Category Archives: Articles

on the Verge writing contest

Co-sponsored by UVic Libraries and the office of Equity and Human Rights (EQHR), and with significant support from other units on campus, the annual on the Verge writing contest deadline is next Wednesday, February 15.

As many of you know, the contest showcases and celebrates emerging UVic student voices with an annual theme under the broad rubric of equity, diversity, and human rights. This year’s theme is DIALOGUE and our guest judge is interdisciplinary spoken word artist Johnny D Trinh. $1600 in cash prizes are available in the categories of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and spoken word — $250 for first place and $150 for second place in each category.

Please share widely with your faculties, departments, and faculty champions. For more information please visit our contest webpage.

For more information, please contact otvcontest@uvic.ca.

UVic Libraries Publication Launch: in CIRCULATION

We are pleased to announce the library’s new signature publication, in CIRCULATION––a magazine focused on library impact at UVic and abroad.

Featuring stories about podcasting, digital preservation, the Peter and Ana Lowens UVic Libraries Special Collections Student Fellowship, and recent library news, this donor-focused magazine celebrates the committed work of library staff on campus and in the community.

in CIRCULATION will be published annually with a small print run.

Please share widely with your colleagues and friends.

Best,
Lisa A (on behalf of Christine, Samantha, Artie and Shahira)

OTESSA Journal volume 2, Issue 1 & 2

Please check out the latest work published in the OTESSA Journal (Volume 2, Issues 1 and 2 published Dec 2022). The journal is using a continuous publication model, so will be posting articles as they move through the editorial process. It is an open-access journal with no Article Processing Charges, so your membership, sponsorship, and conference registration supports the publication activities of OTESSA among the other work we do as we build and grow. The journal is now quietly welcoming submissions from the global public in the discourse, research, or practice sections. To join or renew your membership, please visit the membership form on our website.

We will be pushing out our social media promotion of these works from our @OTESSA_org, @OTESSA_fr, and @OTESSAjournal accounts on Twitter and other platforms. Thank you in advance for helping to promote these works as they are shared! We encourage you to share these works out using the #OTESSA and #OTESSAjournal hashtags in addition to those relevant to the article content.

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1

Discourse Articles

Outside-In: Entangled Openness as Subversion Influencing Emergent Change, Maha Bali

Research Articles

A Synthesis of Research on Mental Health and Remote Learning: How Pandemic Grief Haunts Claims of Causality, Stephanie Moore, George Veletsianos, Michael K. Barbour

Crowdsourcing the (Un)Textbook: Rethinking and Future Thinking the Role of the Textbook in Open Pedagogy, Michelle Harrison, Michael Paskevicius, Irwin Devries, Tannis Morgan

Practice Articles

The UK Open University COVID Response: A Sector Case Study, Martin Weller

Humanizing with Humility: The Challenge of Creating Caring, Compassionate, and Hopeful Educational Spaces in Higher Education, Sarah Driessens, Michelann Parr

ePortfolio Pedagogy: Stimulating a Shift in Mindset, Rita Zuba Prokopetz

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 2

Discourse Articles

On the Misappropriation of Spatial Metaphors in Online Learning, Jon Dron

Research Articles

Surveillance in the System: Data as Critical Change in Higher Education, Samantha Szcyrek, Bonnie Stewart

Introducing A Reflective Framework for the Assessment and Recognition of Microcredentials, Francisco Iniesto, Rebecca Ferguson, Martin Weller, Rob Farrow, Rebecca Pitt

Integrating Technology With Instructional Frameworks to Support all Learners in Inclusive Classrooms, Diane Montgomery

Elders’ Conversations: Perspectives on Leveraging Digital Technology in Language Revival, Melissa Bishop

UVic 2022 “Pathways to Impact” Grant: Eric Higgs

UVic’s “Pathways to Impact” fund aims to move original research that aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and move it into real-world applications for greatest impact. The fund is a partnership between UVic’s Research Partnerships and Knowledge Mobilization (RPKM) unit and UVic Libraries. Funded projects will make their research openly accessible, including via UVicSpace, contributing to the democratization of knowledge and knowledge equity. The inaugural UVic fund is one of a few institutionally led knowledge-mobilization funding initiatives across Canadian research universities and among the first to directly target the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Sentinels of change: Rising treelines and raising knowledge.

UVic researchers address cultural, ecological and environmental urgency behind the Mountain Legacy Project.

UN Sustainable Development Goals: 6, 13, 14 and 15

Among the seven projects that were selected for the 2022 Pathways to Impact fund is Sentinels of change: Rising treelines and raising knowledge, led by Prof. Eric Higgs, a professor at the School of Environmental Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences) at the University of Victoria. The research project uses historical photographs from the Canadian Rocky Mountains to analyze tree line change over the last century. The results will be applied to discuss the effects of climate change on such ecosystems and possible practical implications. The funded project is part of the Mountain Legacy Project.

Besides an article in Scientific Reports, an open access journal by reputable academic publisher Nature…

Trant, A., Higgs, E., & Starzomski, B. M. (2020). A century of high elevation ecosystem change in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Scientific Reports, 10(1), Art. 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-66277-2

…an episode of the appraised podcast Future Ecologies was recently published in connection with the project:

“In a forgotten corner of a national archive, some very heavy boxes held a rare promise: an opportunity to look back in time at a landscape scale.”

Listen to the episode here.

Find a list of achievements and publications by Prof. Higgs on his website and on his ORCiD profile.

