Category: Uncategorised

Open Education Story: Puja

Puja has, until recently when she moved into the Acting Associate Dean role in the School of Access, taught Math in both the Community Learning Partnership and the Academic Career Foundations programs. She is passionate about providing her students with access to free resources, especially since her programs are tuition free, and has adapted a combination of existing Open Textbooks for her courses. I was got to know Puja through the Open Ed Sustainability project where she worked to create an extensive math test bank in the MyOpenMath platform. Puja is also very generous with her time and her open resources, sharing them with colleagues across the college.

Puja, currently Acting Associate Dean of Access at Camosun College, has been here since 2008, starting as an instructional assistant in the math and upgrading help centres, then becoming an instructor in both the Community Learning Partnerships (CLP) and Academic Career Foundations (ACF) departments teaching upgrading mathematics and computer studies, as well as conducting math placement assessments for both CLP and ACF. But I know Puja best as a passionate champion of Open Education, working to provide her students, most of whom are in tuition-free programs, with free course materials. I interviewed her back in 2021 as part of a series of stories on the Open Sustainability project at Camosun, and last March she received a Camosun Open Education Recognition award, but I wanted to revisit her open work today.

Puja explained: “For a long time, I guided students to free online resources to support their learning because I didn’t want my students to pay to learn the basic things we were teaching. And in the fundamental Math upgrading courses, we used open textbooks. At the time, the texts we used had a few errors, but we were able to collaborate to improve them, and each term the materials got better. But while students in the fundamental courses didn’t have to pay for textbooks, once they moved up into higher levels, they were paying between $150 and $250 for a text. “It was ridiculous. Yes, some students could access Adult Upgrading Grant (AUG) funding and there were copies available for loan in our help centers, but not every student could take advantage of these options. I negotiated a lower price with the publisher of our textbook, but it was still not enough. We needed to find a way every student could access course resources for free. So, I talked with Sybil Harrison, then director of Learning Services, and she suggested looking at some open textbooks. At that time the idea was magical.” Puja spent a lot of time searching for the right open textbook. Some of the ones she found were American, lacking the Canadian context. Then in 2018, BCcampus awarded Camosun grant funding for open education, and Puja received some of that funding.

“I was doing a bit of this work off the side of my desk, but it’s hard when you’re working full-time. The grant meant I could finally focus on re-starting my hunt for an open textbook. The first one I found I quickly realized would not work for my students, but then I found another through our articulation group. This one had been authored by a colleague at another BC institution who knew the learning outcomes for our courses.” Puja filled in some gaps, made some corrections, and voila! She had an open textbook for her courses.

But since Puja taught online, she also wanted a platform where she could send my students to complete homework. That was when she discovered MyOpenMath, open platform where faculty can create and share math problems and students can complete them. “I was so pleased to find MyOpenMath. I had to learn a whole new coding language to use it, but it was worth it, and I’ve coded over 500 questions based on the open textbook I found. I can now also generate images – so if I give MyOpenMath the parameters, it randomly generates graphs and figures for the problems.”

One of the drivers behind Puja wanting to provide zero cost course resources for students in CLP is that CLP is a tuition-free program. “Students would ask, ‘Why should I pay for a textbook when the program is tuition free? It sounds like false advertising.’ In addition, I have worked in community with groups like the Bridges for Women’s Society and the Saanich Adult Education Centre (now W̱SÁNEĆ College) with students who don’t have access to additional funds for education – and for any student who wants to learn, textbook cost should never be a barrier to education.” The BCcampus grant helped Puja move towards her ultimate goal of having all the courses providing zero cost resources. “If I can make it work for one course, then we can do the others.”

I asked Puja what students say when they hear they don’t have to pay for textbooks. “Newer students don’t realize how amazing it is to not have to buy course materials – it’s normal for them. But my past students who struggled with those costs say that it’s a step in the right direction.” And when those students move on to other programs, they have some things to say about having to buy textbooks, which hopefully will encourage more instructors to move their courses to zero textbook cost.

