Digital Toolcrib - Season 2

After two Digital Toolcrib episodes, Chad and I let this fall off the side of our desks and then people actually asked us when we were going to do more episodes! It’s a smash hit. In response to these 2-3 viewers, Chad and I have recorded three additional episodes of the Digital Toolcrib and two of them feature special guests which makes them a lot more engaging, exciting, and practical.

Barriers Facing Trades & Educational Development

https://youtu.be/dpvWzUkDkwE 

Chad and Jason talk candidly about how the difficulties facing trades education and some of the barriers involved in providing educational development to trades instructors, including how the word pedagogy frightens the horses and various other forms of misunderstanding and intimidation. The dialogue hopefully identifies some ways to break down these barriers so trades faculty and educational developers can talk the same language of student success.

Reflective Journaling in Carpentry?

https://youtu.be/6WW-wk7gwz4

Medicine Hat College’s carpentry instructor Paul Schaan discusses why and how he implemented reflected journaling in Carpentry, including how it teaches the whole person and increases connection between faculty and students.

Backwards Design in the Trades

https://youtu.be/k72vCpclCoM

In this episode, Chad Flinn and Jason Openo talk with Dr. Sally Vinden of Vancouver Island University. Sally is lead author of Strengthening Digital Teaching & Learning for Trades, Vocational, Education and Training Practitioners, and she received BCcampus’s Award for Excellence in Open Education (2020). The episode discusses how backwards design can be used to ensure competencies are taught and assessed within trades contexts.

Multiple realities: Professional development for online contingent faculty in Canadian strategy and practice.

Openo, J. (2021). Multiple realities: Professional development for online contingent faculty in Canadian strategy and practice [Doctoral dissertation, Athabasca University]. http://hdl.handle.net/10791/360

The growth of contingent faculty and the growth of online education over the first two decades of the 21st century have generated an emergent but overlooked subgroup of faculty – online contingent faculty. These twin dynamics have placed the professional development of online faculty in a strategically important position for Canadian postsecondary institutions to mature online education and enhance instructional effectiveness. This two-phase multimethod research study employs Ursula Franklin’s technology as practice (1990) as its theoretical orientation to explore the following research questions: How are online faculty and their professional development represented in current Canadian postsecondary academic plans? How are the professional development needs of contingent online faculty being served by Canadian teaching and learning centres? What gaps, if any, exist between the projected reality of academic plans and the extended reality of teaching and learning centres in Canada? Phase one consists of a document analysis of 17 academic plans from Canadian colleges and institutes covering the current period and immediate future to reveal how faculty development is described and prioritized in academic strategy (the projected reality of the future). The document analysis highlights important strategic purposes of professional development, such as Indigenization and internationalization, but also shows that part-time and online faculty are marginally represented. Email interviews with 12 directors of Canadian teaching and learning centres comprise phase two (the extended reality of experience), and they illuminate the contested space of providing educational development services to online contingent faculty. The findings reveal formidable barriers to providing professional development opportunities to part-time faculty who teach online, but also innovative solutions to meet the needs of part-time online educators in Canada.

The document analysis of academic plans shows that professional development for online instruction was a neglected topic pre-pandemic, and the email interviews demonstrate that professional development for online instruction became the central, all-consuming task for educational developers, spurring unprecedented creativity and innovation. But it also shows that part-time faculty and their unique needs were again lost in the mix. Part-time faculty have been called indispensable but invisible, and part-time online instructors have been dubbed the doubly invisible. If it is actually possible for a group of people to be triply invisible, the pandemic added this layer of invisibility because it was difficult to determine how much attention was paid specifically to contingent faculty who teach online and their unique conditions.  

