Introduction
As Senior Manager Strategic Curriculum Services in UBC’s Centre for Teaching Learning and Technology my primary role is to promote excellence in curriculum development at the University. However I continue to teach in the Faculty Education.
I’ve taught at the tertiary level since 1998. This has included undergraduate courses in adult education, social foundations of education and sociology of education, as well as post-graduate courses in adult education, educational technology (increasingly referred to as learning technology), research methods and public health. Much of this has been at UBC, though I also taught at the University of Technology Sydney and University of New South Wales whilst completing a post-doctoral fellowship in Australia.
My graduate work is in adult education (MA and PhD; both from UBC) although the focus was on community education related to HIV/AIDS prevention. Both programs presumed a solid understanding of andragogy, pedagogy, instructional design and best teaching practices. However like most of my peers in my MA program, I received no such training prior to teaching adults in private post-secondary schools (integrated ESL with a focus on tourism) beginning in 1994. However the wider university environment offered numerous professional development opportunities of which I availed myself whenever possible.
I have not taught in a face-to-face (F2F) environment for about five years. Today I teach in the Faculty of Education’s Master of Educational Technology (MET) program, a wholly online post-graduate program. My course, ETEC565A, is the “applications” course, where students learn to integrate strategic decision-making with sound instructional design to create rich online learning spaces. It’s an intensive, challenging course for students—and for me as the instructor! Each section of ETEC565A has up to 25 students; I teach between two and four sections per term…usually two (of three) terms per year. Demand for the course has been high and I have taught it for up to four consecutive teaching terms.
Students in the MET are education professionals, mostly working as teachers or school leaders in the K-12 system in British Columbia. Despite it being an educational technology post-graduate program, not all MET students are technophiles. A number enrol because it is a distance course: those living in rural BC either pursue graduate studies in education via distance—or move to be nearer a university offering such a program. There are material benefits for K-12 teachers who complete a post-graduate degree in education in BC: an annual salary increase of up to $10,000 per year.
I hope to teach in a F2F or blended/hybrid environment again, but I’m finding online teaching both fascinating and rewarding. I am, however, finding it difficult to source empirical studies on the effectiveness of different course designs and pedagogical approaches. The FCP hopefully affords me a chance to contribute to that (limited) literature.
This teaching dossier is a work-in-progress. It is reflective of my current perspectives, which have evolved over time and will continue to do so.