VicTeach events 2020

Online meet-ups

While we are working at home, we will be hosting a weekly VicTeach meet-up via Zoom and Office365 Teams on Wednesdays. This is for anyone who wants to chat about any and all teaching issues on our minds, and to share advice, experience and trouble-shooting tips.

The sessions will alternate between 12 pm and 4 pm and some weeks there will be topics for discussion. See the events calendar and events list in the side-bar for event details and times.

6 May

VicTeach considers the proposed new academic pathways

Facilitators: Rhian Salmon/Hazel Godfrey, Centre for Science in Society

This informal VicTeach Zoom get-together was designed for academic and professional staff and tutors interested in the new academic career pathways proposal, especially the teaching-intensive pathway.

Consultation around this proposal was unfortunately interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This session brought this important issue back to our attention and helped us as individual staff members and members of the teaching community to think about the potential associated opportunities and challenges.

The Provost, Wendy Larner, agreed to join the first part of this session so that the community could clarify and ask questions about the proposal prior to an open discussion among participants. This session helped provide ideas and inspiration for VicTeach members to then submit their own individual, informed, feedback about the proposal.

We encouraged participants to review information about the proposal prior to this session, including Prof Larner’s presentation and slides, and the updated timeline.

25 June

Making classrooms rainbow inclusive

AProf JJ Eldridge

Department of Physics, The University of Auckland.

A School of Chemical and Physical Sciences event, supported with funding from VicTeach.

Assumptions of cisgender and heterosexual normativity in society and academia can lead to students in the LGBTQITakatāpui+ community feeling like they don’t fit in. In this seminar JJ introduced some of the terminology around rainbow identities and dispelled myths. JJ then highlighted the most important steps we can take in the classroom and led some brainstorming around what other steps we can take as educators and teachers to make LGBTQITakatāpui+ students safe in the learning environment and know they belong and are welcome in academia.

Watch the recording.

15 October

Enhancing students’ information evaluation capability using the Rauru Whakarare Evaluation Framework

Speakers: Angela Feekery, Senior Lecturer Communication from Massey University, Carwyn Jones, Associate Professor of Law, and Catherine Doughty, Subject Librarian.

Organised by Catherine Doughty.

In this presentation we define information literacy and the integral role that evaluation of information plays. Dr Angela Feekery from Massey University will explain the concepts underpinning the Rauru Whakarare Evaluation Framework—a tool used to unpack the authority of information sources. She will outline the importance of creating a space for evaluation in the various disciplines and curricula. Victoria University Māori customary law professor Carwyn Jones will discuss the evaluation of traditional legal sources using the framework and show how the framework interacts with the Māori world view. Catherine Doughty, a subject librarian at Victoria University will share her work in collaboration with academics to teach evaluation of information to students within different disciplines. Then, participants will have the chance to discuss ways they can collaborate to enhance students’ evaluation capability within their disciplines.

Please register.

22 October

How can more of our professors be Māori and Pasifika? An action-oriented workshop

Organised by: Liana Macdonald, Avery Smith, Hine Funaki, Amanda Thomas, Emily Beausoleil, and Nayantara Sheoran Appleton, supported with funding from VicTeach.

Inspired by recent scholarship about the lack of Māori and Pasifika academics on permanent contracts in universities in Aotearoa, we have turned the reflective lens onto ourselves and our university Te Herenga Waka. In line with the ‘Decolonisation Hub’ at Victoria University of Wellington’s overarching aim to explore and implement what it means to decolonise teaching and learning at higher education institutions, this hui aims to raise consciousness regarding the importance of equitable inclusion of Māori and Pacific permanent academic staff at Te Herenga Waka, and elicit action that will contribute to systemic change.

The event begins with a framing provocation from Dr. Sereana Naepi from the Sociology programme at the University of Auckland and the lead researcher for the ‘Why Isn’t My Professor Pasifika?’ project and Ms. Hine Funaki, a doctoral candidate from Te Kura Māori, Te Herenga Waka whose research focuses on the postgraduate experience. Together in dialogue they outline why such a conversation is urgently needed along three key lines of inquiry: Institutional culture (effects it has on Māori and Pacific experiences, institutional spaces); the role of mentorship (examples of pivotal moments supervisors are more than mentors- mentor and sponsor); and Intentional pathway through (shift to systemic change). These three themes then carry over into the remainder workshop part of the day, where we collectively work towards adressing concrete ways to bring about structural change on our campuses. Participants will choose one of these workshops, and then reconvene together for a chance to hear reports back from all workshop groups and discuss what implications and future directions this gives us at THW.

