Category: Work Reflections (Page 4 of 5)

Looking forward to some good news, some sunshine, some day.

It started out as  one of those weeks but it got better. Between lock down fatigue, the daily sick and dead count on the news, not being as healed as I hoped I would be by now and (sure, why not) a full moon, I was dealing with a little frustration.

I did, however, make some progress on the open/access report. I’ve got an email ready to go and some questions to ask people. I will set up meetings/interviews for next week. I’ve also started thinking about next steps and what we can do now and into the future. It will be interesting to see what comes up in the report. I think the trickiest part will be organizing the information that comes in since the categories are broad and open to interpretation. I’ve set definitions for the scope of the project but I know I’ll hear some perspectives that I haven’t included. I’m going to put a chart or something together as categories emerge and attempt to visually represent some of the information. Should be fun.

I signed up for a change management course this week. A bit of a re-direct to kick the aforementioned frustration – aka – find something within your control. I haven’t finished but there are a lot of familiar  principles and concepts so far.

Next week I’ll be organizing and hopefully having some meetings around open/access. I have a meeting with a friend/colleague from Camosun to talk about what they do. I’m curious whether others have done this kind of report/assessment. I think there is also an opportunity for us to collaborate on something so we’ll see if we can come up some ideas.

I took a little time to cull some pens that no longer work. A small step towards organization. How does it go? Release/chuck what no longer serves you?

I had a couple of more Instructor meetings this week. Mostly around confidence in using the tools. I think they’ll be fine once the initial nerves are worked out. Practicing seemed to help with that.

Margaret and I did our joint session and I had two other scheduled sessions. We had small turn outs all around but that was okay because it made things a bit more conversational than ‘delivered’.  For my second session only one person showed up but they showed up in a different BlueJeans room. I’m not sure what happened but I tested the link on a couple of computers. We are going to rebook but they also have access to the unit of the sampler course that I use for the session and seemed happy with that.

Speaking of the sampler course. I’ve been revising it- still undecided on whether the name still works. I have I copied it into a new course space in case I didn’t like my new changes. I made some changes to the organization and am adding the module organizers. It should be ready Tuesday, at least for peer review.

Margaret and I had a good end of week chat about the Indigenization session she did with BCcampus. It reminded us that we were going to work on a project together so we’ll be thinking about what that will look like next week.

I also plan to go back to the ‘To-Do’ list I created a while ago and see how my earlier plans line up with the present. I was going to build a resource and that’s been on my mind. I have a lot of PD experiences from November to pull from and I think I’ll just start writing some ideas out to see what I can come up with that would be useful for NIC.

Starting the New Year and the new week off with a bang.

This was a busy week right off the start.  We are hiring for two postings so there were some meetings around those as well as some instructor support. Monday and Tuesday were very full.

Margaret and I had a session to prepare for on Tuesday so we met a couple of times. There wasn’t much time to work on it before Christmas as we both had other projects. It was mapped out in a google doc but we had some holes to fill and we needed to figure out who would say what. We had three participants and we covered 5 principles for engagement and used some of the speaker content from the various conferences we attended in November. I enjoyed doing it.

I’ve also been working one on one with an instructor this week. I have been giving them homework assignments before each meeting and things are coming together.

Monday and Tuesday kept filling up so I blocked out some time in my calendar for prep time for my own sessions on Wednesday and Thursday.  I had outlines but wanted to feel more prepared.  I am starting to put more things like that in my calendar – even a half hour to sort out priorities – because the time just seems to disappear. I’ve had limited success with this strategy in the past but it seemed to work this week.

The session on ‘clearing the path’ and creating clear navigation went well. Again, it was a small group and it’s practical information so pretty straight forward. For the session on ‘putting out the welcome mat’ now that I’ve done it once I know that next time I will make it more conversational up front. We can unpack a few terms together. I think I can also use some visuals to see how people ‘feel’ about them. This one is still practical information but it’s more personal. I used a module in the sampler course for most of the content. It was a small group again ,with a couple who had been in the session the day before. We had some time to talk about their specific teaching situations and formats and how to bring in some of the community/humanizing pieces.

