BI-WEEKLY UPDATE - Okanagan College
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BI-WEEKLY UPDATE Hats Off The LAR / Ed Tech team would like to send a shout out to Darrell Skinner in the Therapy Assistant Program for his use of student produced instructional videos to demonstrate fundamental course concepts. What a fabulous way to empower learners as they transition into the profession. Points of Note: COOL TOOL ALERT! Moodle Forums have a few cool new features since the upgrade to 3.9. You now have two grading options: ratings and holistic grading with the option to add marking guides or rubrics. There is also a review option so that you can quickly see how many posts and replies students have made. Forums are also an excellent option for students to share other media as they can upload or directly record into their posts. *A quick note, if you turn both ratings and grade on, two placeholders will appear in the gradebook. Exams If you are looking for innovative assessment strategies, please contact LAR. If you are interested, Ed Tech will do a final exam walk through to check your settings. Please schedule a time to meet before December 10, 2021. Exam Supports: If students experience challenges during an exam, please refer them to the IT Helpdesk 250-762-5445 ext. 4444 or 1-866-839-4032. Open House December 17th – Learning and Applied Research and Education Technology B120-130 Join us for our open house in B120-130 on December 17th from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm. We will showcase exciting new gadgets, tools, and our newly renovated space B130. We will be serving up coffee, tea and goodies so don’t miss out!
ATTENTION Faculty and Instructors!!!
The LAR and Ed Tech team are looking for nine individuals to test either Kahoot, Wooclap or IClickers in
the learning environment. We will provide three people each with the same tool to test over a two-
month period, starting January 2022. Once the testing period is over, you will come together to share
your learning about each tool. Finally, we will offer a one-hour open debate type workshop for faculty
and instructors on the tools. Please email learningandappliedresearch@okanagan.bc.ca if you are
interested in becoming a tester before December 6th. Names will be gathered on a first come, first serve
basis. We will notify all participants by December 10, 2021.
Kaltura Virtual Classroom
Kaltura Virtual Classroom is an easy-to-use online teaching platform that is now available inside Moodle.
If you haven’t already taken part in a Kaltura workshop, there will be more scheduled for January, and
you can also reach out to Ed Tech for a one-on-one training session.
Learning and Applied Research - Books
Want to have a good read about learning, teaching, and student success? Come see us in B120 or email
us to borrow one of our books. We have several to choose from and we are building our library. Listed
below are just some samples:
➢ Promoting Equity and Justice Through Pedagogical Partnership
➢ The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
➢ The Power of Making Thinking Visible, Ron Ritchhart and Mark Church
Open Course Development Opportunities
BCcampus has recently released an expression of interest regarding the development of open courses.
BCcampus would like to add further open courses to the open online course collection that align with
open textbooks currently in the B.C. Open Textbook Collection. They are looking for B.C. applicants who
have developed, adapted, or adopted an open textbook in their B.C. Open Textbook Collection to
develop a new open course, or adapt an existing open course, that accompanies the textbook.
Estimated completion time: Four months
Grant amount: Up to $8000 per course. Three options:
➢ $2000 for an existing course that requires little modification
➢ $5000 for an adaption or major revision of an existing course
➢ $8000 for development of a new course
To learn more about this opportunity, visit the expression of interest page. To apply for this opportunity,
fill out the application form linked on the EOI page and email it to Melanie Meyers at
mmeyers@bccampus.ca.
Workshops
Our next series of workshops for 2022 will be released shortly. Be sure to look for our follow up series
on Kaltura video and Kaltura quizzes!
Interesting Podcasts
Please check out our new podcast section of the Bi-weekly. The podcast is called “Our Teaching
Practice” and explores the experiences of Okanagan College instructors and faculty associated with their
day-to-day teaching practice.
https://anchor.fm/oc-lar-ed-tech
Aspiring for presence – a reflection on a vital component of teaching.
Carl Doige, PhD
“Without presence, teachers are like guides in a theme park who tell the same joke a
dozen times a day. We’re there, but we’re not there. With presence, teaching lives1.”
A survey of journals devoted to the scholarship of learning and teaching in higher education
(e.g., College Teaching; The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) will provide
the reader with a plethora of studies about the effectiveness of specific teaching and
assessment strategies, evaluations of curriculum redesign and development, and the analysis
of students’ metacognitive awareness and sense of self-efficacy. In simple terms, these
studies investigate the essential and important questions of what, how, and why of learning and
teaching.
Less common, but not less important, however, are studies that focus on the presence that the
instructor brings to the learning and teaching experience. In other words, these studies address
the question of who is doing the teaching1-6. As Parker Palmer6 reminds us: “...good teaching cannot be
reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.”
In support of this statement, there is ample evidence4 to suggest that a keystone component to student
motivation, achievement, and engagement is the relationship between the teacher (as a person) and the
student. Further, when students are asked to describe the qualities of their good teachers, the common
descriptions are associated with words like “caring”, “authentic”, “accessible”, “passionate”, and
“enthusiastic”. These qualities all point to the notion of teacher presence.
