Camosun College – Page 5 – Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

Camosun Story #65: Lynnea

Lynnea is one of this year’s Teacher Recognition award recipients at Camosun College, and like Pei Mei, she teaches in the English Language Development program. Lynnea has been at Camosun since 1985, starting as a substitute instructor for a faculty member who was ill, and continuing to pick up work until she was permanent.

Lynnea’s road to teaching ESL was circuitous. “I traveled to Asia with a singing group and every place I went, I was offered a job as an English teacher. And I thought, well, that’s curious. So, when I returned to Canada, I decided to apply for a Linguistics program and even though I was late with my application, I was accepted and suddenly there I was sitting in a linguistics class not knowing if I really wanted to be there.” Lynnea explained that one day a Camosun instructor by the name of Jamie Baird came to class and as he spoke about how you can give people dignity by teaching them to read a soup label or a street sign, Lynnea was moved to tears. By the time she went home that day, she knew she had decided to become an ESL teacher.

Lynnea says she generally teaches the intermediate ELD courses in BESL (Basic English as a Second Language) which she loves. “I have the world in my classroom, with both immigrants and international students which many colleges don’t have. We’ve had Fujian students from China, a group that came out of the Chechen war, a huge group from Panama, and even pilots from Vietnam who took English so they could fly Boeing airplanes. I love the variety of people I get to meet and work and learn with – you can have an 18-year-old from Japan and 75-year-old doctor or lawyer in the same classroom. I also enjoy seeing people who come in at one level of writing or speaking and, when they leave, have improved, whether it’s a small amount or by leaps and bounds. It is rewarding to see the confidence students gain as they improve.”

As I often do, I asked Lynnea what impact the last three years has had on her teaching. She started by telling me about her daughter who just graduated and in her valedictory speech recalled how their graduating class had spent all of their high school years under the pandemic (since it was only declared over May 5, 2023) and how much that changed them. For Lynnea and her students, the change was tremendous at the time of the lockdown. “Reading and writing online worked, but listening and speaking seemed ridiculous, but we still had to do it. I’m not a lover of technology although I can use it – I just prefer being face-to-face. Being online, for me, really reiterated the need to be together to learn.” But despite the frustrations, Lynnea, says “while I’m pretty flexible, I learned to be even more flexible and to think of creative ways to achieve my goals. I learned a lot about online teaching and what I like and don’t like about it. But while we did our best, the goalposts for student learning changed and that has been hard for us.”

I asked Lynnea if she has kept anything of what she learned teaching online during the pandemic, and while she at first said no, she amended that a little, saying “While I’ve always been pretty prolific on D2L, I definitely use the Assignments more, and while I stopped using Discussions for awhile, I am thinking about trying them again. I also feel more in control of how I organize my course materials on D2L, but most of my students’ learning now happens back in the classroom.” Lynnea feels the experience of the past three years has a lesson for us all, which I loved. “I have found in life that when you’re uncomfortable and stretched, you keep stretching and stretching and when you finally let go of the elastic, while it comes back to its original shape, it’s bigger. I think now we’re bigger because we’ve gained more skills and we’re able to do things more creatively than we could before.”

One of the things I am curious about when talking to faculty is what memories stand out for them over their years of teaching. Lynnea had three stories for me.

“Within my first five years of teaching, my classroom was upstairs, which was not usual. One of my students was a very tall older gentleman who struggled to get up to the classroom. One day I noticed he was out of breath so I sat down beside him and said, ‘Mr. Singh, can I ask you a question?’ And he said, ‘Oh, yes.’ I asked, ‘How old are you?’ And after a few minutes of not quite hearing his reply, I asked ‘Are you 89?’ And he said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ We started talking and I found out he had been one of the leaders in the Pakistani Parliament, but here he was, so humble, and struggling to go up upstairs. The next morning, I asked for a new classroom, explaining that I had an almost 90-year-old student in my class, and the next night, we were in a downstairs room. I still remember him – he was the best student in the class and always had his work done on time and when I retire, he’ll stand out for me.”

Lynnea’s second memory is reflective of students who have come to Canada to escape their countries. “Recently, one of my recent Ukrainian students was a young married lady who came in very late one day to class. She apologized and said ‘I’ve been looking for my family and I couldn’t find them, and I’ve been on the phone all night. But I finally found them – my parents are alive.’ This was after a weekend of terrible bombing in Kiev. We all just looked at her and suddenly everything about being in that classroom didn’t matter, and I realized that while what we do in the classroom is important, it’s all temporary.”

And Lynnea’s third memory involved having Sherri Bell come into the classroom to talk to her students. From what she recalls, Lynnea told me “Sherri said something I have quoted so many times since. She asked the students, ‘How many of you don’t know what you want to do in the future?’ Most of them put their hands and then she said, ‘I want to tell you the story of my kids. I have a daughter who after high school went right away to university Calgary but realized quickly she’d made a mistake. She had the courage to finish the year, came back home, took some time, then went to Royal Roads and now has a job in Alberta with an insurance company and loves it. But my son didn’t know what he wanted to do so he didn’t go to school right away and waited a couple of years. When he realized he wanted to play basketball and the Chargers wanted him, he came to Camosun. Eventually he went to UBC and became a physiotherapist.’ She looked at my class and said, ‘Don’t be in a rush to go to school. Wait until you know what you want to do – if you’re not ready, take the time to figure it out.’”

After reflecting a bit on the many memories Lynnea has, I asked what advice she would give a new faculty member joining the ELD department. “For new teachers that come in ESL, I would just say be as creative as you can, and don’t be afraid to try new things in class. Have a plan but be fluid, and always have more than you need to pull from. Be funny and be entertaining – I sometimes feel like I’m like Jay Leno. We have fun and laugh a lot in my classes. And remember that it’s ok to make mistakes.” For Lynnea, it’s also about creating that community in the classroom. “Many students are afraid of teachers, but if we can have fun and build trust, in a few days we feel like a family.” Then she shared one more piece of advice which the woman who hired her shared: “She told me nothing is worth teaching if you only teach it once. Students need to have it pulled in every different direction: scaffold it, add more, teach it over and over so they remember it.”

Lynnea and I ended out conversation with Lynnea telling me what a privilege teaching people from all over the world is for her. “Even though I originally didn’t want to teach ESL, at the end I am so grateful to everyone who taught me and hired me and supported me. Every person I work with is amazing, and I am grateful for each single person I have the privilege of teaching.”

Camosun Story #64: Beth

Beth is an instructor in the English Language Development (ELD) department. She has been teaching at Camosun since 2014, and this term she is back in the classroom after serving as a co-chair for the Basic English as a Second Language (BESL) program, teaching ELD 052 (a reading and writing class) and ELD 054 (a listening and speaking class.)

Beth came to ESL teaching in a roundabout way, first going to the University of Victoria (UVic), then Vancouver Island University (VIU) (Malaspina at the time), then graduating from Simon Fraser University (SFU) with a degree in Contemporary Arts. But, she says, “throughout my post-secondary journey, I was involved in the campus community radio scene. I had several radio shows at several different universities, first at UVic and then SFU where I helped community groups put together their shows and taught them how to use the gear and how to put together a basic show. Because several of these were non-English programming shows, there was a lot of English language teaching going on at the same time. “

After graduation, Beth was living in Vancouver struggling to make ends meet, so decided to look elsewhere for work. “I had a friend who was teaching in Japan, and they had a space available at their school, so, I went to Japan and taught English. My original plan was to go for just one year, but I stayed for seven because I loved it so much.” While Beth was working in Japan, she was also completing, by distance, the Master of Teaching English as a Second Foreign Language through the University of Birmingham. Beth returned to Canada in 2012 where she cobbled together bits of work around Victoria for a few years building experience and credentials, until she was hired at Camosun.

