ACIFA Conference 2019 - Jennefer Rousseau

Another year, another ACIFA conference. ACIFA stands for the Alberta Colleges & Institutes Faculties Association. The theme of the conference was creativity is contagious. A few of us were lucky enough to attend and met some new friends and old friends.

A highlight of the conference was Brain Keating who reminded us that nature is creative! If you have never seen Brian speak, I highly recommend it. Brian told us about elephants and there purposeful habit of working together in a herd to protect themselves from predators. Elephants will go out of their way to scare lions away from the watering hole and make sure everyone gets a drink. We as educators are also like elephants. We are here to protect the weak and give everyone a chance to strive.

As the day continued, June Parham from Norquest taught us that we must be aware of our lizard brain and our learners' lizard brains. Lizard brain stops us from thinking and learning. As we continue to learn about mental health, it’s important we practice our deep breathing exercises when our bodies get tense. We need to take breaks and create safe learning environments. A safe environment isn’t difficult to create. As an instructor or manger, simply make sure the outcomes you wish to achieve are expected and the process to meet those outcomes is familiar. For example, tell your learners what to expect on assessments, how they will be conducted, and what the process will look like. If you will walk around the class during a test, tell your learners that.

From Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, Clare Mulcaby spoke about gender dynamics in the classroom. In her technical college, the male students outnumber the female students perhaps 10:1. This might not be the case in the School of Foundational Learning, but her tips resonated with me. We all have learners in our classes who do not participate. We know some of our learners are riddled with fears, fears that are real! Many of our learners were not allowed to learn in their home country, ask questions, or even benefit from basic human rights like they do here in Canada. Some of our learners are introverts. It’s important to give all our students the opportunity to participate in class, and that might mean posting discussion questions one day ahead, letting students share ideas in smaller groups, and create a rotating leader role in your groups

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Again Universal Design for Learning (my passion, if you didn’t know) was a reoccurring theme at the conference. There are many things we can do to make the classroom accessible to every learner. Jenny Olsen and Nola Vorra from Norquest addressed the topic, as did I in my session on rotating note taking. Implementing UDL might feel like an overwhelming task, but UDL can be applied in a variety of ways. Read to your learners in class, provide audio books or recordings of texts, provide learners with assignment options, eliminate time on tests, provide a video with your lesson, and /or use graphic organizers. What you choose should help your learners. We do many of these things already. For more ideas, research how to help students with anxiety, post-traumatic stress, autism, or learners learning English as a second language.  

In 2019, many colleges in Alberta have adopted “Paws for Learning” which is a program that uses dogs in post-secondary to reduce anxiety in students. These professional dogs and handlers are trained by St. John’s Ambulance and come with their own liability agreement. Usually found in learning spaces, these working pairs help identify students that need extra help and walk them to the appropriate services. They also make everyone happy!

In the end, I learned that in times of change, we must build relationships with others. We must build relationships with our co-workers we find difficult, with governments we don’t like, and with our provocative learners. We will do better if we create partnerships, and the opportunity is all around us. 

We can do it! We are elephants!

Thank you ACIFA- I had a great time!

Design Project: Problem Solving Session

In our last problem-solving session of this pathway development, we tackled the learners’ final project. The pathway will culminate in a month-long collaborative Design Project, in which learners apply knowledge and skills from their two courses to complete a design challenge.

We would like the Design Project to:

• Take the form of an authentic performance task
• Require leaners to design with a specific user in mind
• Provide learners with significant opportunity to make their work personally meaningful

We started our session by working creatively as a group on a simple drawing task. This activity encouraged us to see ideas and add to what others have offered already. We started with three basic shapes on the board and ended up with what is pictured below.

This was a warm-up to the main problem that needed to be solved: what should the final Design Project be?

Some design projects that we are considering are:

• New App Expo – leaners create a new app concept that they publically pitch at a New App Expo
• Artstream Student Websites – Pathway students create a professional website for an Artstream student to showcase their identity as an artist and their work.
• Digital Image Consultant – Are you a BVC employee that is looking to develop or enhance your professional online presence?  Pathway learners are here to help!

And thanks to this brainstorm we added:

• Music Connect – marketing for an initiative that allows learners from SFL to showcase their musical talent
• Promotional video for the college – as a celebration to highlight all the interesting opportunities on campus
• App with a Virtual Tour – of the college or surrounding area
• Premier’s Luncheon – marketing for this event
• Digital Storytelling – for the kids in the BVC day care

After this brainstorm, we used the 6 Thinking Hats method to further explore one of the options. It is during this exercise that we start to ask questions such as, would the learners have the skills to complete such a project, and think about connected opportunities, such as mentorships or partnerships with other learner groups at the college.

