This month, the Edubytes editorial team looks back on the resources, articles and stories that stood out across the year in teaching and learning. The Edubytes editorial team consists of Sunah Cho, Manuel Dias, Will Engle, Marie Krbavac, Stephen Michaud, Jeff Miller, and Jason Myers.
2022 in review
As we begin the new year, many of us tend to reflect on the year that’s been.
Looking back at this year’s Edubytes, we noticed four particular themes that resonated with our readership: anti-racism and inclusive teaching, Indigenous learning resources, online learning, and technology in teaching. In this issue, we share articles, resources and thoughts around these themes. We hope you enjoy revisiting them – or diving into what you may have missed.
The Edubytes community is going strong, with more than one hundred new subscribers joining us in 2022. We look forward to sharing more resources, trends, and topics in teaching and learning in higher education again this year.
From all of us on the team, we thank you for giving Edubytes a read every month, and we wish you all the best for the year to come.
Anti-racism and inclusive teaching
Anti-racism and inclusive teaching in academia are topics that particularly resonated with our readership. In October, thanks to our guest editors Dr. Ryuko Kubota, Dr. Handel Kashope Wright and Dr. Shirley Chau, we highlighted issues of teaching and learning as featured in the UBC President’s Task Force on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Report.
UBC’s President’s Task Force on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence final report
The Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence (ARIE) Task Force, closely connected to the growing cases of racism in North America in 2020, was convened in March 2021. In the beginning of 2022, it finalized a report with recommendations that address how race and racism intersect with other forms of identity-based discrimination.
Anti-racism and inclusive excellence at UBC website
The ARIE at UBC website is a great source to learn more about this topic, understand its impact on the UBC teaching and learning community, and track the many actions the university is taking to build a more inclusive UBC.
Academe has a lot to learn about how inclusive teaching affects instructors
In this article, Chavella Pittman and Thomas J. Tobin describe how students respond to inclusive teaching practices quite differently depending on varied instructor characteristics. Their intent in this article is to raise awareness around the challenges of implementing inclusive techniques in teaching, by taking into account the classroom power dynamics that can make the effectiveness of such techniques quite unpredictable.
Indigenous learning resources
Throughout the year, we shone a light on Indigenous language revitalization efforts and experiences through online learning, and shared context and resources for understanding the ongoing impacts of the residential school system, in an attempt to honour Survivors, their families, and celebrate Indigenous communities’ strength and resilience.
Investigating Indigenous learners’ experience of online learning
In this article, Dr. Tony Bates shares the findings of a master’s thesis from Robline Davey, an Indigenous student who conducted research among 21 Indigenous learners on their personal experiences in online education. Davey has based her research on the Community of Inquiry framework, which focuses on three dimensions — teaching presence, cognitive presence and social presence — to develop online learning experiences that are engaging and motivating for online learners. The findings are eloquent and according to Bates, this thesis is a must-read for administrators or anyone involved in course or learning design, as it offers a critical reflection on a framework widely used in course design.
Teaching and learning resources from the CTLT Indigenous Initiatives
Shared in the 2022 Orange Shirt Day edition of Edubytes, the CTLT Indigenous Initiatives team has developed numerous resources that can be used in classrooms and other educational spaces to explore how knowledge gaps, social location and histories of place affect and inform learning.
Teaching Indigenous language revitalization over Zoom
In this paper, UBC teaching assistant Maya Daurio and instructor Mark Turin reflect on the “pivot to online” during the summer/fall of 2020 in an introductory course on Indigenous language documentation, conservation and revitalization. Through the reflection, they share their experiences creating a learning environment centered around flexibility, compassion and responsiveness, along with some of the challenges both students and the instructional team experienced. Thinking about the future of the course, they reflect on the positive aspects of the online experience that may be beneficially incorporated into the post-pandemic classroom. They recognize that emerging digital technologies have played, and will continue to play, a key role in Indigenous language revitalization and preservation.
Online learning
Online learning is a major theme in Edubytes. It was notably highlighted in April and June in the Learning Technology Rovers and Micro-credentials editions, where we covered topics ranging from the definition of quality of online learning, to a program that teaches communications skills in the technical sector, to a look back at remote learning over the last two years.
Defining quality and online learning
In this blog post, Dr. Tony Bates considers recent work by the Canadian Digital Learning Research Association to define modalities for teaching delivery. He then explores how experiences during the pandemic reveal potential limitations in current quality assurance standards for online learning and a double-standard in terms how quality assurance standards are only used for online modalities.
Critical skills for communications in the technical sector
The ability to communicate information accurately, succinctly and unambiguously is an essential skill required by employers in a breadth of technical industries. The Department of Earth, Environmental and Geographic Science at UBC Okanagan offers a non-credit UBC micro-credential in technical communication. It consists of eight online courses covering skills essential for employment and career advancement in the science and engineering sectors.
We embraced remote work, but remote learning suffered
This article explores the question of why so much of the dialogue around remote work highlighted the benefits of flexibility, whereas media coverage of the shift to remote learning underscored “irreparable harms” to students. Through conversations with educators such as Dr. Valerie Irvine of the University of Victoria, Dr. Hannah McGregor of Simon Fraser University and Geoff Davis of Chatelech Secondary in Sechelt, BC, the article looks at some of the challenges of remote learning along with the lessons we can learn in order to build an education system that emphasizes community, flexibility and embracing the needs of all students. As author Nick Smith concludes, “If we want our education systems from kindergarten right up to graduate-level university to make it through the next disruption, we must revamp them, not for efficiency but for equity and community.”
Teaching and technology
May, June and July’s Edubytes saw a focus on the many ways that technology can be used to transform teaching and learning in higher education.
TLEF and ALT-2040 Virtual Showcase
The Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund and Aspire-2040 Learning Transformations Fund Virtual Showcase at UBC’s Celebrate Learning Week 2022 included presentations by 58 project teams comprised of faculty, staff, and students. The teams shared details about a diverse range of innovative projects in short, in-person sessions and through posters available on the Celebrate Learning Week website.
Micro-credential framework for BC public post-secondary education system
In September 2021, the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills introduced a micro-credential framework for BC’s public post-secondary education system. This document includes a definition, a set of guiding principles and a framework that promotes a shared understanding of micro-credentials among learners, employers, and post-secondary institutions.
Open Jupyter
The Jupyter project seeks to support open-source, interactive and cloud-based computational tools for both research and teaching. UBC developed a self-hosted instance of Jupyter dedicated to teaching and learning, which is available to all students and faculty, and can be integrated into Canvas Learning Management System in a variety of ways.
