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Monthly Archives: September 2020

#EveryChildMatters #OrangeShirtDay

September 25, 2020
Post-secondary Education
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This past week saw the Fall Equinox, as students are getting settled into the new academic year. It is an exciting time of new beginnings, possibilities, and hope. Some are excited and leap right in with confidence, while others may be uncertain and a little wary. Either way, and all along the continuum, the trust that learners place in us as guides, models, and mentors, is profound.

Education is a powerful force for good in this world. We open minds and hearts, we cultivate new ideas, knowledge, and skills, and we inspire change.

Tragically, education has also enacted huge and lasting harms, specifically among survivors of Canada’s Indian residential schools, as well as across successive generations. In the fall of 1973, Phyllis (Jack) Webstad from the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation was a six-year old who was excited to start school:

We never had very much money, but somehow my granny managed to buy me a new outfit to go to the Mission school. I remember going to Robinson’s store and picking out a shiny orange shirt. It had string laced up in front, and was so bright and exciting – just like I felt to be going to school!

When I got to the Mission, they stripped me, and took away my clothes, including the orange shirt! I never wore it again. I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t give it back to me, it was mine! The color orange has always reminded me of that and how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and how I felt like I was worth nothing. All of us little children were crying and no one cared.

Phyllis Webstad is the Executive Director of the Orange Shirt Society, and each year on September 30 we honour the experiences of the former students and survivors of Canada’s residential school system. As educators and academic leaders, we have a special obligation to Truth and Reconciliation for Education.

What can you do?

Orange Shirt Day is timed to align with the start of the new academic year when First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were taken from their families. This day reminds us of our collective responsibility for Truth and Reconciliation, and that we carry these obligations throughout our work as educators and academic leaders. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission report notes that while the TRC focused on the truth about residential schools, true reconciliation extends to the history of colonization, injustice and racism, and fair settlement of land and treaty rights.

We all have a role to play – “The perfect place to begin is right where a teacher stands.”

10 Tips for fostering instructional immediacy in online classrooms

September 15, 2020
Post-secondary Education
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How can we create online learning environments that are as dynamic, collaborative and successful as the best face-to-face classrooms? Is it even possible? My own experience in online graduate teaching over the past two decades suggests an emphatic “yes”. Or, should I say, an emphatic “yes, but…”.

Just as there are multiple and diverse classroom-based teaching approaches (some more successful than others in engaging learners and mobilizing knowledge transfer), there are as many ways and means of online instructional approaches. All students, regardless of the learning platform, engage best when they experience high instructional immediacy. That is, a sense of warmth, caring, connectedness, support and positive regard in the learning environment.

1. Post a positive and supportive welcome message to greet students the first time they log into the course, and each week thereafter

2. Share online bios (pictures are a bonus – students and instructor) to facilitate self-introductions

3. If you haven’t already, include short (< 5 minutes) “conversational” videos introducing weekly course topics and offering tips and key learning to personalize each week’s focus

4. Encourage students to find “peer learning buddies” in the class to foster collaboration and collegiality

5. Have early and ongoing online, discussion board conversations about process, meaning “how it feels”; versus course content, meaning “what we’re learning” – especially near the beginning of the course. Reflecting on process fosters a sense of shared place and community. Here are a couple of sample questions I’ve used:

  • What are you looking forward to in this course, and what is one thing you are concerned about?
  • How can we challenge each-other in ways that foster debate and dialogue but still be respectful and affirming?
  • What is it like for you being in this course and connecting together online?
  • How can I (professor) help maximize your learning and value from this course? And how can you help one another?

6. Offer targeted motivational communications at points in the course where motivation may be flagging (e.g., around Week 6, and towards the final couple of weeks of the course) 

7. Use intentional word choices in online communications with students (such as via class emails, discussion board posts, and course announcements). These can be subtle, and a conversational tone helps convey the sense of community and connection that we are trying to build.

Here are a couple of examples:

GoodBetter
“The focus of this course is…”“Our course will focus on…”
“You will be required to…”“We’ll be working together to accomplish…”
“Students’ feedback has indicated…”“The conversation in our group this week has highlighted…”

8. End the course with an explicit call to action – How does the learning in this course fit into the bigger picture of students’ learning trajectories and career goals? (here’s a video example from a few years ago – this was a social work addiction treatment course I taught at the University of Toronto).

9. Students often expect “24/7” availability and communication, and sometimes even more so when the course is online. That’s not realistic! Help manage expectations by being explicit with students about how often you check into the course, and the expected response time for student questions.

10. Be patient with yourself. You didn’t become an awesome classroom teacher overnight, and it will take time to be as awesome online. Let students know we are all learning together.

As students – and faculty – have had to pivot in orienting to rich digital communication and sharing, online teaching aligns with a new, shared, reality for all of us. The skills of fostering community in digital environments map closely to professional (and personal) applications far beyond the classroom. We’ve collectively experienced how digital inclusion, networking and collaboration are as essential as oxygen.

This post was adapted from: https://educateria.com/2014/06/24/10-tips-for-online-teaching/

We Are Academic Leaders and Change-Makers

September 11, 2020
Post-secondary Education
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Here we are the Friday before classes start for a fresh new academic year. To carry forward with my theatre analogy from last week (and hopefully not stretch it too far!), I guess we could say that the “audience” is taking their seats and waiting for the curtain to rise. Here are the “pre-show activities” among our students that we have witnessed countless times before: the searching for assigned “seats” (i.e. figuring out the online Learning Management System, ordering textbooks and other course materials, etc. etc.); looking through the programme (that would be course syllabi); along with all of the conversations, expectations and curiosity about what the shared experience is going to be like as the action unfolds.

