Category: Work Reflections (Page 3 of 5)

This was my very first 365 photo. I was inspired by Alan Levine to start sharing and photos were something I could do. I’ve always been interested in the DS 106 daily create but never committed to it. I started the 365 photo project  partly for sharing and partly for getting back into a daily creative habit.  I started in September that year because I saw the sun shining through this leaf and wanted to take its picture.  I took a break in 2019 for burnout but started back up again because I really enjoy looking through my old 365 albums. I chose this one for personal reasons this week.  It’s light, and the passage of time to me.

I had quite a long weekend – 5 days off in a row. Tuesday I was able to get the last quiz finished for the craft course. I set up times to meet with Margaret and an instructor and then started looking at OER at other institutions. I also started exploring Pressbooks through the BCcampus website.  I know that Alan did a session about H5P and pressbooks so I’ll be looking around at what he’s shared to see what I can learn.

It was nice to have a little time to clean up some email, catch up on some newsletters and read a few posts from the book club that I have been more of a lurker than a participant in.

I know Alan has a lot of WordPress help available too so I’ll see what I can find and maybe finally get this site cleaned up.

Wednesday morning was meetings. Margaret and I are hatching plans to build a resource that comes from our respective areas.  We find a lot of cross over in our content.  I met with an instructor about her upcoming English course. She’s doing great – I let her do the hands on while sharing her screen and her confidence is improving.  She has cleaned up and set up her grade center to function with her assignments. I’ve given her homework for next week when we move on to asynchronous discussions.

For the first part of the afternoon I explored press books. BCcampus has an installation where we can get an account and start using it. I didn’t have the brain power to come up with a 12 character password so I left that for Thursday. Margaret and I are going to use press books to build something. It will be better for me to learn by doing.  I got my first vaccine in the afternoon and took the last hour of the day off.

Thursday morning I was able to keep busy with some repetitive tasks which was perfect for the day. We have some family things going on so I was able to at least get something done and be focused without having to feel pressured or creative.  And now, last Tuesday feels like a long time ago. A family member is dying and we wait, and we try to keep her as comfortable as possible.

These flowers are Livingston Daisies. I love their bright colours. They open up in the sun and close when it goes away.

We powered through a lot of content this week to get the last couple of module of Craft done as well as a ‘DIY’ module for Respectful Workplace. I wasn’t sure it was going to happen but all that seems to be left to do is adding a little context for RW and setting up a quiz in Craft that I can take care of on Tuesday when I’m back at work. Hopefully there aren’t any glaring errors or omissions.

I was especially surprised that we were able to pull two craft full modules together in such a short time. I guess it helps that one was very short. Margaret was able to get ahead and ship content to me. She also came up with some great video resources and an exercise.  That gave me some time to go and search some images and clean up a messy PowerPoint presentation.

I spent some time helping an instructor with an upcoming course. We set up her grade center and will meet again to work on discussions. I have been stingy with my time and only allowing a half an hour.

I listened in on the Build 2026 session with Lisa. It’s quite exciting to see the approach and the engagement. 31 people showed up. I was doing other things but was able to pay enough attention to feel good about what’s happening.

I also met with a couple of instructors who are interested in Open resources – the sourcing and creating, and possible collaboration with other institutions. I’m going to look into some details on that next week. This is timely because now that we’re (mostly) done with the Motion Picture courses I’ll be moving back to all things Open.

Perspective is everything. These giant ships leaving the port always look so close.

The Cascadia Open Education Summit was this week and I knew I wouldn’t be able to attend much of it because there is so much to do and so little time to do it in. I worked a while on Monday because I wanted to get thing organized for my week so that I could at least enjoy the keynotes

BCcampus does such a good job with events. There were so many positive comments. Brenna was keynote one and I always enjoy listening to her.

Someone shared a pretty hilarious meme about wellness seminars that I shared with our HR manager because I know she has a sense of humour. I sent it with a thanks for all they do because hey, everyone is trying.

I don’t know where the image came from so I can’t give an attribution but I’ll see if I can find out.

