2019 ETUG Spring Conference and 25th Anniversary

Traditional Welcome
Opening Remarks from the SCETUG Chair, Terri Bateman

These days, higher education seems to be constantly buffeted by inflection points, many of them substantial. So substantial, indeed, that they are calling us to make paradigmatic shifts in many of our core areas. Our 21st century digital learning environments are not immune from these pressures. Indeed, they are being called upon to be agile, flexible, robust, and to support new levels of learning diversity ranging from educational content to course models. These new environments will be enabled by digital technology and driven by a vision of a learner-centered approach to higher education. Indeed, it will require a new digital architecture, one that enables our learning environments to keep pace with the ambitions of our learners and instructors. This session will present some ideas about next-generation digital learning environments and offer the opportunity to engage in discussions on how best to move forwards towards a new, enabling digital architecture.

This presentation will discuss the factors and tensions that were identified as we attempt to foster a culture of openness in an institution while it developed a graduate program with openness as a core design principle. Openness was adopted as a program goal predicated on the philosophical stance that openness and open educational practices facilitate collaboration and cultivate networked learning in its many forms as necessitated by the digital age.

This presentation will discuss factors including institutional norms, leadership, relationships, humility and criticality that were identified as being instrumental in fostering a culture of openness at the school, faculty, and university levels. It will share the tensions and conceptual, practical and technical challenges experienced in developing a culture of openness in a higher education institution that to date has no formal institutional open education strategy or open policy in place. After setting stage, we will engage participants using an OER tool that has been developed by the authors to assist in identifying factors in their own institution that may facilitate the inclusion of openness in its many forms. Tensions and enablers will be identified and strategies for moving forward individually and collectively will be discussed.

The suggested flow for the workshop is as follows:
•Welcome and orientation to the work and the research (10 – 15 min)
•Individual completion of the OER tool for identifying tensions and enablers in fostering openness (15 min)
•Pair/share or group review tensions and enablers identified (20 min)
•Large group discussion, feedback and next steps (10 min)


We believe that openness in practice is much more complex than advocates note, and we hope that by sharing our experiences, and discussing them with other practitioners will benefit our collective ability to navigate the complexities that are inherent in the act of implementation.

BCNET is a consortium of 26 higher education institutions in British Columbia that range from Canada’s second largest Research University to a 513 student Indigenous Institution. As well as managing the advanced research network on behalf of CANARIE (Canada’s equivalent to Internet2), BCNET offers a slate of over 24 shared services, including such products as Kaltura, Moodle, Lynda.com, SurveyMonkey, and sectoral licensing amongst other items.


Managing services at an institutional level can be challenging; managing services across an entire sector even more so. As BCNET's members grow and adapt to changes in technology and the needs of their students, BCNET has worked to strategically grow their shared services portfolio in conjunction with these external demands. In recent years, this has led to an increasing desire for more shared services that fall within the EdTech field.

In this session, members of the BCNET Shared Systems and Technologies team will provide an overview of BCNET, discuss the processes they go through to offer shared services to an entire Province, and touch on a few of the exciting new services offerings on their horizon including BigBlueButton and Riipen. With +24 services utilized by over 300,000 unique ID’s, BCNET truly has reshaped Higher Education learning in BC.

Gamification is a pedigogical approach which is rapidly gaining popularity.  Learning Managment Systems are making it easier to add gamification elements to any course.

In my reseach, I offered Calculus 1 and Calculus 2 in an online format, in the overarching form of a Pirate Quest to find sunken treasure.  Gamification elements included things such as badges, points, progression/scaffolding, unlockable content, replay/do-overs, and pirate avatars.

In this workshop, I will share the philosophy, design principles, and results of my research project.  I will also share some important lessons I learned.  Participants will be encouraged to ask questions, suggest improvements, and to share their own experiences.

Technology has given students, instructors, educational technologists, and instructional designers access to powerful tools to create educational media with artistic components.  Whether a powerpoint presentation, a video, a photograph or their placement in overall course design, these media have an aesthetic component. While creators can rely on expert graphic artists or templates for this component, a basic understanding of aesthetics can help them to craft their own work or make better informed decisions in design elements.  This session will be a conversation and experience that goes beyond the traditional aesthetics of visual design.  It will include aesthetic approaches that encompass feelings, relationships, and critical pedagogy.  These approaches are based on Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetic theory (1934) and the research of one of the authors.  We will explore these aesthetic approaches in conversation using a variation of the “Fishbowl” liberating structure and in creative practice with the group experimenting in art, movement/drama, and music creation.  Participants will identify and discuss aesthetic approaches using educational artefacts and will also create new artefacts using these approaches.

