Camosun College – Page 6 – Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

Open Education Week at Camosun

Open Education Week 2023 is March 6th to 10th! Here is what’s happening at Camosun College and Beyond

Visit our Open Education tables at both Lansdowne (March 6^th) and Interurban (March 7^th) where we will share information about Open Education, have people available to answer your questions, and showcase some of the open education work already being done at the college.

Monday the 6^thyou will find us in the foyer of the Fisher Building from 10am-2pm
Tuesday the 7^th we will start in the main foyer of the CHW Building from 9-11am, and then head over to the Trades (CTEI) Building foyer from 11:30am-2pm.

At all three locations, you will find CETL folks, librarians, faculty, and even students ready to talk to you about Open Education, the importance of Open Educational Resources/Open Textbooks, and how you can get on board.

For the first two weeks of March, both campus libraries will be displaying Camosun-authored and used open textbooks so you can see what Camosun faculty members are using to support students in their classes. And speaking of the library, Gwenda Bryan and I have been working on a new and improved Open Education LibGuide (with thanks to Okanagan College whose CC-licenced LibGuide we are adapting). You will be able to see the new Guide at our Open Ed tables, and we will be sharing out the link in as many ways as possible during Open Ed Week and beyond.

Open Education will be taking over the regular Teaching and Learning Community of Practice with an Open Education Conversation Café on Thursday, March 9 at 2:30pm in Teams. This is a drop-in session so, no need to register.

Open Classroom Weeks (last two weeks of March): Celebrate Open Education at Camosun by opening your classroom to colleagues or by visiting another instructor’s class! Contact Derek Murray for details. Info Session: March 10, 12-1pm in LLC 151 & MS Teams Register for Open Classroom Weeks Info Session.

There are also virtual events happening during Open Education Week around BC, Canada, and the world:

BCcampus is curating Open Education Week events from around the province, and you will find those being added to their Events Calendar over the next few weeks.
Visit OE Global’s Open Education Week site to check out what will be happening around the world, much of it virtual.

Finally, Open Education Week is not the only time to find out more about Open Education. Register for any of our Open Education-related workshops taking place in May and June.

Share the joy! Using or looking to adopt an Open Textbook? Want to know more about Open Education? Want to talk about a potential Open Education project? CETL is available to come talk to you and your department/program about Open Education or about your open textbook experiences – shoot me an email for more OE information.

Becoming Unravelled: a reflection from Robin Fast, Educational Developer, CETL

This winter, Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) Book Club participants read Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead).

I can’t emphasise this enough: Do not read this book! It will have you tugging at a thread that unravels an entire sock drawer full of sacred bits of teaching practice. It may lead you to re-examine what you value about the letter grade system, your choice of assignments, your assessment and feedback processes, your relationship with students, and maybe even your feelings about the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote!

The text describes ungrading as the practice of providing no letter grades or marks on student work, focusing instead on an iterative and formative process of feedback in an effort to improve student engagement and learning. And if you think this can’t be done in a letter-grade-centred postsecondary environment, they offer examples that undermine this assumption.

Susan D. Blum, the book’s editor, as well as the chapter authors, make a strong case that letter grades are an invention that needs to be chucked. According to the authors, letter grades don’t correlate to later competence in practice, are a shortcut that doesn’t acknowledge the complexity that is the learning process, discourage risk (a key learning ingredient) because students instead focus on meeting the extrinsic expectations of the evaluator, and put instructors and institutions in the business of ranking students rather than encouraging learning.

As I read, I certainly didn’t like the accusatory finger pointing my way. I had to admit, however, I have myself at times, both as an instructor and a student just tried to get through by taking the most expedient, expected route.

I remember when I first started teaching, picking up the threads left by previous course instructors and learning the ropes from my new colleagues, I accepted that I had to grade, and I worked to find ways to make it meaningful, helpful, and accurate. I remember, less fondly, the first time I was asked that heartwarming question, “Why did you take these marks off?” Much of the feedback I provided students was motivated by justifying the grade I was assigning and trying to prevent that question from coming my way again. I spent my weekends diligently providing that feedback only to realize how frequently, when accompanied by a grade, it wasn’t even read.

As a student, how often did I spend time trying to figure out the instructor’s system, often seemingly chosen at random, rather than based on what I wanted to get out of a course? How often did the stress of the needed grade override my original reasons for signing up for a class? How many times did I choose safe and within-the-lines over something inventive and more fulfilling because there may be a consequence I hadn’t anticipated? This book has reminded me that education needs to prepare learners for the autonomy of a less structured world, where creativity, self-direction, and a growth mindset will be key elements of success. Education also built on relationships – between students and between students and instructors – and this is hardly nurtured by the looming judgment in a grade.