This work attempts to dissipate this fog by grounding its orientation in Ursula Franklin’s The Real World of Technology (1990), where Franklin defines reality as “the experience of ordinary people in everyday life” (p. 36). The professional development for part-time online instructors is not something I explore from a distance. I know this challenge intimately; this has been the nitty gritty of my day-to-day life for the past several years. My efforts to make sense of this tricky terrain have been guided by Franklin’s concerns about how technology affects the quality of our lives, and I hope this work embodies her spirit to solve problems and make the world a better place by employing her concept of redemptive technologies that can arise during a convoluted and tumultuous time such as this one.

Solar classroom shines light on renewable energy

MHC Brooks Campus EBSCO Solar Classroom 1..JPG

On Wednesday, September 8, I had the opportunity to participate in a small ribbon cutting for the new solar classroom built at MHC’s Brooks Campus, right outside the Brooks campus library. I was the lead author on the successful 2019 EBSCO Solar grant application, and MHC was the first Canadian library to be selected for a grant that helps make a critical impact on improving the environment and helps libraries make the transition to green power.

https://www.mhc.ab.ca/NewsandEvents/Stories/2021/September/SolarClassroom

The major selling point of our grant was student involvement. Clay Bos, Peter Kelly, and James Kuehn designed teaching and learning experiences for MHC’s Built Environment & Engineering Technology (BEET) students. BEET students developed initial concept ideas and designs and build the Request for Proposal (RFP) that went out to tender. Terralta and Brost Developments were selected in large part because they built the classroom with learning opportunities built in from start to finish.

In the scheme of things, it is a small grant and a small project with big vision that generates a bit more energy for transformative change.

MHC Brooks Campus EBSCO Solar Classroom 2.JPG

The EBSCO Solar grant allows us to expand our historical commitment to SE Alberta and extend our traditional role into new areas. MHC’s libraries, at both the central and Brooks campuses, are people attractors, and the Brooks campus solar classroom will attract designers, researchers, and students. It would serve as a wonderful band stand for outdoor concerts or events at a time when we are encouraged to spend more time outdoors because of COVID and because time in nature is good for our mental health.

It’s also an example of how I like to work - finding ways to collaborate in meaningful ways that make big visions real.

A major component of Brooks' sustainability plan is to Create A Built Environment in The City that Is Environmentally Friendly and More Energy, Land, and Resource Efficient. "New developments and renovations in the City of Brooks should strive to be as environmentally friendly as possible. The built environment should reflect ideals in energy efficiency, water/wastewater management, renewable energy systems, land conservation, green technologies, and community connectivity." The addition of the solar classroom into the built environment reflects this commitment at the same time it piques curiosity. How much power is being generated? Could I do this in my own backyard?

I hope MHC’s students at the Brooks campus and Brooks community members can find creative ways to use this space in the days and years ahead.

Higher Education After the Pandemic

Carr - Technology and Education.JPG

On March 13, I had the delightful opportunity to talk with Peter Carr at the University of Waterloo about an article I wrote for the Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology.

https://impactofinformationsystemsonsociety.wordpress.com/2021/05/13/higher-education-after-the-pandemic-jason-openo/

The interview covers why I am changing my mind about the article I wrote, how to create more interactive online learning experiences, the need for more authentic assessments, and the various institutional constraints for achieve higher-quality online education.

Digital Toolcrib

DigitalToolCrib.png

Recently, Chad Flinn (Dean of Trades & Technology at Medicine Hat College) and I started a podcast to support Trades and Technology instructors at MHC, but the episodes might have a broader appeal to other educational developers and trades faculty interested in Technical Vocational Education & Training (TVET).

