Tag: faculty stories

Danielle, an early childhood educator by trade, teaches in the Early Learning and Care program at the college, joining the program in 2018 as a term instructor, and becoming continuing in 2021. Her focus and expertise have been on “classroom design and how that facilitates learning for young children and leadership, so I often teach the second-year leadership courses and the environments classes.” 

I wondered what brought Danielle to teaching post-secondary teaching from working with children. “I believe that early childhood educators can change the world and that the children we work with are capable, competent, with ideas that need to be shared. After doing a lot of advocacy work in childcare, going into post-secondary, and working with future educators seemed like the next logical step for me, to give back to the field.” And she models those principles with the students in her classes, holding them as capable and competent, and helping them learn how to apply their own ideas. “I see both children and students in my classes as citizens, and if you look at everybody that way, you centre respect and care in your practice, whether you’re teaching adults or children.” 

I was particularly interested in an assignment Danielle and the students in her class worked on this last term, an Open Pedagogy assignment which resulted in an amazing artifact and has interesting possibilities for the future. The next several paragraphs are in Danielle’s own words. 

“The COVID pandemic offered opportunities to challenge how we think about assignments and to make learning more meaningful in complex situations. One of my focuses during the pandemic for the lab class was to find ways for students to complete assignments during class times to make that work more meaningful for them and for the childcare centers they’re learning to practice in. This assignment emerged from an inquiry assignment on the land. The assignment itself had always worked, but something felt like it was missing.  

I had had a powerful experience just before the pandemic with a group of students in a leadership class where we decided the second day of class to scrap one assignment and design another together. As a result of their engagement with the assignment they created, I could clearly see how they were connecting to the course learning outcomes. I then wondered how I could do this in an environment class, and what emerged was a learning outcome around inquiry into the land. In the assignments package for the course, I included information that we were going to design and create a shared resource together (but not what the specific resource would be) along the steps we would be following. 

Once we decided what the assignment would look like I invited childcare services out onto the land with the students, explaining that we would be building a collaborative resource, and bringing examples of collaborative resources that have been created in our community to inspire them. In the end, the students decided to create a book on plant knowledge for early learning centers. We discussed formatting to create a cohesive design for the book, we looked at what programs they could use, deciding on Canva, we picked a font and a colour template, and we picked graphics. Then for the assignment itself, we decided we would go out on the land, and each of them would find a plant to get to know.  

Students spent a month on the land for three hours a class visiting and learning more about their plants, and educators and children joined us for one full day. Then each of them drafted the story of their relationship with the plant, including information about the plant. The final product was a beautiful book which we planned to present to their practicum mentors. Each page in the book has a photograph of a plant along with student entries, some telling the story of their relationship with the plant, some that are more factual in nature. We included an acknowledgments page to acknowledge the land we were on (including a picture of it) as well as the children and other educators who joined us on the land. I had the book printed in colour and I could see centers taking it out on hikes or out onto the land with children, looking for the plants.” 

I wondered how Danielle and the students decided where on the land to find plants for their project. “We spent some time visiting places, and in the end decided to spend our time on a location off the dog walk trail going towards the HCP gardens [near Interurban campus] as well as in the daffodil field. I had a lot of international students in this group who were feeling very burnt out, and the day we went to the daffodil field was a magical day for them.” I also wondered how Danielle chose which outcome(s) would be opened for students to create their own assignment. “There were a couple of outcomes I wanted this assignment to meet and one of them was about being on the land and acknowledging past harms, to build and foster relationships between students and the land, so they then go and foster those same relationships with children and families.” 

Danielle knew she was taking a risk, having students build an assignment to meet course outcomes and wondered if it would work out. “I can’t believe we put such a rich resource together in a month. It really felt heart centered and I’m excited to see what happens next.” Which led me to my next question around what is next for this book? “I’m thinking of approaching childcare resource centres to see if they want copies in their lending library, sharing it with childcare centers who spend time on the land with children, and also go to conferences to share this experience.”  