I’ve been reminded that we need to encourage mistakes and I’ve been working in a structure where mistakes are punished.

Ungrading offers an alternative and since the examples in the book include continuing to assign a grade at the end of the semester, many of the suggestions are things I can implement within our existing structures, perhaps starting small with a few ungraded assignments to make the change manageable as I try to weave together something new, something more cooperative, more learning centred.

Focusing on Formative Feedback

In Ungrading, the authors suggested assignments that build on each other, and the use of clear, supportive feedback that students can use to improve their work. Students are offered the opportunity to resubmit assignments or use the feedback for their next assignment without the risk of losing a mark: no ‘one and done’ assignments. Students and instructors work together, encouraging risk and growth, to improve performance and deepen learning. The process rather than the product becomes the focus.

The authors also emphasized the value of peer, self, and instructor feedback, and creating a clear structure so that students are able to support each other and are guided to reflect effectively on their own progress. Evidence suggests that feedback alone is more effective in improving performance than feedback with a grade, or than grades alone. With only the feedback to consider, students may build on their skills with a greater intrinsic sense of motivation.

One suggestion I found particularly useful was to ask students to let the instructor know, when submitting an assignment, what they were trying to accomplish or improve, and then targeting feedback to address the student’s specific goals.

Portfolios

In addition to formative, collaborative, and targeted feedback, many authors encouraged students to create portfolios of their work, usually electronic, that they could add to over the course of the semester or longer. Portfolios become a metacognition space and a way to share their work with peers and instructors, building evidence of their learning, and forming the basis for discussions between students and with the instructor during and at the end of the term.

Assigning the Grade

In order to fulfill the grade requirement within which the authors worked, most met with students at the end of the semester to discuss the grade together, usually having the student suggest a grade and provide evidence to justify their choice. Along with the growth demonstrated through their response to feedback throughout the semester, instructors used a variety of assignments that the student could draw from as evidence, including weekly attendance, blog posts, peer-led course units, discussions, presentations, and essays, to name a few. Badging and creating checklists for students to monitor their own progress were also used. Some instructors also described a contract-grading process in which students completed a contracted number of assignments to a specific quality in order to receive a corresponding grade.

If you’re concerned a student will receive a grade they haven’t earned, as Marcus Schultz-Bergin, one of the contributing authors, suggested, then you are still attached to the idea that grades have meaning. Evidence demonstrates that they don’t, and this may be the most compelling reason to ensure students are a part of the process.

Getting Buy-In

Whenever I’ve tried something new in class, I’ve talked with students about the what, the why, and the how. I’ve found that when students understand what is in store, they can ready themselves, make decisions about how they want to participate, recognize themselves as part of the environment and process we are creating together, and engage more fully in the work. Since instructors expect to grade and students expect to be graded, messing with this equation means even more discussion than may be necessary with other, less disruptive changes.

In addition to describing to students the ungrading process, the reasons it is being used, and what students can expect along the way, some authors, where possible or working in environments where this was unfixed, built the syllabus with the class, creating learning outcomes and rubrics together. This approach seems to be a helpful way to demonstrate the ungrading philosophy, by collaborating on some of the foundational elements of the course from the beginning. Referencing the personal meaning that Dewey long ago insisted was essential to learning, some authors also encouraged students to add their own learning outcomes, relevant to them, and to include completing these outcomes as part of their work and portfolio plans.

Results

In the book-club discussions, many of the strategies for assessing learning were similar to those many of us are already including in our courses. The big difference was the lack of letter grades or marks. While some of the approaches described seemed overly elaborate, and assigning a grade at the end of the course appears to compromise the ungrading philosophy promoted in the book, we agreed that the values expressed aligned with our own commitment to an engaged, accessible, and socially just pedagogy. The authors consistently described the positive results, including more egalitarian, cooperative environments and relationships, as well as strong student learning outcomes. They described students who worked harder, had less stress, new learning habits, and more creativity. They described students who had loved learning but hated school, appreciating this one experience where they could love both.

In addition, the instructors were reenergized by their role in education, letting go of the sorting, ranking, and judging and focusing instead on coaching, encouraging, guiding and the socially-just act of teaching.

Ignoring My Advice

If you decide to ignore my advice and pick up this book to begin the unraveling, and continue, as one of the book’s author’s put it, that Wile E. Coyote-level, impossible yet noble pursuit – the perfect teaching and learning experience- please let me know what you decide to adopt and how it goes.

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

Camosun’s Assessment LibGuide (Including the use of feedback).

The Reflective Learning Framework: A Guide for Students and Educators.