But what is this teacher presence?Here is where things get tricky! As vital as this notion of teacher presence is to good teaching, it is hard
to pin down with an all-encompassing definition. Some authors avoid the task completely and in
classic Zen fashion, “point the way” through an apt description1: "Some people, when they teach, are
right there with the rest of us in the room; others seem imprisoned in their own space, on the far side of
an unbridgeable gulf."
From my readings, Rodgers and Raider-Roth4 provide the most tangible and practical definition when
they write: “Presence from the teacher’s point of view is the experience of bringing one’s whole self to
full attention so as to perceive what is happening in the moment." They go on further to refer to
the Latin roots of attend (attendere) and perceive (percipere). Definitions of attendere include: ‘to
stretch toward; to listen or pay close attention to; to accompany; to remain ready to serve’ and
definitions of percipere include: to seize wholly; to see all the way through; to achieve an understanding
of’. Collectively, this analysis conjures the image that one who is teaching with presence is one
with an “alert mind, ready to ‘seize wholly’, in concert with a compassionate heart that stretches
toward, ready to serve.”
Rodgers and Raider-Roth4 also describe a model of teacher presence and a set of practices that involve
1. Connection to self; 2 Connection to students; and 3. Connection to subject and pedagogy. I have
prepared an infographic7 that summarizes the essence of this model.
While this definition (and corresponding model) may provide clarity to the notion of teacher
presence, the bar, in terms of personal qualities and behaviours, is set high for one who wishes to teach
with presence. Is it possible to arrive with an alert mind and compassionate heart to all our teaching
experiences? Perhaps not! But personally, I find the definition and model to
be practically useful, as they provide me with an aspirational goal for how I want to be when I enter the
classroom. Further, I am finding that the definition and model serve as a tangible reference point against
which I can reflect on my learning and teaching experiences. Lastly, the definition and model remind me
that presence is not something a teacher possesses but rather is a set of qualities to be developed over
a lifetime of teaching to best serve my students.
In my next contribution to the bi-weekly, I will explore how teacher presence can be cultivated in the
online teaching environment.
References
1. Farber, J. (2008). Teaching and presence. Pedagogy, 8(2), 215-225.
2. Kornelsen, L. (2006). Teaching with presence. New Directions for adult and continuing education,
2006(111), 73-82.
3. Lanci, J. (2021). Somewhere I’ve Never Been: Parts 1-3. Journal of Religious Competition in
Antiquity Pedagogy, https://soar.stonehill.edu/jrcaadd/ (accessed November 2021)
4. Rodgers, C. R., & Raider‐Roth, M. B. (2006). Presence in teaching. Teachers and Teaching: theory
and practice, 12(3), 265-287.5. Scott, C. (2016). The Presence of the Teacher: Theory into Practice. In Supporting the Success of
Adult and Online Students.
CreateSpace. http://repository.cityu.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.11803/603/Chap16Supporti
ng.pdf?sequence=2 (accessed November 2021)
6. Palmer, P. J. (1998). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. San
Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass.
7. Three components to cultivating teacher presence
infographic: https://www.canva.com/design/DAExDezgFsI/sfv5PWFX-16oErozCJ9F-
g/view?utm_content=DAExDezgFsI&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_sour
ce=publishsharelink (accessed November 2021)
Your LAR and Ed Tech Support Team:
Tom Esson edtech@okanagan.bc.ca
Sami Alkhatib edtech@okanagan.bc.ca
Chantale Hutchinson learningandappliedresearch@okanagan.bc.ca
Carl Doige learningandappliedresearch@okanagan.bc.ca
Colette Martin learningandappliedresearch@okanagan.bc.ca
Our LAR and Ed Tech team is here to help you with your instructional questions using Moodle and
innovative ways to teach online, and we look forward to working with you to show you how to get the
most out of the experience. Gee Lam has recently left the team to return to the Coast therefore,
reaching us by our LAR/Ed Tech email is the very best way to connect with us. We aim to respond as
soon as we are able so that we can support you in finding good solutions to your questions. Please
ensure you include the detailed course name and as much information as you can when making an
inquiry.KALTURA "KNOCKS
IT OUT OF THE PARK"
OVER COLLABORATE
FILE ORGANIZATION
Multiple file types (Power point, images, videos) can be queued up in
a playlist for a seamless display during a live class.
WHITEBOARD
Multiple whiteboards can be used and saved for later use. Images can
be imported onto the whiteboard and then annotated by students.
BREAKOUT ROOMS
Breakout rooms are easily generated and can pre-populated with
course material. Participants can be readily shuffled between rooms
and the instructor can broadcast to all rooms simultaneously.
QUIZZING AND POLLING
Multiple quizzes can be set up prior to class and delivered seamlessly
during the live class. Live polling, with a variety of question types, can
be easily executed on the fly. While the results are not immediately
recorded in Moodle gradebook, they are available for analysis after
class.
RECORDING
Each Kaltura recording is automatically posted to the Media Gallery
of the course. These videos searchable and easily accessed for future
use.
https://www.okanagan.bc.ca/larYou can also read