Speaking of the sampler course I was able to take  a little time to revisit it. It was tricky to be objective while I was immersed in creating the content. Now I am looking at it with my Instructional Designer hat on and I can see some missing pieces. I created a folder on what a module should/could look like but I haven’t followed my own advice. I now need to go through and create a consistent format for each module and find some ways to logically break up long pieces of content. I also want to revisit the name and decide if that’s what it even is anymore. I took out the pieces on assessments and grade center because they didn’t seem to fit any longer. I’ll take a holistic look at it and what the goals for the course are and make a decision. We have so much content on ‘how to’ do things so I don’t want this to be ‘that’, but it’s hard to separate sometimes. Anyway… I am putting a block of time in my calendar next week to address the consistency and content chunking.

I enjoyed my break and it’s good to be back.  I feel like this was a really productive week.

Gingerbread house under construction. A different sort of build than I’ve been working on lately.

I didn’t get to my last weekly reflection for the year. It was a busy week just trying to wrap up the Blackboard course I was working on. That, and it was time for a break.

The direction of the course changed a couple of times and the focus near the end became organization, navigation and creating multiple pathways. So, I took some things out and added some things in. The organization piece is so important. I don’t think there is much consistency in Blackboard usage across the college and that is very frustrating for students.
I really wanted to have information on managing a course, things like setting a tone and being explicit about expectations. The intent is to take a more holistic approach beyond, how to use the tools.

Margaret and I are working on some sessions for the new year. It will be good to be working with people again. The two I’ve planned on my own tie back to the content in the Blackboard course mentioned above and Margaret and I will be drawing from out Lilly conference experiences for a joint session.

I thought about doing a year in review based on the weekly reflections but I think I’ll just enjoy my last little bit of time off instead. It was an ‘interesting’ time for sure. I think 2021 will still have us thinking on our feet because I believe that the sand is still shifting under them. I was excited about the possibilities that the big changes of 2020 presented but the change was too big, the team was too small and the timing was too quick. Still, we managed to pull a lot of resources together and we have some foundation to work with even if we have to rebuild some of the walls with whatever new changes are coming.

Circling up.

This week was all about the Blackboard Sampler course. I feel like I’m running the same circle on a track but on each pass through something changes so maybe more like one of those big parking lots where I’m actually moving up a level on each go around. I did not get enough done this week but I keep adding  so things are happening. There were a couple of Ultra related changes that involved taking some things out and then putting them back in again. It will come together – it IS coming together. I’m just very conscious of the way time is flying. I had hoped for something more polished by today.

I had a walk through of the course with Liesel  on Monday- always good to have another set of eyes. As the week wore on and new projects came up I got a better sense of how I will create continuity, or, patterns for certain types of information. I hit low energy mid-week so fortunately I had some mechanical things to do that didn’t require a lot of creative thinking.

I had a good chat with Geoff about student issues with Blackboard and they are mostly due to what sounds like poor organization and that is helpful to know.  Also got to have tea and work chats with Margaret a couple of times. We have some sessions to plan for January. The ‘Foundations’ as I’m calling it right now, of good (online – I know we haven’t been using that word) course design is the first part of the sampler course and I think it’s something I can turn into a session quite easily, and it sounds like it would be useful to a lot of people.  We’ve been talking about some of the ITC Lilly sessions and can see where some of those can be worked in as well – all the while conscious that this break won’t be much of a break for many who still have to re-adjust courses.

There was some good talk about  new and upcoming projects to support faculty. I have some write ups for sessions to do and we are holding interviews next week for a new CTLI person. Lots going on. I laughed when I saw a tweet by Martin Weller – paraphrasing – “I keep cavalierly saying ‘let’s take that up in the New Year’ with no regard for my future self”. I feel like that’s what next week is going to be like for me – SO MUCH TO DO! but it’s all good. Better to have a full plate. I am starting to really look forward to the Christmas break. It’s going to be weird but we will make the best of it.

Soaring?

Another PD filled week. I attended the ITLC Lilly conference and got some inspiration from some of the speakers. I attended almost all of the plenary sessions and couple of round tables.  I liked the energy of the kick-off speaker Jessamyn Neuhaus (author of Geeky Pedagogy). A lot of this content is not new to me but it is really valuable to be reminded of it especially as I am building the Blackboard course for instructors. One of my favourite quotes from this session – I think quoting Victoria Nesnick – “your course is not a crock pot – you can’t set it and forget it”.  There was also the thought of responsiveness to students being separated by time and space. That’s a concept I use a lot when I’m facilitating anything to do with online Teaching and Learning – and funnily enough ‘Time and Space’ was the topic I chose to do a short video for BCcampus on facilitation tips. I usually add the caveat that I am #notascientist. That was another ‘out of the comfort zone’ moment for me, but they asked nicely and I’ve decided to embrace opportunities like that and have fun with them.