I asked Puja how we can do better at Camosun to support faculty trying to engage in Open Education and move to zero cost course resources. “It has to come from the faculty members. There are many passionate faculty at the college doing quite a bit of work, and many others know about open textbooks and zero cost resources. They also know who to contact for support. So, the main thing is that faculty should be encouraged to take the risk. Use your Scheduled Development time if you’re a CCFA member – that’s perfect time to explore open textbooks. And often while you’re exploring, you’ll find something that you can use to supplement your courses.” In addition, Puja recommends the college find a way to provide course release for faculty members wanting to do this work because “everyone is so busy with their teaching responsibilities, and some faculty members may need additional support with the technical side of working with open resources.”

Finally, Puja says we need to listen to students. “When we hear directly from students about how they saved $200 on a textbook, and what they were able to do with that money, those are helpful conversations.” And she recommends we share those stories on our websites. “When faculty and others see real impact, they automatically want to do better for students.” And speaking of sharing, Puja says we also need faculty who are willing to share the work they have done. “If instructors see examples of high-quality open resources, and know that there is support available, they will come on board.”

One outcome of moving to open resources is the opportunity have students contribute to course resources in new and exciting ways. Puja said, “I’ve gathered about eight or ten questions developed by my students based on the topics they’re learning in class. I can put those questions in my textbook and give credit to the students who wrote them, so they see themselves in the textbooks. The parameters are that the questions need to be solvable, and that the students know the right answers.”

I wondered if, in her capacity as acting dean, Puja could share some ideas around how we can encourage college leadership to get more involved in open education initiative and support. “What we need to do is provide opportunities for collaboration, to encourage faculty and anyone who wants to learn about Open Education and give space for the work. If we can’t fund faculty ourselves, we should provide information about organizations that fund Open Ed work, so faculty can apply for grants or funds for developing OERs. We can also continue to recognize people engaging in Open Education work to encourage others to join in.” One other idea Puja had was for us to create space and workshops where faculty wanting to create and adapt open resources can come to work together. Of course, time is an eternal challenge for many faculty members, and while “continuing [CCFA] faculty have scheduled development time, we need to find ways to support term faculty to do this work as well.”

Puja also noted one other challenge that has come up in many conversations: the question of how students know if a course is zero textbook cost (ZTC). Currently there is no place to find this information at a glance, although Camosun is working on a course syllabus repository which would help, if ZTC information is included, and if the current version of the course uses the same materials. “We should provide clear information that a course is zero textbook cost. Then we could more easily track how many students register in that course because it is ZTC.”

But Puja also points out that simply having access to free course resources is not enough. “Students need access to a stable Internet connection, as well as a safe and quiet place to do their course work. And since they will incur printing costs if they prefer to have a hard copy of the resources, if we just provide the online textbook, we need to know if students have access to a free printer. There are so many layers to it.” But all we can do is keep moving forward in whatever way we can to reduce costs for students wherever possible.

Camosun Story #87: Cyrus

“We are delighted to nominate our instructor, Cyrus. What sets him apart is his innovative and engaging teaching approach. He organizes classes meticulously, ensuring that complex concepts are not only comprehensible but also applicable in real-life scenarios, bridging the gap between classroom and industry. His invitation to participate in post-class activities further demonstrates his dedication through hands-on experiences.”

Cyrus has taught in the Accounting and Finance department at Camosun since 2019, and is currently teaching Finance 110, 210, and 220. Cyrus was a recipient of a Teacher Recognition award this past spring, so I wanted to sit down with him and find out more about his passion for teaching.

After growing up in Victoria, Cyrus worked overseas for an investment bank, mostly in Hong Kong. “I loved it. It was stressful and fast-paced, but it was great. However, from my own experience I realized that while grades were important, once your foot is in the door, many other factors determine job success, and I wanted to share that insight with others.” So, Cyrus moved back to Victoria with his sights on Camosun. “I love what Camosun does for the community and that it gives students from all backgrounds the opportunity to learn. And I also appreciate the practical hands-on work experience that happens here because it aligns with my own vision and goals. So, I contacted the college, started as a term instructor, and then became a continuing instructor last year.”

