Will Valley
Instructor, Faculty of Land and Food Systems
Academic Director of the Land, Food, and Community Series
[Being an educator at UBC is] challenging and rewarding: high expectations for both students and instructors. It’s a high intensity campus with many demands on students time and a competitive environment which puts pressure on students to be well-rounded in all areas of life: across the spectrum of academic, social and career realms. At the same time, students are motivated, competent and willing to engage which creates opportunities for meaningful learning and successful course experiences.
In the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, we have a core curriculum required for undergraduate students: the Land, Food, and Community (LFC) Series. I am the academic director of the series as well as instructor of the second and third year courses and I work alongside other faculty members and staff at UBC in the design and implementation of the series. The objective of the LFC series is to create learning opportunities that encourage students to become citizens, professionals, and leaders who understand the opportunities and obstacles to creating regional, national and global food systems that are healthy, just, and sustainable. Our courses, from 1st through 4th year, are structured around key themes: systems thinking, multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary, community-based experiential learning, critical reflection, and collective action. Students have the opportunity to learn in multiple contexts and with diverse collaborators in order to apply theoretical knowledge to hands-on, real world issues. Our courses use blended learning pedagogies to create time for work with communities, and upon returning to the classroom, space for critical discussions on their lived-experiences. We believe that as future professionals, our students need to practice engaging with the complexity, uncertainty, and messiness of modern food systems, and be supported through intentional educational experiences along the way.
Candice Rideout
Instructor, Faculty of Land and Food Systems
My approach to teaching is based on my belief that we can and should create learning opportunities that have the potential to truly change lives — experiences that enable students to learn key content and develop important skills, but go beyond that to inspire them to apply their learning in important ways beyond the course. I often teach fairly large classes of around 200 or so students, and use a variety of strategies to achieve my aim of creating transformative learning experiences for the many diverse learners I have the privilege to teach. One strategy that has been particularly effective in allowing students to personalize their learning experience, even in the context of a large class, is my use of a flexible assessment strategy. Students have the option of using the proposed grade distribution for the course, or modifying the proposed values by selecting (from within ranges indicated on the syllabus) the value of particular assessments for them. Students make their choices at the beginning of the term according to their interests and what they feel would best support their learning. I think being able to choose the value of various assessments in the calculation of their final grade gives students more ownership over their learning experience in the course — which likely translates to increased engagement and learning.
An example of this flexible assessment approach can be seen in the syllabus for FNH 355 International Nutrition.
Christina Hendricks
Professor of Teaching, Faculty of Arts
In addition to teaching courses in the Philosophy department and the Arts One program at UBC, I am also involved in facilitating learning in a few other ways. I am part of an informal team of people on campus who are interested in open education, which includes promoting the use of free educational resources that are licensed to allow revision, as well as promoting the sharing of one’s own teaching resources, and asking students to contribute to the wider world of public knowledge instead of only producing work their instructors will see. Our group includes faculty, students, CTLT staff, and a librarian (so far). We have revamped the Open UBC website recently, and we work together with students from the AMS and others on campus to plan events around open education. In addition, I am a co-facilitator for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Community of Practice at UBC, which plans workshops for those engaging in SoTL to learn more about SoTL methods, to share their projects and get ideas from each other, and more. I also do my own SoTL research: on peer feedback on writing, on student and faculty perceptions of the use of open textbooks in post-secondary institutions, and on what student behaviours and attitudes might be correlated with greater improvement in writing over time in a course.