This was a very creative and productive process for us. Many thanks to those who were able to join us at this, and the previous, problem-solving sessions.

We were holding these open problem solving sessions every two weeks as part of the development of the Career Program Pathway – Creative Technologies project. The purpose of these sessions is twofold: give SFL and CT faculty multiple opportunities to get involved in the development process, and for the course developers to be able to learn from the expertise of others and apply that knowledge in this project.

Interested in the results of our last Problem Solving Session? Check out our post on this blog: Feedback on Learning Outcomes and Objectives. Have ideas to share but were not able to make a session? You can chat anytime with Allison, Penny, or Deanna.

Feedback on Learning Outcomes and Objectives

Drafting has become an exploratory yet deeply focused and detailed part of our design process. After writing and fine-tuning the learning outcomes and objectives for the two courses in the pathway, we put the drafts out there for feedback in this problem solving session. Colleagues were invited to participate in the session from a variety of perspectives:

• Subject matter expert (SME) – in math, computers, communications, or digital culture
• Learner
• Instructor but not SME
• Curriculum developer

This allowed us incorporate a variety of different views into this review of outcomes and objectives. After a group discussion around the course outcomes and whether the scope was right and whether the components fit together and made sense, we individually reviewed and commented on the objectives for each outcome for both courses.

The written comments and subsequent discussion led us to modifications, such as:

• Breaking objectives down into sub-parts, to ensure adequate time would be planned for
• Re-combining elements into groups that fit together better
• Adding missed potential objectives
• Eliminating “nice to have” objectives that went too far outside the scope of a course

This resulted in a second draft that incorporated more viewpoints, benefitted from more eyes, and pushed us to think deeper about a few key issues. Once again, we are grateful to those who were able to participate in this problem solving session for their time and expertise.

We are holding these open problem solving sessions every two weeks as part of the development of the Career Program Pathway – Creative Technologies project. The purpose of these sessions is twofold: give SFL and CT faculty multiple opportunities to get involved in the development process, and for the course developers to be able to learn from the expertise of others and apply that knowledge in this project.

Interested in the results of our last Problem Solving Session? Check out our post on this blog: Depth of Knowledge. Have ideas to share but not able to make a session? You can chat anytime with Allison, Penny, or Deanna.

Depth of Knowledge - Problem Solving Session

How deeply do learners understand what you are teaching them? Do they get why they are learning this? Can they apply it to a new situation? During the design process we purposefully develop assessment to address these questions.

This session focused on applying Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) levels to determine how in-depth learners need to know each of the learning outcomes in the CPP-CT courses. See the image below for a brief explanation of each level.

Source: http://www.synergiseducation.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Dok.svg

 We broke into three groups and each group chose one learning outcome to focus on. The group discussed what the learning outcome meant and the sub skills that learners need to be introduced to before they can achieve the learning outcome. The group then looked at each sub skill and determined which DOK level it represented.

As this was a brainstorming session, we also tried a new approach to increase our creative ability. We had containers of legos set out that participants were encouraged to sort by colour into piles, in between brainstorming the DOK targets. This idea is based off of research that suggests that keeping the mind engaged in a simple/mindless task enhances creativity. The lego sorting worked for some; others said they have found chores such as folding laundry or washing dishes to be beneficial.

We came away from this session with three fully developed learning outcomes with various objectives aligned to DOK level targets. This kind of work is time consuming but important, as it sets the stage for a well scaffolded course. We are thankful for the full participation from everyone who was able to join us.

We are holding these open problem solving sessions every two weeks as part of the development of the Career Program Pathway – Creative Technologies project. The purpose of these sessions is twofold: give SFL and CT faculty multiple opportunities to get involved in the development process, and for the course developers to be able to learn from the expertise of others and apply that knowledge in this project.

Interested in the results of our last Problem Solving Session? Check out our post on this blog: Authentic Tasks and Audiences. Have ideas to share but not able to make a session? You can chat anytime with Allison, Penny, or Deanna.

Authentic Task and Audience - Problem Solving Session

We often hear about the value of using authentic tasks in the classroom. They can motivate learners, provide an opportunity to integrate skills, and help us focus on the big issues of a course. When developing courses and trying to create authentic tasks, we need to understand what they are in a little more detail. We wanted to differentiate between authentic tasks and other ways of applying skills and knowledge, so we opened up the conversation and got other instructors’ input.