After making such a big switch in careers, I wondered what it was about teaching that keeps Cyrus here. “The first half of my life was corporate and career-focused, and I didn’t have anything more I wanted to do there. But teaching was where I could give back, and with my investment banking background, I could bring a unique voice for students to hear from. And of course, it gives me some family/life balance as well.” In terms of the teaching itself, Cyrus says “my biggest enjoyment is working with the students who think they are horrible at math or who think that finance is boring. A lot of students take finance because it’s a requirement, and they don’t understand that whether they want to be a painter or an accountant, having a vision of one’s finances early in life is important for everyone. So, we explore why they should care about interest rates; why they should care about the yield curve; and what that tells them about future job prospects.” And Cyrus makes the finance course exciting, not just for students who are looking at finance as a career, but for everyone; and he loves having “the opportunity to build that interest early in their academic lives and careers.”

As always, I was curious about the impact of the COVID years on Cyrus’s teaching. “The biggest change I noticed was that the students have become a lot more interested in being in class, so I’ve tried to make sure that classroom time is used in the best way possible.” But what Cyrus also has realized is how he can use technology more to support his students. “I can create videos and have those videos available for students even if they are not taking an online class. At first, I wondered if I made the videos accessible for students, would they come to class? But I realize now that sometimes students have challenges getting to class, so I’ve changed my point of view and make everything as available as possible to students. If it’s hard for them to come to class, I prefer they have the option to watch a video instead of missing everything.” Cyrus does make clear to students, however, that not everything discussed in class will be available in the videos because class time is an opportunity for Cyrus to discuss real-life job experiences with them.

Since COVID, Cyrus has also been exploring alternative assessments. “You can’t customize everything, but offering a variety of assessments is another way to support students, for example by reducing reliance on exams. In a math course, I still have tests, but one assignment I’ve developed that I’ll continue to tweak is that I give students an article about a current topic in the markets, ask them to summarize the article in bullet points, making make it as concise as possible, then ask them to tell me, verbally, why the article is important.” Cyrus explains to students that this is what happens in the real world: their boss will hand them an article and ask them to summarize it because he or she does not have time to read the article or have it explained to them verbatim. “Their job in this assignment is to learn how to write concisely so the main points jump out in the five to ten seconds bosses will give you. And when explaining verbally, it’s the same thing: you have 30 seconds to hold their interest because in the work world, if you don’t hold your boss’s attention, you’re going to be passed over.”

I asked Cyrus if he had any memories from his teaching over the years that stood out to him. “When I bring in real-life examples. For example, we talk a lot about housing because it is front and center in students’ minds, and students seem to appreciate that. I also bring in books and tell students I will reduce the weightings on exams if they decide to read one of the books. I’ve have been surprised to see that 90% of the students opt in to read a book, but they loved it, so I want to incorporate more of that.” Cyrus also has a lot of international students in his classes, which brings in diverse perspectives on markets from around the world. “For example, I ask them what the inflation rate is in Ecuador, or what is the financial situation in their countries, so all the students in class learn what’s happening in different parts of the world. One of my goals, having been myself raised here on the island, kind of isolated from the rest of the world, is to expand students’ views as they meet people from different parts of the world.”

As we came to the end of our time together, I asked Cyrus what kind of advice he might have for new faculty coming to teach at Camosun. “Have empathy. We need to keep reminding ourselves that the difficulties our students face to be in our classrooms are considerable. So whatever job we can do to make it easier for them, we should do that. We also need to understand that every student learns differently. You can’t customize everything for every student but offering a variety of assessments or providing content in different formats, like videos, will help. Remember that just because students have different learning abilities, doesn’t mean that some of them aren’t cut out for school. Maybe it just means we are not giving them the right assessments to show their learning.”

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 #70: Melissa

Melissa is a faculty member who teaches both in the Computer Science and Communications departments at Camosun.  I was very interested in talking to Melissa about her foray into ungrading, and she had a fantastic story to share. If you want to learn more about ungrading, see Becoming Unravelled: a reflection from Robin Fast, Educational Developer, CETL.