UVic Libraries congratulates Professor Higgs and his team on the successful application and their valuable research contribution to the fulfillment of the United Nations’ SDGs.

Mt. Assiniboine and Magog Lake: A. O. Wheeler, 1913 & Mary Sanseverino, 2017

UVicSpace: Readership Snapshot

December 17, 2021

Since January 1, 2021, the University of Victoria’s institutional repository (UVicSpace) has seen 1068 fulltext uploads. Of that total, 369 comprise theses and dissertations. The theses and dissertations collection had 13,668 visits from across the world (e.g., US, Russia, Germany, France, Netherlands, etc.)

The top 5 downloads in the theses and dissertation collection are:

10353 Project-based learning through the eyes of teachers and students: Investigating opinions of PBL in adult ESL   (stats)
5658 The drafting of Vietnam’s Consumer Protection Law: an analysis from legal transplantation theories.   (stats)
5301 Form, content, body parts: an analysis of gender relations in contemporary Japanese film.   (stats)
5293 Evaluation of EHR Training as a catalyst to achieve clinician satisfaction with technology in acute care setting   (stats)
5107 Tarot cards: an investigation of their benefit as a tool for self reflection   (stats)

The top 5 downloads in our open access monograph publishing series are:

85961 Global corruption : Law, theory & practice   (stats)
7481 Handbook of eHealth Evaluation: An Evidence-based Approach   (stats)
5762 From Family to Philosophy: Letter-Writers from the Pastons to Elizabeth Barrett Browning   (stats)
4581 Greek and Latin Roots, Part 1 (Latin) and Part 2 (Greek). Contribution of Greek and Latin to the English Language   (stats)
3762 Narratives of Memory, Migration, and Xenophobia in the European Union and Canada   (stats)

To get started with uploading your work contact the UVic Libraries Copyright and Scholarly Communications office at scholcom (at) uvic.ca. We can help you archive your final published or accepted manuscript versions of your articles in UVicSpace after checking publisher permissions. Placing your research publications in an open repository increases knowledge dissemination and helps satisfy the Tri-Agency’s open access to publications requirement.

The new normal

March 14, 2021|Times Colonist via UVic News

We’re now a year into the pandemic, however, with vaccinations becoming more frequent, there is hope for a return to normal living. But what might “normal” look like? Numerous experts warn it will not be the same as before, and some of the changes may remain in place long-term. Including hybrid workplace programs (from both home and office).

Whatever the post-pandemic world looks like, [Saul] Klein said it’s not likely to be starkly different from what is happening now.

“We won’t see a big-bang solution,” he said. “There is likely to be a gradual resumption, and even once the rules start to diminish, the behavioural patterns we have established over the last year will not disappear.”

Saul Klein, Dean of the Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria, is one of the many experts weighing in on what our post-pandemic world may look like and what will be needed for businesses to succeed and people to feel financially stable. The Copyright and Scholarly Communications Office encourages you to visit Dr. Klein’s publications through UVic’s institutional repository, UVicSpace, and browse his other works both in the repository and his ORCID profile.

KULA: CFP COVID-19, Online Instruction, and Open Educational Resources

Request for Proposals: COVID-19, Online Instruction, and Open Educational Resources

KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies is requesting proposals for a forum on the shift to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. We seek commentaries and teaching reflections (especially contributions that openly share syllabi and teaching materials with the broader community) from faculty members, librarians, and other staff working at post-secondary institutions who have transitioned to and developed pedagogical materials, especially Open Educational Resources (OERs), for online instruction in the last year. How has your teaching evolved? What are the demands and challenges of the digital environment? What has worked, and what has not? How have students responded?

As a multidisciplinary journal, we encourage submissions from scholars and practitioners across disciplines, and we are interested in experiences with both synchronous and asynchronous teaching. We also welcome submissions with student collaborators.

Please submit proposals of approximately 300 words under the section “Proposals: COVID-19, Online Instruction, and Open Educational Resources” here: https://kula.uvic.ca/index.php/kula/submission/wizard. We are accepting proposals until March 15, 2021.

The deadline for full submissions, which will undergo blind peer review, will be May 31, 2021

Endangered or a language in hiding?

Feb. 16, 2021|Toronto Star via UVic News

After two decades of hiding his ancestral tongue, Levi Martin was reintroduced to Tla-o-qui-aht and is one of the estimated 10 percent to speak it fluently. And as one of the many children sent to Residential Schools, he isn’t the only one that struggled after losing a crucial part of his identity. Thankfully, a platform called FirstVoices (launched in 2003) has a growing database of Indigenous languages and can be used as a reference guide for those hoping to learn or relearn. Those involved in the website’s efforts are always encouraging others to contribute their knowledge of different dialects, pronunciation, and more to safeguard against language extinction.

“Many of the languages are spoken as first languages by a very small handful of elders and those elders are passing on,” [Sonya Bird] said. “If language revitalization efforts don’t happen now, within the next decade or two, we’ll have lost a lot of those elders and knowledge keepers.”

Sonya Bird, an associate linguistics professor at the University of Victoria, is one of the many members a part of the Indigenous languages revitalization projects. Her area of focus has been pronunciation, particularly with long sequences of consonants, and providing the tools to achieve oral proficiency. If you wish to explore more of her work, The Copyright and Scholarly Communications Office encourages you to visit Dr. Bird’s publications through UVic’s institutional repository, UVicSpace and browse her list of her publications.