Town Hall 2006
Program and Schedule
Thursday, June 22nd
Afternoon Seminars
Time: 3:00pm – 4:00pm | LSC
ARTS ISIT - "Pachyderm: A new online resource developed for Open Source learning"
Tim Wang, Manager, Instructional Development, Arts ISIT
Liang Shao, Developer, Arts ISIT
Topic Areas: e-Learning
Pachyderm is a new and exciting online resource developed for open-source learning. The pillars of Pachyderm include an array of easy-to-use templates, giving users an unmatched creative license to generate visual learning aids, benefiting both instructors in educating, and students in learning. These templates provide easy-to-use “fill-in the fields” with options to upload annotated pictures, music, movies and multimedia, onto a highly interactive and educationally captivating presentation. This ground breaking program has created the opportunity for educators to take online, open-sourced learning to the next level by combining a huge variety of digital learning aids and putting them into one, simple and easy to use environment. The Pachyderm project was forged from the partnership between the New Media Consortium, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. These talented developers have been recruited from universities around North America, who in turn work tirelessly in conjunction with digital library experts to develop a program that brings all the essentials of teaching and learning together under one comprehensive “do-it-yourself” website. For more information, please visit the Pachyderm website at: http://www.pachyderm.org
Time: 3:00pm – 4:00pm | LSC
UBC FINANCE & HR SYSTEMS - "Web-based Faculty and Staff Self Service"
Niran Subramaniam, Director, MIS, UBC Finance & HR Systems
Robert Boudreau, Director, HR Management Systems
Topic Areas: e-Business
Reflecting the goals of eStrategy, UBC Finance and Human Resources introduced self service capabilities in Spring 2006 providing Faculty & Staff the capability to view their pay advices and view and update their personal information over the Web.
In releasing this self-service, Finance and Human Resources departments will adhere to the goals of eStrategy that enable a new administrative environment that is simple, efficient and minimizes time spent; that welcomes, values and respects the end user; is flexible, personalized, anticipates the needs of the UBC community, and supports the University’s strategic goals.
All UBC employees now have web based self-service capability once they self-subscribe by signing up with their CWL credentials, which will provide a highly secure, encrypted login to the self service through the management systems portal (www.msp.ubc.ca).
The self-service will provide immediate benefit to Faculty and Staff, who will be able to update and ensure accuracy of their own personal information in real-time. In addition to the reduction in errors resulting from paper based processing, the web based pay advices eliminate the need to keep paper records, which in turn results in administrative efficiencies for you and UBC.
Your payroll department now prints and delivers close to 40,000 paper pay advices each month. These pay advices will eventually be discontinued upon successful adoption and acceptance of the self-service. Discontinuing printed pay advices will help UBC become a greener Campus through contribution to the goals of the UBC Sustainability Office (http://www.sustain.ubc.ca/).
For more project info: www.enableit.ubc.ca
Time: 3:00pm – 4:00pm | LSC
FACULTY of MEDICINE - "Case-Based Learning Distributed over the World Wide Web: Creating Online Learning Communities"
Dr. Niamh Kelly, Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Faculty of Medicine
Shannon Charney, Student
Bonnie Leung, Student
Melanie Phillips, Student
Topic Areas: e-Learning
‘Human Bacterial Infections’ (PATH417) is a case-based online learning course delivered at UBC as an upper level science course. The learning occurs when students, working first on their own and then in groups, are directed to acquire content by working through case scenarios. Understanding of this content is pushed to deeper levels through the use of small group learning with peer feedback, instructor feedback, and, the use of e-portfolios. The course is delivered over the World Wide Web, using the WebCT platform, with students and instructors all communicating online. Using the online course as a framework for the presentation, instructors and students will demonstrate how this course promotes student learning while building (learning) communities.
