cool for me. We also often take our students to Hero Work, a charity that renovates other charities in Greater Victoria, where they donate their labor and their skills to complete renovations. We also took the Women in Trades class to the Salvation Army soup kitchen for their renovation last fall. Seeing the students engaged in giving back to the community and using the skills they’ve learned in the program is amazing, and it also gives them the opportunity to walk by and say, hey, look – I built that!”

But Andrea herself is inspirational as well.  “I hear from students how important it is to see me here as a faculty member, whether it’s female students or queer students – I think it makes them feel more at ease. I try to provide that a little bit of connection by making sure everyone feels included and giving them a safe space within our department to connect with somebody. I believe if you feel included in the community and your learning environment, you’re going to be much more successful overall. And knowing that you have a touch point is important – it certainly was for me when I went through school. And I want to pay it forward and do the same thing for our students now.”

My final question to Andrea was what advice she might have for a new instructor starting in her area. “I feel fortunate to have an extraordinarily supportive department and I asked a lot of questions when I started. So don’t be afraid to ask questions, and don’t be afraid to lean on other faculty for help if you’re unsure about things. The biggest superpower of our department is that we are very collaborative – we all lean on one another, get along well, and work well as a team. When you have the opportunity to work within a team where everyone supports one another, it makes for a much better environment, for both faculty and students. Make sure to take advantage of the opportunities we have for learning at the college – you never know what little tidbits you’re going to learn that will support your teaching practice. And finally, poll your students to see how things are going.  Then embrace that feedback, not as criticism, but as a way that you can improve your own practice.”