We came into this session asking the following questions. For any subject:

• What are some ideas of authentic tasks?
• What are your sources or contacts when creating authentic tasks?
• What tips can you give us from your experience? Any pitfalls to avoid? Any amazing successes?

After describing various examples of authentic tasks that we have been involved with, we tried to define what makes a task authentic and came up with this list of characteristics:

• Has value outside of educational setting (may be workplace or general life)
• Utility beyond the project
• Can be simulated, real, or a hybrid
• Can be simple or complex
• May involve authentic props/documents
• It considers: what will be meaningful to students?
• Includes an element of performance/execution of a skill
• An authentic audience – is someone who would actually use this product or process outside of the educational setting? Community, industry, general public, peers
• Assessment of authentic tasks can be based on process or product, depending on the learning outcome

Other considerations that came out of the discussion include:

• Community partnerships can contribute to authentic task creation. Establishing and maintaining these can be challenging.
• Timing and the timeline of such a task needs to be carefully planned for
• Flexibility needs to be built into such tasks
• Reflection time should be built in early and often
• Instructors will need different types of support for some of the bigger ideas discussed

This has given us a great starting point for integrating authentic tasks into these new courses. We appreciate the people who showed up and offered insights and asked thoughtful questions. We look forward to learning with you in the next session.

Not everyone can make it to the scheduled sessions. We appreciate your emails and conversations around these topics anytime. Some of the resources shared with us this way include:

• Creating Learning Partners Literacy Tutor Training manual,Unit 13
• Creating authentic materials and activities for the adult literacy classroom: A handbook for practitioners

We are holding these open problem solving sessions every two weeks as part of the development of the Career Program Pathway – Creative Technologies project. The purpose of these sessions is twofold: give SFL and CT faculty multiple opportunities to get involved in the development process, and for the course developers to be able to learn from the expertise of others and apply that knowledge in this project.

Literacy Partnerships in the Community

by Berniece Gowan

Each Fall and Winter term for the past 2 years a small group of DDRC students come to BVC to be recognized for their completion of the ABLE Computer Literacy course that is delivered at DDRC. The curriculum for this course was adapted from our current ABLE Computers for Beginners. Candice Witkowskyj and then Vicky Minhas co-designed the curriculum with DDRC staff. We used a train the trainer model which meant that the DDRC staff became the Instructors. The curriculum is continually revised and adapted to that setting for those learners by the DDRC staff. This is an excellent example of building community capacity and working together in partnership.

The original version of the article posted below can be found here.

Food for Thought about Online Teaching and Learning: A D2L Design Story from the University of Calgary - Danielle Dore

I recently attended the D2L Connection: Alberta event hosted by SAIT which provided a wonderful opportunity to connect with other institutions regarding their practices and insights into using D2L. Representatives from D2L were also on hand to talk about new Daylight features and implementation. One particularly interesting session I attended was Changing the Conversation about Online Teaching and Learning: A D2L Design Story presented by the University of Calgary’s Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning.

This session centered on what was learned about increasing learner success and engagement in an online course. Over two years of learner and instructor surveys, feedback, and subsequent changes, the Educational Development Unit proposed and implemented a number of changes to their online courses. What I found quite interesting is many of these changes are quick, easy to implement, and are modifications made directly in D2L.

Changes made include:

-          Elimination of submodules – Learner feedback suggested that content was difficult to locate when learners had to navigate into submodules.

-          Cut content – Learners found it hard to prioritize and process what information was the most important when too much content was presented. Course content should only include what is essential for learning, and supplementary resources or resources for extension should be selectively released for individual learners as needed. D2L provides many options for selective “Release Conditions” that can allow additional resources and content to be released to learners including set scores on Dropbox rubrics, grade rubrics, scores on quiz totals, and/or even certain quiz questions. This allows D2L to remain uncluttered while providing target resources to particular learners.

*For more information about Release Conditions in D2L please see Lorna Malanik’s post: Personalize Learning with Intelligent Agents and Release Conditions

-          Naming modules by week instead of “Module X” – Naming modules by week provided learners another way of keeping on-track in their courses. Also, feedback suggested that using the word “module” actually presented a barrier to some learners as they did not fully understand what the term referenced. When the content/topic of a module is referenced, it should be done so with an action verb. For example:

o   Week 1: Applying Reading Strategies vs Module 1: Reading Strategies

-          Online environment as the third teacher – Significant changes were made to “humanize” the online environment to increase learner engagement and reduce anxiety through:

o   Use of videos, gifs, holiday greetings, videos from instructors. *On an interesting side note, feedback suggested that learners found having a video greeting from their instructor to be very important; however, many learners did not actually watch their instructor video. It seems that just having their option to watch the instructor’s video was enough for them.

o   Use of learner pictures.

o   Groupings of learners within the course.