Danielle also plans to stick to this assignment in the future. “It’s going to be different every time, and that’s the beauty of it. I am interested to see how this assignment will evolve with each group of students, who will now have some control over their own learning. That can be scary, having a blank page in your assignments package that says, ‘there’s no assignment here – we’re going to design it on March 5.’ But when I’m working with children, I don’t have everything planned out because I look to see where the children’s interests are, and this is an opportunity to take that practice and use it with adult students. I’ll have a story like this every term!” 

As we came to the end of our lively conversation, Danielle had a few final words for me, and you “The pandemic helped me embrace what a class would look like where students could complete all their assignments in class rather than having to work for hours outside of class. What a class would look like if we didn’t use a PowerPoint all the time but were more engaging. And what would happen if we were empowered to try something different.” 

Mary has been an instructor in the BSN (Baccalaureate of Science in Nursing) program at Camosun College since January 2000.  Prior to that she graduated from Camosun with an Associate of Arts and Nursing Diploma (1992), then completed a Post Registered Nurse program Bachelor of Science of Nursing (BSN) from the University of Victoria, followed by a Master of Science of Nursing (MSN) at the University of British Columbia (UBC). All the while, Mary was working as a nurse spending much of her time in both complex and acute care hospital settings.

Mary has always had a passion for teaching. “In the master’s program at UBC you can focus on different streams, one of which is curriculum education. My curriculum education instructor, Dr. Barbara Paterson, talked to us about how important it is for teaching to be meaningful and fun, and that you want to meet the students where they’re at. I was drawn to that perspective on education, and it’s something I’ve continued throughout my career as an educator.” When Mary graduated from UBC, she continued to work as a Registered Nurse at the bedside but began to consider what else she wanted to do. Dr. Paterson’s words stuck with her, so she asked some of her mentors if she should apply for teaching jobs, and they told her yes! While Camosun was not hiring when Mary applied, one of the instructors in the program suddenly had to go on leave and Mary was brought in to teach her class. “And that was how I began to share my passion for nursing and teaching with the student nurses at Camosun.”

For the first few years Mary taught, she went back and forth between teaching first- and second-year courses, “but I gravitated towards the first year because that’s where we introduce and teach our students about complex care, independent living, and older adults. I also enjoy working with students who are new to the college life. When I was a student at Camosun, I found the transition from high school to college life very stressful, but the supports I got made all the difference in transitioning from that smaller environment to the larger environment. So, I really enjoy those first few months where you’re really supporting new students; it’s almost like when, as a nurse, you assess your patients when admitting them to find what supports they need.”

I wondered what else, aside from supporting first year students, Mary enjoyed about teaching.  “I have a passion for supporting Indigenous students. The Nursing program began to save seats for Indigenous students in the early 2000’s. Before HHS hired an Indigenous Support Coordinator, I and other instructors provided support for the new Indigenous students.  I am especially inspired by Indigenous Liaison Nurses and Indigenous nurses in our communities, and I continue to incorporate Indigenous education knowledge into my classes and support the students.”

In addition, Mary told me that being an instructor “feels like Christmas time all the time.  Students are so excited when they see something new, for example when my first-year students are out in nursing practice for the first time – they’re in their Camosun scrub uniforms, getting to know their clients, and having that textbook relational practice become real. I feel so honored to see the light, the happiness, the engagement, and the care that happens, to see that I am making a difference in their lives.” And Mary especially loves it when she runs into past students in the hospital that are now RNs, knowing that she had a part in where they are now. “It energizes me to know that even if I’m not directly caring for those patients somebody I taught is, someone who has been inspired by something I did or said. I love being a nurse, and I love being an educator. What an honor to be able to combine two amazing careers into one.”

I wondered what teaching life was like for Mary when we all had to move online during COVID, and what she has kept from that time.  “Even before we went online, I was working with Sue Doner in CETL to learn how to better use D2L, for example learning how to use rubrics and grade online. Then when we moved online, I was not as stressed, and this made transition for me easier. We all, however, spent long days creating all the learning plans and the online activities. What I’ve kept from that time were some neat learning activities that we can send to students – home study packages and reflections they can complete to get ready for nursing practice. Some of them I’ve had to change, but those have been great resources.”  But Mary is still using some of the videos they created during COVID and has kept her virtual office hours.