I really enjoyed Lilian Nave and Kevin Gannon’s sessions  – didn’t realize he was the ‘tattooed prof’ on twitter until the other day. I  have loads of resources from the plenary sessions open to follow up with and a few synchronous sessions to finish (and start) watching. I think five days is a bit long for a conference but it was resource packed and very well put together.

Tuesday was also the ‘Teach in Against Surveillance’ I had to split the cognitive load a little on that day to get to both events. Fortunately, any bits of plenary sessions I missed were recorded. It was a very powerful session. The passion, the solidarity, the shared outrage but also hopefulness, the speaker list… just.. inspiring. Ian urged us to call proctoring software what it is -academic surveillance software – not ed tech.

One more quote “Students are allies, not adversaries” from Kevin Gannon’s plenary, resonated this week.

Other than that I’ve been writing. Each day something comes from a plenary, or from twitter that I want to to add to to the Sampler course. I realize that each section could probably be its own micro-course. There’s so much to understand about why engagement, community, accessibility, presence, are as, or more, important than course content.  I’ve been writing and organizing and outlining. Now it’s time to start putting in some media and some activities to make it more interactive. It will be good to get another set of eyes on it Monday. I still need more graphics, more colour but it will come. I’ve started a powerpoint on all the things I want to say about metaphorically opening the doors and turning on the lights so that students, all students, feel like they should there. Thanks Flower Darby.

I almost forgot that I also listened to Brenna Clark Gray’s session on caring Friday – there were three NIC faculty in attendance.

This week was a bit of a mixed bag – or- a tossed salad?

We had a meeting with the hiring committee to narrow down a short list of candidates.  We had a CTLI meeting to check in and a meeting about the impending Blackboard Ultra switch-over. I spent some time looking at videos about Ultra and experimenting with my courses in Course Sites. I copied over a version of the Instructional Skills Workshop Online (ISWO) that I ran at NIC a number of years ago. It used a lot of the tools and I got over 1600 errors on my import. I didn’t spend a lot of time looking over the errors but I will. I want to know how easy (or not) it will be for instructors to clean up after an import – and what triggers the errors. 1600 sounds like a lot but a quick look revealed that it wasn’t that scary.

I spent some time on ITLC Lilly conference site. I updated my profile and made some notes on which synchronous sessions I might want to take in.

The rest of my time was spent working on the Blackboard Sampler Course for instructors. It feels a bit like writing an outline for a paper at the moment. Mostly descriptive content so far but I’m working on adding interactions. I hope I can make more time to work on it in and around the conference next week.  I want to make aesthetic changes but I think it’s more important to keep moving forward for now.

That’s about it. I’m building in more breaks just to get comfortable but am able to move a little better and am bending my knee as ordered by the surgeon. It’s going to be a while but hey, it’s been almost 4 weeks already so, almost halfway there.

Since I talk about tools, and I really ‘drilled down’ on what ‘access’ means, I submit this close up of a toy drill.

There was a lot of housekeeping this week. Mostly cleaning up bits of things that were partially done.
I registered for the ITLC Lilly Online conference.  It looks like there will be some not only interesting, but relevant, to me sessions.

I dusted off my old PD plan and plugged in some new things. The focus is on accessibility and accessible content. I found some websites like CAST and the Government of BC  that have some great resources on the topic(s).  it’s a living document so I won’t call it complete. A lot has changed since the last time I updated it (in February!). The thing that took a longer time than I planned or expected was a concept map about access. I can map a concept in my head that would make you dizzy but getting one on electronic paper was a struggle. Ironically, my document so far is not completely accessible – I turned on the accessibility helper and I need to add some alt text for some arrows and do something with wrapped text inside some shapes. Going forward I am going to check all my documents. I have a feeling it will make things take longer but I want to walk the talk.