-          Implement mental health strategies – The need for normalizing mental health and wellness was recognized as an important consideration for course development. It was implanted in the course through:

o   Extending the length of the course to include a “Break Week” allowing for learners (and instructors) a time to incorporate mental health/wellness strategies and access mental health resources. 

o   Imbedding self-care strategies through:

§  Mindfulness/meditation activities.

§  Use of D2L Intelligent Agents and then personal email to check-in with learners.

§  Course cafés. (Opportunities for learners in a course to connect with each other that is not necessarily content related.)

-          Role based discussion – Each learner is expected to perform in each of the following roles throughout the course:

o   Director/facilitator – oversee the discussion and keep it relevant and on track

o   Connector – make real-life connections to discussion content

o   Wordsmith – research to support connections

o   Reporter – present discussion to whole class

By providing learners with discussion roles and expectations, all aspects of an effective discussion can be covered while allowing learners the flexibility to choose when and what discussions they would take on in a specific role. Also, it allows learners to decide which weeks might be better or more difficult to perform certain roles. For example, if a learner had a more demanding week with other courses, they may decide within the group that they would take on less demanding role for that discussion.

-          “Veedback” – Video feedback in which the instructor provides learners with a video of feedback in place of written feedback. Learners suggested this mode of feedback was more preferred and reviewed than written feedback. This feedback strategy also contributes to the humanizing of the course.

-          Develop inquiry skills – Learners are presented with a discussion topic in the form of a driving question over time through discussion threads. This allowed learners to “connect the dots” of content to see the bigger context of what they were learning. This also allows the instructor to see the navigation of a learner’s understanding of a topic over time and support, enhance, direct or redirect a learner’s exploration of a topic.

One of the most impactful messages I gained from this session was the importance of continual surveying and feedback of both learners and instructors to inform modifications for course improvement. All courses should be seen as continually under development with room for enhancing learner success and engagement.

The Importance of Accurate Student Assessment - Take-Aways from the Calgary Regional Consortium’s “Interpreting Diploma Exam Results: A Formative Tool to Enhance Instructional Practices” Professional Learning Session

As the name suggests, the focus of this session was to consider a multitude of factors to appropriately interpret diploma exam results, particularly to consider discrepancies between an individual learner’s school awarded mark (SAM) and diploma exam mark (DIP) as well as averages of SAMs and DIPs province-wide.  Participants were even provided several Excel programs that are used to input data to provide enhanced, visual interpretations of diploma exam results.  While the focus was on HS, the take-aways can apply to all teachers at any level because it matters to all of us that a learner’s grades accurately reflect his or her skills.

In relation to the reports provided by Alberta Education, it is interesting to look at provincial averages in comparison to our learners’ averages.  But before throwing our hands in the air in defeat, or alternatively jumping for joy, we should consider that our small sample size at BVC doesn’t give us very much data to work with in any particular exam sitting.  Instead of looking at a single year, we should consider trends through the multi-year reports and also reflect on whether the demographics of our learners are representative of the demographics of the province.

What we can consider at BVC for a particular exam sitting is any discrepancies between a learner’s SAM and DIP.  The province-wide trend is for DIPs to be lower than SAMs.  But why?  

Tim Coates, a former Social Studies teacher who served as the Director of the Diploma Examination Program Branch at Alberta Education from 2005 – 2014, facilitated the session and offered some points for consideration.

• A bad day at the exam.  It can happen that a learner may have a bad day at the exam and underperform. 

• Grades for non-outcomes.  Awarding or reducing grades for attendance, participation, attitude, effort, or other behaviours such as turning work in early/late can impact learners’ grades substantially regardless of their ability in a course.  While instructors may be frustrated that a learner does not take his or her work seriously, or delighted that he or she makes a tremendous effort, these things should not directly inform any part of a learner’s grade.

• Grades for “polluted” data.  Coates provided a memorable example.  Imagine you need a lab test.  You go to a lab and provide your sample.  The technician then tells you, “we’ll give you your results just as soon as we have samples from three other people; we’re going to mix your samples, test the results, and then distribute the results among the group.”  Clearly, this would not work to measure an individual’s lab results, and it doesn’t work to measure an individual learner’s ability in a group work situation, either.  We need “clean” data.

