Category Archives: Teaching

UVic Open Education Resource Grant – CFP

The University of Victoria provides grants for the purpose of the adoption, adaptation or development of Open Educational Resources (OERs), with the aim of replacing existing textbooks or other types of educational resources that can be prohibitively expensive. Ideally, the completed OERs will be useable not just at UVic, but other post-secondary institutions.

Open Educational Resource (OER) Grants are offered as a partnership between UVic Libraries (Libraries) and the Division of Learning and Teaching Support and Innovation (LTSI), with invaluable support from the 2020 BCcampus OE Sustainability Grant, as well as the Division of Student Affairs, the University of Victoria Students’ Society (UVSS) and University Systems.

About the Grant

Grant Deadline: January 31, 2023

TK Labels: Tool for Indigenous Peoples to assert sovereignty over traditional knowledges

Logo for the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples

Source: https://indigenousknowledge.unimelb.edu.au

August 9 marks the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, an annual celebration of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted in 2007. It is an opportunity to highlight the significant contribution that Indigenous Peoples have made to our world and it serves as a reminder to reaffirm everyone’s commitment to advancing the rights of Indigenous Peoples and to working together to address the challenges they still face around the world.

This celebratory blog post is dedicated to Traditional Knowledge Labels (TK Labels) – a framework for preserving Indigenous knowledges in digital environments. It will outline how the system works and discuss how it can be helpful in scholarly work.

1.   What are TK Labels?

Traditional Knowledge Labels (TK Labels) is a digital tagging system developed by the Local Contexts initiative in partnership with Indigenous communities worldwide to recognize, categorize, and acknowledge traditional knowledges of Indigenous Peoples and their contexts and regulate how and by whom that intellectual property can be used. Together with other tools such as Local Context’s BC Labels, GIDA’s CARE Principles, or the Mukurtu Content Management System (CMS), they ensure the cultural sovereignty of Indigenous peoples worldwide.

2.   What can TK Labels add to existing frameworks regulating intellectual property?

TK labels appear to be akin to statutory copyright and trademark law. Yet they were developed because legal concepts of regulating intellectual property are often at odds with how traditional knowledge is passed on, shared, and exercised. Copyright laws have been exploited many times to appropriate Indigenous knowledges and traditional cultural expressions, including by the scientific community.

Instead, the concept of TK labels is loosely inspired by Creative Commons (CC) licenses. CC licenses form another labeling system, that is intended to complement copyright by offering a more general framework for sharing intellectual property. But TK labels are more elaborate than Creative Commons and designed to provide a holistic perspective on the context in which traditional knowledges and Indigenous cultural heritages live. They can, for example, show provenance and specify protocols that should be applied when using the knowledge and they can be customized to serve local contexts. TK labels also contrast with Creative Commons because the open philosophy of which these licenses are a component is not in harmony with indigenous traditions of learning, teaching, and knowing.

Although not legally binding, TK labels create a safe space for traditional manifestations of intellectual property and their contexts that existing copyright laws generally cannot capture and legislate.

3.  How do TK Labels help protect Indigenous Knowledges and promote Indigenous cultural sovereignty?

Currently 20 different TK Labels help to raise awareness of Indigenous knowledges and their interrelationships. Labeling traditional knowledges that exist in digital environments makes them more recognizable. By contextualizing them with the help of TK Labels, knowledge-keepers can decide to provide clarity, depth, and meaning to audiences outside of their communities. As a result, these labels can prevent misappropriation by making clear where the knowledge and teachings originate and in what way their usage is authorized. This can encourage future use, foster their preservation and prevent undesirable or illegitimate applications. It is the exercise and sometimes the restitution of control over their dissemination. TK Labels help to repatriate sovereignty over knowledges and cultural expressions, that have been torn from their ancestral settings. And not least, they can encourage engagement with the inherent nature of Indigenous knowledge traditions and lead to a deeper understanding of them.