I did sit in on a session about Open Pedagogy in Practice. It was  about one of my favourite things – students as content creators. Really cool project where 34 students made a textbook using Pressbooks. There were 2 students there presenting along with the instructor.

I also listened in on the Zero Cost Textbook presentation while I was doing other things. It seems that Business and Health programs of 2 years are the current sweet spot for ZCT. My take away was that having students create some content in areas where Open content is scarce could be a great thing.

The final keynote really had an impact on me this morning. Kaela Parks from Portland Community College talked about Disrupting Ableism with Open Practices. I am going to share the recording for this one when it’s ready.  I was having a conversation with my daughter yesterday about what ‘normal’ is and that I don’t think there is such a thing. I think most people probably feel a little out of place at least sometimes. I’m not sure I’ll be able to put thoughts into words but I’ll try.  I’ve never needed an accommodation and I’ve always been told I’m ‘smart’. There have been times when I know that I’m not getting something the way other people are but that other things come easily to me and not to them. It took a NIC instructor to point out that I’m a conceptual thinker. Just knowing that made a huge difference for me. I learned what questions to ask if I was getting stuck. I need the big picture, not just the steps (show me the bicycle/swingset/Ikea bookshelf, don’t just tell me how to build it). In my EdTech Masters program so many fellow students were teachers and a lot of them very sequential. It was interesting learning with them and sharing perspectives. All that to say that we can figure out ways for students to feel included and it should be part of our conscious thinking about the design of everything.

We got another craft module out this week and have content and a little structure going for the next one. I’ve pulled some resources for a respectful workplace module and will work on that and the Craft module next week – one step ahead of the students but almost at the finish line.

Still working on the craft service course. This week I started with working through the content and setting up the sections in Blackboard. This section is on “substantials’ and Word flags it as a typo – I managed to catch an actual typo of the word before linking the pdf in the course. I also managed, however, to get a typo into the file name while making sure the naming convention matched the others. 

Food videos of chopping, decorating, and presenting dishes can be quite mesmerizing.  Margaret shared a couple for knife skills that led to some more about creating cool garnishes.

Non-sequitur, I had a band-aid I on the tip of my index finger that made typing (and cutting and pasting) a little awkward.
I set up time to work with an instructor on some upcoming asynchronous courses. We met a few times this week  for short meetings. Shell be fine but man, the courses could be prettied up. 

I used a photo from my flickr Food album for one of the exercises last week. I didn’t give myself an attribution. Click the photo of hamburger buns to see the album – not sure why it took that picture and not the cover.  Back in the before time when we could go out and be around other people, I used to make the mini blts (from this album) as party food (pastry, bacon jam, tomato and arugula).

My photos  are all cc by if they are of any use to you.

I found myself getting very anxious on Tuesday afternoon. I started second guessing every thing I was doing , whether it was ‘right’ or not, and got stressed out over little things. I was also checking email regularly to see if I can book a vaccine. I think that contributed. I also realized that I haven’t really taken any time off in a while. Normally there would have been a vacation this year. 

We cranked out the rest of the module on Wednesday.  I wanted to make a matching question around knife skills for a quiz and learned that the text editor for matching questions does not have an option to add images so I adjusted them to T/F.   Today (Thursday) I’ve been getting the next module as ready as I can for now.  Margaret and I are bouncing ideas for exercises around and hopefully will have a little more time for creativity and execution next week. There is not a lot of content but there are some important topics like packaging and recycling. These bring budgetary and environmental concerns into consideration. 

I’m registered for the Cascadia Open Education Summit next week. Hoping we can firm up what’s left for the next module so that I can enjoy some of it. 

Getting back on track. It’s been a while since I have written a reflection. 

We’ve been really busy with the Craft Service course . Every Thursday I just seem to run out of time to write and at 3 days a week, the weeks go by really quickly. I will go back to making a few notes in a draft throughout the days so that I’m not so frazzled on Thursdays.

