Some WACCs on my Birthday. Again.
On March 30th, my birthday, I presented at the Washington State Canvas Conference. It was the second time I had presented at the event on my birthday. How weird is that?
Spending my birthday with the great people in the world of education. #2017wacc pic.twitter.com/LJVpQ3r0nV
— Todd Conaway (@Todd_Conaway) March 30, 2017
Well, no matter. The day started wonderfully as I was able to finally see the Jimi Hendrix memorial in Renton. Turns out it was in a cemetery just 200 feet from where the bus let me off at Renton Technical College. I have long been a huge fan of his music and it was a special moment there at 7:40 in the morning pondering his life and work. What a wonderful way to start a conference and my birthday.
The keynote speaker for the conference was friend and colleague Michelle Pacansky-Brock. She has done some wonderful work in the field of teaching and her “humanizing” work has impacted many. In 2017 or so I asked her to share some thoughts with our faculty around the use of video in online spaces. We were running a “20 minutes a day – 5 day class” for faculty and she added a video to a Canvas discussion we were having around using video. When she left University of California Channel Islands for the California Community College system, our team here was able to continue a relationship with them and the five day classes.
In 2017, I did this presentation on my birthday at the WACC event. This year, I shared a version of something I have pondered much over the years since working with Lisa Lane. She wrote an article titled, “Insidious Pedagogy” and I have long seen the effects of funneling faculty down a narrow path of the LMS training and how influential our first experiences as teachers can be. I came up with “Faculty Voice & Student Agency in the Time of the LMS” as a title. The presentation is below.
My session was immediately after the keynote, thankfully, and I had a good audience. Many of the sessions were done as “Hyflex” sessions and all I can say is, “We ain’t there yet.”
I had a nice conversation with Ben Whitmore from Spokane Community Colleges. Ben in the eLearning Director there and super friendly and easy to be around. He shared with me that he had been to Bellevue College and a few others over the past couple of days talking with people about hyflex classrooms and how they are being developed. He was not overly optimistic about the state of affairs. In fact, I happened to be next to him when a Renton faculty came into the room and started chatting about his experience in the “hyflex room.” Audio did not work, too many cameras, hard to focus on any one thing, remote student user issues that took away from in person students… Lots of issues.
I know from faculty I work with they already have enough to try to do well in a classroom or in an LMS without trying to shove a hyflex scenario at them.
The session I attended after mine was given by Geoff Cain and Kristen Copeland, the Director of Teaching and Learning at Clover Park Technical College and titled, “A New Vision for Transparent and Engaged Professional Development.” The short blurb was, “Participants will learn how these hub courses connect faculty professional development with Universal Design for Learning, peer-to-peer learning communities, open education, and the college’s commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion.” They shared some successes and failures they had with life after the pandemic in faculty development. Seems that as we have all experiences, everyone is toast. But, like all of us, we continue on with trying new paths and finding ways in that might work. At Clover Park, they are gamifying some of the Canvas courses they use to help faculty. While that is just starting, they are hopeful that a little competition might push some a bit down the road.
The next session I went to was with Amber Lemiere and titled, “Wreck this Gradebook.” Of course, I was there. While the theme of grading was prevalent at the conference, she both spoke to the challenges of the equational system we have and grading, but also to the way Canvas “forces” you to grade. She didn’t like that and had some fun ideas of getting around the gradebook. She is a pretty nice & easy-going person and it was interesting to see her kinda upset at the gradebook.
I skipped the next session as I had an hour and twenty-minute bus ride back home. On my birthday…
Keeping with Grading, the keynote session on Friday morning was given by Latoya Reid and Ivan Ramirez and titled, “Interrupting our Grading Culture.” They shared that they would, “examine the problematic origin of our standard grading system and address the misconceptions about what it accomplishes, reflecting on how grading affects students and how it reinforces power codes. We will then present an overview of some nontraditional grading methods and how they could be implemented in different areas of study. Finally, we will discuss ways in which nontraditional grading methods are troubled by cold campus climates and a technology that is not designed for its implementation, focusing on providing tools to meet these challenges.” And they did.
If you know me, you know my feelings about grading and numbers. This session was wonderful and pointed right at our rather messed up system. I liked the presenters so much I attended the Q&A with them for the next session. The audience was enraged as we often are at the way we have gone about evaluating “learning” and there was much discussion about the challenges of changing that system.
The last event on Friday as by a colleague at Western, Chris Powell. Chris has a nice space he uses to share Canvas resources. He also has some fun ideas around marketing professional development and reaching faculty in novel ways. The program noted the session would help us, “learn how Chris was able to pivot from simply being a technical resource for teachers to emerging as a relational technologist who worked smarter, not harder, with his unique brand of customer support. These strategies not only helped clients climb the steep learning curve caused by COVID’s rapid transition to online learning, but also helped navigated their stress, pressure, and innovation of that unique academic year.”
Yep. As I sit here now with way too many cookies and coffee, and very few faculty on campus, now is a good time to try something new.
Overall, it was a really nice Thursday there on my birthday. Energized. Happy. Sounds or people and smells of food. Movement and shuffling. It was good to be around other people.
Friday was not the same as I was remote and not as attentive as I may have been there with others. It is a good group to support and even if it falls on my birthday again, I’ll be there, ready to say something.