An image of 12 different TK Labels and their meaning

Examples of different TK Labels and their meanings. Source: Local Contexts and https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec523/2021/10/02/traditional-knowledge-and-the-commons/

4. What role TK Labels can play in indigenizing digital scholarship

TK labels offer an opportunity to improve the social impact of digital scholarship by promoting decolonization and indigenization. As more non-Indigenous researchers turn to traditional knowledge to solve societal problems to which Western science cannot find sufficient answers, such as wildlife conservation or the life-threatening effects of the climate crisis, it is increasingly important that this knowledge be used appropriately, respectfully, and in harmony with its bearers. TK labels can provide a framework for this use. With TK Labels, global Indigenous communities have an additional tool in their hands with which they can gain recognition for knowledges and cultural practices that have been considered a common good by the scientific community for centuries and have thus been appropriated without acknowledgement of their sources. Now these communities can claim it on their own terms.

5. How students, researchers and academic institutions can implement TK Labels in their learning, teaching, research and heritage work

The labels themselves can only be applied by Indigenous communities. Researchers and educators as well as academic and heritage institutions (archives, museums, libraries) who would like to refer to traditional knowledges in their works or in collections they host can apply a TK notice to them by registering their projects or collections in the Local Contexts Hub. That will notify Indigenous communities of potential Indigenous rights and interests in their publications, data or holdings, who can then decide if and which labels to apply to those projects. 

An important application relevant to scholarly and preservation work that includes the TK Labels is the Mukurtu CMS for building digital collections that contain manifestations of Indigenous cultural practices and traditional teachings. Learn more about how TK Labels are implemented into Mukurtu here.

Further Reading on Indigenous Knowledges

A special issue of UVic’s open access journal KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies has been dedicated to Indigenous Knowledges in 2021.

UVic OER Grants – Spring 2021 Awards

What are open Education Resources (OERs)?

“Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.”[1]

OER Grants

UVic’s OER grant was established in 2019 with funding from the UVic Undergraduate Student Society, UVic Libraries, the Division of Learning, Teaching, Support and Innovation (LTSI), and UVic Systems. The LTSI, Libraries, and UVSS administer the grants. The grant provides funding of up to $7,500 along with staff support to help faculty members redesign a course to adopt, adapt or create open textbooks or other OER as their primary course material.

Proposals were evaluated based on the following five criteria:

  1. The quality of the project goals and motivation;
  2. The potential impact on UVic students in terms of cost-savings and learning based on the cost of educational materials being replaced, class sizes, as well as possible employment of research assistants (RAs) for the project;
  3. Their potential impact on student learning and the student experience in the form of high-quality materials, and open and innovative pedagogy;
  4. Overall alignment with the UVic strategic framework;
  5. Long-term plans to reuse the OER in courses in subsequent terms;
  6. The extent to which the OER will be freely and openly shared throughout and beyond UVic (e.g., through BCcampus);
  7. The feasibility of the plan and time frame: will the OER be ready within a reasonable time frame, preferably ready for the following winter or spring term?
  8. Logical alignment of the budget with the work to be undertaken.

We congratulate the spring 2021 grant recipients:

  • Valerie Irvine and Michael Paskevicius, Department of Curriculum & Instruction/Educational Technology

Internet Radio for Open Community Engagement

Audio in open education has a long history, starting with early radio, then podcasts, and, more recently, audio-only streams on social media (e.g., Twitter Spaces). This project will install internet radio software to engage learners and the broader global community in our teaching and learning.

  • Thirumarai Chelvan IIamparithi, Electrical & Computer Engineering

Creating an open textbook for ECE365 (Applied Electronics and Electrical Machines) course.

ECE365 course introduces some important aspects of electrical engineering to mechanical and biomedical engineering students. There are no open textbooks for such a course. The existing textbooks are prohibitively expensive. Moreover, their contents are not up to date. Therefore, the project aims to create an open textbook for the course.

  • Gerry Ferguson, Law

Global Corruption: Law, Theory and Practice textbook

This project is designed to assist in the creation of a new and expanded open textbook entitled “Global Corruption: Law, Theory and Practice.” The new version contains three new chapters, updates and revisions to the twelve existing chapters, and new expert authors for ten of the fifteen chapters.