As always, I was curious if Mary had some specific memories from her years of teaching to share. “For me, it’s those critical moments, when the teaching and the experiential learning come together at the bedside of a client. Or when a student is giving personal care for the first time on their own and I’m observing. Those moments are inspirational because you’re seeing the students make a difference. For example, I had a student a few years ago who had been working with a client and, on her own, had written up a summary of suggestions for the Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL) to share with the staff about how she had worked with this client and which things had worked well. Another time we had a client who was passing away and two students felt so compassionate they asked if they could work with just that client.  They spent the rest of the shift attending to the client and being there for the family. I didn’t organize that – the students did. You have to be open to in-the-moments experiences like these because sometimes they support the best learning.”

This piece about students being in control of their own learning is important to Mary. “It’s not about my agenda, it’s about them meeting their learning goals. We ask students to create learning plans, and some of them ask, what do you want me to write? To which I reply, what is important to you? While there are learning outcomes that must be achieved in courses, some can be more flexible and when students assign their own meaning to them, then learning happens more easily.”

I asked Mary what advice she might have for new faculty at Camosun. “Be kind to yourself – it’s a steep learning curve, becoming an instructor. Take the Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) early on and find mentors both in nursing and in places like CETL. Try new things and be ok when they don’t land perfectly because students enjoy engaging in a variety of activities. Attend the Great Teachers conference because you will learn so much from other instructors.  Use your professional development time wisely – it goes fast and can get eaten up by curriculum development so try to read a few articles every semester for yourself, not just for your teaching. And remember: to be a good teacher, you have to be a good student and open to constructive criticism. And finally, just be open to all the exciting things that we’re privileged to have access to here at Camosun College.”

Stephanie is a term instructor in the Social Sciences department where she teaches geography courses.  She has not been at the college long (since fall, 2023) and as a term instructor, does not always know if or when she will be teaching again. But she had an amazing story to tell and some great insights on teaching and learning to share.

Stephanie grew up in Arkansas where she completed a bachelor’s with a double major in geography and Arab studies.  After completing a master’s in geography, Stephanie studied tourism in Tunisia before beginning her doctoral studies in environmental studies at York University (moving to Canada for the first time). During all of this, and in between studies, she traveled, attended the American University in Morocco and the Borgiba Institute for Languages in Tunis, worked with World Heritage Sites, specifically in Carthage, then returned to the United States to study American nationalism and identity on landscapes of national parks. Finally, she moved to Qatar with her husband who works in medical imaging IT, where they spent six years before returning to Canada in 2022. “I worked at the US army base with Afghan refugees. We built a school and brought kids together. We would go out into the community and distribute donations. And I ended up teaching English – I never thought of being an English teacher, but it was what was needed.”

After renewing her permanent residency in Canada, Stephanie applied to be a substitute geography instructor at Camosun, a job she did during the winter term of 2023. Then, in the fall of 2023, she came on board as a term instructor teaching two sections of Geography 100, one blended and one in-person. And this past winter term, Stephanie was teaching a full course load, including courses on resource and environmental management, environmental sustainability, and the geography of Canada. As overwhelming as starting to teach at a new institution then taking on a full load of teaching has been for her, Stephanie tells me she has had a lot of help. Her chair at the time was with her every step of the way, and she also had help from some of my colleagues in CETL, as well as her subject liaison librarian, telling me that “every person has been amazing!”

When I asked Stephanie what drew her to teaching and what she enjoys most about it, she immediately answered, the students. “My weekends are busy with course work and sometimes I get bogged down. But when I get back with the students, it’s very energizing and I remember why I’m doing this. In spite of the ups and downs that come with teaching, I just want to engage and empower the students; I want to show them the world.”

