Last week, I hosted a virtual pet cafĂ© via Zoom. I invited pretty much everyone I knew: friends from all across the country, colleagues, soccer teammates, classmates. People showed up with their cats and dogs ready to introduce them to…
Category: Student Affairs
All across the country, student affairs professionals are trying to figure out how to move their services online. Appointments for things like academic advising and counselling are being moved to Zoom or some other video-conferencing tool. Some writing centres are…
In October 2019, I attended the NODA conference in Houston, Texas to learn all about orientation and share some of our work at UVic. While the conference didn’t quite meet my expectations in terms of session quality, I managed to…
Let’s put the premise up front: When it comes to awards, NODA needs to do better. Awards are an inherent part of society today. From the Oscars and Tonys, to your institution’s annual end-of-year banquets, to the wrap-up events in…
I’ve already finished two courses in my Master’s program, and yet, this September still feels like my first ‘real’ semester. July’s courses were condensed, which gave it an all-in sort of feel. Since we had to be in class every…
When I signed up to help plan Dalhousie’s Orientation Week the summer after my first year of university in 2009, there was no part of me that thought orientation was about to become a career. When I created a summer…
I got incredibly excited when I picked up our class reading last Monday: The 5 R’s for Indigenizing Online Learning: A Case Study of the First Nations Schools’ Principals Course. Finally. Something that directly, 100% related to the work that…
I’ve been aware of Peggy McIntosh’s writing on white privilege and the invisible backpack for several years now, and as someone who benefits daily from white privilege, I found it to be an eye-opening to gain an understanding of how…
Implementation matters. Just because you’re implementing something (an instructional strategy, perhaps?) that is known to be a best practice, doesn’t automatically mean it’s going to have a positive impact. How you implement the practice matters. In other words, there’s a…
In case you’ve missed it, I recently started my Master in Education: Educational Technology degree at the University of Victoria. The cohort-based program kicks off by throwing us in the deep end; we’re completing two courses between July 3 and…