Teaching

My teaching philosophy is informed by the principles of collaborative learning and collective critical reflection.  I focus on knowledge acquisition as a perpetual process, one that takes place both inside and outside the classroom. I take real pleasure in demystifying digital technology in order to foster students’ confidence in their ability for knowledge creation and dissemination.

As so much of students’ cultural life is lived online, even in courses that are not inherently digital I find that using popular online environments encourages students to reflect on course themes outside of class time.  In Introduction to Cultural Studies, at the University of Victoria, I had students using tumblr to post excerpts from course readings and relevant images. Their online posts and interactions served as the basis for our weekly in-class show-and-tell where we discussed how course themes apply to everyday experience. In Studies in Children’s Literature, at UBC Okanagan, students performed a critical analysis of Wikipedia in order to produce the rubric against which their own Wikipedia pages on fin-de-siècle literary fairy tales would be graded (@laura_estill has proven the success of having students design their own rubrics). The students reported that while the process had made them more wary of Wikipedia’s authority, it increased their respect for the amount of work that goes into each Wikipedia page Students in my Digital Humanities classes at UBCO have successfully shared their knowledge through HTML- and TEI-encoded editions.

As a creative-pedagogy TA at Ryerson University I worked with small groups as they curated digital exhibits based on books from Ryerson’s Children’s Literature Archive and contextual analyses of material federated in NINES, The Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship.  Guided by the digital humanities tenet that computer science can be harnessed to bring new insights into humanities research, each group met with me to discuss the virtual representation of a material objects, and the materiality of the code that mediates that representation.  As preparation for collaborative projects, I worked with students on strategies for developing research questions and dividing the research responsibilities within each group.

The central challenge of bringing digital humanities into the classroom is designing lesson plans that can I tailor to meet students at their particular level of computer literacy. To this end, when working with students on online exhibits, I scheduled lengthy drop-in hours to help students develop their skills.  It was extremely rewarding to see students who approached the projects with the disclaimer that they “did not know much about computers,” successfully (and eventually independently) manipulate the code that underpinned their exhibits.

Awards

August 2011 – Recipient of the TA/GA Award, awarded to the top five Teaching and Graduate Assistants at Ryerson University.
March 2014 – Nominated for the FCCS Teaching Excellence Award.

Teaching

Courses Taught

ENGL522/IGS501: Making in the Digital Humanities
University of British Columbia – Okanagan Campus, Department of Critical Studies/ College of Graduate Studies

DIHU302: The Programmed World
University of British Columbia – Okanagan Campus, Department of Critical Studies

DIHU301: The Self-Conscious Text
University of British Columbia – Okanagan Campus, Department of Critical Studies

ENGL323/CULT270: Reading Popular Culture
University of British Columbia – Okanagan Campus, Department of Critical Studies

ENGL355: Digital Humanities in Critical Literary Studies
University of British Columbia – Okanagan Campus, Department of Critical Studies

ENGL201: Children’s Literature and Publishing (team taught with Dr. Margaret Reeves)
University of British Columbia – Okanagan Campus, Department of Critical Studies

ENGL212: Studies in Children’s Literature
University of British Columbia – Okanagan Campus, Department of Critical Studies

ENGL207: Introduction to Cultural Studies
University of Victoria, Department of English

POL501: Women, Power and Politics
Ryerson University, Department of Politics and Public Administration

CPOL501: Women, Power and Politics
Ryerson University, Chang School of Continuing Education

Teaching Assistant

Winter 2011 – ENG633: 19C Literature and Culture II (L. Janzen Kooistra)
Ryerson University, Department of English
Curatorial Tutor, responsible for developing digital pedagogy; guiding students through the revision and publication of their literary analyses online, through the Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Scholarship (NINES) Exhibit Builder platform.

Fall 2010 – ENG222: Fairy Tales and Fantasies (L. Janzen Kooistra)
Ryerson University, Department of English
Curatorial Tutor, responsible for training students in archival and digital methodologies in the Children’s Literature Archive; leading students through the process of representing material objects in an online environment and assisting them with the preparation of their digital exhibits of a curated CLA book.

Winter 2010 – ENG633: 19C Literature and Culture II (L. Janzen Kooistra)
Ryerson University, Department of English
Provided feedback on essay abstracts and annotated bibliographies; marked research essay; gave a guest lecture, “‘Nature Red in Tooth and Claw’: Science and the Meaning of Death.”

Fall 2009 – ENG222: Fairy Tales and Fantasies (L. Janzen Kooistra)
Ryerson University, Department of English
Head Teaching Assistant, responsible for liaising with 7 first-time TAs and advising them on lesson plans and marking practices; facilitating communication and consistency through the use of a TA blog I developed; leading weekly tutorials for 2 groups of 20 students; grading student work; assisting with online course management via Blackboard; and providing administrative support to the instructor.

Winter 2009 – CMN600: Science, Communication and Society (J. Mason)
Ryerson University, Professional Communication
Responsible for weekly grading and meeting students; helped students develop their writing skills; assisted with online course management via Blackboard.

Professional Development

March 2016 Strategies for Indigenous Engagement in the Classroom
A pedagogy workshop led by Allison Hargreaves and Ruthann Lee, members of the FCCS Indigenous Strategic Engagement Committee.

January 2014 Participated in the Supporting Excellence in Graduate Student Supervision
A workshop offered by Miriam Grant, Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, and the College of Graduate Studies.

August 2012 Teaching with TEI (Women Writers Project, Brown University)
One of the NEH-funded Taking TEI Further workshops, this three-day intensive course focused on using TEI in the classroom to introduce students to data modeling, xml, and close reading.  Students need not simply consume digital texts, they can be the produce and disseminate of digital scholarship.

February 2010 Ontarians with Disabilities Act Customer Service Standards training (Faculty of Arts, Ryerson University)
This online course was comprised of four modules: one on the OADA regulations; one on communication; one on service; and one on accessibility at Ryerson.  Not only did the course make me more familiar with the requirements of the act, but it also taught me the techniques that I need to produce accessible lectures, documents, PDFs, websites, and powerpoint presentations, to ensure that my tutorials are accessible to all students.

September 2009 TA Workshop (Faculty of Arts, Ryerson University)
Through Ryerson’s inaugural TA traiing workshop I developed a small TA support group.  I am still in touch with my colleagues from the group; they continue to give invaluable feedback on my proposed teaching activities.

November 2008 Interactive Lecturing seminar (The Learning and Teaching Office, Ryerson University)
This seminar was extremely rewarding.  By implementing an interactive lecturing style, I’ve been able to help students think critically about course material, both by encouraging discussion, and by getting students to ensure their own comprehension by explaining course concepts to one another.

September 2008 Course Design workshop (The Learning and Teaching Office, Ryerson University)
In this workshop I learned to concretize learning outcomes through a variety of instruction modes that meet students’ individual learning styles.