Margaret and I have been taking a ‘divide and conquer’ approach to course content: proofing, organizing, creating thumbnails, formatting (So.Much.Formatting), and coming up with exercises and quiz questions. This has been more or less the formula for the past 3 weeks and it’s engaging and kind of fun. It’s not ideal that we’re building a course that has students in it but that’s how it goes sometimes. Laying down tracks in front of a moving train.

I am using the accessibility checker in Microsoft more and more. I’m going to do a little video or something about it for future because it’s a really easy way to get people thinking about accessible content. For our documents lately it doesn’t like the low contrast headers and I get errors about text not lining up with pictures. I’m going to look up the text/image issue and see what that’s about – didn’t seem to me from what I understand about the tech – that it would be a major issue. I’m also not sure that split and merged tables cells are still a big problem. I’ve read a bit on both sides of that.

My strategy for next week is to get all the module structure in place in Blackboard first. Then, have the thumbnails and documents in place. While checking the documents I’ll see what kind of exercises I can come up with and if I can gather a few quiz questions. Next step will be formatting any Word docs I need for exercises. This is what I got hung up on at the end of the week and because of that I missed things I usually wouldn’t like BB settings and the module overview bullets section. I’m going to work Monday and Tuesday next week and then Wednesday and Thursday mornings. I hope that Thursday will be a time when I can walk through and look for details – I hope that every Thursday, but hey, could happen 🙂 . I’m going to take note of any issues that need fixing but only go in one direction – forward. Then I can back track and work through the fixes.

I feel better for getting this done even if it’s Sunday.

This week I worked on a list of tech based, asynchronous activities for engagement. Margaret and I will be collaborating on fleshing the list items out  and creating a resource. We’ll turn these into something like recipe cards that instructors can choose to plug into a course when they need an activity.   I think there will be a lot of potential cross-referencing with regards to what kind of engagement they’re looking for and what sort of tools are available to achieve it.  I like the problem solving aspect – what’s the goal in using an activity?  Beyond just a ‘cool thing to do’ the activity should have a purpose connected in someway to outcomes. 

I enjoyed working on the list. It took me back to working with some really great, creative instructors and colleagues over the years. I had to dig around the reaches of my brain and even call on a friend. Me: “you remember that thing, with the cards, that were pictures, and everyone picked one?” friend: “visual explorer?”  I knew she’d know what I meant.  🙂  And Liesel knew the website I was talking about immediately when I described Pedagogy Unbound. I could not come up with that name. Turns out I also could have asked my husband…  

Having lots of different educational perspectives makes creating activities interesting. With a little creativity, you can apply the same activity to philosophy or carpentry. Working with the motion picture content has helped bring more scenario ideas into play. 

I also did a little work on the Craft Services course in the section on budgeting this week. I think these students will really benefit from the experience their instructors probably had to learn on the ground. 

Until next week… 

Pick one

Oh fun! It looks like we’re using a block editor now. I am just going to dive in and type and see what happens. From what I can see (in 3 seconds) is that conceptually it behaves a bit like Articulate Rise. I’ll do the tutorial later. First thing I notice is that I can’t wrap text around my image (yet) and the image came in without having to go through the gallery where I usually add an alt tag. 

Leaving that here but I did figure it out 🙂 

I ran out of time last week for a reflection. Essentially, it was a repeat of the week before. There were a couple of small things to add but I’ve forgotten them now. This week there was a bit more test writing and building. This week I did a little more of the same and learned a little about the settings for tests that show feedback for each M/C answer.

Margaret and I will be collaborating on some resources for asynchronous online engagement, exercises that can be plugged into courses – kind of like a series of recipe cards to pull from. I’ve got a document started with a few ideas. It sounds like things will be busy for the next couple of months. Apologies for the banal entry but the day is over and it’s time for Clinical Pilates.

March you say? Doesn’t feel much like spring yet. Dark, grey, and raining. I did see a crocus recently so there’s hope.

To start off this post, here is a question: 

How  did I spend most of my work hours this week?