I had to ask Beth if she found that all her radio experience has helped in her teaching life. “When you’re hosting by yourself, you are doing multiple tasks at the same time, not multitasking, but managing many things all happening at the same time. You have to always be one step ahead, your plans ready and available. This really helped during my Master’s program where the students would get together and run webinars – it was a great group of people, some of whom I’ve never met in person, only online. Running webinars was like producing a radio show because you have to watch the chat, watch the video, make sure people have access to files, and make sure that you stay on time. You also learn flexibility because when things don’t go as planned, you can’t give up, you have to shift and go to a backup plan.” Kind of like teaching online during the pandemic, which I will come to shortly.

Beth told me what she enjoys most about teaching is “helping students realize their potential. “That’s the thing about language: it’s so exciting when you’re finally able to communicate a basic message in another language whether it’s listening and speaking or reading and writing and everything in between. Improving your English, especially for new immigrants, opens more employment, more education, and changes your confidence level. And at Camosun, we can see where students go, whether they take other programs at the college or at another university. I love that I am part of the School of Access – we’re providing access to a million different things.”

As has been my eternal question since I started these interviews in 2021, I asked Beth about the impact the last three years on her teaching and her students. “The past two years and eight months, I was co-chair of ELD so I wasn’t teaching as much as I am currently. I taught ELD 062 and 064 online during the lockdown in the summer of 2020, did some subbing later, taught for a couple of weeks in fall 2022 until we got an instructor. But I’ve always used a lot of technology in my classes, including D2L, so, I found it relatively easy to teach online and it didn’t seem too much of a shift to being remote. But what it confirmed to me was both the good things I was already doing, and the things that I needed to tweak. And it reminded me how important it is to take the time to organize things.”

Beth also noted how much of a toll the last three years have had on students. “Students have had to (and continue to have to) manage tiredness, confusion, uncertainty, on top of having to study. Instructors need to be a more flexible in terms of how they’re doing assignments, because if we continue to do things the way it used to be students are not going to be successful. We need to experiment more and explore alternative ways of assessment. In BESL, we use outcomes, and we need to look at different ways for satisfying each outcome, not just a paper and pencil test for example.” Beth is concerned about the complexity of student life today. “Students are stretched in all sorts of ways. They are working, have families, they are studying, and if they get COVID they may be away for a significant amount of time. And instructors have to support students as well as keep things moving, deliver effective lessons, get feedback to them as quickly as possible, as well as manage their own health and sanity.” These days, Beth noted, we seem to have to do more with less which means changing expectations and mindsets in our new reality.

I asked Beth if she had any memories from her teaching that stood out for her. “For me, it’s those tiny moments that are the most meaningful for me, like seeing the moment a student has understood a concept – when it clicks.” But she did have a couple of specific memories. “I taught English in a junior high in Japan for seven years, and when I left to return to Canada, my colleagues told my students, some of whom I had taught for 3 years, that I was leaving Japan. My students told me about the impact I had had on them. They said I helped them understand that speaking in another language with other people was fun and not scary, difficult but achievable.” And this term, Beth is using an Open Textbook in her class and discovering the importance of understanding student expectations. “Most of them want a hard copy book. They don’t want to be bothered with printing something or with having to read on a screen. But I didn’t have enough time to arrange for printed copies of the text before I started teaching the class. I will need to do a bit more planning which sections of the text I will use next time so there can be print copies and thinking about the difference in how your brain processes information through reading on-screen versus reading on paper. Maybe that’ll be my next PHD.”

Knowing that Beth served as co-chair for almost three years, I was curious about what advice she would give new faculty members coming into ELD. “Camosun’s ELD programs are unique for a few reasons. We have long semesters, and the curriculum and outcomes are loosely based on the Canadian Language Benchmarks, which is unusual in BC. So, becoming familiar with that is important. But at Camosun there are so many great people who are willing and able to help you. Our Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, the ELD faculty, we all help each other. Just ask questions, reach out for help, but have patience because it can take time for people to respond if they are busy. And remember that teaching can be overwhelming for both new faculty and faculty who have been here for a long time. It’s not easy even after you’ve been doing it for a long time.”

Beth is always thinking ahead in her teaching and noted how fast things have been changing in recent years, for example Open Education, ungrading, and alternative assessments. “I’m not doing as much I want to yet because it takes planning and consideration around how it will fit with the course content, but I’m integrating more of these than I had before. We also have to keep our students and their needs in mind. For English language students, it’s not just about conversation, it’s about communication of all kinds. Some students need to use Whatsapp to communicate with their bosses or have to submit their hours by PDF – they need to be able to use many different tools and engaging with them in class provides direct application for them. It’s about more than just teaching language now.”

Camosun Story #63: Tony

Tony is a faculty member in the English Language Development (ELD) program and another one of our amazing Camosun instructors to receive a Teacher Recognition award this year.

Tony didn’t start out wanting to teach English. “I’ve always been interested in languages, and first completed a degree in Spanish literature intending to become a Spanish teacher. But when I finished, I thought my chances of teaching English in Montreal would be better than teaching Spanish. So, I completed a degree in English. Then I thought I would teach English somewhere in Latin America, but I ended up in Asia instead.” After teaching in Montreal and Korea, Tony came to Victoria and taught at UVic for two or three years before coming to Camosun where he been for 16 years. At Camosun, Tony mostly teaches the lower level ELD courses “and one thing that I’m teaching now is English support for the Health Care Assistant program in Health and Human Services.”

I asked Tony what he enjoys most about teaching. “When one of my students becomes gainfully employed after completing our program or has been accepted into a program at a college or university, knowing that I had something to do with that is rewarding, although we often don’t hear about those successes. But knowing that someone’s English has improved and they’re able to participate more in society is encouraging because for a lot of people, it can be frustrating when you don’t know the language.” And, like many of his colleagues, Tony also finds having the world in his classroom exciting. “We have a fair mix of students from all over the world in our classes right now, which is what I signed up for.”

When I asked Tony what impact the last three years had on him as an instructor, he told me “I was wrapping up my doctorate the first year of COVID, and relieved that it was out of the way. But the next hurdle was adjusting to teaching online. Fortunately, through the English Teachers Association (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, TESOL) in the US I was able to access a six-month online course about designing English language courses, which was a huge help for me. When I started teaching online, I noticed immediately that all those things you would normally do in the classroom you just can’t do online. I remember from those workshops the advice to sit down to consider your course outcomes and design your lessons and assessment around those. Then consider how can the online environment help you meet your outcomes, rather than wondering what I’ve always done is not working. The course was eye-opening and took me back to the basics, rethink the objectives asking, what am I trying to teach? What do I expect them to learn?” Tony has embraced backward syllabus design. “You start with the outcomes and work your way backwards: I felt I didn’t have a choice in the online environment, but I’m a backward design person now.

