Welcome to the Edubytes newsletter, featuring articles that focus on innovations in teaching and learning in higher education.
If you have a topic that you would like to see covered in Edubytes, please contact us. We would love to hear from you.
In this issue:
1. Student Learning
2. Open Learning
3. Innovative Frameworks
4. Indigenous Initiatives
5. UBC Community
Student Learning
Seven things happen when students share their workJohn Spencer, professor of education at George Fox University, discusses the benefits of students sharing their work with an audience. Spencer discusses that by sharing their work and connecting with an audience, students become more empathetic, learn to embrace criticism, see learning as authentic, and build confidence. Spencer discusses his experiences with students and the approaches that he’s used.
Purposeful pathways: Faculty planning for curricular coherence
This article provides an overview of the Association of American Colleges and Universities Purposeful Pathways project which supports institutions in developing and assessing curricular pathways that enable a coherent curriculum. Four case studies are provided that highlight the experiences of participating institutions as they engaged with the process of curricular redesign. Laurel Pritchard, a member of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas project team says, “A coherent curriculum is a set of well-planned learning experiences that occur in the appropriate sequence so that the learning in the later parts of the sequence builds on the learning in the beginning parts of the sequence. When a student reaches the end of a sequence, they have a coherent understanding of what they've learned and how that learning can be applied to some real-life problem or experience.”
The British Columbia Federation of Students has donated $30,000 to BCcampus Open Education to fund the creation of open educational resources (OER), including open textbooks. The article states that since 2012, BCcampus Open Education, formerly known as the B.C. Open Textbook Project, has saved students across the province nearly $9 million through the creation of over 250 open textbooks on a wide variety of subjects.
How faculty and instructors are successfully experimenting with artificial intelligence to support their teaching
This article looks at 20 projects from around the world that are using artificial intelligence in teaching. The areas include automated feedback and grading, intelligent tutoring systems, learning analytics, student support, adaptive group formation, virtual reality and simulations, virtual agents, personalized and adaptive learning environments, and online proctoring. Readers are invited to contact the project leads to get more information.
Faculty developers as allies (not experts) in supporting Indigenous perspectives
Kathleen Bortolin, a curriculum, teaching and learning specialist in the Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning at Vancouver Island University (VIU), writes about her experiences taking a year-long course called “Learning How to be Together: Indigenous Ways of Knowing in the Academy” offered through VIU’s Office of Aboriginal Education and Engagement. She discusses how the experience helped her to deepen her knowledge and understanding of Indigenous perspectives and build relationships. “We should be immersed in difficult conversations, listening and speaking, witnessing and being witnessed,” Bortolinwrites. “We should be connecting with Indigenous and non-Indigenous colleagues and community members, moving forward with words and action. All the while, building and rebuilding trust.”
Traditional knowledge and the commons: The open movement, listening, and learningThis article looks at the open movement and Creative Commons (CC) licenses and how they are sometimes at odds with the ways in which Indigenous communities may view their traditional knowledge. The author writes, “The conversation needs to involve more communities, policymakers and scholars and the Creative Commons team is exploring the possibilities of working with other projects and involving indigenous communities more closely to understand the role CC licenses could play in the protection and dissemination of traditional knowledge.”
BCcampus has given its Award for Excellence in Open Education to Maja Krzic, associate professor of applied biology and forest and conservation sciences at UBC. In its announcement, BCcampus notes that Krzic established the Virtual Soil Science Learning Resources group with 30 Canadian soil scientists, media developers, students, and educators focused on developing open access tools. Krzic has also worked to develop open online tools at UBC and internationally in the areas of soil science, agriculture, forestry, land management, and natural resources. Previous recipients of the award include Christina Hendricks, professor of teaching in the Department of Philosophy and academic director at the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology at UBC.
The Science Education Initiative HandbookWarren Code, associate director of the Science Centre for Learning and Teaching at UBC, and Stephanie Chasteen, a physicist, research associate at the University of Colorado Boulder, and consultant, have written an openly-licensed handbook based on the Science Education Initiative (SEI), a transformative initiative aimed at changing STEM teaching practices in the university setting. The SEI, started by Nobel Prize winning physicist Carl Weiman, was successfully implemented at UBC and CU Boulder. The handbook aims to be “a practical guide to fostering change in university courses and faculty by embedding discipline-based education specialists within departments.”