UNGRADING: Untangling Grades from Feedback

E-portfolio Resources

Camosun Story #57: Anthony

Anthony is a faculty member in the Centre for Sport and Exercise Education (CSEE). In fact, he was a brand-new term faculty member in the Fall of 2022 when I first heard his name from my instructional designer colleague, Kristina, who was amazed with the work Anthony was doing in his classroom around assessments and engagement activities. So, last December, I sat down in Teams to chat with Anthony and Kristina about his experiences.

Anthony came to Camosun in a very roundabout way. He was born in the U.S., was drafted to Major League Baseball at 17, received a scholarship for a Bachelor of Psychology program which he completed in 2011, got married and moved to Canada in 2012, completed a Master’s of Science in Kinesiology (after starting a Master’s or Education) at UVic, became a master coach developer for baseball in B.C. and Canada, then started applying to teach at Camosun. After about two years of applying, he finally got the call one week before the Fall 2022 term started!

Anthony was hired to teach SPMA460, which is the Media and Public Relations for the Sport Management program, and with only four days to prepare, he was feeling a bit overwhelmed. But fortunately he was able to meet with Kristina who introduced him to D2L, and helped him navigate the course syllabus, the assessments, etc. “I had the opportunity to work with several new term faculty in CSEE that semester and the first time Anthony and I sat down, I was captivated by his passion to give the students an authentic learning experience.” Kristina mused that in our work as instructional designers, much of our time is spent “trying to help new instructors understand various approaches to teaching and how to inspire engagement in students. But Anthony brought all of that from his professional life so those first meetings were more about helping him navigate D2L and the college system versus actually teaching.” Kristina found this a new experience for her “because Anthony was bringing so much expertise to the table already. We spent more time discussing higher-level questions and had deeper conversations about teaching that we as instructional designers don’t normally have until an instructor has had two or three years of in-classroom teaching experience.”

While Anthony has been a guest speaker and presented to rooms full of hundreds and thousands of people, he had never taught a course over a long period of time. “I really wanted to do a good job because the classroom is an integral part of these students’ lives and I’m a part of it. I wanted to give them the best opportunity to learn from me and my experiences and my network.” For Anthony, this meant a lot of late nights. “For the most part, I was finishing the lecture at 1:00 am the night before I was supposed to deliver it, as well as reviewing some of the content the night before so I could better guide the students.” Because Anthony had less experience with some of the course topics, he brought in guest speakers to enhance the content. “My background in media and public relations was only from an athlete’s point of view. For example, I had been a participant in press conferences, but I never had to set one up. But thankfully the head of communications for BC Transit came in and shared some experiences from running press conferences for BC Ferries, etc.”

But Anthony reflected that his background as a coach and as a facilitator for the Coaching Association of Canada helped a great deal. “The rule of thumb is you talk 25% of the time and let the coaches speak the other 75%, and your 25% comes in by asking them questions to help them come up with a better answer. In my class, there were times the students didn’t want to talk, and I had to ask them very specific questions to get them going.”

Anthony also used a model he appreciated from his grad school days. “We would break up a four-hour classroom day by doing activities throughout the four hours, as well as small group presentations. So, most days, I would plan an activity that wasn’t for a grade, where the students had to put themselves in a role-play type of situation. What I found, oddly enough, was that in-class participation during the ungraded activities was superior to that of the graded assignments because students were not stressed about being graded.” So, the puzzle now becomes how to reduce that stress when students are being assessed for marks.

Another one of my colleagues, Derek, from the Faculty Development area, also supported Anthony. “I asked him to come and observe the class, and we’ve since had some very deep conversations about teaching. My big takeaway was that I wish I could start day one again and add more things to my delivery.” But as Kristina noted, “the first time around, you’re figuring out the grading, what your expectations are, etc. Next time around you can work on the assignment instructions, the guidance you give the students, because you will be able to anticipate things that come up.”

One other thing I wanted to note about Anthony’s approach was that he had no hard due dates on any assignment. Everything was ultimately due on the last day of class. “If a student wanted to turn in their assignment 100 times, I would grade it 100 times and give it back so they could improve and get steadily better marks until they were satisfied. Some students have taken advantage of that – they turned everything in during the first week of class and we’ve been back-and-forth four or five times with me asking questions. On the other hand, some of the class has just appreciated that they could wait until the last minute and then hand everything in on the last day.” While some students have commented that Anthony is just too nice, he notes that it’s not about being nice, it’s about supporting student learning. “I want them to understand what they’re turning in so that if I ask them these questions two years from now, they’re going to remember, as opposed to if they cram and give me an assignment last minute. It’s made for some tough grading days, but I think the students appreciated my efforts.”