• Grades for formative assessment and resubmission of assignments.  We can agree that learning happens through practice and assessing this practice serves as formative assessment for learning, and therefore it should not be counted as a weighted grade.  But what about allowing a learner to take feedback from a summative assessment, make improvements, and then resubmit the assessment?  Clearly the learner’s grade will improve.  Good.  But is this an actual representation of a learner’s ability to do the work him or herself?  Coates emphasized that this method of resubmission and reassessment should be considered formative, not summative, and therefore there should be no weight associated with the grade.  For learners to demonstrate their mastery of a skillset, they need a new task to independently show what they know.

• Assessments are unreliable.  Coates explained in considerable length the process of assessing the reliability of exams and showed a variety of calculations we can make to determine both the difficulty and discrimination of our exams.  (This is not for an ELA teacher to attempt to explain.)  Through this, he stressed that we consider the purpose of our assessments: through our assessments, can we determine the difference between an 80% and 90% learner, or a 30% and 50% learner?  Does the assessment make it possible for everyone to perform reasonably well despite not knowing much, or perform only average in spite of knowing a lot?  In other words, does our assessment discriminate?  If the assessments we provide our learners throughout the course are not able to really showcase what he or she does or does not know, their SAM is not going to correlate to their DIP.  
•  As a side note, this is the purpose of analytics programs such as Form Return (which we used in our department for a short time) and Smarter Grades (a newer program which we are investigating) that can make calculations for multiple choice and short answer tests and show the results of the data, even aggregating the data from multiple classes, terms, or years.  Although it would mean considerable backend work, use of such a program to analyze the reliability of unit and equivalency exams could result in the useful development of better exams.  

Unfortunately, at the time I attended the session, our DIP reports were not available to me, but I am looking forward to analyzing my own learners’ diploma examination results in this new light and I hope to have reasonable access to the data in a timely manner after future exam sittings.  I think looking at the results within subject discipline groups will foster useful discussion about exam and assessment reliability and consistency between classes.

This session proved to be a good reminder that all assessments should reflect the outcomes, the entire set of outcomes, and only the outcomes of the course.  It also brought me back to the old conflict between what I feel is philosophically sound and what I feel is practically and/or usefully managed.  For instance, how do we survive the marking load from multiple learners who fail to complete assessments on time and then submit a horde of them the last week of the term?  Coates reasons that it is not our job to teach the learner a lesson in responsibility and that our obligation is to provide the most accurate report of learning; therefore, no assignment is too late and no marks should be deducted for being late.  So if we do accept late assignments and allow them full grades as Coates suggests, do we also laboriously make comments on the late work, or can we say the point of providing feedback is now lost?  Or what about formative assessments (i.e. a writing assignment not for grade but for feedback) where the associated summative assessment is already past due?  Or what about denying access to a discussion forum after a new forum has started and most of the class has moved on? 

What do you think?  Do you face similar conflicts?  How have you resolved them?

Lorna

Take-aways from the D2L Connection: Alberta Event - Personalize Learning with Intelligent Agents and Release Conditions

Have you struggled with knowing what information to include in D2L and which to leave out?  You know that some learners need lots of support, and you know that other learners don’t need nearly as much.  So what can you do?  Do you include everything in your unit folders “just in case”?  You could.  But this can become overwhelming and confusing for learners to navigate.

Did you know that you can use D2L to release materials selectively to learners on a need-to-know basis?

You may wonder, why would I want to limit the information I provide to all learners?  Well, simply, to make things simpler.  Your course can be streamlined, and as a bonus, you can increase the appearance of instructor presence by allowing specific material to be released to meet individual learners’ needs.

Here’s a scenario: you have a learner who has just flunked a quiz or other assessment.  So you, brilliant, ever-present instructor, use Release Conditions to automatically make additional support available and use an Intelligent Agent (personalized email sent automatically based a criteria you have established) to inform this learner of the material that has been made available specifically to address the issue and provide more practice for a concept.

What’s the point?  If you have sufficient opportunities for formative assessment, you can have learners see only the vital information in your courses and keep the extra stuff hidden until a Release Condition has been met.  Your courses will be streamlined and your learners will know that each file is important and can’t be skipped.  It will eliminate the temptation to have folders such as “Extra Material” or “Additional Handouts” or “Supplementary Resources” that are rarely accessed by the learners who need them most.  

Click here for a video that shows how Release Conditions and Intelligent Agents can be used together to personalize learning.

Lorna