  • Sara Humphreys and Erin Kelly, Academic and Technical Writing Program

Why Write?: A Guide for Advanced Student Researchers in Canada

A team comprising experts in writing studies at the University of Victoria has made notable progress in the past year on an OER designed to support students in first-year academic writing courses. While this open source textbook titled Why Write?: A Guide for Students in Canada speaks to broad concerns about reading, writing, and research, it has become clear that there is a pressing need for an additional OER tailored for advanced academic writers, specifically UVic honours and graduate students.

The project below is funded through BCcampus Sustainability Grant received by UVic Libraries

  • Michael Paskevisius and Valerie Irvine, Curriculum & Instruction/Educational Technology

Uvic Open Hub Community Development

This project will hire students to develop the UVic Open Hub, a community of practice for undergraduates, graduates, and faculty interested in adopting open practices in teaching and research. This supplements a proposal shortlisted for the UVic Strategic Framework Impact Fund with partners from Education, Libraries, LTSI, UVSS, and Systems.

Open Education Grants @UVic

What are open Education Resources (OERs)?

“Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.”[1]

OER Grants

UVic’s OER grant was established in 2019 with funding from the UVic Undergraduate Student Society, UVic Libraries, the Division of Learning, Teaching, Support and Innovation (LTSI), and UVic Systems. The LTSI, Libraries, and UVSS administer the grants. The grant provides funding of up to $5,000 along with staff support to help faculty members redesign a course to adopt, adapt or create open textbooks or other OER as their primary course material.

Proposals were evaluated based on the following five criteria:

  1. The potential impact of cost-savings to students based off the cost of educational materials being replaced, class sizes, as well as possible employment of TA’s for the project;
  2. Their potential impact on student learning and the student experience in the form of high-quality materials, and open and innovative pedagogy;
  3. Overall alignment with UVic strategic framework;
  4. Long-term plans to reuse the OER in courses in subsequent terms;
  5. The extent to which the OER will be freely and openly shared throughout and beyond UVic (e.g., through BCcampus); and,
  6. Feasibility of the OER being ready within a reasonable timeframe, preferably ready for the following winter or spring term.

We congratulate the January 2020 of grant recipients:

  • Trefor Bazett, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
    Adapting an OER Differential Equations Textbook for Math 204 ($5,000)

This project adapts an existing OER Differential Equations textbook in order to replace the expensive physical textbook currently used in Math204. The new textbook will include engaging, interactive, online content compatible with both flipped and traditional classrooms.

  • Sara Humphreys, Academic and Technical Writing Program
    Academic Writing for Undergraduate and Graduate Students ($2,250)

The print version of Academic Writing Essentials (AWE) needs revision. The Academic and Technical Writing Program (ATWP), in collaboration with the LTSI’s Centre for Academic Communication (CAC), is proposing an OER to support writing development of the University of Victoria’s diverse undergraduate and graduate student and would align with SEM goals.

  • Viloeta Iosub, Department of Chemistry
    Development of a Spectroscopy Tool ($5,000)

Spectroscopy is a topic newly introduced to second year organic chemistry. This grant will support the development of a web-based platform that will serve as a practice tool for students and replace the current recommended textbook.

  • Kieka Mynhardt, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
    Somme Sonder Sukkel ($5,000)

Somme Sonder Sukkel (from Afrikaans) roughly translates to “Problems without problems”, in the sense of “without a struggle”. This grant will support the development of a bank of exercises/examples suitable for an introductory combinatorics course, customized for MATH222. We aim to develop this work into a textbook showcasing underrepresented voices.

  • Lijun Zhang, Department of Economics
    Adaptation of OpenStax Textbook for Econ 104 ($5,000)

This project aims to adapt Macroeconomics (2e) from Openstax.org, available in BCcampus OER category, for Econ 104, and create supplementary materials for the course.

 

Astronomical Society and undergraduate research

January 2020

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series has published its first Compendium of Undergraduate Research in Astronomy and Space Physics. The papers will be published electronically as they are published throughout the year. They will also be open access!