While Anthony admitted to having some concerns about the sustainability of this model if he were to be teaching multiple courses at once, Kristina assured him that “while the workload increases with more students, you’re able to anticipate, plan, and incorporate for that because you now have a solid foundation (and feedback from students) to work with, and each time you teach, you’re going to add another layer to it. I think if you had tried to add all those pieces at the very beginning, things may have fallen apart along the way. But because you started simple, you were able to deliver that exceptionally and in a way that you can now add too.”

Anthony doesn’t just think of his students inside the classroom. He also sees his role as linking them with the right people for the information they need, or to help them move forward in their career, or help them discover another path they might want to pursue. “Athletes often don’t have mentors. They typically don’t start school with a job in mind, but rather think that for the rest of their lives they are going to play a sport, become famous, and make money. But this only happens for a small percentage of those athletes. So, this class is not just about what students learn, but it’s also about making connections, utilizing networks, and figuring out how this can propel them further. This class may take them somewhere that has nothing to do with media and public relations, but because of the connections they’ve made, they can go anywhere.” In fact, one of Anthony’s dreams would be to have an entire course of just guest speakers. “Nobody in the class knew what an agent does except for one student who was a professional baseball player and had an agent, but even he didn’t understand the nuances. We could bring in CEOs or general managers of sports teams – if we had a class full of guest speakers, I think it could be a huge benefit for the students.

Kristina ended our conversation with something I had also been thinking. “When you (Anthony) talk about your teaching, if feel like there is no boundary between the classroom and the real-world. You’ve taken down those walls and you’ve immersed your course material and your students within the context of what they would encounter in real life and connect those authentically rather than teaching the concept and then applying it to an artificial example. I think that’s something very unique you’re giving your students. You have a gift, and sometimes we don’t take the time to recognize those gifts in other people.” I couldn’t agree more.

You will be happy to know that Anthony is back with Camosun this term, teaching more classes. I am excited for his students and look forward to finding out what amazing things he is doing!

Blended Learning Perspectives: Examples from Camosun Faculty

Today is the fourth, and final (for now), post in our series on Blended Learning Perspectives. So far, I have shared with you a video with several Camosun faculty members explaining their views of what blended learning is, a series of videos where some of these same faculty members talk about blended learning and how it supports equity, diversity, and inclusion and a series of videos with faculty talking about the importance of student feedback.

This week, three instructors share some of their own blended learning lesson examples.

Tanis (Kinesiology) – where students reflect, discuss, review online and then build community when they are together in person.

Diane (Education and Career Preparation) – where students discuss and brainstorm synchronously, then watch and analyze related videos in their asynchronous classroom space, and reflect on them from a personal perspective.

Kari (English) – where students review and reflect and comment on peers’ work online, then come together in person and have a group conversation about the work they have read and reviewed.

Blended Learning Perspectives: Student Feedback

Today is the third post in our series on Blended Learning Perspectives. So far, I have I shared with you a video with several Camosun faculty members explaining their views of what blended learning is and a series of videos where some of these same faculty members talk about blended learning and how it supports equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Today we have four videos where our faculty talk about the importance of collecting and using student feedback to give instructors the opportunity to improve and refine their teaching and help them make adjustments during the course with current student needs in mind.

Zahra (Academic and Career Foundations) – the importance of one-on-one check-ins with students in her self-paced classes to make sure they are on track.

Brent (Medical Radiography) – the importance of check-ins during the class (not waiting until the end of the term).

Bijan (Economics/School of Business) – addressing the challenge of getting feedback from online learners.

Tanis (Kinesiology) – finding different ways to build in feedback to invite them in rather than putting them on the spot.

Blended Learning Perspectives: Equity, Diversity, Inclusion

Last week I shared with you a video with several Camosun faculty members explaining their views of what blended learning is. Today, I would like to share with you a series of videos where some of these same faculty members talk about blended learning and how it supports equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Diane (EDCP) – Blended learning can include diverse learners many of whom can’t come to on-site classes, address content accessibility, and allow the inclusion of guest speakers from all over the world.

Kari (English) – Blended learning can provide a variety of resources and ways of presenting resources to support diverse learning needs.

Alyssa (Kinesiology) – Blended learning can provide flexibility to students with many competing priorities and who need to take time to digest material before contributing to discussions.

Bijan (Economics/School of Business) – Blended learning can provide multiple supports for learning.

Blended Learning Perspectives: Defining Blended Learning

So today I am beginning a new series of posts showcasing video perspectives on Blended Learning by faculty at Camosun College. These videos are clips taken from a series of interviews with college faculty which were gathered by Robin Fast, a faculty member in Community, Family, and Child Studies who was also a part of our CETL team last year developing our Blended FLO course.