Melissa is an art school graduate who has her certificate in Applied Design from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, as well as a certificate in Industrial Design from Emily Carr (as well as many other credentials).  Her work background is in product design (she designed shoes!) but over time, she sought a career shift into teaching, and in 2014, an opportunity came up at Camosun in the Communications Department and she jumped on board.

In 2015, Melissa embraced the opportunity to complete her Master’s degree in postsecondary curriculum and instruction from Simon Fraser University (SFU), and after its completion, began teaching at the University of Victoria (UVic) in Art Education in addition to teaching at Camosun. During COVID, Melissa experienced a reduced teaching load at Camosun. “I taught Digital Media 125 and 126 until the program was paused.” At UVic, her course load expanded to include Digital Art, Visual Design for Marketing, Advocacy and Persuasion and Design Thinking, which she found “was very much in alignment of everything I do.”

While teaching Design Thinking at UVic, Melissa really began to face challenges when grading a creative course.   “Students would ask why I didn’t like their work or why they didn’t get an A, and I explained it was nothing to do with me not liking the work. We were looking at foundational skills, how we develop creativity, and how to marry it with the right technologies to get an outcome that addresses our client needs. There’s always been friction between the creative work and having to fit it in a rubric because creativity cannot be contained in a box. But students have to get a grade, so how can we find a way to understand how grading is going to happen?”

Then, fast forward to last year when Melissa applied to teach a Computer Science course in Design Thinking at Camosun. “Not in Art Education, but for computer science students, but still very much like my UVic course – trying to fit something organic and process-based into the confines of 13 weeks with a grade at the end.” Melissa already knew that there was going to be a friction with grades, but as she began to puzzle through how to address this, some of her colleagues told her about Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and what to do instead) by Susan Blum. “Then after I read Robin Fast’s piece on ungrading I read the book. I couldn’t put it down – they were speaking my language.” Melissa also reflected on one of her SFU courses which was ungraded.  “Experiencing that course was absolute freedom and marked a shift where I understood that the work I was doing in education was actually a creative pursuit. And discovering that alignment shifted my whole perspective on education.”  Now Melissa began to see a way through her grading conundrum. “I spent my Scheduled Development putting together the design thinking class and setting it up as an ungraded course.”

Taking her guidance from all her reading, Melissa opted for what is known as a Zero, One, Two ungrading system.  “Zero means the student work does not meet any of the outcomes, work given a One meets most outcomes, and Two meets all outcomes. But every assignment also has a reflection and feedback component.” Melissa wrote out her reasoning for her students to help them understand what she was doing and to address questions they might have, telling them she was considering where they would land after college because “in industry, you’re not going to be graded for anything.”  But it was also about process design. “Thinking is about process, and you need to be wildly creative and stand behind your ideas. You have to fail and fail often to be successful, so grading a failure doesn’t work.” And after talking this through with her students, they were onboard and ready to try it.

Students also had the opportunity to engage in peer review and feedback, and needed to recognize the value of that feedback so it wasn’t just “good job.” “I sat down with each student twice during the term (once at mid-term and once at the end) as part of their self-assessment. I explained that I had to give a grade and wanted to know where they saw themselves. I was surprised that most of my students graded themselves with the same grade I would have given them.”

During those meetings, Melissa heard a lot about the student experience she would not have heard any other way. Some of the things students said:

  • Students noted how ungrading shifted how they applied skills in other classes.
  • Students learned not to overestimate their skill sets (recognizing they still have questions to ask and things to learn.)
  • If students put less time into the course because of competing priorities, they graded themselves lower as a reflection of that.
  • Students took ownership of their work, defending their work and did not ask Melissa what she wanted to see. They defended their work because they knew that that was encouraged.
  • Students felt that they were free to do things over and over again, which is what you do in design and in industry. It’s never a one and done – rarely do you finalize an outcome the first time around.

In addition to students seeing the value of ungrading, Melissa also found relief from the stress of grading work.  “There was a freedom that I didn’t have to assign a letter grade to something, that I could leave it at a Zero, One, and Two. And since I always write feedback, it wasn’t like I had an extra load – it was just different.”  Melissa discovered that we can do assessments differently. “At the end of the day, it’s not my experience, it’s their experience that is important. I was not the teacher, but worked shoulder to shoulder with my students, and they leaned on everybody for feedback, just like it happens out in industry.”