2020 Compendium Table of Contents: http://www.aspbooks.org/a/volumes/table_of_contents/?book_id=602

 

Featured Thesis: Korean parents’, kindergarten teachers’, and kindergarten students’ perceptions of early English-language education

by Seon-Young Park

https://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8443/handle/1828/4397
Today’s featured thesis is submitted as part of a Master of Arts in Linguistics.

Abstract:

In Korea, English education in kindergartens has dramatically increased in the last 15 years. As a result, almost all Korean kindergarten students are learning English today. The present study aims to understand Korean parents’, kindergarten teachers’, and kindergarten students’ perceptions of early English-language education (EEE). This study is particularly significant because thus far little research has investigated the perceptions of EEE held by the young learners themselves. Ninety-five participants – 30 kindergarten teachers, 33 parents, and 32 five- and six-year old kindergarten students – were recruited from five kindergartens in four cities in Chung-Nam province, Korea. The parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of EEE were examined through questionnaires, whereas the students’ perceptions of learning English were investigated through multiple data collection methods: a questionnaire, an interview session, and a drawing activity. Questionnaire data gathered from the parents and teachers were quantitatively analyzed, and the data gathered from the kindergarten students were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings revealed that the parent and student groups shared more positive attitudes towards EEE than the teacher group. In addition, many more parents and students believed that English education is necessary at the kindergarten level than the teachers did. Concerning kindergarten students’ perceptions, the three data collection methods in this study showed that many kindergarten children consistently held positive attitudes towards learning English. The students were not only interested in learning English, but they also showed high self-confidence in learning English.

To read more, visit UVicSpace

*UVic’s open access repository, UVicspace, makes worldwide knowledge mobilization possible. Through this platform, researchers at any institution have access to dissertations (and theses and graduate projects) published by our graduate students. This also makes works available to the interested layperson, who may be engaged in learning more about the research being done at UVic, with no paywall. UVic’s graduate students are doing valuable research every day – but sometimes it goes unsung. Our goal with this series is to shine a light on our students by featuring excellence, one achievement at a time.

The UVic LIbraries ePublishing Services Team

Technical Writing Essentials – New Open Textbook

Book Title coverTechnical Writing Essentials: Introduction to Professional Communications in the Technical Fields by Suzan Last is an open textbook designed to introduce readers to the basics of technical communication: audience and task analysis in workplace contexts, clear and concise communications style, effective document design, teamwork and collaboration, and fundamental research skills.

Read it online here: https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/technicalwriting/

 

 

Suzan Last has taught in many capacities during her time at UVic, including three years of teaching ESL in Japan and a brief stint teaching high school English. She has been teaching at UVic since 2003, when she was a SSHRC doctoral fellow in the English department. She since discovered that she had a greater passion for teaching than for dissertation-writing, and decided to pursue teaching full time. She has published articles and given conference papers on a wide range of topics, including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Eliza Haywood, and John Fowles. Her area specialties include Academic and Technical Writing, Curriculum development, Renaissance literature, and postmodern fiction, particularly as it incorporates forms of game and play.

Open Education Resources – New BC professional learning guides to support Indigenization, decolonization, and reconciliation

“Pulling Together” Series

“Pulling Together” is open professional learning series developed for staff across post-secondary institutions in British Columbia. These guides are the result of the Indigenization Project, a collaboration between BCcampus and the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training. The project was supported by a steering committee of Indigenous education leaders from BC universities, colleges, and institutes, the First Nations Education Steering Committee, the Indigenous Adult and Higher Learning Association, and Métis Nation BC. These guides are intended to support the systemic change occurring across post-secondary institutions through Indigenization, decolonization, and reconciliation. Published under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International Licence 

Titles Include:

Pulling Together: Foundations Guide

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Pulling Together: A Guide for Curriculum Developers

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Pulling Together: A Guide for Teachers and Instructors

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Pulling Together: A Guide for Leaders and Administrators

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Pulling Together: A Guide for Front-Line Staff, Student Services, and Advisors

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