I also wondered about her experience teaching a blended course.  “Even though I did teach and take classes online during COVID, the blended concept was completely new to me. I taught two blended sections in the winter 2024 term – one ran during the day and the other in the evening and the students in each section had very different needs. I found it challenging but Derek in CETL helped me pick out some books about online learning, and I talked to Susan Chen and Katie Waterhouse [both instructors who teach blended courses.] I would redesign the courses if given the opportunity, but you don’t always know what needs to be changed until you’re in the middle of teaching.” Right now, as a term faculty member, Stephanie unfortunately does not have the Scheduled Development time she would need to redesign the courses. But she didn’t start with nothing. “My chair was very generous in sharing her content, and I inherited some content from another faculty member, so all I had to do was fill some gaps, integrate current topics, and add a bit of myself. The blend itself was one class a week in person with the rest asynchronous in D2L, so I also had to figure out what belonged online and what needed to be in-person. Sometimes I recorded lectures, sometimes the lecture was in person and the lab activity was online – it depended on the class. I worked hard to make the courses successful, but I could only do so much with the time I had.”

I asked Stephanie if any memories of the past year of teaching had stuck with her.  “I think just making connections with students and those moments when you say something that opens their eyes to something new. For example, in the resource and environmental management course I asked students if they had heard about the ring of fire. And everyone said yes, until they realized I was talking about the ring of fire in Northern Ontario which none of them knew about, even the Canadians from Ontario. When you hook them, they get excited. For me, that’s the best part.”

Stephanie has had many international students in her courses.  “It’s amazing to have students from all over the world because they bring different perspectives.” Stephanie worked with Cristina Petersen (one of our Multilingual Support Specialists) to support her international students on how to take notes, and to provide definitions for terms they find challenging. “When I get frustrated because students aren’t coming to class or taking notes, I remind myself that every student, international or not, has their own struggles, preferences for how to learn, and reasons for being here.” Stephanie can also relate to international students because she is international herself. “In one class, we were talking about forestry in British Columbia and I asked ‘who here can vote in Canada?’ Well, of course, I can’t and that I think that helped some of the international students, knowing that I’m not from here either.”

As we came to the end of our conversation, I asked Stephanie, as a fairly new faculty member, what she would like to have had or known when she started teaching at Camosun, and what advice she would have for other new faculty.  Her answer echoed what I have heard from many other term instructors: “I would have liked to have had more time before the start of the term to figure out what I was doing, because that first term was tough. Getting a C-number, getting access to D2L and learning how to use it, etc.” In addition, Stephanie spoke to the uncertainty of not knowing if she would be teaching again in the future until the last minute, and imagining what she could do with her courses if she had more time to prepare. “As far as what would I tell new faculty: Be annoying. Ask questions. If you’re wondering about the writing center go over and knock on the door and introduce yourself. Just be annoying – it’s okay. People will be kind to you.  But you’re not going to find out unless you keep asking questions.”

Thuy has been a faculty member in the Biology Department at Camosun College since 1999. Thuy was finishing her master’s in molecular and developmental genetics, and had transferred into the PhD program, but after passing the PhD qualifying exam left her wandering the streets of Montreal feeling empty instead of elated, she decided teaching was really what she wanted to do.  She was accepted into the education program at McGill where she completed a two-year degree. And the rest is history.  I have spoken to Thuy a few times in the past about her teaching (sometimes on nice walks around the campus), and was really looking forward to sharing some of her insights with others.

Thuy started out teaching introductory biology courses, then began teaching anatomy and physiology (A&P) to first-year nursing students.  After 15 years of teaching A&P, an opportunity came up for her to teach the infectious disease course.  At first, Thuy was not interested, but as she thought about it (and became fascinated with sourdough cultures) she decided to give it a try, and in Fall of 2019 found herself teaching three new courses, one being the infectious disease course.  “I remember teaching my infectious disease students that first fall, talking about Ebola and other diseases where the World Health Organization will come in to mitigate spread of the disease during an outbreak. To help students understand the challenges of public health and relate to the people living through the Ebola outbreak, I said ‘can you imagine if you got sick, and people in blue vests came and said, you can’t get together with your family this Christmas because you have a respiratory illness?’ And then, COVID happened. Teaching this course turned out to be a good thing for me, because despite the horror of switching to online teaching, because I was still new to infectious disease, I found myself very curious about COVID rather than worn down by it.”