Tony discovered there were advantages to the online environment. “There are so many things you can do online that you can’t do on paper. Like adding videos – students love videos in their classes. I would make a video of myself explaining how to write a compare-contrast paragraph and think, no one’s going to watch this, but everyone watched it. I found the whole experience to be transformative. My fear last year was that we were going to take the great leap backward and put aside the COVID experience as a bad dream. But there were so many good things we can take from that experience, and I feel that I’m a better teacher now. I realize now how much easier it is to be organized when I use D2L; I never realized before how much that organization can empower students with learning difficulties. And for me, using tools like Teams and Zoom, I don’t have to run back and forth between campuses for meetings, I don’t carry books home anymore, and I can work pretty much anywhere.”

Tony also had some thoughts about what his program should be considering post-COVID, which I think applies to all programs at the college. “Students will encounter online courses at some point, and we in ELD need to prepare them for when they go to other institutions. For example, we need some digital course outcomes in our courses, help them with using computers, using online search engines, etc. And because so many resources are online now, we need to teach students how to use them.”

I then asked Tony to look back over his teaching years to see if any memories stood out to him. What he told me was unexpected, but really shows how we as teachers, and how we teach, can change with time and understanding. “There’s been a transformation over the past many years from making students learn all the grammar rules before using a language to supporting students to actually use the language – not hoping that by learning grammar students will suddenly be able to communicate accurately. About 12 years ago I decided, I am going to lick this issue of articles in English. I hammered the rules into the students believing they would stop making mistakes. We did lots of exercises, quizzes, routines, and then one day I said, here are some pictures of how to pot a plant. They’re mixed up. With your partner, rearrange them into the correct order, and then I want you to write a paragraph on how to pot a plant. And when I collected them, not one of the paragraphs had articles in it, after all those exercises and all those tests. I realized that just because I taught articles, did not mean my students were able to use them. We, as teachers, have to understand that it might take years for some students to acquire that ability.”

In addition, Tony spoke to some of the interactions he has had with students over the year. “I try to find value in every student in the class and to see everyone as an individual, because I think respect in the classroom is very important. I remember when I started teaching 25 years ago, I was concerned about classroom management and discipline, how was I going to get through two hours of teaching, and will they like me. But of course, those concerns have changed over time. Now I believe that with a good plan and respect for your students, you will have a managed classroom. I don’t know when that changed for me – it was probably a very gradual process.”

I wondered what advice Tony would give a new faculty member coming in to teach ELD at Camosun. “Make a good impression because you never know what will happen in future. Make an effort to learn the ‘culture,’ of the department, or at least learn the conventions of the department before you break them. And when you do break them, give a principled reason for doing so. Understand what technology is available to them at the college and take advantage of professional development opportunities as well. We are so lucky to have so many opportunities available for development, and people should take advantage of them.”

Tony also had some words about valuing the many approaches to teaching at the college and encourages new faculty to “bring in the experience and wisdom you have gained from where you’ve come and continue to maintain ties with people in other institutions. We need to know what else is going on out there to keep us all fresh. And we need to embrace the different ways we teach and support each other’s autonomy in the classroom” and may I also add, take the time to learn from each other.

Camosun Story #62: Pei Mei

Pei Mei is an instructor in the English Language Development (ELD) program and has been teaching at Camosun since 1993 at the former Carey Road campus. She was also one of 28 faculty members to receive a Teacher Recognition award this year.

I asked Pei Mei about her journey to becoming an ELD instructor. “I came from Singapore and, with my dad’s guidance, decided to become trained as an elementary school teacher.” After two years of training, Pei Mei says, “some of my fellow students and I talked about going overseas to get a university education and we promised each other one we would ask our parents. I did some research on costs, and surprisingly, despite being middle income earners, my parents said “yes”. I decided to come to Canada, to UVic, where I completed an English and Linguistics degree.” Pei Mei then took a break from school, but she wanted to stay in Canada. “I wanted to get my feet into teaching, but teaching alone would not get me permanent residency.” So, while Pei Mei taught at Camosun, she also enrolled in the Culinary Arts program and, after 18 months, became a chef. Acquiring this status did the trick to obtaining PR. Ten years later, Pei Mei decided to go back to school, completing her Master of Education, Curriculum and Instruction in 2006, and since then has been at Camosun, both teaching and serving in the role of co-Chair of ELD. 30 years after coming to Canada, Pei Mei (like many of us) wonders where the time has gone. “You get into the groove of your work and time just goes on.”

I asked Pei Mei what she enjoys about teaching English as a second, or additional, language. “I’ve met thousands of students and I’ve heard so many stories. Mostly they’re similar stories – they’ve come here for a better life, either by choice or not. But even if many of the circumstances are similar, the personal stories are different. I’ve also met a lot of fascinating people at the college, with my coworkers at the top of that list.”

Of course, the last three years threw a wrench into Pei Mei’s teaching world, as it did for so many. “When everything shut down, it threw us into panic mode, and I think I was the least tech savvy of everyone. Teaching online for me seemed like a huge stretch, and it took me a very long time in comparison to my coworkers to learn how to do it. I felt very sorry for my students who were in my class at the time we moved online. Thankfully, we had people in the department who were very adept at technical things, and while I couldn’t always understand what they were talking about, I had to learn and got individual tutoring from my coworkers – not that any of them could afford the time.” Essentially, for me it was learn and understand later! Pei Mei was one of four or five ELD instructors who chose to work from campus during the shutdown. “We had our own offices so keeping our distance from one another was easy. We had to get cameras, learn how to use the Elmo, learn to use Collaborate. We had to help the students learn how to get online – it was frenetic! But we got through that first day (yes, that was just day one.)” Pei Mei and her fellow faculty looked out for one another during that time. “It was such a supportive environment that we came to depend on it. We knew that if we got into trouble, we would be there to help each other. During a time where outside the college walls things were crazy, we found a sense of collegial peace and comfort working here in our little cohort.”

Supporting students in their learning was another matter. “In ELD, our students are not native English speakers but require learning it to go on to better their lives or to go on College courses. In a physical classroom, you can see right away when they are struggling, and you can tangibly help them. But when you’re online, all you can depend on are words. It was extremely challenging, because while we sent students documents about what to do, it was difficult for them to grasp the meaning when it was just words. A lot of our students are more visual learners, more tactile learners. They need to see, they need to observe, try to do it, and even then, often still need more instruction. All of this took up class time, so at best we could maybe get through half of the lesson plan. When we finally came back to face-to-face classes, I realized I needed to continue to be clearer with my instructions and more of a “hands-on” approach. Online, everything slowed down because of the challenges with the technology, but I picked up the pace when they finally came back to class. I noticed they struggled still with learning at a ‘faster’ pace. So, I had to slow down the pace to make sure everyone was together. I also had to work to catch the attention of the younger students because once they lose attention their learning stops, although that didn’t help the people who were slightly older and the more motivated ones. I needed to learn to balance the two groups of learners, and that was not easy.”

Today things have settled down for Pei Mei and her students. “There has been enough time for students to adjust back to normal expectations.” She is, however, carrying forward some of the things she learned to do during the pandemic. “I am putting more tests back online because students have mentioned that they like seeing the scores right away even though I prefer to have students writing on paper as it allows me to more easily see where they are strong or where they need more help. With ELD students, hand-written exercises and tests help us to gauge each student’s ability to use English script. That said for this Scheduled Development period I have loaded quite a few of the tests into D2L – but I am keeping a balance of both online and paper tests.”

