Every February, Educational Developers from across Canada gather together for the Educational Developers Caucus (EDC). This most recent gathering took place at the University of Victoria from February 14-16. It is a short but very busy and very impactful conference. Several of us from the Teaching Commons attended, each with multiple presentations.
The conference was well run, and in all honesty, it was nice to get away from the cold and snow to the warmer and wetter. There were multiple streamed events allowing any delegate to pick and choose the area of focus most appealing. From an engagement point of view, this year’s conference had a record breaking number of new EDC conference attendees, including the Teaching Commons own Alice Kim and Lisa Endersby.
Celia Popovic and I sit on the EDC Executive as the Vice Chair Conferences and Secretary, respectively. Prior to the formal start of the conference proper we attended Executive meetings and planned for our Annual General Meeting. Although we meet monthly as an Executive, this is the first of two (2) face-to-face meetings that take place during the year. The AGM is also a critical time because it provides a very short opportunity to connect with the membership at large, communicate current and upcoming initiatives, review By-Laws, and pass/approve motions and such. As MC of this Annual General Meeting I can assure you that I enjoyed my conference going experience much more after these meetings were over!
This Executive meeting was immediately followed by Celia facilitating a pre-conference workshop with Peter Felton (Executive Director, Center for Engaged Learning, Elon University, US) and Nancy Chick (Academic Director, Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, University of Calgary) entitled Principles of good practice in publication: The inside track for educational developers. The purpose of this workshop was for the facilitators, who are all editors of different journals, to help demystify the process of getting published in a journal. Participants also learned about key criteria for acceptance, and practice applying what they’ve learned to current or potential projects.
One of my presentations stemmed from a research paper (Vander Kloet et al., 2017) that colleagues from across Canada and I wrote together. Our session, Teaching at the edge: The role of educational developers in supporting contingent instructors, critically focused on the role educational developers have in supporting contingent instructors and the unique challenges faced by their precarious, often tangential roles. Our previous research highlighted how three aspects of contingency affect contingent instructors’ ability to engage in SoTL): 1) institutional knowledge, status, and role; 2) invisibility and isolation; and 3) precarity.
Celia and I, along with our colleagues Alice Kim and Genevieve Maheux-Pelletier (virtual presence) shared our work on a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Guidebook that we are researching and writing: Drawing interest in SoTL research: Where do we go from here? The aim of this interactive workshop was to identify needs and share practical approaches that educational developers can use to best support faculty who are engaging in SoTL research. We presented preliminary findings of our research to showcase the personal journeys of faculty engaged in SoTL at our institution, highlighting obstacles they overcame and lessons their experiences afforded them.
Celia’s conference experience wouldn’t have been complete without a third presentation…this time she did so with Teaching Commons colleague Lisa Endersby. Their session entitled Building (on) reflection: Using LEGO in the classroom, opened workshop participants to new ways of incorporating creative activities that can help expand reflective learning beyond mere linear or theoretical thinking to offer more concrete, practical insights. Participants were engaged in a number of interactive activities designed to model the use of LEGO to teach creativity, communication and problem solving while also encouraging critical thinking and formative assessment of student learning.
Lisa engaged participants in fruitful dialogue during her roundtable session - Thinking in the round: A discussion of roundtables for developing critical skills. During this time, participants were invited to share their own experiences and strategies in order to identify and then discuss further, practices in using the roundtable approach for skill development.
During this EDC Conference it was very easy to see Teaching Commons engagement and leadership. Our participation is leagues beyond simple attendance. We are active participants, presenters, facilitators, organizers, and executive members. This conference provides us with a wonderful opportunity to connect and network with other educational developers across the country.
Vander Kloet, M., Frake-Mistak, M., McGinn, M. K., Caldecott, M., Aspenlieder, E. D., Beres, J. L., Fukuzawa, S., Cassidy, A., & Gill, A. (2017). Conditions for Contingent Instructors Engaged in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 8 (2). https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotl-rcacea.2017.2.9
