Although I have long incorporated open educational resources into my teaching predominantly so that students would not have to buy expensive textbooks, I haven’t until recently considered this to be foundational to my pedagogical approach in the university classroom. Having learned much over the past year, I now consider that incorporating open educational resources not only saves students money, but also contributes to the accessibility of the university and the democratization and decommodification of knowledge.

Open educational resources are those which are licensed in such a way that they are available for free for use by students and teachers. Many of these resources are also licensed such that with attribution they can be modified and customized. BC Campus has a list of such resources which is growing daily.

Using open resources acknowledges the communal nature of knowledge production and resists attempts to commodify what should truly be held in the common good. We also know that students will sometimes not enroll, withdraw from, or not purchase the readings for courses that have significant text costs. Textbook costs are a serious hindrance to the financial accessibility of the university, but the adoption of open educational resources in BC has saved students about $8million since 2010.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University recently announced a suite of courses with zero textbook costs called “Zed Cred.” I’m thrilled that many of my courses will rely completely on open resources as part of the Zed Cred suite.

Finally, I’ve recently moved to a “paperless classroom,” which means that all course documents are exchanged via the course management software used by the institutions where I teach. I was concerned that this would make grading more difficult or tiresome, but in fact it saves time with things like tabulations and keeping track of late assignments. Likewise, I need no longer carry around bags and bags of paper, and don’t have to worry about where I will store piles of assignments for the few years we are required to retain them. Plus, this obviously reduces the environmental impacts of paper, printer, and ink manufacturing.

In the spring semester of 2017, I will be teaching two courses at SFU – one in Communication and the other in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies:

CMNS 342: Science and Public Policy: Risk Communication

In a globalized landscape, where threats of infectious disease outbreaks, bioterrorism, and natural disaster seem omnipresent, how do we (as communicators) translate scientific knowledge into actionable information for diverse publics? While “common sense” assures us that we simply need to deliver “the facts” in a comprehensive manner, what happens when scientific evidence is uncertain, controversial, or even suspect, to some of its most affected populations? How are these issues mediated and transformed through the ubiquity of new information and communication technologies (ICTs)?

This course examines the relationships between communication, science, technology, and public policy in the evaluation and management of risk. After introducing key theories, concepts, and problematics, each week will examine a different case study of risk and communication. Topics include: vaccinations, nuclear waste, HIV/AIDS, antibiotic resistance, tsunamis, and obesity. This case study approach will inform the final project, where students will work in teams to develop a podcast about a topic relevant to risk communication.

GSWS 210: Gender Today: Reproductive Rights, Reproductive Justice

Reproductive politics refers ongoing struggles to define, constrain, medicalize, technologize, spur, and/or prevent reproduction. This is an introductory course that builds interdisciplinary and feminist tools to analyze narratives, issues, practices, and arguments regarding reproductive politics as they manifest throughout the lifecourse, from preconception to end of life. Topics include reproductive choices, fertility, non-normative kinship, childbirth, child rearing, menopause and andropause, and the developmental origins of health and disease. Recognizing the topical and controversial nature of reproductive politics as well as the role of GSWS in transforming students into critical advocates for social change, assignments encourage students to engage in public dialogues on reproduction and to develop programmes of advocacy to advance reproductive justice.

I think that there are substantial academic and professional benefits that can be gained from the development good writing skills. As such, an area of pedagogical specialization that I am committed to developing is teaching students how to write well. I have training in writing intensive learning from Simon Fraser University, and to further cultivate my expertise, I seek out courses to teach or TA that centralize writing outcomes in assignments. Because I am always in the process of improving my own writing, I very much enjoy the mutual benefits of talking about and practicing writing skills with students.

To that end, I developed a short writing tutorial presentation which I deliver to undergraduate students who must write essays for their course assignments. I am uploading the tutorial in PDF form as a simple contribution to the ‘world out there’ and hope that it will help other teachers or students.

I normally spend about one hour exploring good writing alongside this presentation. The tutorial is most relevant for social scientific courses in the 3rd year in which students write essays in draft stages by incorporating grader feedback.

Of course I acknowledge that ideas about “good writing” are not universal. I took this into consideration when editing the presentation to upload here. For example, I originally included a slide about semicolons, but deleted it because those tricky punctuaters can be controversial…

The tutorial is here: Critical Essay Writing

I hope someone finds it useful!

In her important book When Species Meet (2008), feminist science studies scholar Donna Haraway calls love a “nasty developmental infection.” Illustrative of Haraway’s irreductive naturecultural provocations, she is referring here to the ways in which our relations with others, be they defined by what we call love, hate, excesses, or debts, make up who we are in our very constitution. Our becoming is not just affected by others, but infected by them. Like any successful parasite, an infection may operate behind the scenes unsensed or unrecognized until it gains significance in future experiences. The infection may be fought like the common cold, embraced like childhood chickenpox, or utterly necessary to our well-being like intestinal flora. Love and other relations can be understood as infections of our being that take us up, take us on, and change us.

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