Episode 01 - Assessment in Trades and Technology

A lot of trades students come into the trades with a negative history and relationship with schooling, many being told they were smart enough to do anything but go into the trades. Most trades are also governed by a body that requires high-stakes summative exams. This has huge and important implications for how trades instructors prepare their students for these exams and go beyond these exams in their assessment strategies. This episode explores some of the challenges and new opportunities for rethinking assessment in the trades.

https://share.transistor.fm/s/539291b6?trk=public_post-content_share-embed-video_share-article_title

Episode 02 - What worked and what didn’t

If we could go back to February 2020 before the pandemic (not that anyone would want to live through the past year again), and ask trades instructors what they would say if we told them that they would be teaching predominantly online for the next year, the answers probably would have included at least a couple expletives. But it happened. What can we learn from it as we approach the future of trades education?

https://share.transistor.fm/s/255cd8e8?trk=public_post-content_share-embed-video_share-article_title

Hyflex: The best (or worst) of both worlds?

A director of a Canadian teaching and learning centre described hyflex in the following way: "Hyflex sounds sexy, but it's like beer-goggle sexy. When you soberly look at the costs and the pedagogical challenges, it's far less attractive."  

The pandemic has intensified interest in hyflex (hybrid-flexible) learning modalities, but the idea was developed by Brian Beatty in 2006. Hyflex learning environments offer synchronous instruction to both face-to-face and distance students. To paint the prettiest picture of hyflex, all learning activities address and support learning outcomes regardless of the delivery medium, affording students flexibility and freedom. In a hyflex offering, a student could choose to attend class in the face-to-face environment, remotely through their computer, or watch a recording so that the learning objectives and results remain equivalent.  At its best, hyflex provides learner choice and enhances accessibility. 

But making the learning experience equivalent for the student learning at a distance is the primary challenge.  When the instructor is physically present with other human beings in the same space and time, the natural inclination is to favour the in-person students, which is why some recommend building a hyflex course as if it was an online course.  To bridge the gap and make the distance student more present, the physical hyflex classroom is often equipped with several, large video screens, ambient microphones and 360 degree cameras so that the instructor and the remote students can be virtually "face-to-face" with the other learners present in the classroom.  This increases the technological complexity of the learning experience and increases the cognitive load for the instructor. 

Faculty cannot just walk in the room and teach the way they did before. They will be running an in-person classroom AND recording a videoconferencing session.  The instructor needs to plan for content and student learning activities. Lectures should be relatively short (15-20 minutes), engage the learners with generative learning activities (utilizing small breakout groups AND breakout rooms), and employ authentic assessments to evaluate student learning.  

It’s still too early to tell what permanent changes will result from the pandemic, but that is becoming apparent is the many instructors have changed their approaches to shorter, more engaging video lectures and fewer high-stakes exams, encouraging both group discussion and collaboration.  Recent research suggests that, as a result of these pandemic-related adjustments in course design and teaching approaches, students might be studying harder, leading Richard Arum (co-author of Academically Adrift) to say that the pandemic’s big lesson is, “When you move to more engaging, participatory, interactive instructional strategies, student academic engagement goes up.”

Implementing effective active learning strategies presents challenges for many faculty, and low interactivity is a known failing of many online learning opportunities.  Creating active/interactive learning experiences for students learning both in-person and at a distance is a formidable challenge 

Personally, I am not yet sold on hyflex. Online learning (when it is freely chosen and not forced upon us by a pandemic) has enough evidence behind it to show that it can offer high-quality learning experience when intentionally designed with the distance learner in mind.  Face-to-face learning experiences facilitate the construction of a well-connected learning community more easily. 

But here's what I know. Several other institutions are exploring hyflex learning and spending lots of money through classroom transformation projects.  As several other technological implementations and adoptions have shown, over time, some institutions and their faculty will figure out how to do hyflex well, and those that do will be able to offer academic opportunities that increase competition in the marketplace. That’s the most sobering thought of all, and the best reason to experiment to see how hyflex can work at MHC.

Thank you to Rene Hemenway and Michael Pin-Chuan Lin for helping provide background research for this article.

HyFlex Learning with David Rhoads - Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design: Implementing student-directed hybrid classes by Brian Beatty

What To Expect In A Hyflex Course: Faculty Handbook by Texas A&M San Antonio

HyFlex Course Design Examples

High Enrollment and HyFlex: The Case for an Alternative Course Model

Will the transformation towards learning-centred assessment finally occur?