After so many positive outcomes, Melissa is ready to ungrade again.  “Next, I’ll be teaching a user interface [and user experience] course in computer science, with the same students I’ve already taught. This course also relies on empathy, where we’re thinking about other people and their experiences, and if we can ask reflective questions of ourselves, we can ask better questions of our users.”  As for revising the courses she has already ungraded, she said “I would still have the two meetings with students mid-term and at the end. I don’t know how I could fit in more, but I found those meetings to be important to giving students space to talk about what they need.”  But Melissa wants to explore how D2L can support more flexibility in how it presents grades and feedback to students to reduce confusion and keep things aligned with her ungrading.

Melissa also asked her Computer Concepts course students how they might envision that course as being ungraded.  “I asked them what they would like to see and how we could make a course that isn’t particularly creative more engaging. Having the students chime in on that, even though they won’t be able to experience it, was valuable and if I teach that course again I will spend time reworking it into an ungrading format.”

I was curious if Melissa has talked with colleagues about her ungrading, and she noted that she and her fellow computer science instructors have had some very fruitful conversations about pedagogy. “We need to talk about different ways of doing things and the challenges we face trying new things. And because we are teaching the same students it was interesting to compare experiences and connect them back to pedagogy.

Melissa wrapped up our conversation by saying “ungrading had been rolling around in my head for a while, but I wasn’t ready to try it.  But this year after talking to colleagues and reading Robin’s post, I finally felt safe and confident to give it a shot. Because it’s been so positive, I am willing to try again and do even better next time.  And to my Camosun colleagues, those I’ve met and those I haven’t met, if you’re thinking about trying something new like ungrading, just give it a try!”

Open Education at CamFest: A Reflection

This term, for the first time ever, I hosted an Open Textbook table at our annual beginning-of-the-school-year student welcome celebration (during the first week of classes) called CamFest.

I was at Interurban campus on the Wednesday and Lansdowne on the Thursday and really enjoyed interacting with students around the potential for Open Textbooks and Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) courses and programs to save them money.  While some students told me about courses they have taken that do not require costly resources, most lamented the exorbitant cost of their textbooks – one student in Nursing commenting that she paid $900 this term for her texts. And some of their stories were heart-breaking and irritation-provoking, if I am honest.  Why do our students, in this day and age, have to decide between buying textbooks and paying rent?  Why do they have to weigh the cost of books against passing their classes?

And then there are the online assessment tools attached to digital textbooks (or sometimes not) that many students are required to buy.  Several students, one close to tears, asked me why they have to pay to do their course assessments (feels a bit like double-dipping to me…what does tuition cover again?)

I know many of you reading get it, but we need to keep spreading the word across our institutions about Open Textbooks/Open Education and working towards better supporting faculty to move to ZTC (and zero online assessment costs) courses and programs.

If I think about my own institution, Camosun College, Open Textbooks and ZTC address every one of our new Strategic Plan goals.  Want to know how?

  • Strengthen the Camosun Advantage, Goal 2 (Deliver outstanding flexible learning opportunities to support students’ evolving educational expectations.)  Note: one identified success metric for this goal is measuring the percentage of courses using open textbooks for teaching.
  • Doing Good Work Together, Goal 2 (Ensure financial sustainability for continued investment in student success.)  Some of the folks working on Open Ed include: VP Student Experience, Librarians, Other folks in the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, Faculty who have been doing this work and are invested in it, Student Society, and there are many more to be added to this list!!
  • Responding to Community Needs, Goal 3 (Break down systemic barriers to improve access to post-secondary education.)  Open Ed opens doors for more students!
  • Honouring Indigenous Resurgence, Goal 4 (Infuse Indigenous values into practices and spaces at the college.)  Note, within the framework of Open Education we find Traditional Knowledge Licenses which provide licensing that honours Indigenous and cultural knowledge which traditional copyright laws do not.  We have an Ed Developer with a specialization in Indigenization as well as a librarian working on Indigenous knowledge citations, etc.
  • Rising to the Challenge of Climate Change, Goal 2 (Support existing programs and increase climate education across the college.)  Note, there are many open education and open science resources on climate change and other important global concerns.
  • Advancing Social Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Goal 3 (Celebrate and uphold the diversity of students and employees as a strength within Camosun’s community.)  Open Ed aligns with the work of the Centre for Accessible Learning as well as with colleagues who work closely with UDL to ensure OpenEd resources are created with accessibility in mind. We have an Accessibility Committee now at the college, as well as one in Learning Services.

