Festival of Learning 2020

Maximize Empathy in eLearning through Interactive Design

JIBC’s Center for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation will share a unique eLearning course design model to maximize empathy for learners. There are two parts to this hands-on workshop:
1. We will introduce the need for Usability Analysis in the eLearning context, showcase different types of usability testing methods, best practices, and explore Jakob Nielsen's 10 general principles on interaction.

2. Participants will be introduced to the process, tools and resources for user testing to identify technological challenges by placing themselves in learners’ shoes.
Participants will walk away with a basic understanding of usability principles, conduct a usability test of their current project, and a list of free tools and resources to help recognize design gaps and create prototypes for their next eLearning project.

TWU recently launched a Facilitated Academic Resource and Research Centre in Chennai, India, using a model of teaching and learning that blends online and face-to-face learning. In the coming years, we plan to open more centres in Uganda, China, and other international locations. The unique challenges associated with the model and with offering effective learning opportunities to diverse student populations yet maintaining consistency of learning experiences led us to design a flexible, collaborative, and version-controlled technological infrastructure for supporting the design and delivery of course materials. We use a combination of MS Word, Markdown files in Github, Grav CMS, and Moodle to create and share differentiated course materials to different locations while maintaining a single repository for all versions of the course. This presentation will demonstrate the underlying infrastructure and the technical design features in our courses that allow for this model. Topics will include challenges of the model, lessons learned so far, as well as next steps for further development of our processes and infrastructure.

Participants are encouraged to bring their own laptop to this session
Tech curious educators and authors - want to support more open and collaborative materials, inside or outside of other platforms? Are you looking for a more flexible workflow and environment than what traditional CMSs like WordPress provides? Faced with these challenges, Paul Hibbitts developed a set of open source components for the file-based Grav CMS to work with his CMPT-363 Canvas course.

The modern CMS Grav uses the platform-independent Markdown format and enables version-controlled editing with Git services such as GitHub and GitLab. These also naturally support the 5 Rs (Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute) of Open Educational Resources. Integrating Grav pages within other systems (e.g. LMSs) is seamless too - without any content restrictions. In this session, participants will get to explore Markdown and the latest release of Grav with various open education-related projects (such as the Open Course/MultiCourse Hub and Open Publishing Space). You can also learn more about these Grav projects, and how Grav works with Markdown and Git, at hibbittsdesign.org.

Long and Drawn Out.
We double dog dare you to use your educators’ super powers to translate the densest text we could find — a terms and conditions agreement — into a gripping, page-turning, stick figure graphic novel. Are you game to join a team of challengers who will use humble stick figures to convert technical language into teachable moments?

Seriously, that “click here to agree” terms and conditions contract that we routinely skip over contains restrictions on our copyrights and privacy. What would we education professionals do differently if we knew exactly what is — and is not — in the terms and conditions of our education learning management systems, apps, and tools?

We will dig deep into the terms and conditions associated with learning management tools like Blackboard and Turnitin using the fun and successful stick figure visual narrative method from the Life Outside the Box program (a JIBC initiative). This story-telling tool has been used to great success in translating important documents into comic book scenes. You may use this comics-creating method to deeply analyze any technologically complex, emotionally charged, and/or frequently misunderstood readings in your own discipline.

Come and learn how to make long and drawn out documents, like terms and conditions agreements, more accessible and memorable. There will be laughs, gold stars, and a ticking clock. (We pinky swear no art skills are needed — this activity really is stick figure easy!)

As part of my Educational Technology Fellowship sponsored by BCcampus, I am disrupting the conventional approach of using English, academic text-based forms of instruction by applying an intervention using multilingual, technology-based forms for engaging students–specifically videos and podcasts–in online and blended learning environments. My research is based on the hypothesis that narrative-based videos and podcasts, as relational 'texts' for teaching and learning through storytelling, provide opportunities for embodied ways of knowing (that encourage the expression of one's whole self) and for supporting students and teachers in building relationships of trust and mutual respect. This approach, which aligns with principles of decolonization, can potentially support more diverse, equal and inclusive learning environments. Building on my relationship with the Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECUAD), where I have been a sessional faculty member since 2012 , my action research involves case studies in undergraduate courses–blended and online–at ECUAD. I am collaborating with teaching faculty, and working with them to integrate participatory video and podcast creation into their classes in a way that will enable us to provide evidence-based results while supporting the overall teaching and learning goals of each course. While this research will focus on 'diversity' and 'inclusion' in terms of cultural diversity, consideration will be given to the ways that other equity-seeking groups respond to the research intervention. This research project aims to support a kind of student learning and success that goes beyond academic performance to develop essential life skills that can support students in becoming critical and creative agents in their own lives and communities.

In this session, I will present the initial findings of my research, showcase some students' videos and podcasts from the project, and engage session participants in a lively form of media analysis as a catalyst for discussion.

Field trips are valuable experiential learning opportunities for students in natural sciences. They reinforce key concepts and, more importantly, generate enthusiasm for students to further explore these disciplines (Boyle et al., 2007). Unfortunately, access to field experiences can be limited by many barriers, such as mobility issues, financial constraints and time limitations. Virtual reality (VR) technologies provide a means to increase access by allowing students to participate in ways that are not otherwise possible. Adopting these technologies requires that faculty and institutions make significant time and money commitments. Additionally, although there is an increasing amount of research that shows the cognitive benefits of VR and other technology-enable field trips (e.g. Bursztn et al., 2015; Ibanez and Delgado-Kloos, 2018), there has been no work looking at the impact different types of VR have on affective learning benefits (e.g. interest, motivation, etc.). This presentation will address both of these issues by: 1) outlining a framework to help guide decision-making for any faculty interested in using VR; and 2) comparing evidence of affective learning gains of VR field trips to traditional field trips. Demographic analysis of these data suggest that certain minority groups benefit more from the increased access that VR field trips provide compared to traditional field trips.