The videos I will be presenting over the next few weeks were integrated into our Blended FLO course and cover a variety of topics related to Blended Learning. We hope you enjoy them.

In today’s video we will hear from Camosun faculty providing their own definitions of Blended Learning: Kari Jones from English, followed by Diane Gilliland of the Education & Career Preparation program, Bijan Ahmadi from Economics in the School of Business, Alyssa O’Conner in Kinesiology, Zahra Kimji from Academic and Career Foundations, and Brent Mekelburg from Allied Health and Technologies.

If you have questions about Blended Learning in your own context, if you would like to share your own experiences with Blended Learning, or if you would like to be connected with Robin, please email me at schudele@camosun.ca.

Open Education Story: Charlie Molnar

Charlie Molnar is a biology instructor at Camosun who has long been involved with Open Education, revising, adapting, and creating Open Educational Resources since 2015. Charlie began his Open Education journey by working with Dr. Jane Gair, who teaches at Camosun College as well as at UVic in the Island Medical Program, a distributed site of UBC’s medical school, 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 seven years.

Reflecting back to 2015, Charlie recalled that his Dean “informed faculty that there was an opportunity to work on a project to create resources for students that would be high-quality, engaging, and not carry any publishing fees.” Jane and Charlie (with release time because of the project funding) began working on their project over several months, creating a substantive revision with much support from BCcampus (especially with the building of the textbook in Pressbooks.) Charlie told me that he “made first use of the new edition during the summer session at Camosun in 2015” and commented “how grateful students were to have this resource that they could download and have forever and use for free.” Charlie and his colleagues over the years have also arranged for the Camosun Print Shop to print relevant chapters of the textbook that students who prefer a print copy can purchase at the bookstore for a nominal fee.

But Charlie was not done with his Open Education journey, and since 2015, “nearly every year [on his Schedule Development time], he has been making revisions to the materials in the textbook.” For example, Charlie first encouraged students to look for grammatical errors, labeling problems, or any issues with the open textbook. “They were quite pleased to be part of this process and valued that I wanted their input on how to improve the textbook. What a wonderful thing it was to not only be teaching from this textbook, but to see my students reading it differently because they had input in how to make it better, something which was unique in my experience as a biology instructor.”

Charlie said that “the next major upgrade was to create video content [working with Alan Shook at Camosun] that could be embedded and linked into the textbook, so students could see me, as well as graphics and images, describing not only interesting facets of biology related to the text material, but also some topics that were a little beyond the ordinary context of a biology text. I think now there are 24 five- to seven-minute-long videos embedded in the textbook that the students can access and re-access, something that is not available in a paper textbook.”

Next, Charlie worked with Suzanne Wilkinson and others to integrate Indigenous content into the textbook. “We integrated material related to Indigenous culture, especially of the Pacific Coast Aboriginal peoples, and their expertise in processing food and calories, etc. For example, there’s a portion that talks about camas bulbs and the biochemistry of why these bulbs are treated in the way they are, buried underground with the coals over top of them and what that happens to the carbohydrates there.”

Charlie returned to his videos the next year, working with Sue Doner in eLearning to include accurate closed captioning so that the video materials would be more accessible. “Once again, the people at Camosun, especially Sue Doner, were extremely helpful in facilitating this upgrade to make materials maximally accessible.”

Next Charlie got involved with another BCcampus funded project: adding H5P objects to the textbook. “I worked with a colleague from Kwantlen Polytechnic to move the written questions that appeared at the end of chapter sections into H5P which meant students could answer section questions right in the textbook and get immediate feedback and check their understanding in real time, without an instructor needing to mark those questions.” He also integrated H5P into many of his videos. “Now nearly all of the videos have at least one stopping point where the video pauses and questions are posed to the students about what they’ve heard so that they can get real-time feedback about that as well.”

Finally, this last summer (working with Sue Doner and Kristina Andrew in eLearning) Charlie “created a package of material [on a WordPress site] that was based around the first two chapters of the textbook and included those first two chapters, the first laboratory exercise, and exercises in terminology, so students could preview what kind of text material was most important.” The link to this site was sent to students who had registered in Charlie’s course by the beginning of August 2022. Those students then “had early access to the textbook and materials so they could prepare for the first days and weeks of class and have an idea of what was coming, what kind of materials would be covered and to what depth.” Charlie especially wanted to support those students for whom English is not their first language to give them a clearer idea of what they could expect “so they could preview the course and see if it was for them, whether they were ready for it, interested in it, and perhaps make their registrations and financial decisions in a more educated way.”