So, given these alignments with the principles and goals we hold dear at Camosun, can we do better for our students?  I am hopeful that we can!

But now let me give voice to our students at both campuses who told me what they could do if they didn’t have to buy textbooks:

   

Camosun Faculty Story #5: Susan

Susan is a Statistics instructor at Camosun – you can imagine perhaps some of the challenges she faced moving her class online, especially during the panic of last March.  But Susan was prepared.  The week before the College moved online, Susan came to eLearning and got set up with Collaborate so she could try out virtual live teaching using her tablet PC (which is a huge necessity for any course where you have to write formulas and draw graphs.)  So, the following week when we all moved online, she was ready to go and able to support her students using Collaborate + tablet to finish off her term.

After that mad rush, Susan had some time to consider how she was going to teach in the fall.  To help her figure this out, she first surveyed her students from the winter term to ask them what they would like – “about three quarter to 80% said they wanted synchronous classes, and the rest of them said partial-synchronous. Not a single person wanted to have asynchronous classes.”  Then Susan attended many of the eLearning workshops offered in May and June to find out what the eLearning folks recommended.  But, the surveys and what she was hearing in the workshops didn’t always mesh and Susan was confused.  So, while she initially had decided to run fully synchronous online lectures for fall, Susan changed her mind in the middle of summer and decided to create lectures videos and so she did.

Of course, every instructor and student is different in how they prefer to teach or learn, and over the fall term, Susan found her way.  She ran fully synchronous classes for the semester although pre-recorded lectures are already available to the students in D2L. This is because during the first month in the fall, she “interviewed all my students one by one – everybody got 10 minutes with me. It [seemed] crazy [in that] first month to finish interviewing them, but it made such a difference for many of them.” She asked them what kind of support they needed, and also what mode of delivery, live or video, did they prefer, and once again most students said they wanted the live sessions.  Why?  Susan says partly because “they want to hear what other students have to say. So many of them are there to hear what questions other people [have] and they don’t want to miss out on anything.”  This term, Susan does both:  she has her live sessions and posts the recordings of those sessions after by week.  But this term, she has also discovered that different student groups prefer different modes of learning.  Her first years, mostly social science students, still prefer the live sessions, but her second years (engineering students) wanted to meet synchronously once a week only, preferring the option of watching videos on their own time.

Susan found online exams to be a particular challenge for her.  Last March, while finishing off her winter courses, she unfortunately discovered her exams ended up on a cheating site, Chegg.com.  So, she decided that instead of worrying about cheating, or finding her exams on Chegg, she invested a great deal of time over the summer creating quizzes in D2L using randomized questions from her question banks, and working with the Quizzes tool to mitigate potential issues as much as she could.  The time investment she feels was worth it, “I would rather do a lot of work than get upset by cheating incidents.”

Susan spent a lot of time working on ways to connect her students, and to help them build community, but she finds the lack of face to face connection difficult.  She allocated participation marks for students to use the Discussion tool in D2L to post an introduction to their class and to read and comment on classmates’ introductions, and asked students to post a Profile picture in Collaborate to make their virtual classrooms more inviting. “I did a lot of things to make the students feel included, to feel supported by peers, to make connections
And when I didn’t have enough time to do one-on-one interviews, I did group interviews. So they sign up and they hear what other people are saying
so they feel that they are not alone” For Susan, supporting her students is a most important job she has as an instructor: “As an educator, I want my students to feel that it’s ok to make mistakes because that’s how they learn, but they have to feel safe [first]. I feel it’s my job to make them feel safe to feel uncomfortable while studying a difficult subject.”