I asked Pei Mei if there were any memories over her past 30 years of teaching that stand out to her. “Because I am an immigrant myself, my experiences are similar to those of my students. I started off as an international student, so I have that experience as well. And I believe that because of these experiences, I am able to connect with my students and understand them a little more. I don’t necessarily talk about myself, but I talk about the struggles of immigrants. I think that helps them see a way forward from the point of where they’re at. I try to provide guidance to them because often they are on their own, like I was when I came to Canada. Even though English is my native language, I still wish I had had someone to guide me back then because things were very different from what I was used to. So, if I have an opportunity to help an immigrant who needs guidance or directions, I step in. I feel very fortunate as an instructor to be able to share a similar perspective with them.”

For my last question to Pei Mei, I asked what kind of advice she would give to a new faculty member coming to teach in ELD. “Have patience. Listen to the students. If they want to tell you a story, listen to that story. I think in our society, we’re very quick to give advice without listening to the details, without truly understanding what is being relayed. With students, I try to be as patient as I can, especially with people who have gone through a tough time, people who did not choose to leave their country in the middle of the night but had to. And if you don’t understand, say you don’t understand, there’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing is more important than listening to somebody to give them the space to speak. I believe that we aren’t just here to teach them English, but also to help them survive here. Yes, we need to help them understand what it means to be a student in our Western educational system, but we also need to accept them as they are and to try and help them move on.”

As we wrapped up our conversation, Pei Mei had some final thoughts for me. “When I received the Teacher Recognition award, I felt a bit guilty because it’s not for innovative teaching – there’s nothing new to what I do. Teaching gives me the opportunity to work with students, to help them, to meet them at their level, and to move them forward. I’m just thankful for the opportunity to be able to help them. For me as an instructor, that’s the bottom line. It’s not solely about the curriculum; it’s also about them individually. I’m very thankful for the student who nominated me even though I don’t think I deserve it. But I have experiences I can share with the students, and it’s up to them whether they want to learn from them. In the end, it’s about just being honest and real with your students.” When they ‘get it’, you’ll know because that’s when the light shines bright.

Camosun Story #61: Kendal

Kendal teaches in the Diagnostic Medical Sonography program in the Allied Health area of Health and Human Services. Like the Sonography program, Kendal is pretty new to Canada (moving up here from the United States in 2021) and to Camosun (becoming a term faculty member in the brand new Sonography program in January 2022), but she has obviously made an impact on her students as she was one of 28 faculty members who received a Teacher Recognition Award, this year.

Kendal has been a cardiac sonographer since 2015. “I’ve worked with a very wide patient population from premature babies in incubators all the way up to 100-year-old folks. I’ve worked in trauma centers, hospitals, outpatient clinics, cardiologist’s offices, and I’ve also done traveling ultrasound.” But in addition to being new to Canada and Camosun, Kendal was also new to formal teaching when she started working in the Sonography program.

When I asked how that initial experience was, Kendal told me that “it was a bit of trial by fire, and not just for me. As a new program, everyone was trying to figure things out.” Sonography has only been a program at Camosun since May 2021, with accreditation being approved in January 2023 (the program received the highest possible accreditation result for a new program without graduates.) It is a cohort-based program with 16 students per cohort and 7 faculty members, meaning that the Sonography group is like a family. “We get to be really close and build strong relationships with our students as a result of that. We have a good teacher to student ratio.” Students are full-time in the two-year program, taking roughly five courses per term. There are currently no options for part-time, “because we ideally need even numbers as our students are practicing their scanning on one another. When someone is missing, labs can become challenging because if one of the rooms has three students, they have to split that same amount of scanning time between three people now instead of two.” But the program group does recognize that they need to find ways to help students who struggle to finish within the two-year time frame. “I don’t know what the answer is, but we realize we need to decide what to do if not everybody finishes on time. So far we have not faced that as a newly established program.”

One of the things Kendal is most excited about is the Sonography program’s integrated school clinic where real patients come for scans run by students with preceptors who are Island Health employees. “In my second term at Camosun I was a clinical liaison, meaning I would drive out to Victoria General Hospital and Royal Jubilee Hospital to check on the students there. Because the clinics were removed from the on-campus environment, you couldn’t see the direct communication between students understanding the conceptual knowledge between their didactic learning, their lab learning, and the clinical environment. Now, because the clinic is right downstairs, we have a closer relationship with those preceptors than the ones who were out in the hospitals. Unfortunately, our clinic didn’t open until the first cohort were out in practicum.” Not every hospital experience is positive, but the on-campus clinic is different. “Anybody who’s applied to be a preceptor in the on-campus clinic loves teaching – they wouldn’t have applied for the job otherwise. You have the people who are passionate about ultrasound, about health care, patient care, and also about teaching the next generation of sonographers. This also makes the instructor’s life a lot easier with that synchronicity between what’s going on in the classroom, what’s going on in the lab, and what’s going on in the clinical environment.”

I asked Kendal about her experience coming into the program after courses have returned to an in-person model, after the first year being wrapped up in COVID restrictions. “Because sonography is hands-on, my fellow faculty found the ultrasound lab hard to manage. We have a large TV in a classroom hooked into the ultrasound machines in each of the individual rooms. Instructors can watch what the students are doing on the machine. But, because one of the restrictions during COVID was a two people only per room requirement – meaning the student and the patient – how do you as an instructor guide the students to rotate the probe, apply more pressure, etc.? I cannot imagine how difficult that was for them. I came on board when restrictions were lifted on that.” Today, while the labs are back in person, some of the courses remain blended or asynchronous. Kendal, however, much prefers teaching in person. “In an asynchronous classroom I feel like you lose the connection you can have with students face-to-face– they can’t ask questions immediately and directly. And in person is much more fun!”

I asked Kendal what she loves best about teaching. “I love it when you see the students finally understand what you’re talking about, that little light bulb moment. In a hands-on field like ultrasound, you teach content in the classroom, then you’re go into the ultrasound lab where they apply that didactic learning. It’s even more exciting seeing those connections made when they apply their learning in the clinical world. I tell them that I celebrate all their wins where ever we find them, big or small.”

There have been some challenges along the way for Kendal and the program. “We had to do a lot of content creation because there was nothing there for the majority of these courses. Even after teaching a course once, there is a lot of retooling to be done for the next time around as we figure out what works and what doesn’t work.” Kendal is also the only term employee in the program which, of course, “comes with its own set of challenges balancing workload: trying to be there for the students as much as they need, and at the same time not burning yourself out. Being a new program and going through accreditation was also very tough, although our program leader did an excellent job preparing us for accreditation.”

One of the things students noted when they nominated Kendal for the Teacher Recognition Awards was her games. “My specialty is cardiac ultrasound. We teach them the basic cardiac ultrasound views – what the expectations of hemodynamics/pressures are, what happens when things go wrong inside of the heart. Lots of content that is very complex and overwhelming! So, what I try to do is integrate some fun activities in the classroom. For example, I made a 12-pound batch of playdough in different colours and distributed it to the students during one of their first cardiac anatomy and physiology lectures. This allowed them to make their own model of the heart. As I presented new ultrasound views (in ultrasound, we’re looking at a 3D structure in a 2D plane and sometimes the anatomy doesn’t look exactly like what you’d expect it to look like) they used the playdough to give them a better perspective of how the valves open, the orientation of the heart, etc. in a 3D view.” Kendal also leverages the technology available in the CHW building as much as possible. “I use the four projectors in the classrooms to project ultrasound views on each screen. Students break up into teams and draw out how blood moves through the heart. I keep integrating things like that to try and keep them interested because the courses can be very overwhelming. Everyone learns differently and I try to add techniques in for those who need a hands-on connection to knowledge in the classroom.”