Charlie described the past seven years as an evolution, but not one he had anticipated back in 2015 when he first embarked on that original open textbook revision. “I really didn’t know what would be involved, what partnerships could be created. I was not very technologically adept and still am not. The original idea was just to create a resource to help relieve the students from the burden of exceptionally high textbook costs.” So, what made Charlie want to do more? “I must confess that it was a bit of altruism thinking, I have an opportunity to help students get through their college experience with less debt, and with a high-quality resource. It also felt really nice to go to Concepts of Biology first Canadian edition and see my name there with Jane’s.

When I asked Charlie if he considered all his work as a success, he said, yes “while I think students are more familiar with open resources now, in 2015 they were so startled and grateful to have this free resource.” He has also seen some of his colleagues take the open textbook and make their own adaptations to it, “not to necessarily add to it formally, but use it as a starting point, or pull our specific videos and components, or lead students to it for those portions on Indigenization.”

One thing Charlie wishes he knew was who else outside of Camosun is using his textbook. “I hoped there would be a list of colleges that have taken advantage of it, but I know that it’s used around the world because I’ve received emails from people in various locations who stumbled across it and felt grateful enough to write to me and thank me for it. So that felt nice too.”

I asked Charlie what challenges he faced doing this work over the past seven years, and he reiterated the importance of getting all the support he did, from BCcampus, from people at Camosun, the H5P expert from Kwantlen. “I could just be the subject matter expert rather than having to learn all the technology – I could simply create the materials for someone else to insert and embed into the textbook.” And when I asked what advice he would give people thinking of embarking on their own Open Education journey, he said “why do this alone? I’ve always been a person whose loves to work in groups and take advantage of people’s different skill sets so why not recognize your strengths and find other people who could be helpful in other aspects of the production and share this opportunity to create something that will help students so dramatically.”

One thing I personally think we could do better as an institution is celebrating our faculty, students, and employees who do this kind of work: creating materials that are shared around the world, support students, and make such a difference. Charlie mentioned to me that back in 2015 “I was bursting with pride for Jane and I when we created this textbook, and I asked if we could have a display of the open educational resources that we’ve created at Camosun [because there are a lot!] to show how proud we are of this work but it never came about.” Well, I am happy to say that we are going to do just that here in the library in March 2023 to celebrate Open Education Week!

When I asked Charlie if he would recommend that others do this work, he, not surprisingly given his obvious devotion to Open Education, said yes, “it’s a wonderful thing to.” And not just for students. “It also helped me refresh my understanding of unfolding biological and genetic research so that I could include up-to-date examples that the students would have heard about and convey it at an appropriate level both in my teaching and in the textbook.”

Charlie is heading into retirement (he is currently on a two-year post-retirement contract) but he is not likely done with his open textbook yet. “I don’t know exactly what I may be devoting time to when I’m fully retired from Camosun, but it might be that I add to, clarify, and refine materials in the textbook.” I look forward to seeing what he does next!

Camosun Story #56: Nancy

Nancy is a faculty member and counsellor at Camosun, and I would be remiss if I did not also mention that she has worked here for 45 years. Over those 45 years, Nancy has filled a variety of roles. “While I’ve served mostly in direct service roles, I’ve also done some admin work in student affairs and student development and have also been chair of our department. And I’m probably the only person at Camosun who’s worked with all six presidents.” Nancy reflected that she has seen a lot of changes at Camosun and the experience of working from home and supporting students virtually during COVID was just one of many. Just as one example, “when I first came to the college, one of my first roles was to look at women’s access to the college. At that time, there might have been two women on faculty and the majority of students were male. But over the years those demographics have grown and changed tremendously.”

When I asked how she adapted to working remotely, Nancy says she was relieved. “I was getting information from my daughter [whose first degree was in microbiology and immunology] long before the decision was made to work off-campus. There were a couple of weeks where we worried about working so directly with people, when distancing physically was awkward, and also because we work in small offices that are not well ventilated, and deal with a lot of emotion. So, it felt very vulnerable.”

Once the counsellors moved to working from home, they found adapting to remote counselling challenging. Before moving to Teams, the group worked with students over the phone. “Very rarely would we have phone sessions with students prior to COVID – to get a sense of a person we felt it was better to meet with them in person. Losing that meant losing important visual information. It was awkward at first and you really had to compensate for what you couldn’t see by listening carefully, for example listening to breathing more carefully, like when you lose one sense, you compensate by developing another.” One of the most dramatic phone sessions Nancy had was when she was talking to a student who began to sound jumbled. Nancy suspected something was wrong, and it turned out the student was suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. Fortunately, she was able to get help and pulled through ok. Nancy mentioned that one advantage some of her colleagues noted with phone sessions was that “some students are willing to disclose more easily over the phone because they feel less vulnerable, because they’re not visible. I found that’s true often with male students – it seems to be easier for them to disclose more quickly when they can’t be seen.”