Objectives for this session: Participants attending this presentation will be informed, and have a chance to ask questions, about:
• Online learning
• Case-based learning
• Self-directed learning
• E-portfolio driven learning
• Peer facilitated teaching and learning
• Instructor facilitated learning
Time: 3:00pm – 4:00pm | LSC
OFFICE of LEARNING TECHNOLOGY - "LEAP to Collaboration: Sharing Academic Support Resources"
Cindy Underhill, Manager - Learning Support Resources, OLT
Novak Rogic, Manager - Web Strategy, OLT
Glen Chua, Student, Student Development
Patrick Tam, Student, Student Development
Topic Areas: e-Learning
Students are telling us that there are good learning resources at UBC but they are hard to find. In fact, in comparison to other Canadian Universities, UBC students are 10 percent less likely to be successful in “getting academic advice” and 8 percent less likely to find help with “questions or problems” (CUSC, 2004) LEAP (Learning Enhancement through Academic Partnerships) is a new interactive site devoted to providing a coordinated, student-centered, peer-based, easy to access collection of resources designed to enhance academic success. The concept is simple: resources are developed and owned at the department/faculty /student service level and shared through LEAP. The site structure (weblog) allows for easy and shared content management by multiple authors. Collaboration can be as easy as setting up and RSS feed between the LEAP site and your own OR as in-depth as joining forces to bring your tutoring sessions online. This is your opportunity to explore the possibilities! LEAP is TLEF funded and represents a partnership between the AMS, VP Students: Student Development and the Office of Learning Technology. Session Goals: For participants to come away with a better understanding of: • what LEAP can offer students now. • how to leverage their resources by partnering with LEAP to develop new resources for learners. • the power of RSS aggregation (Aggrssive) to share content easily and improve access to resources.
Time: 3:00pm – 4:00pm | LSC
ENROLMENT SERVICES - "Working with Wordpress to Build a Community-Driven Website"
Michael LeBlanc, Senior Web Coordinator, UBC Enrolment Services
John Chong, Web Design and Usability Specialist, UBC Information Technology
Topic Areas: e-Community, e-Business
Blogs and community-driven websites have reached critical mass over the last few years, with even CNN correspondents blogging on location and asking for reader feedback. Meanwhile, we have seen the rise of content management systems for the web – designed to make the task of site content creation and maintenance easier through distributed administration.
This presentation will look at Wordpress – a free, open source application – and how it can be implemented as a content management system to create an interactive, community-centred website. We will specifically look at the UBC e-Strategy Update website, analyzing the limitations of the previous site and the functionality Wordpress offered through article/page commenting and RSS feeds. The result is a website that facilitates interaction and communication between site visitors and content authors.
We will then explore how Wordpress can be used to support an informational site (such as a departmental website), and how it can be customized to meet requirements that are not necessarily available “out of the box.” We will also explore how common administrative tasks are handled in Wordpress – including content approval, content categorization, and comments.
Time: 3:00pm – 4:00pm | LSC
FACULTY of EDUCATION - "Teaching towards social and ecological justice online: Introduction to Global Citizenship at UBC"
Dr. Dalene Swanson, Department of Curriculum Studies, Faculty of Education
Sally McLean, Centre for Intercultural Communication, UBC Continuing Studies
Topic Areas: e-Learning
How can we help UBC students make connections between academic knowledge they acquire in their classes, and their roles and responsibilities as members of local and global communities? How can we engage students personally and professionally with the practical and ethical complexities of global challenges? How do we create a forum for students to engage in issues of social and ecological justice through critical thought, moral commitment and meaningful engagement in their learning and 'coming to know' as global citizens?
We are an interdisciplinary group of researchers and instructors at UBC who co-teach a new international, interactive, fully online course: Introduction to Global Citizenship. The course was collaboratively developed, but principally conceived of and designed by Dr. Leah Macfadyen (UBC Faculty of Science). As the core course in a new multidisciplinary Program in Global Issues, it is open to undergraduate students at UBC and partner universities in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and England.
Our course combines academic rigour with personal reflection and group discussion. It provides students with a broad understanding of barriers and bridges to global citizenship, brings greater awareness of key global issues, and encourages individual and collective action and accountability on issues of sustainability and social justice. Pilot delivery of our course in 2005-2006 suggests that it offers students an extremely challenging, thought-provoking, international educational experience, as we learn about and discuss global issues together.
In this presentation, we will describe topic selection, course design and collaboration. We will further discuss our experiences teaching this online course and provide examples of student responses to this unusual undertaking, including evidence of transformative learning.