Susan had a lot of advice for faculty getting ready to teach online for the first time, from preparing how your class is divided between live sessions and videos/asynchronous, to how to think about exams, to how important it is to be present for your students (using the News tool, for example), but what struck me particularly were her comments about time management.  “We cannot assume all students understand time management,” so be clear about what they should be doing every week. “I use the calendar in D2L, on top of a pacing schedule, so it pops up reminders for them, for example, your lab will be due in two days
.However, do not send them too many emails – they get too many and
will be overwhelmed.”  And most of all “be accessible but have boundaries.”

Susan also noted the importance of having support and the right equipment to reduce the stress of teaching online. “One major reason that my online teaching transition went smoothly was because I have the tablet PC that my department chair obtained for us through a pilot project just before the pandemic. Another major reason is that I received sufficient supported from eLearning throughout last year; I asked many how-to questions and in turn I got as many quick and helpful responses. I also think being in a network or a community, as well as getting timely feedback from students around what is working and what’s not is important to online teaching and learning success.”

When I asked how Susan feels now about online teaching, she says she is tired, but that doesn’t mean she won’t continue to use some of the things she built into her courses moving forward. She even would like to teach another online course again!  That being said, Susan is looking forward to seeing her students face to face as well.  So, maybe this is an opportunity to explore the best of both worlds J

 

via GIPHY

eLearning workshops for Spring Schedule Development

Are you a faculty at Camosun College planning for your Scheduled Development for Spring?  Here is a list of  eLearning online learning opportunities coming in May/June 2021.

Note that we have not yet finalized a schedule, and more workshops may be added, but this will give you an idea of what you could plan for during your SD.  For planning purposes, faculty can assume that most of these eLearning workshops will be 1 to 1.5 hours, with the exception of the 5 week and 2 week  FLO courses.

Questions?  Email Emily Schudel at schudele@camosun.ca.

Beginner

Intermediate

Advanced

D2L
Getting Started with D2L Setting Up Your Gradebook Working with Master Courses
Content Management in D2L Quizzes in D2L Advanced Quizzing
Managing Assignments Using Rubrics to Streamline Your Assessment Process
Creating Discussions Designing for Engagement: Moving Beyond Text and Images (HTML Templates)
Spring Cleaning

Accessibility
Text-to-Speech Support for Students: An Orientation to the ReadSpeaker tools in Your D2L Course Introduction to the ALLY tool in D2L: Designing for Accessibility &  Inclusion Using the Accessibility Reports in D2L: What should I do first? (And how do I do it?!)
Take the First Steps in Creating Accessible Content for your Online Classroom

Collaborate
Introduction to BBCU

 

 Increasing Your Proficiency in BBCU Engaging with Students and Using Breakout Rooms in Collaborate
Supported Practice Sessions

Kaltura
Enhancing Your Courses with Video (Kaltura Intro) Going Deeper with Videos and Kaltura Creating Great Kaltura Capture Videos

Open Education/OER
Intro to Open Education and Open Educational Resources (OER) H5P Workshop
Intro to Creative Commons Integrating Creative Commons Material into your Course(s)

Pedagogy
Online Assessments FLO Synchronous (2 weeks) Ethical Dimensions of Educational Technology
FLO Asynchronous (5 weeks)
Flipping the Classroom (blended – asynchronous for  week culminating in a synchronous workshop)

 

Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning Bulletin for January 2021

Happy New Year, and welcome to 2021!

In this bulletin from the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning please find articles, links, and learning opportunities that may be of interest to you. For general information please contact CETL . For information specifically about online teaching, contact eLearning.

Note that registration is restricted to Camosun College employees.
 “Teaching occurs only when learning takes place.”
― from What the best college teachers do by Ken Bain

 eLearning workshops (Registration required)

Welcome to the eLearning Team’s offerings to support the start-up of winter term, providing training related to Camosun’s core educational technologies. Get descriptions and register here.