Kendal told me that the moments from her teaching that stand out to her were “anytime they tell me, for example, that they scanned their first echocardiogram all by themselves – something that they couldn’t do before. Or telling me about an interesting case that they got to see. Moments where they feel proud of themselves for accomplishing something and want to share that with me. That makes me feel privileged and honoured, to be somebody on their list that they want to share that moment with.”

As our conversation drew to a close, I asked Kendal, based on her recent experience of being a brand-new faculty member at Camosun, what advice she would give new faculty members. As a new and term faculty, Kendal had to learn the admin side of Camosun on top of teaching for the first time, teaching in a new program where she was developing new content, learning to use D2L, etc. and she advises “be patient with yourself and don’t expect to get everything correct right out of the gate. Be willing to advocate for yourself because sometimes people assume that you know specific information or someone else has explained what you need to do your job. Be humble and understand that you’re learning. It can be frustrating, especially when you move from having a level of proficiency in your chosen field to something where you’re a novice again. Just give yourself grace so you can absorb all this knowledge that’s coming at you from so many different directions, in the same way your students are trying to absorb all that new information from you.”

Camosun Story #60: Emah

Emah teaches in, and is Chair of, the Massage Therapy program at Camosun College, and she was also one of 28 faculty members who received a Teacher Recognition Award this year.

Massage Therapy is a relatively new program, starting in 2019 – yes, just before the pandemic hit – and Emah was the first faculty member hired in the program. Massage Therapy is a cohort-based, two-year program (six semesters with no breaks) with 24 students per cohort (which is the most they can accommodate in their spaces currently) and about 15 faculty (which surprised me – I had no idea it was so large!)

Like Sonography, Massage Therapy runs a clinic on campus to give students that work integrated learning experience. “It runs exactly like a regular massage therapy clinic, and students are directly supervised by Camosun faculty, which is a requirement of the program’s accreditation. This simulated clinic experience is most reflective of what it is like to be in a real practice” But in addition to the on-campus clinic, Massage Therapy students also engage in community outreach. “Our students go to locations like New Roads Therapeutic Recovery Community, a part of Our Place, where they treat folks who have substance disorders, are struggling with homelessness, and often have chronic health conditions with orthopedic conditions layered on top. The students also work with the Victoria Foundation, which is a society for youth who are struggling with mental health and substance abuse, as well as with other organizations. When students work in community, they’re working with specialized patient populations who are less likely to come into a clinical setting which is both valuable for student learning and valuable to the members of the public.” Emah told me that these outreach opportunities are not only close to her heart but are also wildly successful with the students.

I asked Emah what she enjoys most about teaching. “The first time I was in the classroom, I had that flow state experience where I lost track of time – I always tell my students that they will have to stop me because I will not know when it’s break time. That dynamic of students having meaningful conversations and watching them create relationship and community in the classroom, well its exciting to know that you have a little piece in that. That moment where the content suddenly makes sense to a student – it’s that high we all seek. I also joke about the fact that I’m the youngest of five children, so it’s just nice to have people listen, although after teaching for 15 years, I am now at a point where I feel comfortable turning it over to the students to do the talking.”

I, of course, had to ask Emah about the impact of COVID on her program, especially given that the program had just started when the pandemic shut things down (see Diane C’s story as well). “COVID had a massive impact because our program is, of course, literally face-to-face and hands-on. There were already enough challenges creating and running a brand-new program, with no faculty hired yet, and building everything from the ground up while a group of students was going through the program. COVID hitting made things extra hard. But, because we weren’t really stuck in our ways yet, it was also an opportunity to do something different, to engaging in lots of wild, creative problem-solving.” In addition, Emah told me that their program was one of the only ones in BC that managed to continue even through the initial lock-down. “Because it was our very first group of students, we were able to quickly move courses so that those that were not hands-on (some of the heavy science courses) came first, and the more hands-on came later. Was that great? No, it was terrible, but it kept us running (especially since this was a new program) and allowed the students to graduate on time where most other programs had to delay graduation.”

I wondered about the student experience from then until now. Emah noted that especially during the midst of the pandemic how challenging it was for students. “I don’t think we recognize the mental health impact that that experience had, particularly on younger people. And in my profession the vulnerability level is sky-high. If there is trauma, it will come up – I’ve been an educator for over 15 years and mental health crises are a part of this profession. But the two classes who went through COVID experienced escalated trauma and emotional dysregulation which really impacted the students academically. And now in year three with COVID moving past, this cohort is experiencing what I would call a sustainable level of mental health crisis, which is just part of the profession. But the temperature rose to a boiling point for two years which was a lot for our faculty to manage.”

Emah is very appreciative of the team she works with. “We have an incredible Department of faculty and not only do we enjoy working together, we also love to engage with each other outside of work. They’re just incredible human beings. Almost all of us have worked in private schools, and coming to Camosun feels amazing – we’re all so grateful to be here.”

When I asked Emah for a memory of teaching that stood out for her, she said “the biggest aha moment with this program is how we enter the classroom with a significant level of humility. We approach the classroom as an opportunity to engage with other adults to all learn. While I recognize that there is a power dynamic inherent in the post-secondary structure, I truly go into the classroom recognizing us as a group of human beings who want to work together. It goes well when you show up vulnerable and humble. Everybody just relaxes, including the faculty, and then we can get the job done. Students and faculty work together to figure it all out.”

I ended our conversation asking Emah, as a faculty member and Chair, what advice would she have for faculty starting at Camosun. “Things often feel like such a big deal, but most things are not, so try to bring that intensity down, even when it feels like your stress is sky high. In addition, be your authentic self. When the going gets tough people will work with you if you’re you and they sense that you’re you, particularly students. And finally, be kind but fierce. There will always be conflict and struggle, so take your stance, but try to be kind in the process.”

Mary Burgess Open Education Recognition Award @ Camosun, 2023

About the Award

The Mary Burgess Open Education Recognition Award recognizes faculty members who have made profound contributions to Open Education at Camosun College and demonstrated an impact on student learning and student costs by utilizing, designing, or adapting open resources in their instruction. These contributions may also include providing leadership for, research on, and advocacy for Open Education and Open Educational Resources (OER) to peers, students, and the institution in general.

Open Educational Resources/Open Textbooks have positive benefits on the student experience by lowering access barriers and reducing student costs for learning materials. They also enable instructors to modify, edit, or adapt high-quality resources to fit their individual teaching goals in order to provide meaningful, contextualized materials for their students.

In naming this award, the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning looked at educators across BC who have advanced the work of OER in their own careers and have themselves been recognized by their peers. After reviewing a short list of outstanding individuals, it was determined that CETL’s inaugural award for Open Education is named after Mary Burgess.

Mary Burgess is recognized globally for their work in Open Education. As the first Director of Open Education at BCcampus, Mary guided the work of the Open Textbook project, which includes hundreds of open textbooks and other open educational resources (OER). Open textbooks from the collection have been adopted by thousands of educators in the province, and to date, the project has saved students in B.C. over $30 million in textbook costs. (https://bccampus.ca/2022/07/20/theres-something-about-mary/)

This Year’s Recipient

This year, we recognize Charlie Molnar, Biology, for his work revising, adapting, and creating Open Educational Resources since 2015. Charlie began his Open Education journey by working with Dr. Jane Gair, another Camosun Biology instructor, to substantially revise the Open textbook, Concepts of Biology, creating the first Canadian edition which Charlie and several of his fellow biology instructors at Camosun have been using in their courses for the past eight years.