McMurtrie, B. (2021, March 17). Good grades, stressed students. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/good-grades-stressed-students

Many colleges invested in professional development over the spring and summer to help faculty members create online versions of their courses. Instructors learned how to make short, engaging videos, use more formative assessments and fewer high-stakes exams, encourage group discussion and collaboration, and add flexibility to accommodate students challenged by online learning and the pandemic.

There’s a lesson in here, said Arum. “When you move to more engaging, participatory, interactive instructional strategies, student academic engagement goes up.”

Ross. S. (2021, March 17). UPEI prof develops ‘plagiarism-resistant’ online exams. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-online-plagiarism-resistent-exams-1.5954079

Greene, J. (2020, December 13). The strange case of the exploding student workload. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/guest-post-strange-case-exploding-student-workload

students used to having two midterms and a final, or those used to taking their exams only once, might experience continuous low-stakes assessment as continuous a-stress-ment. Similarly, being given the option to take an exam a second time to get a better grade could feel like an offer you can’t say no to, in our grade-driven higher education landscape. And, perhaps most crushingly, no-stakes assessments -- that is, quizzes and assignments that help students gauge their learning but are not graded -- can feel to many students like busywork, a phrase that appears again and again in criticisms of the pandemic learning scene

Nowak, Z. (2020, November 4). Using online quizzing better. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/11/04/how-make-online-quizzes-more-effective-opinion

Davidson, C. N., & Katopodis, C. (2020, October 28). 8 ways to improve group work online. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/10/28/advice-how-successfully-guide-students-group-work-online-opinion

Since students now are contending with such things as illness and even death, unreliable bandwidth, and inadequate work and study environments, it is unfair to burden them with interdependence. They suggest that it is particularly difficult online to manage students who fall away, “ghost” the class for a period of time or fail to contribute, leaving their peers to shoulder the responsibilities for the group. Katz writes, “It serves neither you nor students to spend the semester managing group work dynamics that increase students’ anxiety instead of building community.”

While many of those suggestions are helpful, we would like to push back at the notion that managing group dynamics doesn’t serve students. It is complicated -- almost too complicated. However, guiding students in effective collaboration is one of the best ways to mentor them in this crisis.

Toor, R. (2020, October 27). How to build community in a Zoom class with personal essays. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-to-build-community-in-a-zoom-class-with-personal-essays

Writing personal essays about their experiences at the beginning of the pandemic helped students cope, they said. Funny stories about toilet-paper hoarding and stress-cleaning mothers abounded, but they also talked about stuff that was hard for them. What they wrote reminded me, as their instructor, to be patient and empathetic. I learned how and what they were struggling with, and the sandbox gave them permission to vent.

Darby, F. (2020, September 24). 7 ways to assess students online and minimize cheating. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/7-ways-to-assess-students-online-and-minimize-cheating

How can you make sure your online students take tests without cheating? It’s one of the most-frequent questions asked by new online instructors and even some experienced ones. The short answer: You can’t.

So mix it up. Give students a variety of ways to show their learning, and not just the usual papers, projects, and homework. Get creative. Ask students to: (a) submit a weekly reflection on the reading, (b) create a brief video or audio about their stance on some current event, or (c) interview professionals in their desired career. Adding other forms of assessment — when weighted intentionally in your grading scheme — allows students who struggle with test anxiety to show their learning in other ways.

CBC. (2020, September 22). University of Regina students worried anti-cheating software will invade privacy. CBCNews. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/university-regina-students-proctortrack-privacy-concerns-1.5734005

Dumbaugh, D. (2020, September 9). Revitalizing classes through oral exams. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/09/09/how-use-oral-examinations-revitalize-online-classes-opinion

With solutions and other resources readily available online, students can gain a false sense of security about content, and faculty members can have a difficult time assessing what a student knows. Oral exams provide a way to deal with both issues simultaneously. Updating oral exams for the 21st-century virtual classroom helps students improve their communication, conquer anxiety, solve problems quickly and think creatively.

