Large higher educational organizations worldwide have invested in infrastructure which supports online and technology-enabled learning opportunities at higher education institutions. For large consortia in Canada and the United States, shared educational technologies present a number of opportunities, not least of which is significant cost savings for institutions and government. In 2017, the government of Ontario tasked eCampusOntario with executing a 3-year pilot of Lynda.com on behalf of all institutions in the province. This decision set eCampusOntario on a path towards shared licensing of educational technology and the development of shared infrastructure.
This presentation will consider eCampusOntario’s approach for the provision of shared educational technology. What principles shape these decisions? How do we ensure that a technology or practice will support ethical considerations and principles of access, choice and flexibility for learners and educators?
The eCampusOntario approach is characterized by the cultivation of learner and educator communities which trickle up to inform decision making at a systemic level. These spaces prioritize the empowerment of learners and educators to connect, experiment and explore the intersection between technology and learning in an open environment. This presentation will feature two key projects: eCampusOntario Student Experience Design (SXD) Lab and the Ontario Extend Professional Development Framework.
Through the cultivation of these educator and learner driven networks, eCampusOntario is better positioned to move from idea to scale, execute system-wide shared technology and infrastructure projects, and ultimately keep pace with the changing environment of higher education.
This session includes a brief demonstration of the various web projects and tool that I use in my Media and Humanities courses, as well as several student projects built over the last few years in my courses (about 25min). This will be followed by a question period and discussion of various web design tools (Wix, Weebly, Wordpress) as well as collaborative design tools (Canva) and video animation and editing tools (Pow Toons, etc.) (about 20min). The goal is to discuss the pros and cons of various web tools used for teaching and projects, and to collaborate together on a list of resource for our students to use for their web projects.
I have been teaching and developing courses on media and technology within the Humanities for several years. My focus is on critical media literacy, social justice education, trans-cultural media analysis, cultural analysis and gender studies. In my presentation, I will demonstrate... Read More →
People attending this session will learn about the effectiveness of a BC made, free, online peer-feedback tool. The tool, ComPAIR, is grounded in the notion that comparing different answers fosters learners’ understanding of the features of a strong answer. During the session, attendees will: a) try out the online tool, b) learn the results of an experimental test of the tool, and c) use a ‘classroom response system’ to engage in a discussion of the challenges of rigourously evaluating learning innovations.
The teaching innovation explored here is grounded in two basic findings of pedagogic research. First, frequent formative assessments have the benefit of incentivizing active cognitive engagement with material. Encouraging student exploration of how and why their answers can be improved, however, is difficult. Second, peer feedback activities provide students with feedback and, more importantly, an opportunity to engage in critical reasoning about the characteristics of a good ‘answer’. Taken together, peer feedback provides an opportunity for students to deepen their learning by actively engaging with the content of their own answers and those of their peers.
In addition to providing an opportunity to use the tool, we will discuss results of an experimental test of online peer feedback in which 150 students in the same course were randomly assigned to either i) complete a peer-feedback exercise, or ii) a control group with no exercise. To test the tool we consider both: a) performance on subsequent assignments across the two experimental groups, and b) results from a student survey on their experiences using the tool. The session will conclude with a moderated discussion of the challenges and opportunities related to experimental analysis of educational innovations.
I teach political science at UBC. My courses focus on quantitative research methods, public opinion, and political psychology. I joined UBC after earning my PhD in politics at Princeton. My teaching interests include: blended learning, technology in the classroom, and learning through... Read More →
Why do we care about education? Why is education a priority for the public? Who is education for? The eCampusOntario Student-Experience Design (SXD) Lab explores these fundamental questions by empowering students to take charge of the learning design process. In Fall 2017, eCampusOntario launched the SXD Lab in partnership with leading designers, industry partners, educators and Ontario higher education students. The SXD Lab creates an environment in which teams of students use design thinking methodology to prototype openly-licensed outputs that have an impact on students’ learning experiences.
I'm Chris and I am a Canadian with a passion for accessible and affordable high-quality education. I have been involved with education for a number of years in different capacities such as institutions, student government, non-profits and most recently, a government agency called... Read More →
I will present about UBC’s efforts to implement and evaluate team chat as a learning technology for online and blended courses. Team chat (like Slack) is a transformative communication and collaboration technology, combining threaded discussions with real-time chat in an intuitive and flexible way. Features like persistent history, advanced search capability, file sharing, typing status, mobile apps, and emoji reactions add up to a versatile tool that is still easy to use.