On April 17, 2019 the Ministry of Advanced Education Skills and Training announced their continued commitment to open education with the funding of $3.26 million toward open education in British Columbia.
In this presentation, Amanda Coolidge will outline what the strategy looks like for the next three years of open education development and disbursement. In addition, she will share documentation and further information on potential grant opportunities for institutions.

It's an exciting time for access and affordability in British Columbia's post secondary environment- find out how you can be a part of it!

Smudging Lesson facilitated by: Elder Mike Arnouse from the Adams Lake Indian Band.
https://www.tru.ca/indigenous/current-students/elder-residence.html

Traditional Welcome
Opening Remarks from the SCETUG Chair, Terri Bateman

What I’ve always been interested in is how we, as human beings, relate to the world around us, and in particular our relationship to technology. For me, there is no better context than education and lifelong learning to explore how that relationship is evolving as digital technology becomes more pervasive in our lives. My keynote will challenge the perception that the ‘march of the machines’ is moving us to a future in which we are all just data points, gadgets or messy human problems that need to be solved by technology. 
Focusing on the conference theme about people and technology, I am going to focus on three things in this talk: First, I am going to question how we can develop a more mature, reflective, a more critical perspective in our professional practice and why that is important. I want to focus on some of the sticky points around ethics, student consent and data literacy and our role in addressing them. This will lead me to examine what skills and capabilities education technology professionals need in order to tackle those questions and last I am going to look at the role of technology in our efforts to make education more equitable for all.  

Trades education lends itself nicely to the philosophy of OER and OEP.  Students are involved in the creation of their own hands-on skills from many sources during their apprenticeships.  Some apprentices pursue a life in trades due to difficulties they may have had in standard formal education.  By utilizing the same model of an educational system, the system is setting some apprentices up for failure.  Often the classroom-based training is a lecture based lesson that may or may not be followed up with a lab to test the hypothesis of the lectures.  The students are given resources such as textbooks, handouts, exercise books and lab books.  The use of OER and OEP in vocational education has proven to be beneficial to vocational students, especially those who have previously struggled academically.  The use of OER and OEP in vocational education would benefit from more research.
This presentation will discuss the current state of vocational education (from a Canadian context), how OER and OEP can benefit vocational education (cost savings as well as pedagogical benefits), and present methods being employed in my own practice that are seeing beneficial results. The presentation will have "check-in" points along the way using the interactive plugin for google slides, pear deck. Not only will this allow for interaction between the presenter and the audience but it is an example of some of the technology that I am using in vocational education.

When I Grow Up I Want to be an Educational Technologist - Clint Lalonde
Protecting our values in the shadow of tech giants - Ian Linkletter
Google Read and Write for Accessibility - Matthew Stranach
MOOCs are Dead! Long Live MOOCs! - Matthew Stranach
Songs of Educational Development - John Churchley 

For the last two years (2017 and 2018) the CDLRA has conducted an annual survey of online and distance learning in Canadian post-secondary institutions. With high response rates and reliable data, it is now possible not only to identify emerging trends and issues in the use of digital learning, but also to tease out differences between provinces and types of institutions. This presentation will provide a brief overview of the key results but more importantly will give participants the opportunity to discuss and reflect on the findings, especially in terms of what actions instructors, learning technology specialists and institutions should take as a consequence of the findings.

In online and distance learning we often hear complaints from students about the lack of engagement and interaction.  A simple way to add teacher presence is to create a “talking head” style video, but these can lack visual interest. A relatively new way to merge the benefits of a face-to-face conversation feel, with the hand drawn support from the instructor is to use a light board. Light boards are situated between the instructor and camera, allowing the instructor to teach in the traditional way as if they had a white board, but still face the audience via the camera.

We will present various ways of building a light board, including the gear and materials needed. We will demo techniques to create a light board video, and discuss the pedagogical benefits of this type of instruction. Participants will be able get their “hands on” the pens and try out the light board for themselves.

Topics covered include: lighting setups, camera gear, markers, production planning, and hosting of finished videos.