News – Aurelea Mahood

2019-05-092019-05-10

Newest Members!

Last week, Linda Buchanan, Mayor of North Vancouver, and Paul Dangerfield, President of Capilano University, signed an MOU to launch a CityStudio pilot partnership between the City of North Vancouver and Capilano University.

This announcement builds on the tireless advocacy of Carol Aitken (IDEA) who attended CityStudio Vancouver‘s Art of the Cities conference in Spring 2017 and the support of Laureen Styles, VP Academic & Provost, and Leanne MacCarthy, CNV CAO.

This Spring I’ve had the pleasure of working behind the scenes with Larry Orr, Manager, Business and Community Partnership, to hammer out the details of our new CityStudio North Vancouver partnership

CityStudio North Vancouver is now also a member of the CityStudio Network, a global movement of cities working with post-secondary institutions for civic benefit. Through the co-creation of experimental projects, students gain employable skills and city staff receive support to advance strategic priorities in the community.

Our first series of collaborations will be launched in September 2019

Excitingly, our first ever project generation workshop will be be taking place next Thursday at CityHall with the assistance of Duane Eleverum and Ileana Costrut from CityStudio Vancouver.

And our announcement was featured in yesterday’s North Shore News. Thinking that we are off a good start. Fall 2019 here we come!

2018-04-272018-04-27

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

English 335: Electronic Literature is not a course that I get to teach every year, and so it was with some sadness that I walked out of our classroom on the last day of classes earlier this month.

Today however I discovered Reigns: Her Majesty thanks to Rhizome News and Celine Katzman’s piece on Leigh Alexander’s new swipe-based iOS game posted on the Rhizome blog.

When I next have the opportunity to teach this course, or a course with an e-lit unit, I will surely have to consider adding this piece into the mix.

According to Katzman, “Reigns: Her Majesty complicates that straightforward idea of power by introducing and focusing on two other practices that have historically empowered women: witchcraft and the pursuit of self-knowledge”.

According to Environment Canada, the rain is poised to return this weekend. A perfect opportunity to stay inside and explore Alexander’s latest work.

2018-03-15

Riffs on E-Lit: A New Podcast from Wonderbox

I was excited to spot last week that Lyle Skains and Jordan Glendinning of Wonderbox have launched a podcast on digital fiction.

The Wonderbox Podcast (available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Podbean) will be a twice-monthly discussion with Skains and Glendinning delving into “the wondrous world of digital fiction”.

If you are new to digital fiction, they suggest (and I do too) taking look at Bell et al’s “Screed for Digital fiction” (2010), published on the Electronic Book Review, which defines e-lit as “fiction written for and read on a computer screen that pursues its verbal, discursive and/or conceptual complexity through the digital medium, and would lose something of its aesthetic and semiotic function if it were removed from that medium”.

According to Skains, the first few episodes of the podcast look at the digital fiction you’re already reading (even if you’re not really aware of it), interactive fiction and text adventure games, hypertexts, digital archiving, writing digital fiction, transmedia fiction, locative fiction, and the overlap of literature and games. Future episodes will include interviews and guests.

Looking to forward to taking my first listen!

2017-09-212017-09-22

Peer Mentors on Deck

Portfolio Project Peer Mentors (Fall 2017)

The Fall term is now in full swing. Line ups at Good Earth. A busy Library courtyard on these sunny crisp autumn days. And increasing traffic in the Writing Centre (Fir 402). This term, there new faces in the Writing Centre.

The Writing Centre instructors and peer mentors have been joined by the Portfolio Project Peer Mentors.

Drop-In Hours

Monday 11 am – 2 pm
Tuesday 11 am – 2 pm
Wednesday 11 am – 2 pm
Thursday 11:30 am – 2:30 pm
Friday 11 am – 2 pm

The peer mentors are there to assist students and faculty alike with building out digital portfolios. This year, we have a growing mix of course- and program-based ePortfolio initiatives with participation from faculty and students in North Vancouver and the Sunshine Coast.

In my own teaching, we are using portfolios and WordPress sites in all three of my Fall term courses: English 109 – Contemporary Issues in Literature and Culture, LBST 200 – Refocusing Knowledge, and LBST 330 – Methods of Inquiry. In the first year literature course, students will be posting their book reviews of selected course texts.