Eventually the counsellors switched from phone to video sessions. “Teams, while there were some technical glitches, was good. However, it was more work for our counselling admin people to set up Teams interviews. We have a confidentiality statement that students initial in-person but doing this online adds another level of complexity. In addition, when confidentiality needs to be broken, for example if a student wants us to communicate with an instructor, we have to get their written permission to break confidentiality which can be stressful for students to manoeuvre virtually.” However, in spite of the challenges, Nancy has found that some students prefer the virtual sessions and now students are given a choice between being seen in-person, or through Teams, or by phone. “Giving students the opportunity to make their own decision as to how they want to meet sets the relationship off to a better start.”

While student choice was one benefit of moving to online service, using Teams carried with it some challenges as well. “When we meet with students in person, they can see our environment and that we are honouring their confidentiality. However, they don’t see that when we’re working at home. I’m always very careful to say that I’m by myself, and only my aged cat is with me, that no one can overhear a conversation. For some of my colleagues who have families, ensuring that confidentiality was more of a challenge, so we did try to find places on campus where students could call in. I also think I had more conversations with people sitting in their trucks and cars, and some students would tell me that they had roommates or parents or families which made it difficult for them.”

One other challenge moving to this virtual model was losing the in-person resources of other employees at Camosun. “We were not able to accompany a student over to the ombudsperson or have an instructor walk a student over to us. That transfer of trust is best done person to person. So, we had to find new ways to do the same thing. We added more check-ins and follow-ups, but it was harder to contact people to have them available when we did not know their schedules or where they were.” Something Nancy noted as one of those little things you don’t think about it until it’s not there.

For herself, Nancy found some good things coming out of the past couple of years. “I am less reliant on paper, and I think my tech skills have increased. In addition, I think the opportunity to reflect about what we’ve lost and gained, about what’s important to us, has been one of the biggest benefits. It’s given us a chance to really look at what we value and what we want to keep and what we don’t want to keep for the future.”

All in all, while Nancy finds many benefits to working virtually with students and giving them that choice of how they want to meet with her, she told me “I think overall students prefer a traditional in-person learning environment because they miss the interaction and making new connections.” She asked me “what do you remember about what you learned in your first year of university?” After I thought about it, I said what I remember the most is being happy not to be in high school anymore. She then told me “I ask that question often of people and no one ever says something that they learned in the classroom. It’s always, I learned how to socialize, how to drink beer, how to struggle with values. There’s so much learning that happens outside of the classroom. And for students learning remotely, are they getting the same opportunities to learn who they are as a person? Post-secondary time is a really precious experience. It’s when young people are learning independence and what they learn during this time shapes them into adulthood.”

Interestingly enough, when I wondered if these past few years were the most challenging time for her in her years at Camosun, Nancy said no, the most challenging time she had at Camosun was when there was a fire in the Dawson building right before Labour Day, “and for an entire year, all of the registration people, advisors, counsellors, physical plant folks, International had to relocate and work elsewhere, and do their work in different ways (remembering that students were expected on campus right away to begin the fall semester), which became a great bonding experience.” A more challenging time, but as she said to me, good training for the similar challenges that came via COVID.

Finally, if Nancy had any advice to give someone experiencing the kind of change we all faced over the past few years, she says “embrace it and learn from it. Learn about your resilience – we’ve all learned about resilience in a way that we hadn’t experienced before. And take the time to reflect on what’s important and what isn’t. And finally, trust the capacity of human beings to do the right thing.”

Camosun Story #55: Allyson

Allyson is an Instructional Assistant (IA) for the BEST program, now called Education & Career Planning program (EDCP). I have already shared stories from her colleagues, Diane and Val, as well as the story of the BEST program review as told by my CETL colleagues Monique and Deidre. So, of course, I wanted to see if Allyson would also be willing to talk to me, and she was!

Allyson started by telling me a bit about her background. “I had a 20-year career as a technical writer and instructional designer. As a technical writer, I wrote curriculum to support classroom learning, but I also developed asynchronous curriculum. But what was missing for me was direct contact with students. In the spring of 2020, I came to the BEST program.” Just as Allyson was looking forward to being in the classroom and moving away from her computer, COVID hit. But while she missed that in-person contact with students, “COVID was a blessing for me because I was right away able to apply my years of experience with online and asynchronous documentation. It was such a gift to have a new job that I wanted and to be able to connect with people, albeit online.”