Every Scheduled Development period since 2015, Charlie has made revisions and enhancements to Concepts of Biology. He has revised the textbook using student feedback, created and added video content (including captions to make them accessible) as well as graphics and images, integrated material related to Indigenous culture, especially of the Pacific Coast Aboriginal peoples, and their expertise in processing food and calories, etc., and added H5P interactive components (to both the textbook and the videos). Most recently, Charlie created an Open website to support students who are thinking of enrolling in or who are preparing to start Biology 103 at Camosun. This website contains the first two chapters of the Open textbook, the first laboratory exercise and first assignment for Biology 103, and scientific-terminology activities; before coming to the first class, students can prepare for the first days and weeks of class.

While two of these projects received funding from BCcampus, (the initial textbook and the H5P activities), Charlie did most of the work during his Scheduled Development time or in addition to his regular work. Charlie believes that engaging in Open Education is a wonderful thing to do, but not just for students, saying “it also helped me refresh my understanding of unfolding biological and genetic research so I could include up-to-date examples and convey them at an appropriate level both in my teaching and in the textbook.” (https://camosunelearning.opened.ca/2022/10/25/open-education-story-charlie-molnar/).

Award Criteria

Faculty will be considered for this award if they have met two or more of the following criteria:

Improved teaching efficiency and effectiveness through using, adapting, and creating Open Educational Resources (OER) course materials aligned to course learning outcomes.
Developed OER to share with colleagues, enhance student-learning opportunities, and reduce barriers to education.
Used Open Educational Practices (OEP) for learning, teaching, and assessment while challenging, supporting, and inspiring students to do their best work.
Demonstrated creativity and passion in delivering educational experiences that expand student reach and influence beyond the classroom by providing opportunities for students to collaborate and openly share their work with the wider community.
Demonstrated knowledge of and passion for open education and the benefits it brings to learning and teaching while contributing to the ongoing work to make the global open education movement inclusive and fair.
Worked collaboratively with colleagues and students on open education initiatives, aimed at integrating OEP into teaching and learning.
Acted as a valuable resource for students, colleagues, and Camosun by sharing open education knowledge and promoting and encouraging the development and use of OER and OEP.
Participated beyond Camosun in open education initiatives such as sharing OER, contributing to OE committees/communities of practice, and pursuing or providing PD opportunities in open.

2nd Annual Teacher Recognition Celebration Camosun College – April 27, 2023

Congratulations to 28 faculty from across Camosun College who are being recognized for their contribution to teaching and learning!

While nominations came from both Camosun employees and students, there was once again this year an overwhelming response from students. Their voices and stories highlighted some of the amazing work being done at Camosun to support student learning.

The following faculty are being honoured for Innovation in Student Success: “Recognizing faculty who have gone above and beyond what was expected of them in promoting student success, by using engaging and flexible approaches to better meet the needs of all learners.”

Andrea Durdle, Plumbing and Pipe Trades
Arloene Burak, Psychology
Brent McMillen, Medical Radiography
Brooke Cameron, Biology
Dan Reeve, Political Science
Darren Hall, Plumbing and Pipe Trades
David Armstrong, Hospitality Management
David Raju, Biology
Dianne Patterson, Health Care Assistant
Emah Christiansen, Massage Therapy
Gilles Cazelais, Math
James Smyth, Plumbing and Pipe Trades
Joanne Irvine, Management and HR Leadership
Joyce van de Vegte, Electronics and Computer Engineering Technology
Katie Waterhouse, Anthropology
Kendal Adam, Diagnostic
Medical Sonography
Lynnea Jackson, English
Language Development
Matt Agbay, Business Statistics
Meaghan Feduck, Education Assistant, Community Support
Michelle Lysak, Accounting and Finance
Nicole Kilburn, Anthropology
Noreen Ortilla, Massage Therapy
Pei Mei Chia, English Language Development
Phil Vreugdenhil, Electronics and Computer Engineering
Richard Burman, Mechanical Engineering Capstone
Robin Fast, Community, Family and Child Studies
Selena Hebig, Nursing
Tony Vernon, Health Care Assistant—ESL

Teacher Recognition is an annual initiative of Camosun’s Teaching and Learning Council – a collaborative, peer-based, interdisciplinary group of faculty from across the college with a passion for advancing quality teaching and learning at Camosun, including advocacy, supports and strategies.

Camosun Story #59: Brooke

Brooke is a biology instructor in the School of Arts and Sciences. Last year, Brooke embarked on a journey she had been looking forward to taking for a long time. “When I was interviewed for my position in 2018, one of my questions to the interviewers was: how does the Biology Department embrace Indigenization? It’s a big part of Camosun College and what this college emphasizes in its identity. Biology has areas that can be easily Indigenized and areas that seem impossible, so when I began teaching, I was just flying by the seat of my pants. I was acknowledging territory, going with students on nature walks, and teaching and learning about SENĆOŦEN names and W̱SÁNEĆ uses, but it was small pieces here and there.” The real beginning of Brooke’s Indigenization journey began with the Indigenizing your Course workshop series she took in the summer of 2022.

“I can’t say enough wonderful things about that workshop. There were ten of us and we all said ‘I want to do this, but I know I’m going to make mistakes. I need to make sure that I’m okay with that and that I’ve been given permission to try.’” As Brooke told me, the program was not about checking the boxes, but about bringing together a community, all trying, failing, succeeding together, and supporting each other in a safe place. “That workshop gave me the confidence, the motivation, and the accountability I needed to move forward.”

One thing that helped Brooke think about how to go about Indigenizing her course was developing a framework. “Thinking about decolonizing your course can be overwhelming and intimidating. Instead, find one thing that resonates with you and start there. For me, my framework was that people are whole. So often we only engage with one part of that whole such as mind and body and I wanted to engage with others such as spirit and emotion.” One thing the workshop facilitators, Natasha Parrish and Charlotte Sheldrake, had Brooke and her workshop colleagues do was write an Indigenization statement, outlining what Indigenization meant to each of them, “[…]because it’s allowed to be different. The statement created accountability and the facilitators made sure that by the end of our workshop, we had our purpose and our framework ready to follow.”

The course Brooke Indigenized was her biodiversity course. “It’s a non-major’s biology course for students who need a science, but who aren’t necessarily going into biology. I thought it was a great course to break down because there was no expectation at the end of the course to entirely focus on the Western science perspective way through and through, so it was a chance for me to open worldviews.” The biodiversity course is a typical science class: lectures, tests, labs, assignments. The first thing Brooke did was remove tests she didn’t think were needed. “What that did was open two lab sessions for something different. I still had my Western science labs – those were still important – but I added a restoration project where we worked with the Saanich district and volunteers at Rithet’s Bog. We learned about the land, engaged in restoration, and connected with the material in a different way. We also took a field trip out to the Salish Sea Centre, where we saw living creatures rather than preserved specimens in jars. We observed how they interacted with one another in their mini ecosystems. I also invited Della Rice-Sylvester, a Cowichan elder and medicine woman, to give us a tour of campus with her eyes.” Brooke and her students were blown away, witnessing another perspective on biodiversity, those spiritual and emotional connections to the land, that had until then been completely absent. Brooke told me that she will be keeping all the changes she made to the labs saying, “I’m only going to be going forward from here.” And when she asked for student feedback, she heard nothing but resounding gratitude for the inclusion of these experiences, saying things like “I needed this in my education, and I didn’t even know I needed it. How could I have gone through my academic career up until now and not have this be part of my learning?” Brooke said, “it was such an easy thing to do and was something I could have done years ago if I had given myself the permission.”