In LBST 200 and 330, the Liberal Studies students will be returning to their sites, which they first begin working on in LBST 100. As students enrolled in an individualized majors program, the portfolio sites are particularly valuable as a means of capturing their emerging areas of expertise as they build their own degrees.

The Liberal Studies BA launched its program-based portfolio initiative in Fall 2015.

2017-05-112017-05-12

A Folio Thinking Sort of Morning

This week over at Capilano University, we are wrapping up our Learning and Teaching Symposium, which began on May 8 with a keynote presentation from Dr. Linda Shadiow, author of What Our Stories Teach Us, on “Using Sightlines to Strengthen to the Learning Environment”. Her keynote presentation in combination an afternoon workshop encouraged us as educators to reflect on how our stories as learners in our respective disciplines in turn informs who we are as educators.

This invitation to explore the role of reflection and metacognition in learning was returned to this morning in a series of three linked presentations that I had the pleasure of hosting with my colleagues from the Spring 2017 ePortfolio Development Community.

The opening session – What We Talk About When We Talk About Portfolios (.pdf) – opened with an overview of past portfolio initiatives at the university before moving onto a summary of what was been taking place on campus this past academic, including the English 100 Portfolio Pilot and Liberal Studies Portfolio Project. In particular, this session pivoted on the ideas shared by Cyri Jones (Business), Maureen Bracewell (Anthropology and Women’s and Gender Studies), and Alison Hale (Education and Employment Access) who were invited to reflect on the promise of ePortfolios for students, faculties, and the university as a whole.

Our second session – Folio Thinking / Rethinking Teaching (.pdf) – focused on the process adopted by the Development Community in the redesign process with examples provided by Sheila Ross and Vicky Ross (ENGL 100), Jules Smith (HCA 102), Maureen Bracewell (WGST 222), and Sandra Seekins (AHIS 430).

The final presentation – Portfolios in Action (.pdf) – was my favourite of the three sessions. Here we were joined by four students who shared their portfolios with us and provided the room with insights into what they value about course- and program-based invitations to develop professional personal websites. Megan Amato (Liberal Studies), Faith Dawa (Early Childhood Care and Education), Livleen Pannu (Business) and Radovan Marek (Communications) were poised, thoughtful, and inspiring.

Thank you for spending the morning with us.

2017-04-232017-05-02

SRS 2017! It’s a wrap.

Our first ever Student Research Symposium is a wrap.

While everyone involved is likely exhausted, I suspect that everyone is thoroughly impressed with the quality of the student work that was on display yesterday.

Congratulations to all of the graduating Liberal Studies students who presented at SRS 2017.

I would also like to congratulate Megan Hildebrandt (President’s Medal 2017) on her award-winning graduating project, which assessed the reliability of nutritional labels and regulation of pseudo-healthy food products in Canada.

2017-03-222017-05-02

SRS 2017 / Student Research

One month to go!

Our inaugural Student Research Symposium is an opportunity for Capilano undergraduates completing research projects or capstone projects to share their findings with their peers, faculty, family, friends, and the wider university community.

Graduating Liberal Studies students will be presenting alongside their peers from the Bachelor of Arts with a Major in Applied Behaviour Analysis, Bachelor of Communication Studies, and Bachelor of Early Childhood Care and Education.

We are working on the program right now!

2017-01-152019-05-09

Peer Mentors in the Writing Centre

In conjunction with the Liberal Studies BA, I am pleased to announce that we have now two peer mentors on deck in the Writing Centre (Fir 402) for the remainder of the Spring term.

Megan Amato is available on Mondays and Wednesdays from 1-2pm. Alex Strang is in the Centre on Wednesdays from 2-4pm.

Megan and Alex are here to assist CapU students looking for help with getting started on their portfolio and to provide peer-based feedback on in-progress sites.

2015-09-102015-09-17

Chat Live / Fall 2015

ChatLive kicks off one week today.

For Liberal Studies students thinking about setting up their first Liberal Studies Tutorials in the Spring term, ChatLive is a fantastic way for students to get to know various instructors’ research interests and areas of expertise!

Click here for more details on the Fall ChatLive sessions.