ETUG 25th Anniversary Conference June 20 & 21, 2019 Thompson Rivers University **Parking - It’s best to park in Lots J, K or N. Parking on campus is $5.00/day and free after 5:00pm.** Keynote’s on Day 1 & 2 as well as Gasta Session are available on Livestream - Link to watch.
In an era of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) calls to action, Indigenizing our institutions, teaching and disciplines means shifting our foci so that decolonial ideologies, theories and practice are at the center of all we do. At TRU, we have been centering decolonization as a lens from which everything else is seen and put into motion.
A decolonial position means that we need to consider those whose intersecting identities have long been on the margins of our educational contexts, and proven to be disadvantaged by digital distance learning. This work recognizes the importance of intersecting identities and thus the need to look at theories and lenses of Decolonization along with Critical Race Theory and Queer Studies, together to inform equitable practices in classroom and distance education. We know that factors such as race and gender, as well as perceptions around family, community, land and place contribute to the structural barriers that marginalized students face in education.
Yet, current perspectives on equity in distance education, and education broadly, tend to focus on providing students with opportunities to engage, employing deficit-model interventions, rather than evaluating issues of access (recruitment and retention of students, for example) and addressing systemic and structural inequities in our classrooms and schools. The fields of Decolonization, Critical Race Theory, and Queer Studies, individually and together have contributed to more meaningful understandings of the experiences of marginalized students in education, and have provided researchers and practitioners with useful ways to respond to institutional racism in our classrooms and schools.
In collaboration with attendees, this workshop will facilitate a way to explore ways in which the role of the instructional designer and educational technology consultant have changed in face to face and distance education, share ways that evolution of educational technology support and training can be used to transform education, enhance learning and sharing from a student-centred way, and increase access for collaboration between students and faculty.
Co-facilitators will draw upon their experiences in decolonizing higher education, in order to find a starting point for dialogue. We are an immigrant settler of colour assistant professor with expertise in mathematics education; a Métis graduate student with expertise in distance education, engaged in a study about barriers for online Indigenous students; and a St’at’imc PhD student, TRU instructor in the School of Education. We are eager to participate in collective sense-making with others at ETUG.