Research shows how timely interactions with instructors, collaboration with classmates, and a sense of community can enhance teaching and learning. This is particularly important in an online learning environment. Team chat has given our students a direct communication channel to their instructor and each other, helping them connect, ask questions, seek clarification, collaborate, and build community.
Since 2016, the Faculty of Education has been piloting an open source team chat application called Mattermost on a UBC-hosted server. Unlike Slack or Microsoft Teams, which are both cloud-hosted outside of Canada, Mattermost allows us to keep student data secure in compliance with BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). Mattermost has been used in over 20 course sections across the faculties of Education, Arts, and Science. As of December 2017, the UBC Mattermost pilot consists of 100 daily active users, 300 monthly active users, and almost 70,000 posts.
Attendees will learn (and chat) about:
• Ways team chat can enhance learning • How team chat has been applied in real use cases including online program cohorts, learning communities, and research teams • The relationship between secure, safe, transparent platforms and academic freedom
Mattermost will be blended into the session, allowing attendees to choose the conversation(s) they wish to join, participate in real-time, network with colleagues, and carry on chatting after the Festival of Learning concludes.
Learning Technology Specialist, University of British Columbia
Ian is the Faculty of Education's Learning Technology Specialist. He helps instructors integrate technology with their teaching in effective, evidence-based, and innovative ways. Ian specializes in distance education and is the Project Manager of the Reconciliation Through Indigenous... Read More →
Participants are encouraged to bring their own laptop to this session
This session begins where 2017’s ETUG - Beyond a Toy: 360° Experiential Learning - left off. That session delved into how viewing 360° video had an immersive quality that could encourage meaningful connections to a topic. This mode permits class trips to anywhere in the world all within the space of a smartphone and Virtual Reality viewer.
The next step in the pedagogical journey switches the student’s role from passive viewer to creator and editor of 360° spaces.
In part one of the proposed session, attendees would view some of the best student created 360° projects from Camosun this academic year. Students have gone out into their community and documented diverse concepts from their classes, like tidal movements or patriarchy, in actions – via 360° images. What’s more, these groups then augmented a string of 360° spaces – bubbles – with text information, 2D photos, soundscapes, quotes, poems, and video.
In part two of the session, attendees will be invited into a series of pre-shot 360° images. From inside these bubbles, attendees will be taught how to augment these spaces – via Holobuilder.com, a US based virtual reality company who Camosun works with. After a short round of instruction, attendees will be encouraged to explore, play, and design their bubbles with the many tools Holobuilder makes available. The goal is to not only to have attendees get their hands and heads inside a thought bubble, but also to have attendees consider how they might bring 360° image augmentation to their classrooms and institutions. Instructors may consider having students explore an augmented 360° space the instructor has created. Others may ask students to define and delineate a 360° bubble – as a mapping project might. The goal will be to generate a discussion on the potential and pitfalls for this type of learning.
Ultimately, most disciplines aspire to have their students see the world through a variety of unique lenses that their discipline teaches. This project permits students to capture and describe these paradigms in the world around them.
Applied learning, indigenization, and digital pedagogy are the three main axis which I'm trying to bring to life in the classrooms I'm part of.
I wonder how classes can facilitate more creativity. I wish I know how to facilitate learning activities that encouraged failure positive... Read More →
Summary Blackboard Ally seamlessly integrates into various Learning Management Systems to improve accessibility of digital course content and track progress made over time. Ally promotes accessible course design from the start by flagging inaccessible materials and providing feedback and instructions for remediation, in addition to providing alternative formats that best meet students’ individual needs.
Abstract
In response to recent state and local policies, the Washington State community and technical college system has been working to improve accessibility in all areas, but specifically in the area of online instruction. To help with this effort, the system first piloted Ally with 7 colleges, followed by a system-wide roll-out of the tool. Ally is integrated in Canvas, allowing faculty to scan their courses for accessibility problem areas. Using Ally’s feedback feature, faculty are given the guidance on how to make their materials more accessible. Additionally, Ally enables faculty and students to download alternative formats for various course materials. From an institutional standpoint, Ally is able to track the improvements and progress made over time.
In this presentation, we’ll demonstrate Ally’s feature set in Canvas and discuss the feedback and experience from faculty, staff, and students involved in the pilots and system-wide roll-out.