Another aspect of the course Brooke pulled apart was the 20% of the grade from lab exams, putting that grade instead into a book meeting project. “We read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer and took five lecture periods, with two or three weeks in between, to meet and discuss the different parts of the book. I provided questions for students to consider, then they came to the book meetings and met in small groups to discuss the book and the questions.” This was Brooke’s chance to encourage her students to express their feelings and their emotions and their spirituality. “We have international students, and students from across Canada, coming in with different perspectives that they could share with the class. You don’t normally see that in a biology course – there isn’t often room for students to make cultural connections.”

In fact, this was the main reason Brooke wanted to Indigenize her course. “Western science is very much focused on ‘what did you see? What is physically there? What did you physically observe?’ And that’s it. But Indigenous science goes beyond that, also looking at how things make you feel and exploring your connection to, and your relationship with, what you observe. What I wanted to do in my course was to give my students an opportunity to discuss their feelings and their connections to what we were observing. And honestly, when it comes to conservation biology, climate change, and the biodiversity crisis, how can you not have feelings about them?”

But how do you assess feelings? “When you’re dealing with emotion and spirit, I don’t think it’s reasonable to assign limits. Sometimes I would see that a student only wrote a sentence, and I would ask them to dig a little bit deeper next time, and the next week they would. They knew that if they read the book and engaged, it was a low-pressure experience for them.” For each book meeting they also had an assignment giving them licence to be creative. “Robin Kimmerer mentions how in Indigenous sciences you see the personhood of non-human life, something not addressed in Western science. One time I asked them to write a story from a non-human perspective: imagine you’re a flower being picked, or a spider trying not to get squashed, or an old growth tree watching as your friends and family get felled. What emotions, what feelings, what knowledge do those organisms have? What is their personhood? But no pressure – I just wanted them to try. And these creative expressions were a gift to read.”

Aimee Bernard Biol102 Artwork — For our class you chose Braiding Sweetgrass in place of our lab exams because of the ways in which it blends Indigenous ways of knowing with Western science and argues the value of both for navigating the future of Biology. We revisited this idea/thesis throughout the course. For our final book project I wanted to try and visually represent this idea with Western science on one side and Indigenous ways of knowing on the other being braided together as the sweetgrass is braided within the book. Aimee Bernard

Maddy Harvey Biol 102 artwork — Maddy Harvey Biology 102 Artwork

With all these changes, Brooke was not sure how students would react, but she said she had never seen such amazing buy-in. “For the first time since I’ve taught this course, nobody dropped, and nobody failed. I felt so full knowing that my students committed to this journey.” And Brooke clarified that she still lectures and, there were still traditional assessments, but she provided a gateway into Indigenous science. “I was touched to hear my students say, “this education is essential for me; I should be respecting the land; I need to recognize the importance of reciprocity.” These were not concepts I lectured to them. The book taught them, our nature walks taught them, and I provided them space to learn it.” Brooke is keeping the book discussions, but says she may provide more specificity, perhaps through rubrics, because students do like structure and clarity. “Overall, I think my students are at an advantage having these other perspectives and potentially being able to challenge Western perspectives as needed in whatever they study in the future.”

Brooke’s changes also created community, gratitude, and hope as students began to see themselves as part of the ecosystem. “We are such an invasive species and students had a very negative perspective of human impact on the world when they came into the course. But leaving the course, they had hope that we can still recognize our roles and responsibilities and learn to respect our relationship to the land and the organisms on it. They left feeling a bit more empowered knowing that, as humans, we can do better.”

The biodiversity course opened itself well to Indigenization, but Brooke admits that other biology courses are a bit more challenging. “When you’re discussing enzyme pathways in a cell where there’s a molecular change, it’s not necessarily about bringing in Indigenous perspectives on that content, but more about trying to embrace a more holistic view of assessment and course delivery and Indigenous ways of learning.”

Brooke will be sharing her experiences with her colleagues and has already shown them some of her students’ creative projects, but she knows that there will be some questions around how they can Indigenize their courses. “I think that is where the Indigenizing your Course program is important, because the facilitators give you permission to try and to consider: why is it so important that students open their minds to multiple perspectives? Why is that going to benefit our students in their academic career and in their lives? Faculty know that they should, but don’t necessarily know the why or the how, and they don’t often have a community they can try and fail with.”

But Brooke does recognize that in the end, this is a personal journey. “Sometimes being an instructor is exhausting. You have to carve out the space for this work, and that’s a lot to ask. But I don’t want people to be so fearful of getting it wrong that they don’t do anything. It’s okay to get it wrong and to keep trying. Be vulnerable because you are trying something worthwhile. Just commit to one change. And if you think it went well, and if you get good feedback, that might encourage you to do more. You’re not helping anyone when you don’t try.”

Moving forward, Brooke has plans to Indigenize some of her other courses as well as do some more Indigenization work with her biodiversity course. “I’m going to continue to remove content that’s not serving my students and offer Indigenous perspectives. I also brought in three guest lecturers. A fantastic pair of teachers came to talk about climate anxiety and renewable resources speaking from a more social science perspective. An amazing enthusiast came in thrilled to talk about phylum Porifera (sea sponges) and it was great to experience someone’s joy and passion for something most folks overlook. It wasn’t just me as the sole holder of information – this was community-based learning and I’m absolutely going to keep bringing in other voices.” As for her other courses, she is looking at Indigenizing a course that is based on molecular and cellular content, but also about family traits and epigenetics, topics which she thinks will lend themselves to a more holistic approach.

I wanted to close with these words from Brooke, summing up her first Indigenization experience. “I used to think my students just needed to know and do the things I gave them in the syllabus. But now I want to expose them to a variety of perspectives and to engage with the four quadrants of themselves as human beings (physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental). I see them as whole people who deserve to be challenged physically and mentally and to have their emotions and their spirituality addressed – that is what Indigenization has brought to me and my students.”

Camosun Story #58: The Interdisciplinary Education Festival

Lynelle is a faculty member in the School Health and Human Services (HHS), in the Allied Health Technologies Department. Since 2017, Lynelle has been a facilitator of the Interdisciplinary Education (IDE) Student Festival at Camosun College, and I wanted to talk to her about how the festival started, how it has evolved over the years, and where it is headed in the future.

Lynelle started our conversation by sharing that the predecessor of the IDE festival originated out of a program review of the Medical Radiography program. “One of the competencies being added by the Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technologists (CAMRT) was around inter-professional communication. The hope behind this competency was that if students are taught how to communicate inter-professionally at school, that skill will carry forward into their careers and ultimately improve patient-client outcomes because when practitioners communicate better, they can provide better coordinated collaborative care.” Thus, a project-based course in interprofessional communication was born.