McMurtrie, B. (2020, August 27). Teaching: Getting creative with course assessments. The Chronicle of Higher Education [Teaching newsletter]. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/newsletter/teaching/2020-08-27

Southworth, J. (2020, August 25). The problem with argumentative writing. University Affairs. Retrieved from https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/the-problem-with-argumentative-writing/

Professors, instructors, and students across the nation are moving various kinds of exhibitions online to showcase students’ term works. Holland College, for example, has moved the exhibition of “All about Hue” –a showcasing of School of Visual Arts students’ works–to the school’s online gallery. Meanwhile art history and museology students and a lecturer at Université du Québec à Montréal have taken their project to organize an exhibit online, showcasing the works of four artists that explores the fragility and complexity of human relationships with living things. In a bit of a different vein, 105 students participating in the University of Fraser Valley’s CityStudio Abbotsford Hububb—a show-and-tell community building event—are delivering their projects addressing civic challenges virtually. “I hope this new method of collaboration in experiential learning will further highlight the role that the higher education plays in the community,” said UFV Experiential Education Coordinator Larissa Horne.

Contact North. (2020, August 20). How assessment is changing in the digital age: Five guiding principles. TeachOnline.ca. Retrieved from https://teachonline.ca/tools-trends/how-assessment-changing-digital-age-five-guiding-principles

Mintz, S. (2020, January 9). The future (revisited) of online education. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/future-revisited-online-education

DeCoster, B. (2020, January 7). 2020 Conference Preview: “Back to reality: Writing assignment, hyperreality, and the ‘problem of plagiarism’”. ICAI blog. Retrieved from https://academicintegrity.org/integrity/2020-conference-preview-back-to-reality-writing-assigments-hyperreality-and-the-problem-of-plagiarism/

However, one thing has persistently failed to advance, and that is the type of assignment and grading used in higher education.

Bowness, S. (2019, November 28). How to bring students into the feedback loop. University Affairs. Retrieved from https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/how-to-bring-students-into-the-feedback-loop/

Eubanks, D. (2019, November 24). Weaponized learning outcomes. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/guest-post-weaponized-learning-outcomes

Lederman, D. (2019, May 1). Do colleges measure what they value? Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/05/01/study-student-learning-outcomes

Flaherty, C. (2019, April 2). When grading less is more. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/02/professors-reflections-their-experiences-ungrading-spark-renewed-interest-student

Schroeder, R. (2019, January 9). Disrupting the disrupters. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-education-was-disruptive-force-25-years-ago-now-it-being-disrupted

We can begin disruption anew with microcredentialing of just-in-time modules that anticipate the tech-driven training that industry will need in the coming year or two. We can offer microcredentialing of the communication, leadership and social skills that businesses say our graduates lack such as online leadership; communication skills (verbal, video and interactive); creative and innovative thinking; and more. We can serve international markets where growth is faster than domestically and needs are even greater. And we can seek to collaborate with other colleges and universities to jointly offer programs that draw upon the more diverse base of knowledge experts across multiple institutions.

Even if enrollments have not yet reached a plateau in your traditional online programs, now is the time to begin to look at the life-cycle curve and plan for the eventuality that your university will also be disrupted.

Flaherty, C. (2019, January 4). Grading smarter, not harder. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/04/do-historians-miss-ideals-assessment-some-have-suggested

Markowitz, T. (2018, September 16). The seven deadly sins of digital badging in education. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/troymarkowitz/2018/09/16/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-digital-badging-in-education-making-badges-student-centered/

Houck, D. (2018, September 20). Why are we still grading? Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/09/20/phd-student-ponders-alternatives-current-grading-approaches-opinion