Workshop dates Times Topics
Monday, January 4 1:00pm- 2:00pm D2L Overview
Tuesday, January 5 10:00am-11:00am Introduction to Blackboard Collaborate Ultra
Tuesday, January 5 1:00pm – 2:00pm D2L Course Set-up
Thursday, January 7 10:00am-11:00am Setting Up Your Gradebook in D2L
Friday, January 8 10:00am-11:00am Increasing Your Proficiency in Blackboard Collaborate

eLearning resources

·         Online learning tips for students Share this with your students at the beginning of term!

·         Privacy considerations for online teaching

·         Guidance for remote instruction

D2L Change Notice

As part of Colleague Renewal, there will be a new integration between D2L and Colleague. The most immediate change will impact some of the communication tools. The roll out will happen in phases, starting in January, then March, then summer. Find out more

Other CETL learning opportunites

 Planning ahead for spring SD 

 Stay tuned for the following online learning opportunities coming in spring 2021:

 Camosun Communities of Practice

 Check out our MS Teams Communities of Practice site. This is a peer-based virtual space for synchronous and asynchronous conversation, connection, resource sharing and more, including channels for:

Synchronous and asynchronous online course design and delivery

As you move into thinking more about how you want to teach online in the Winter, and even moving forward into Spring and Summer next year, we would like you to consider flexible delivery options to support your students in engaging with your course content and activities.

  • Synchronous design and delivery = “at the same time”. Instructors and students meet online in real time through videoconferencing or live chatting, typically on a weekly basis. Instructors may deliver virtual office hours, course check-ins or focused sessions on complex content or troubleshooting.
  • Asynchronous design and delivery = “not at the same time”. Students can work through course materials, assessments and activities at their own pace or within a prescribed/suggested time frame. E.g. They may be required to participate in a discussion activity over a seven day period when it is convenient for them or work through interactive self-paced activities and receive automated feedback.
  • Flexible design and delivery = incorporating a variety of delivery approaches so that students have a choice in how, when, and where they study. Instructors can define how much structure to integrate into the experience for students and often the goal is to strike a balance.

As we continue to transition courses to an online environment, faculty will need to rethink the role that both synchronous and asynchronous delivery approaches play in creating effective flexible online learning experiences for students. It is evident that neither approach is perfect; there are pros and cons to both modalities for online delivery. Increasingly faculty are opting for an approach that incorporates both delivery formats and enables faculty to be more flexible and responsive to the diversity of learner needs. Ultimately, deciding on your approach will depend on your learners, the curriculum, course materials and your time and capacity as an instructor and other contextual factors. If we consider designing online courses that incorporate the strengths of both asynchronous and synchronous delivery models, we can create experiences that enable both flexibility and structure to co-exist, thus creating a more enrichening teaching and learning environment for students and instructors.

Learn more! Creating flexible learning experiences through asynchronous and synchronous delivery approaches is a Camosun resource developed by the eLearning team which highlights some key elements to consider when determining your delivery strategy.

Below are some additional articles for consideration:

eLearning Drop-ins for December

The eLearning team will be offering scheduled drop-in sessions for faculty needing support with D2L, Collaborate, Kaltura, Assessments, and Final Grades. Come to the sessions with your questions, curiosities, and dilemmas and we will be happy to help you with them. These sessions are not formal workshops; instead, sessions will respond to the needs of those who participate. The sessions are organized around specific tools, but we will do our best to answer any questions that participants have. No registration is needed.

You can join the sessions through the Collaborate link on the nav bar in the D2L On-Demand course or email Emily Schudel for a link.

Drop-in Dates Times Topics
Tuesday, December 1 11am-12pm D2L Dilemmas
Thursday, December 3 2-3pm Final Exam Setup
Tuesday, December 8 2-3pm Releasing Final Grades in D2L
Thursday, December 10 10-11am Final Exam Setup
Tuesday, December 15 11am-12pm Releasing Final Exams in D2L
Thursday, December 17 2pm-3pm Final Exam Setup
Tuesday, December 22 11am-12pm Releasing Final Grades in D2L

eLearning resources