1. 1. 1. 1. writing multiple choice questions 
         2. watching videos about habits and  procrastination
         3. converting a scanned PDF into a quiz in BB Learn
         4. All of the above. 

The correct answer is d. all of the above. I spent most of my time this week in the world of quizzes. I wrote multiple choice questions, and incorrect answer feedback, for two different course modules. It was a good exercise – it’s not that easy to write good ones but after a bit of practice you can see patterns in the content.

One of the modules dealt with procrastination and it amused me that I was watching videos about procrastinating as part of my job.  🙂 There was some interesting content about procrastination being a habit, and how habits form about 40% of what we do daily. Procrastination is also a form of stress relief. You’re welcome. 

I also got the foodsafe quiz converted into an online format in Blackboard. With some restrictions we have permission for students to take it online so that’s good. 

Outside of quizzes I did a little reading – no actual writing yet – for the open/access report. I get an email here and there from people that I interviewed who want to share a little more information. I need to get into the Open text adoptions and contact the people using them at NIC. It’s open education week and I haven’t really engaged with any content. I signed up for the BCcampus book club for spring – the book is Small Teaching Online. 

It doesn’t sound like I did much this week and then I remember that my week is only half a week so .. I kept busy.

Next week it sounds like I’ll be working on some interactive elements for the motion picture courses and that sounds like fun. 

My high-five etug pen being reflected onto a lined piece of paper – listening, reflecting, writing are the dominant themes for now.

Not lots to report for this week. I had a few more interviews.  There was no work for me to do on the Craft Services course so I spent my non-interview time downloading transcripts, reading through Widening our Doorways and looking through policies. The transcripts are not that easy to read so I may have to re-watch a couple of interview sections. I know I don’t remember everything I’ll want to capture. It was a good experience talking to people from all over the college and I could see a few common themes emerge between different areas.

I went back to the Blackboard Sampler course and set up a couple of folders for the Assessment and Grade Center content. I had kind of let that go for a while since it wasn’t high on my list of things to do. I’ll dig though the existing content I had to fill out those sections and I need to resize some images.

I learned that the issues that I had with registration have led to some changes coming to the web site.  I know it wasn’t just me but people certainly heard about it.  There are some other changes coming too and I’m looking forward to seeing them. Getting to things through the web site was an issue that kept coming up when talking about barriers to access.

I may have a chance to get in on some Equity, Diversity and Inclusion training for SCETUG next week. That will tie in nicely with what I’m doing.

That’s about it. Next week will be mostly reading and writing and possibly some follow up questions.

Care to join me for an interview? 🙂 Watch your step… We waited for railings on our deck for what seemed like a very long time…

Another quick week . I had a couple more interviews and have set up some more for next week. I held off booking too many due to the craft services course. There is no content for that yet so I did an email blitz with the rest of my open and access contact list and will hopefully be able to schedule the last of the interviews I want to do.  In the mean time I am making connections and finding themes arise with the people that I talk to.  I think early March is realistic to make a report out of what I (will) have to work with. I know that craft services still has a tight timeline so I imagine that will take up a good chunk of my hours when the content does come in.

I am now trying to imagine how I will do some graphic representations for the report and the kinds of headers and sections I will use for organization. It might be that my original organizers don’t fit with the content, or maybe I’ll have to add a couple. I have really enjoyed talking to colleagues and hearing their perspectives. I had a great talk with the crew from the Student’s Union and we will be talking some more about open textbooks/resources soon. I can see where that conversation will fit in with recommendations.

I’ve also done a little reading from the BCcampus newsletter on open and accessible content and I registered for Cascadia  since it’s all about Open Education, and, it looks like I won’t be on vacation…

Next week will be taken up with more interviews and more organization of the material that I have. I will read through some of the transcripts and look for more themes/commonalities. If the content comes through I’ll likely spend some time on the craft services course.  I’ve had a few more responses since I started writing this post. I am once again, really pleased that people are interested in talking about access. It’s reaffirming that NIC is a place where people really care about student success.