Used by educators all over the world, H5P is a quick-to-learn tool for building interactives for formative assessments like quizzes, matching games, unit reviews, and more. Interactives built in H5P are open access, easy to reuse, and designed with both accessibility and academic integrity in mind. They’re also highly portable and can be plugged into most existing Learning Management Systems, as well as WordPress and Pressbooks. And better than all of this: it’s super fun to use.
This BYOD workshop is intended for anyone interested in using H5P to work collaboratively to build new interactives for their own classroom teaching or instructional support needs. Options to author in Wordpress or Pressbooks will be offered to participants, and support will be provided for those who wish to work within their existing LMS. If you’re new to the possibilities of H5P, an introductory tutorial will be provided; if you have some familiarity already, you’ll be encouraged and supported to try out one of the H5P offerings you’ve never worked with before. In addition to lots of hands-on development time, participants will engage in a robust discussion about using H5P effectively, including:
- considerations of accessibility, universal design, and authoring on the web;
- best practices for the use and design of H5P interactives; and
- advice for finding and adapting open-access content for use in your interactives.
All participants will leave the session with at least two finished H5P interactives and a clear understanding of how to download, save, reuse, and integrate their builds into their preferred online learning spaces. Participants will also be encouraged to practice authoring in H5P in at least two different environments.

In FRST 201 – Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, students learn identification and ecological characteristics of 69 key plant species. This knowledge is critical for responsible forest management and requisite for subsequent courses. This is primarily taught in the field (e.g., at Pacific Spirit Regional Park and Cypress Provincial Park) during laboratory sessions.

Unfortunately, with high enrollment, it is challenging for all students to have adequate time to fully examine the plants in the field. Language obstacles, particularly specialized terminology, add additional challenge for English-language learners. Lastly, around 75 Chinese students transfer into forestry each year after completing 2 or 3 years of forestry education at partner universities in China. These students generally receive transfer credit for an equivalent Chinese course, so they are not entirely prepared for upper-level courses requiring knowledge of BC plants.

To better support student learning, we developed three resources. The primary resource is a publicly available collection of professionally produced 1-2 minute videos for 50 of the plants (http://bit.ly/BCPlants). These videos were filmed in the field, introducing the plants, showing key identification characteristics, and discussing the soil moisture and soil nutrient levels indicated by each. We deliberately chose the medium of video because it allows students to see the plants being touched and manipulated as they are described, conveying a better sense of scale and structure compared to what is possible from a photograph. In addition to the videos, we developed a companion website with photographs, botanical drawings, and text for each plant. Lastly, to promote student learning through the use of retrieval practice, we created a dynamic quizzing system (using Gravity Forms with WordPress) where students select which species they would like to be quizzed on, and practice quizzes are randomly generated based on a variety of question templates.

In this session I will present some of the videos, demonstrate the adaptive quizzing system, discuss the challenges in developing these materials, and share results from a student use and feedback survey.

In every aspect of life in the twenty-first century, we are confronted with this notion of disruption. Heralded as an unmitigated good in many quarters, “disruptive innovation” once meant the creation of a new market that overtakes an existing one, but now we use it colloquially to refer to significant change. In education, we are sold tools that “disrupt” plagiarism, classroom management, and grading, and often the promise of change outpaces the conversation about ethics, implementation, and usage. At the same time, many of the innovations that truly have the potential to disrupt education in meaningful ways find themselves co-opted by the neoliberal college/university and its magnetic attraction to the status quo. Too often, the disruption for sale is primarily performative, and tools that promise revolution only reify existing power relationships: a plagiarism detector that mines and resells student data; a classroom management tool that relies on digital surveillance; a grading assistant that teaches an AI how to auto-grade.
    If we really seek to disrupt education – to make it decolonial, democratic, accessible, equitable – we have to unsettle the institution as a whole. This presentation uses recent case studies to explore the intersections of resistance and disruption and reflect on how emergent classroom technologies can only meaningfully “disrupt” when partnered with a critical pedagogy that interrogates the ethics, implementation, and usage of these tools; it also offers a toolkit that instructors and those working in instructional support can use to interrogate the practices at their own institutions. Most importantly, it offers a call to action for all educators interested in “disruption” to look critically at their own practice and unsettle their own pedagogies in the quest for disruption and transformation.

BC’s Educational Technology Users Group (ETUG) is a community that exists to empower and inspire all who design, develop, and support learning experiences.  In this three-part session, the Stewardship Committee for ETUG will share what we do and how we support educators in the creative and effective use of educational technologies for learning.  We will invite participants to share their ETUG and edtech experiences (both disruptive and transformational) with the group, which will lead us into an unconference, taking the topics generated by the group into robust and engaging conversations.  In addition we will be looking for ideas and thoughts around how we can better serve and connect the ETUG community and all those who use and support educational technology in post-secondary institutions across B.C.  Come and see who we are, what we do, and what we can do for you.

1. Lightning round about ETUG and what we do
2. Sharing trends and participant generated topics
3. Unconference