And on the part of the cast and crew (that’s us!), there might be some pre-show jitters, lots of getting those last details right, and wondering what kind of audience it is going to be. The magic happens when the audience engages as live and dynamic partners in a shared and transformative experience for all. As an aside, despite two decades of teaching, I always had some of those “pre-show jitters” before a new semester, and then came the wonderful experience of meeting my students and finding my stride. It never gets old!

Thinking about our students’ anticipation of the coming semester also brings to mind our highly diverse and internationalized learning community across post-secondary education, and our core values of inclusion, respect, equity and social justice.  Anti-Black and Anti-Indigenous Racism, and other corrosive forms of violence, colonization and oppression, are enacted in a myriad of ways – large and small (and noting that the cumulative trauma of a multitude of implicit and overt forms of racism means that none are objectively “small”). As academic leaders, we all have a stake in how we engage with our students and with one-another, with the curriculum we teach, as well as the voices we amplify and include, and the actions that we take.

This past week marked an important, national, activist response by academics: the September 9-10 Scholar Strike galvanized by Dr. Anthea Butler. As the web page states: “The Canadian action is aligned with the one in the U.S., in its call for racial justice, an end to anti-Black police violence and it adds a specific focus on anti-Indigenous, colonial violence.”

The criticality of this work is painfully amplified in numerous research papers and other reports, including the Ontario Human Rights Commission Report: A Disparate Impact: Second interim report on the inquiry into racial profiling and racial discrimination of Black persons by the Toronto Police Service.

These documents are painful to read (and see), and are also essential reading (and seeing). To know is never to un-know, and in knowing comes the imperative for action.

On the eve of this new academic year and a new semester, let’s reaffirm our resolve of advocacy and activism, reflected in all that we do as academic leaders and change-makers.

Opening Night, The River We Stand In, and Whitewater Rafting Safety Tips

September 4, 2020
Post-secondary Education
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It’s been another active week at the college, with yet more students starting their apprenticeship labs, as well as faculty on campus (and at home) shooting videos (instructional and promotional) and getting all kinds of curriculum prepped for our September 14 Fall Semester start date! Now more than ever, with such limited on-campus activity, it feels kind of like all of the feverish “backstage” action that happens in a theater production, getting ready for opening night.

And in this case, we’ve got a 13-week run, with an incredible diversity of tools, applications and platforms to engage our students in a rich and immersive learning experience. Every semester, in every single class, we build learning communities and create the magic of discovery, and inquiry, and connectedness. Mastering the art of doing this all (or at least mostly) online expands our students’ own skills of engagement and professional practice in a world gone more radically digital than it has ever been.

We have already experienced cataclysmic change, and it’s a sure thing that we will continue to do so in the coming academic year. But what will never change is our deep and dedicated commitment to our students: transforming lives and communities through learning. You’ve probably heard the quote by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “You never stand in the same river twice, because it’s never the same river, and you’re never the same person.”

We are all in a swirling river of change, so let me offer some “safety tips”.

At faculty meetings last week, I used the analogy of taking a white-water rafting trip in anticipation of the coming semester. A heart-stopping adventure that mingles together trepidation and excitement. We’re probably all feeling a little of both those things right now, and our students as well, and when I searched online for “whitewater rafting safety tips”, there were some pretty compelling parallels:

So for the coming semester:

“I hope you see things that startle you.

I hope you feel things you never felt before.

I hope you meet people with a different point of view.

I hope you live a life you’re proud of.

If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”

–Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Top 10 Challenges – and Opportunities – Facing PSE

September 1, 2020
Education Research
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We are all students, and we are all teachers

This past week I did a session for Northern College at their Faculty Development Conference reflecting on some of the key themes and opportunities for higher education, as we collectively navigate through this “Year of the Pandemic”.

There were faculty and staff joining from across northern Ontario, and a lively discussion following my talk. One thing that stood out for me was how, regardless of how large or small, rural or urban, our institutions – all of us in higher education are grappling with the same big questions, big issues, big challenges, and big opportunities for transformation, redress, growth and change.

Here are the “Top 10” standout themes from Wednesday’s conversation:

  1. Leading inclusion and action through “two pandemics”: COVID-19, as well as the more destructive, corrosive and longstanding pandemic of racism, particularly Anti-Indigenous and Anti-Black Racism, and other forms of violence and exclusion
  2. Navigating institutional sustainability in the face of enrolment challenges
  3. Mastering online and digital technology tools and applications to support online teaching, and preparing students for meaningful engagement in online learning
  4. Digital inclusion and student access to technology and WiFi/bandwidth
  5. Fostering connectedness and community in this time of physical distancing and remote working and teaching
  6. Assuring student and employee health and safety, especially those who are engaging in face-to-face, lab-based learning on our campuses
  7. Supporting student (and employee) mental health and wellness
  8. Fostering closer connections with industry and employers to enrich opportunities for Work-Integrated Learning and graduate employment
  9. Balancing work with child care, elder care, and other competing priorities and responsibilities
  10. Finding our way into a new reality for PSE, one which can offer students choice and “hyflex” learning opportunities across a range of face-to-face, online, and hybrid credentials and micro-credentials…all pretty unimaginable just six months ago!

As we prepare for a fall semester in which so much is uncertain, and in which our students are placing so much hope and trust in us, the axiom that “we are all students, and we are all teachers” has never been more real. We are on an extraordinary learning journey together. It’s not going to perfect, it will certainly be messy at times, and the occasions when we get things absolutely right will be worth celebrating.