Because she was new, Allyson was able to approach the new online delivery for BEST with fresh eyes. As you may remember from Monique and Deidre’s story of the BEST program review, they had online content to draw from (unlike many faculty who were creating their content at the same time they were learning to teaching online). “We had adopted the BC curriculum, which was for self-directed asynchronous learning. Initially, the content was structured by topic” which didn’t match with the way the BEST program approached content delivery. “After the first academic year we all agreed that it would be best if we moved to a week-by-week content structure, displaying that week’s content each Monday at 10:30 am. Then we added the Checklist tool which listed the readings, the assignment due dates and what students had to prepare for class.

Adding the Gradebook (and naming it My Progress) was huge help for both instructors and students. We don’t assign grades – we give strength-based feedback. By renaming it to My Progress and displaying the students’ week-by-week progress as they complete assignments, students can manage their own learning. But the Gradebook is also an important tool for the instructors to very clearly determine if a student has met the criteria for the certificate or not.”

With the new week-by-week curriculum organization, the Checklist and the Gradebook, the program design became more accessible and easier to navigate, and some of the weekly content could be lifted out and ported to other programs at Camosun.

Putting BEST online opened literally the world to anyone wanting to come into the program. “Being online allowed us to have a student in Chilliwack who, through our program, felt seen and heard. She turned a corner and is now on the path to following her dream. We could never have helped that student if we weren’t online. And now we now have inquiries and students from Canadians living in Chile, Nova Scotia, Winnipeg and Whitehorse. How amazing is that? We have also successfully added BEST to Camosun International’s roster of programs for international students.” The diversity of students goes beyond geographical location. “We have people who are just out of high school, retirees, and everyone in-between. That diversity is a huge benefit for our students. In the information sessions I talk about how everyone’s going to learn from each other, how the program reflects the diversity of real life.” But everyone in the class is there for the same reason: they are looking for guidance to help them make education and career choices that are a great fit for them.

Allyson explained that a large part of the process is making people feel safe to explore—to try new things. One example is when students try out a Table Topic after attending a Toastmaster mini session. “This is in week two: a couple of brave ones go first, and then the more hesitant students take a risk to join in. They feel safe enough to try new skills right then and there after being introduced to Toastmasters. I can’t stress enough how gifted Diana and Val are in terms of making people feel safe. That’s a huge piece of this program is making people feel safe to try new things.” And all this online!

But while Allyson admires the way Diane and Val work with students, she is equally a part of the team that makes BEST such a success. Val and Diane encouraged Allyson to consider which pieces she might want to teach, and since she has a passion for the power of an effective resume to land a job interview, she developed a four-part resume writing workshop to demystify and simplify the resume-writing process.

I asked Allyson what rewards she sees in the work she does, and she told me the reward “is when a student’s dream is realized by the connections that we help them make; the process of going through the program, going from feeling stuck to having confidence, and having the courage to go out and do something that they really want to do.” And over the past two years, Allyson has seen “many shining moments, even for that person who is just doing one small thing which may not seem like a big deal, but it is a big deal – it’s a shining moment for that person.”

When I asked about lessons learned, Allyson said “what surprised me with the online classroom is how you can have an engaged, supportive learning space in an online environment. It doesn’t have to be in-person, and it may even be better because it’s so focused. Our students are so keen on coming to class on time, and they miss the regularity of the class after the program ends.” In their synchronous classes, they used breakout rooms frequently. “Every seven to ten minutes we’re getting them to do something which increases engagement.” But frequent communication between Allyson and the two instructors was also key to improving engagement. “Every morning at 8:30. I meet with the instructor so we can review the plan for the class. For example, if there was going to be Breakout groups, I know that ahead of time and so I am well prepared to support them. Having that advance check-in ensures that what happens during the class is as seamless as possible for the students.

My job as the Instructional Assistant is to listen for cues from the instructors and to keep an eye on the students’ participation.” You’re another set of eyes and ears for the instructor so they can concentrate on the content and the flow of the class; and you’re an advocate for the students to make sure they are heard.” The better you know your students, the more you can see their progress. “You can see them become more comfortable and less anxious as they open up, as they speak more.”

When reflecting on what she might say to herself of March 2020, Allyson said she might say “it will work out and it will become clearer. And students are going to be forgiving of mistakes. That first online class, those students were amazingly forgiving. They were so understanding because we were trying to figure it all out – I still think of them: even though there were bumps on the road, they still got a lot out of the program.”

Here’s to BEST (now EDCP) continuing to support and inspire students for years to come.