Key Points
Blackboard Ally can meet the needs of faculty by providing immediate evaluation and guidance on making accessible content.
Blackboard Ally can meet the needs of students by allowing them to download the alternative format of their choice.
Blackboard Ally can meet the needs of administration by tracking institutional progress made towards increased accessibility.
Nicolaas Matthijs is an entrepreneur and product creator with over 10 years of experience in Educational Technology. Nicolaas has worked at several leading R1 institutions such as Cambridge University, UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech, where he developed Learning Management Systems, Academic... Read More →
This session is a fast-paced, immersive experience into the Design Thinking Mindset. Using a mash-up of approaches, this format is a unique template that walks participants through the five pillars of design thinking: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test; with an emphasis on the Empathetic Interview. Baked-in concepts borrowed from Liberating Structures, Institute of Innovation in Education, Stanford Design School, Future Design School. A multi-modal mash-up with multiple access points and a myriad of applications.
I'll be bringing examples of past participants "out loud" thinking, and talk about the sorts of challenges I have seen addressed-- successfully!-- with a Design Thinking approach.
As humans, we have an obligation to care for ourselves, for each other, and for the world, but how can we create, enter into, and support caring relationships in post-secondary institutions? Educational developers, like teachers, have an ethical responsibility for demonstrating care in our work to improve teaching and learning with ‘loving the learner’ being our motto (Rogers & Webb, 1991). As people working in different educational development roles (Curriculum Consultant, Educational Development Consultant) at a large research intensive post-secondary institution in BC who hold the values of caring, service, and relationships as a priority, we are exploring questions including: How do we operationalize care in our work? How is care operationalized in the types of questions that we ask in our work?
Building on the work of scholars who have explored an ethics of care in relation to education (see Noddings, 1988, Rogers & Webb, 1991), we provide some reflections on how an ethics of care is present in our own practices (and where it is absent or under-developed), in order to share how an ethics of care can be operationalized in educational development. Drawing on the literature, we also present practices that support enactment of an ethics of care in education and specifically in educational development. These include aspects such as modelling, dialogue, practice, continuity, reflection, and continuity (Rogers & Webb, 1991).
In this session, participants will be invited to explore how care is/could be operationalized in their work through discussing questions such as: What does care look like? Does showing care mean the same thing to everyone? Twenty years into the future, what might caring look like in post-secondary education?
This session is of interest to educational developers, staff, students, and administrators who have a desire to explore the ways that the principles of caring can be incorporated into practice. By the end of this session, participants will have been introduced to ways that care is (or could be) demonstrated in the field of educational development and they will be able to articulate several practices that support an ethics of care in post-secondary education.
This session will present the vision of UBC’s Emerging Media Lab (EML - eml.ubc.ca/) as a space dedicated to exploring how emerging technologies are evolving the way we learn. The presenters will share EML’s project development process and its support structure; how it established and continues to foster the connection with the industry, on-campus student groups, and k-12 teachers; how it built and has maintained a community of practice. Currently the EML serves two roles in the UBC community: 1) to enhance teaching and learning with immersive technologies - Virtual Reality (VR)/Augmented Reality (AR)/ Mixed Reality (MR) - while providing inspirational sessions such as demos, workshops, orientations and community of practice meetings, and 2) to incubate ideas by developing projects in collaboration among students, faculty and staff members.
Participants in the session will have opportunities to experience ongoing and completed projects in immersive media such as the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and HoloLens. Projects include the HoloBrain (http://eml.ubc.ca/projects/holobrain/), an AR teaching tool that could be implemented in neuroanatomy instruction, the Stanley Park Geography VR Field Trip (http://eml.ubc.ca/projects/geography-vr/ ), a project that focuses on Stanley park as a virtual reality experience using 3D spatial environment models, and landscape photogrammetry, and the Pterygopalatine Fossa VR project, ( http://eml.ubc.ca/projects/pterygopalatine-fossa-vr/ ) an interactive educational virtual reality tool to aid anatomy education with regards to the Pterygopalatine Fossa. Participants will also be asked to create their own 3D objects as a demonstration of how guided task sheets can be used to aid faculty/staff/students in developing a better understanding of how immersive experiences are created. These projects will help participants to experience and better understand both the unique affordances of these technologies for teaching and learning and a better understanding of what is required in terms of development.