Please register.

29 October

Session on the Assessment Framework Proposal

As part of the Te Herenga Waka Resilience Programme, the University is looking at developing an assessment framework that empowers staff to use the most effective and manageable assessment of students.

A discussion paper has been developed and presented to the Academic Board. The project team, Professor Stephen Dobson, Dr Sue Walbran, and Edward Schofield, are seeking wider feedback from across the University, and are attending a number of Faculty Board meetings and School meetings.

In addition to these, there is a VicTeach ‘open door’ session that the VicTeach community are welcome to attend to share their views on the discussion paper, and give advice as to what would and would not be useful in the final framework.

There will be a brief introduction to the project, where it has come from, and where it is going.

5 November

Design workshop to tackle challenges in online learning & teaching

Organised by Dana Fridman, School of Design Innovation

In this workshop, we will look into how Design Thinking can help us solve online learning & teaching challenges. Together, we will empathise, define, ideate, and support each other in coming up with new solutions to prototype, test and apply in our classrooms while getting an insight into the Design Thinking process.

You are welcome to bring a challenge that you are facing or tackle a proposed challenge. For example, online engagement, supporting productive collaborative learning, and self-paced active learning online. Bring your challenge and workshop some solutions.

Please register.

17 November

Crit-ing the crit: Decolonising and rethinking teaching and learning practice in Aotearoa New Zealand

Organised by: Rebecca Kiddle, Hannah Hopewell, and Maibritt Pedersen Zari, Wellington School of Architecture, supported with funding from VicTeach.

This kaupapa is supported by Ngā Aho, Network of Māori Design Professionals.

Are you interested in critically evaluating your own teaching practice through a decolonisation lens? This wānanga considers this issue in the context of the design review/crit process, a pedagogical tool used extensively in design education. Through considering this learning and teaching tool, you will get a broader understanding of issues around decolonising of teaching and learning in Aotearoa NZ.

Design education and professional practice has utilised the crit or the design review as a tool to critique student work since the early nineteenth century. The crit involves a student presenting work to a panel of ‘experts’ with these experts responding with critical advice usually with a view to improving the work. This pedagogical tool has a number of benefits including the sharing and expanding of ideas through a social learning process. Equally though, the crit has been a source of angst, even pain for many setting up a dynamic between student and critic encouraging students to aggressively defend their work resulting in detrimental pedagogical and personal outcomes. El-Husseiny writes “the crit is frequently a playground for the display of intellectual superiority, arrogance, and occasional bullying”.

In the Aotearoa New Zealand context, additional questions around whether the practice of design review chimes with tikanga Māori remain uninterrogated. What indeed would a ‘Māori crit’ or a ‘decolonised crit’ look like? Or more fundamentally, do design reviews support the development of mātauranga Māori or do they channel knowledge towards the Eurocentric value sets and worldviews that much of architectural and design education is based on?

This wānanga explores these questions asking our six speakers to provide whakaaro, provocation or alternatives to stimulate thinking around how we better teach architecture and design in a way that supports successful student learning rooted in an Aotearoa New Zealand context.

Please register.

20 November

VicTeach end of year session

Come along and share successes and challenges in your 2020 teaching and learning in a relaxed informal setting.

Please register.

23–26 November

VicTeach Retreat

VicTeach is supporting a research and writing retreat on the Kāpiti Coast at the beautiful Waihōanga Centre in Ōtaki Forks, approximately one hour north of Wellington.

This retreat is open to all professional, academic and teaching staff who are passionate about teaching and the student experience and are keen to explore options to develop research into their activities. It is also open to colleagues who want to spend dedicated time working on a teaching-related project, such as a new course development or design. In addition to dedicating writing time on on-going research/teaching projects related to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL), there is also the opportunity to use other spaces on site for bouncing around initial research ideas, learning how to create a research context for an initiative and creating new collaborations.

Please submit an expression of interest by 5 October.

8 December

Connecting UNSW and VicTeach Communities of Practice: discussion of connecting and maintaining engagement in teaching

Both the University of New South Wales and Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington have teaching focused communities of practice.