Innovation Showcases (Asynchronous Session)
Athletic Therapy Innovative Concussion Educational Tool View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Colin King
Recent research has found substantial gaps in concussion assessment and management knowledge in various groups of Canadian health professionals, including: medical students, emergency medicine/family physicians, and physiotherapists. These findings demonstrate the amount of variability and lack of standardization in recognizing, treating, and managing concussions among medical professionals. Similarly, results from our recent pilot project also identified parallel gaps within Athletic Therapy students. Based on these findings, we created an interactive online educational tool that engages students in realistic concussion scenarios. Findings from recent research, including our own, were used to design and develop an interactive online concussion educational tool (AT-ICE). Scenarios were created to guide students through complete situational experiences, starting with on-field recognition and all the way to initial concussion management. We also embedded various technologies and learning activities to connect students with the theoretical knowledge and practical skills required to effectively recognize, assess, and manage concussions. During the development phase, we worked with experts in the field (four Certified Athletic Therapists) to ensure that scenarios were contextually authentic and representative of the many challenges that can arise when assessing and managing concussions in real life. The main goal of this project was to develop an interactive pedagogical tool that enriches student learning about concussions. We also hope to help standardize the knowledge and skills required of health professionals to effectively recognize, assess, and manage concussions. Future research will continue to explore the effectiveness of this tool in various health professional contexts.
Collaborative Online Learning Across Borders: Reimagining Relational Connectedness through Technology View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Sonja Arndt
Collaborative Online Learning Across Borders (COLAB) shapes new epistemological foundations for learning, bridging physical and cultural borders, especially those brought about by pandemic-induced challenges. COLAB consists of a four-week unit of intercultural engagements across universities and countries and is designed for preservice teachers working in an online environment. Since 2017 we (then lecturers at three universities in the US and New Zealand, and now also Australia) have been designing COLAB to facilitate early childhood preservice teachers’ development of intercultural insights and understandings. Arising from our shared interests in reconceptualising teacher education by enhancing meaningful, respectful, and sensitive recognitions and engagements with cultural Otherness, COLAB has emerged as a timely innovation to respond to the constraints that continue to be necessary, as the severity of Covid-19 besets global educational and societal realities. In a time where global connections are simultaneously severed and reinforced, intercultural encounters remain vital as does rethinking how we offer them during and after the pandemic, when traditional student mobility is cut, and the need for new ways of connecting enhanced. In this presentation we share findings and potentialities exposed in the most recent research on our teaching with COLAB, using qualitative data that draws on our students’ contributions to the unit and reflective interviews. We reflect on the potential contributions that such uses of technologies might make to future social knowledge and meaning making and wonder how they might help us epistemologically and pedagogically strengthen existing teacher education programs, not despite, but because of the pandemic.
Teaching and Twitch: Using a Gaming Platform for Learning and Community View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Courtney Redding
In our current global online world, how do we innovate our classroom experiences? In my courses, I have been using the popular game platform Twitch as an alternative course space and to help build a community for your students. Using similar methods as streamers, explore a new way to reach out to your students within your design space. Learn some tips and techniques to get started today.
Pandemic Driven Opportunities for a Digital Humanities Open Educational Resource: Breaking the Boundaries of Conventional Usage View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Jade G. Winn, Curtis Fletcher
As the pandemic closed down campuses in March of 2020, there was already the beginning of innovative usage of the Open Educational Resource (OER) software Scalar. Although it was designed to be a digital humanities platform for scholars to write digitally native, Scalar was being piloted as an e-portfolio software for our Master of Management in Library and Information Science (MMLIS) program at the University of Southern California (USC). This pilot proved more valuable than we imagined as it now serves as the capstone software. It is allowing our alumni to use it as a career search tool, to follow their careers, track their scholarly pursuits and to publish in a digitally native space. Additionally, the Scalar capstone projects serve as the end of program assessment tool for accreditation. What we did not foresee was how Scalar would go viral with inventive applications including moving in person exhibits online, virtual CV, training programs, assessment, digital archiving, special collections outreach and many more unconventional applications. Due to the pandemic, the use of Scalar software usage has increased exponentially and continues to be used in inventive innovative and imaginative ways and imaginative areas. In this showcase we will share the diverse and ingenious applications that Scalar is being used for. We will address how to get started using Scalar for a variety of projects. We will suggest how this free academic software can be applied with resourceful approaches that facilitate teaching, learning, scholarly pursuits, virtual exhibits, assessment, training, programs, and planning.