I asked Thuy what she likes best about her life as an instructor.  “I really like the creative aspect of it and the problem solving and I like learning and trying new things, whether it’s new material or new students with new problems. I find the challenges of, for example, making a particular piece of content more accessible or easier to understand, fun. And the best challenges are when students come for help, you work with them, and then see them achieve what they want – that’s really exciting. But I do find it hard when students are struggling but you have no idea if it’s a personal struggle, a content-related struggle, or a learning skills struggle – sometimes it can be difficult to support in those circumstances.”

Going back to her online teaching experience (which she found especially challenging) during COVID, I asked Thuy if there were things she continued to integrate into her teaching since coming back to in-person teaching. “I have continued to record my lectures and make them available to students, and I provide notes for them in D2L, first, to reduce stress for people who can’t make it because of illness and also to support international students, or for any student really.  For example, while my dental hygiene students come to every class, most of them watch the recordings in case they missed something. Some students don’t take notes in class anymore because they find it more effective to focus and listen and not have to worry about taking notes too.”

I wondered if Thuy had any memories of past 25 years of teaching that stuck out for her.  “There were two students – I don’t remember their names, but I still think about them sometimes. Both of them came to me for help and I spent a lot of time with them. When they came to my office, I would ask them about various topics, and they could talk to me about those topics with no problem.  However, when it came to writing the exams, they would falter. I began to feel that oral exams would have worked better for them., but at that time I didn’t know how to go about offering oral exams as an option in a way that would have seemed fair and not additionally stressful for them. Maybe if I had tried it, or if I had been able to talk to somebody who had already tried it I could have helped these students more.”

I asked Thuy what advice she might have for new instructors at Camosun.  “It doesn’t matter if you’re new or if you’ve been teaching for a while, sometimes things don’t go well, and you can lose confidence. One image which helps me when I feel really, really low, is that what I am doing is scrunching down low so that I can suddenly leap up – that periods of downs are actually periods of powering up.  Thinking about them that way can really help. In addition, so often when we as teachers get evaluations, 95% of them will be great, but those other one or two comments are the ones that hurt you, that stick with you.  But don’t hold those negative comments to your heart.”  Thuy said she thought this same idea would be helpful for students as well.  “One bad exam can be demotivating enough to make students give up. Instead, we need to all remember to use those failures as feedback. Everyone fails at one time or another and it’s not the failing that’s important, it’s what you do afterwards that matters.”

As we wrapped up our conversation, Thuy wanted to share one more story with me.  “To support students to develop their voice, I ask them to do presentations, but not in front of the entire class. Instead, they present to small groups of people at stations in the classroom. As students in the audience move from station to station, the presenting students repeat the same ten-minute presentation many times, so they become more comfortable with presenting. My dental hygiene students do this twice in one semester and once in the following semester, and by the end they have learned how to narrow down what is important, how to create visuals for the presentation, how to engage their audience and are better prepared for their capstone project, a presentation in front of 30 dentists and dental health professionals!” What a wonderful model for building an essential, transferable skill in a supportive environment.  I am looking forward to our next walk to find out what she is exploring next.

Kristin is an instructor in the School of Health and Human Services.  She has a background in mental health and curriculum and instruction and was hired by Camosun over 20 years ago on a contract to start a community mental health credential.  She has since worked not only to grow that program, but to develop other credentials. Today, Kristin teaches courses in the Mental Health and Addition program, as well as in the Interprofessional Mental Health and Addiction post-graduate diploma, and the Community Family and Child Studies program.