I worked on a Blackboard course for instructors. It’s shifting as I go and think things through. I didn’t get a lot of time to spend on it and that will be my priority for Monday. I have taught instructors  ‘how to teach online’ many times through the Instructional Skills Workshop Online but that was a facilitated asynchronous course – this one will be more self directed. Maybe like ISWO I could put in a reflective piece for participants that I could keep track off and provide feedback for. We’ll see how it takes shape.  I like the idea.

I also played with some new tools this week:

From the OER challenge this week I experimented with Hipothes.is, the annotation tool. I added to one of my blog post to try it out. I was also introduced to the Mason OER Metafinder or MOM. A cool tool for digging deep into Open resources. I did a search for ‘teaching online’ and got over 1100 results.

I listened to the H5P webinar with Clint, Ian, and Alan (Lalonde, Linkletter, and Levine respectively)  that happened last Friday.  I have been curious about H5P for a while and have experimented with it a little bit,  a long time ago. I listed while doing other things and then at the end there was a demo on how to add the plug in so I played along.  I added a photo slider that will be at the bottom of this post. I just grabbed a couple of photos from my library. I look forward to trying out some more of the available H5P content for future posts.

These three things took minutes each to do. I’m pretty impressed with that.  I’m sure each one could take one down a wormhole of experimentation but I love that I can try things out to get a taste and see if there is some use for real life. Recording them here will hopefully help me remember, and having to submit to the OER challenge makes me do more than just ‘take a glance’ at the cool things.

Here is my first H5P :

Bright yellow benches casting shadows in Guadalajara

The emerging theme this week was shapes. Drawing circles, lines and arrows, and putting things in boxes. There was even a little spiral in there. 

Last week I started a concept map on what access means in many different contexts and have been pulling that apart and breaking it down into sections and adding detail.  Access is so nuanced.  It’s not pretty yet but it is taking shape – or shapes… 

I worked out some vacation times for the next year and I don’t believe that I’ll be able to take any of the actual planned vacations. I am pretty sure that this contributed to the aforementioned spiral that happened on Tuesday.  There are so many things that are out of our control- so many unknowns. I have to remember that for all I am aware that other people are in a #traumainformed situation, I am part of that ecosystem and it’s going to affect me too sometimes.  I took a little walk and thought about the things that are actually in my control and decided to focus on those.  I am in a very good place and don’t feel particularly delicate most of the time but there are days where just a little thing can seem… I don’t know… like a big deal?  It was a short-lived and mostly contained spiral and a good reminder to take a beat and get some perspective; it will be okay. 

Wednesday I attended a BCcampus session that showcased how 5 different institutions are using OER.  Open Access in Action: Tales from Five Institutions.  KPU has an Academic Integrity tutorial that they’ve put into pressbooks.  they’ve found a way to use badges in Moodle so students can demonstrate that they’ve completed the content. Mike and I looked at badges in Blackboard a few eyars ago for the very same reason. BCIT shared some biology (biotechnology) resources that look great. I learned about the Open art Histories project and a new cross-institutional Open text for Physical Geography. The beauty of these resources is that they are open for remix and re-use.  I think it would be nice to have a little curated library of these resources that are relative to programs and course at NIC.  I just may take that on as a project and see if I can get some instructors on board. There are a lot of educators using H5P and I look forward to exploring it a little more soon. I played with it a few years ago but don’t remember much. I learned about the H5P hub (coming soon) in this session. 

Some of the strands of my to do list have started coming together. I’ve been gathering resources related to access, open pedagogy, and UDL as well as working out what that kind of specialization looks like as a Teaching and Learning specialist. What would I have to offer with that kind of specialization without putting myself into the box of accessibility alone? See what I did there? The Open Education Challenge Series has been really great so far and helps with thinking about more ways I could support faculty. 

I did something a little different (for me) this week – I signed up to co-host a radio show one morning during the Studio20 event that BCcampus is hosting in November.  It felt a little impulsive but also, right. I think it will be fun and another way to connect with my community.  Studio20 is about engaging learners online so fits right in with PD too.  Co-hosting includes a pass to the event. 

I think I’ve been missing community and collaboration. Even being back in the office, I’m working alone, in fact, probably more so than when I was working from home. November is shaping up to be PD intensive so that should help.  The etug conference is on November 6th and registration is looking good.  It will be great to spend the day with that group.