The newly created course was MRAD 264, and Lynelle spoke passionately about its interdisciplinary nature. “Interdisciplinary education is about learning with, from, and about others – it’s peer-to-peer learning, and students were tasked with teaching other students about their profession and providing an integrated learning experience.” In other words, students were not only working together within the course itself, but also required to communicate with students outside of the course. “Students came up with the idea to run a mini conference on campus. They split into groups, and we ran four learning activities, inviting fellow Camosun students to come in and learn about our professions and about some of the unique challenges that we face, creating a moment in time where they could inter-professionally communicate.” Students did not just run the conference itself, however. They had to plan and market the event, ran a post-event pizza party (meaning they needed to get food safe certificates and organize food services), solicited donations, booked space for the event, etc. The collaboration students engaged in went well beyond the course outcomes.

Lynelle emphasized that every element of that conference was student produced, while she supported them to bring their vision alive. “It was hard for the students because they wanted to be told what to do, and how they were going to be graded. We spent a lot of time talking about how to accomplish a shared goal, how to organize their labour, how to ensure everybody understands their individual roles, etc.”

The Dean of HHS and other college leadership attended that first mini-conference, and excitement grew. Lynelle and others applied for and were awarded one of the Camosun Innovation Awards which gave them some budget to work with for the next year so students would not have to look for donations. “The second year, we had enough money to do better promotion and to support participation from more students. That year, we went with poster-style presentations which are very common in health care learning.” Then the following year they applied for another grant from outside of Camosun, and with that funding were able to build out the event even further. During this time as well, students from more HHS programs were beginning to participate in the event.

In 2019, although they didn’t know it at the time, they held the last fully in-person event. “We had almost all of the health programs participating by that time and had to book off two floors of the Ewing building. We had both poster presentations and interactive displays as well as health and wellness activities – all student-led activities for the benefit of other students. We added a passport that listed all of the activities and each time you participated in one of them, you got a stamp. Students were then able to take that passport back to their instructors for bonus points or as part of a required activity in their courses.”

But then, in 2020, COVID threw a wrench in the works when the college shut down shortly before the festival was to take place. Because they couldn’t hold an in-person event they “pivoted in a dramatic way to a WordPress site where we posted all the presentation materials for students to interact with online.” Lynelle reflected that, despite the stress, “ultimately that activity was quite successful and recording all of the work that we had intended to do under the circumstances was brilliant.”

According to Lynelle, the level of engagement in this pandemic IDE was superficial, through comments on the site. But the next year, they took the online format and built on it. “The following year we added another group of students to the mix – students in the Interactive Media Development (IMD)program in Computer Science which had been created by an interdisciplinary team at the College. The purpose of bringing in the inter-professional practices course arose from an industry criticism of graduates from these types of highly technical programs that graduates struggle to communicate with clients. We asked ourselves, I wonder what would happen if we put these IMD students in a situation where they had to learn with, from, and about students in a very dissimilar discipline: health.” This was tactical as well, Lynelle noted, because health students tend to have lower technical expertise, although they are asked to work with electronic health records, digital imaging, app tracking, online health appointments. “Health students in general need to understand how technology works and how to communicate with the people who are building, maintaining, supporting technology in our workplaces.” Hence the decision to bring these two groups together.

Lynelle didn’t teach the first IMD course, but she did the following year. But because of low enrolments in that second pandemic year, they took the two cohorts of students (one from health and one from IMD) and combined them together into one section, a rare event with two cohorts of students in two separate Schools taking the same course. It was a tough year, Lynelle said. “We were all having a hard time with the pandemic, so what we did that year was refine the virtual-only experience. The first cohort of IMD students had built a brand-new website from scratch, collaborating with the health students and instructors; this section of combined students didn’t have the same capacity and we had to discover together what was possible.” And her additional challenge was teaching to two completely different groups of students. “When you teach this particular course to a specific discipline, you work within that discipline’s perspective. But teaching from two perspectives is an interesting challenge. It was difficult for the students to grasp initially, but we walked through the steps and processes, convincing them of their own capabilities, and at about week eight or nine they started to see what was possible, and by week 13, they were pretty darn proud of themselves for what they had accomplished.”

During this iteration, the virtual festival integrated more interactive elements into the website. In addition to the projects, the students included more information about different programs, they interviewed Dean of HHS about interdisciplinary education at Camosun and included some keynote speakers. The focus of the IMD students was peer-to-peer technical support for instructors and for students submitting projects to the website as well as providing troubleshooting support and updating the website.” And along the way, learning skills their profession had been criticized for lacking. Lynelle was proud to report that the whole cohort of IMD students was immediately employed after graduation, and most were hired where they wanted to be hired.

And now we come to the current year (2023). “This semester, I’m teaching the course to Sonography students for the first time. And this year, the students are using H5P to develop an interactive virtual simulation that teaches their profession to people in other health care professions. The theme of this year’s interdisciplinary student festival, which will be held in the spring, is What we wish our colleagues knew: Get the scoop on our scope.” Basically, students are looking at improving communication between professions, for example between nurses, care aids and allied health professionals, to reduce medical mistakes or miscommunications. “The students created a simulation exercise: you click through it, learning bits here and there, watch some patient interactions, so at the end their peer colleagues should have a fundamental understanding of what sonographers need in order to do their job. And that’s the point of this student interdisciplinary festival – improving interprofessional communication.”

As Lynelle and the IDE festival group think about the future, they are reaching out to the interdisciplinary education community of practice at Camosun College to see if there are ways to bring more students in to this kind of student-led learning for and about each other. “We’ve proven that it works with a group of students in a computer science program that realistically have no reason to take a health program, but this course does speak to one of their program outcomes explicitly.” To start, a student in Mental Health and Addictions has been interviewed by Lynelle’s students as a first step in learning about that profession, in hopes that “they will then be interested in learning more about us. Then maybe in the next iteration, they’ll be more interested in learning with us.”

But it’s not just service-education programs Lynelle sees fitting in with the current model. “I want to learn how someone in Economics might see their students participating. When I think about how important economics is to funding our healthcare system, if economics students gained a better understanding of where they might fit in the world through collaborative learning and understanding, how would that improve our society? Because if we understand each other better, if we recognize not only what makes us different but what makes us the same, and what we need in order to work in a more collaborative way, I don’t think discipline matters so much – it’s about beginning to have those conversations.”

And why shouldn’t anyone at Camosun be allowed and encouraged, and even required, to take an interdisciplinary communication course? “I would love for any student to be able to take this course and be able to participate in these kinds of activities – even to go so far as to create open programming where students could choose to take the courses that they’re excited to take.” Lynelle’s point hit home with me. This course addresses an essential skill that ALL students should be engaged in learning. “These are the skills employers are looking for – working with teams, working with clients – capabilities aren’t necessarily included in discipline-specific programs. Everyone who learns to take an X-ray can functionally execute an X-ray, but who can do it with the best client-centred care perspective? Who can interact with other colleagues in the department or interact with the other departments that we have to work with.? This is why the IDE festival was born.”

Lynelle concluded our conversation by telling me “I don’t know where this is going to go, but almost every single allied health, nursing, and health-related credential now includes some sort of inter-professional or interdisciplinary competency, so I think it’s here to stay in all those programs. But what about other essential courses? I would love to see, for example, a course about Indigenous history in every single program. If we’re talking about the skills and capabilities that are going to help graduates function better as employees and be more attractive to employers, we have to look ways to incorporate those important topics and skills into the core of all our programs, so they are not something that students or instructors have to do off the side of their desk.” That should be the future of education – whole and inclusive.