Kristin says “I came to Camosun with a non-traditional perspective of teaching. I was working with groups in psychiatry and mental health and was drawn to building relationships with students.  Our programs attract many students with their own mental health and substance use challenges, so it’s important to meet students where they’re at to recognize their strengths and support their motivation. Nothing warms my heart more than hearing grads tell us how much they changed through the program, or even partway through.”

I wondered where the students in Kristin’s program come from.  “Many times, they’re coming from support or work positions in residential settings, street programs, outreach, etc. In the classroom, students engage in reflection and self-awareness so they can become more grounded in their own values and beliefs;  if you’re going to develop relationships with the people you’re supporting, you need to understand your own perspectives to be accepting of others’ values, beliefs, and perspectives.”

I asked Kristin what impact the past three years have had on her teaching.  “Being online during COVID highlighted engagement, because if we can’t engage students in any context, online or face-to-face, then they’re not to grow and become who they need to be in order to support others. That experience pushed us as faculty to be responsive and figure out how we were going to keep students engaged and motivated when we didn’t have the containment of the classroom.” But luckily, the programs were approved to have some in-person sessions during the height of the pandemic. “It was worth the work to get classroom time on campus, and students appreciated the opportunity to work on their skill development with others.”  Kristin herself is skeptical of how relationships can be built online but appreciates that many of their grads will need to engage with clients through online platforms, making online learning relevant for them. “Some of our graduates will need to use technology to connect with and assess clients and right now we’re revamping our professional communication courses to include content on digital literacy to help students think more about the benefits of technology, and  ultimately help their clients navigate the Internet to find relevant information and reliable resources.”

One activity in one course in the program Kristin has kept from the online teaching days was one where students work in small groups and record video of themselves leading group sessions.  The video allows students to not only observe the activity and evaluate things like facial expressions, but also allows them to watch the video again and conduct a self-evaluation of the session. In addition, an assignment that required students conduct interviews at an organization on-site, but had to move online during the pandemic, has been revised to include online interviews as an option.  “This helps because professionals out in the field are very busy and the online interview option means students have more opportunities to connect with them while being more respectful of the professional’s time because they can choose what works best for them.”

Since Kristin has been teaching at Camosun for so long, I knew she must have some memories that stick in her mind. “I recall the first graduation ceremony I went to and seeing the excitement in the grads waiting to get their parchment. I was ready to shake their hands as they crossed the stage but instead, I got hugs! It was amazing to see that I meant more to them than I thought, and I felt very blessed to be a part of their learning journey.”  Another thing Kristin appreciates is the diversity of students in her classes and the relationships they build together. “We get such an eclectic group of students in our program, of all ages and with all kinds of experience and education. I still have grads from years ago contact me to let me know what they are doing now – it’s those relationships I always think about, as well as the collective wisdom that the variety of students brings to the program.”  But what Kristin really wanted me to know about her students was how much they want to be here.  “We get a lot of people that need to make career changes and have put a lot of thought into what’s going to bring them purpose in their lives. Some have retired and decided retirement is not for them, some have been in recovery and want to learn how to help others in recovery. There are so many different reasons people come to the program, but everyone’s passionate and thirsty for knowledge, and that’s what’s so exciting.”

I asked Kristin what advice she might have for new instructors in her program or at Camosun in general. “Connect with other faculty to ask about strategies and talk about challenges. Don’t take things that happen in the classroom personally because you never know why someone might be reacting the way they are. Instead, engage with that student and figure out what’s going on rather than make assumptions because that personal engagement goes a long way to help that student sort out what’s getting in the way. New instructors might not feel confident in responding to something unexpected happening in the classroom that might have them questioning their ability as an instructor.  It’s ok to say, ‘let me think about that and get back to you’ and not feel compelled to say something right then and there.”

As we wrapped up our discussion, Kristin said, “I’ve been really fortunate to be in a program with students who are passionate about learning, and I also learn from my students – I’m always changing the way I do things and am grateful that we have that freedom as instructors and as a program to be responsive to what’s going on in the community. That ability to adjust and respond to the needs of students and the people they will ultimately be serving, as well as the students themselves, makes it all worthwhile”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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