The session will end with a discussion of how emerging media can be used to support teaching and learning both in and out of the classroom in addition to what barriers and challenges are present.
With background in systems design, human factors, and emerging technologies, I have been working within academia on adopting emerging technologies to enhance knowledge translation and learning experience.
Currently I lead UBC Studios and the UBC Emerging Media Lab (http://eml.ubc.ca... Read More →
Engineering Student enthusiastic about VR/AR and its possibility. In progress of expanding my horizon beyond my degree at UBC. I've been working at UBC Emerging Media Lab for past 8 months as Lab Coordinator - Ask me anything about EML, developing for VR/AR and anything about students... Read More →
Participants are encouraged to bring their own laptops to this session
This presentation introduces ComPAIR, an innovative peer feedback and teaching technology developed at UBC that provides students a safe, flexible environment to develop the skill of evaluating another person’s work, and in turn, receive evaluations from their peers.
Particularly in introductory courses, the effectiveness of peer feedback can be limited by the relative newness of students to both the course content and the skills involved in providing good feedback. ComPAIR’s novel design makes use of students’ inherent ability and desire to compare: according to the psychological principle of comparative judgement, novices are much better at choosing the “better” of two answers than they are at giving those answers an absolute score. By scaffolding peer feedback through comparisons, ComPAIR provides an engaging, simple, and safe environment that supports two distinct outcomes: 1) students learn how to assess their own work and that of others in a way that 2) facilitates the learning of subtle aspects of course content through the act of comparing.
We will review the results of an extended assessment of student experience with ComPAIR through three pilot courses in English, Physics and Math at UBC. Session Participants will have the opportunity to actually use the software from the perspective of an instructor, course administrator, and student. There will also be an interactive portion of the session to demonstrate how comparisons are used for learning.
ComPAIR is open source software developed at UBC. Details on how to set up compare at your own institution can be found here: https://lthub.ubc.ca/guides/compair/.
Assistant Professor of Teaching, University of British Columbia
I'm an Instructor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UBC and the Associate Director the Science Gateway Programs, which includes Science One and the Coordinated Science Program. I spend most of my time either teaching or thinking about teaching.
How can students create a personalized learning pathway and build competencies that would help them gain access to real-world opportunities? How can these students be supported and be connected with peers, mentors, experts in the field, and community interest groups? How can educational technologies be leveraged to build this web of personalized learning pathways and relationships that support learning beyond the formal educational structure?
These are key issues in connected learning and are addressed in this presentation on a connected learning project called “Sky, Water, Earth” (http://www.skywaterearth.ca). "Sky, Water, Earth" is a collection of self-guided learning activities that are grouped by theme and presented in a playlist format, or a sequenced pathway. The themes are competencies valued by future employers in the sciences – scientific communication, creative thinking, and research orientation. These themes are closely aligned with the BC Science Learning Standards. Students choose which playlists to work on, progress at their own pace, earn points as they complete the playlists, and redeem points for real-world opportunities. Some real-world opportunities include Google hangout with scientists, access to networking events, and guided visits to labs at UBC. The presenter will share the project design and development process, contribution of project partners, and initial feedback from educators. The presenter will also lead group discussions on how elements of connected learning (self-selected learning pathways, flexible pace, and community connection) could be incorporated in their own teaching and how to overcome some potential challenges.
Since 2011, JIBC has implemented open textbooks in some courses, including adoptions, adaptions, and new textbook creations. One of the drivers for this activity is a recognition that our student demographic is lower socio-economic for the most part and likely face considerable challenges in paying for their programs. Currently, we are working towards creating one of the first Zed Creds in Canada in our Law Enforcement Studies Diploma program. We have 11 textbooks currently in use and expect all courses in the LESD program to have zero cost for textbooks by Fall 2020. In 2018, we are seeking student perspectives on the impact that this has had on their perception of JIBC, their program, and their courses and instructors. Specifically, we want to know whether our assumption that open textbooks are benefitting students is valid, and if so, in what ways and to what degree.
In this presentation, we’ll share findings and discuss possible next steps both in terms of research and future development of our Zed Cred.
Centre for Teaching, Learning and Innovation, Justice Institute of BC
Florence is a Program Manager and Instructor and works for the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Innovation (CTLI) at the Justice Institute of BC. In her role as an instructional designer she collaborates with program areas and divisions as they develop and redesign their courses... Read More →