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Exploring and learning at ETUG’s 2017 Spring Jam

Education by Design Spring Jam 2017Just back (actually it’s been nearly two weeks!) from a challenging, fun exploration of ideas, innovations, edtech stories and design practices at UBC Okanagan (a sunny, stormy beautiful campus in Kelowna). Another ETUG event that introduced me to new people and projects and left me with lots to think about and new ideas of my own to try for the future. A great way to start a summer break.

1.  How People Learn Plenary (Dr. Peter Newbury)

Dr. Newbury’s fast-paced, humorous and interactive exploration of three key findbeginner to expertings from the well-known National Academy of Science book “How People Learn.” was a great introduction to the Spring Jam. While I was familiar with the National Academies book, I appreciated his efforts to engage us in different ways we could help students “move from ignorance to expertise.” I chuckled at his explanation of how students move from “unconscious incompetence” to “conscious, competence” as I remembered my first university classes.

Further learning:

2.  Wikipedia Edit-a-thon   (Will Engle, and Christina Hendriks, UBC)

An “Edit-a-thon” is “..an organized event where editors of online communities such as Wikipedia edit and improve a specific topic or type of content, typically including basic editing training for new editors.” Will and Christina shared their experiences working with students to edit Wikipedia articles and got us all to dig in and try some simple editing tasks.

I attended to see how UBC had approached Wikipedia assignments as we’d tried something like this at Yukon College in 2003 or 2004 (without success). I’m not sure it’s much easier because of all the resources and supports available from Wikipedia; it seems as though the rules have grown (even though Wikipedia says it has no rules!) and the process has become more complex. But Christina and Will provided compelling evidence of transformational learning possibilities and shared a handout to follow if you’re interested.

Steps for planning Wikipedia student learning sessions:

  • familiarize yourself with the rules – remember the 5 pillars
  • provide introductory “easy” editing activities for students
  • determine whether writing articles or simply contributing editing “muscle” is the learning you’re looking for? Design your students’ assignment
  • Allow time to acquaint students with Wikipedia policies, explore “good” article structure, practice how to use the wiki, learn how to interact with Wikipedia community editors!
  • Connect with UBC Centre for Teaching, Learning & Technology for assessment structures

Further learning:

3.  Student-driven OER, 3D modeling and virtual reality tours – the next wave of OER creation and adaptation in BC  Rosario Passos, BCIT

Rosario spent the last year with BCcampus to work on open projects.  During her session, she shared some outstanding examples of co-creation of open resources with students and faculty at UBC and Camosun (funded by the BCcampus Open Education grant funding). Professor Christina Hendriks was in the audience and shared her experiences working on the development of the Open Case Studies Project at UBC.

The final portion of Rosario’s presentation focused on the upcoming BCcampus OER deadline – June 16th – new funding for ancillary resource creation, OER creation, Zed-Cred degrees

4.  Open Pedagogy: Making Learning Visible through Live, Reflective and Co-created Experiences   (Liesel Knaack, and Michael Paskevicius, VIU)

Open-LiesslMichaelIt’s not about open textbooks, or open pedagogy, or OERs! It’s about “…making of learning visible through community engagement and the design of authentic and lived learning experiences.” Liesel Knaack challenged the audience to move beyond definitions of “open” to focus on ways to make learning more meaningful, relevant and useful to students. Michael Paskevicius supported our understanding through the session by sharing useful models of openness – Attributes of Open Pedagogy B. Hegarty 2015 and Degrees of Openness, C. Hodgkinson-Williams and E. Gray 2009. Hopefully he’ll share his slides soon – keep an eye on his Slideshare channel!

Some examples of visible learning at VIU:

5.  Applying Design Principles and Collaborative, Visual Techniques to “Modules”  (Barbara Berry, Educational Consultant, SFU TLC Team)

Jumpstart presentation SFUJumpstart is an initiative between the Teaching and Learning Centre at SFU and the Faculty of Health Sciences aimed at supporting tenure track faculty to create “shareable” educational resources. They shared developing examples of design thinking approaches using storyboards, visual mapping, diagrams and templates

SFU TLC Team: John Born, Christina Drabik, Kar On Lee, David Rubeli, Robyn Schell, Jason Toal, Sarah Turner, Duane Woods, Gabe Wong. 

I don’t have much to share from this session as it was more about collecting our feedback and involving us in the story than about sharing actual outcomes – the project is in the early stages.

Keep an eye out for my next post. This year was the first time I’d stepped forward to lead an ETUG session, and, in the spirit of “if it’s worth doing…”, I was a co-facilitator of three different sessions with Beth Cougler Blom and Sylvia Currie.  I’ll do a separate post to share what I learned about different facilitation techniques (design thinking methods and a few ideas from Gamestorming) plus some of the creative ideas that participants shared with us about our “big” questions!

 

 

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Sylvia Riessner

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