Reflections of Yvonne Dawydiak, Technology Integration Mentor, Project Coordinator:
It has been a pleasure and a privilege to work closely with all of the stakeholders in this project. From Natasha Boskic and ETS, to Course Coordinators in three departments, to the student team working with me ‘on the ground’ and to the teacher candidates, instructors and staff in the Teacher Education Program in the Faculty of Education at UBC, all participants in the project have expressed the value of the work we did. Writing this final report with Liza Navarro, GAA, has given me an opportunity to reflect on the impact of the work we have done in the past year. I believe this project has had a tremendous impact.
The past year was a unique one for me. It was the first year I did not have my own cohort of students as a seconded faculty but, instead, I was charged with trying to work with students and faculty across the program as a Technology Integration Mentor, a 50% one-year Management and Professional appointment. I was concerned that I would not feel the same sense of professional satisfaction and connection with students as I had as an instructor and faculty advisor but found, instead, that without the need to focus so much of my energy on one small group of students, I was able to forge meaningful relationships with students from across the program. This was evident in the frequency with which TCs reached out to me with questions, to share accomplishments and challenges while on practicum and even after they graduated. At the recent Faculty of Education Awards night, I was able to touch base with over twenty graduates with whom I had worked. All had positive things to say about their experiences learning with our project team and the importance of this work on their success as students and their practice as teachers. From one alumni at the event:
“The work I did with you is even more relevant now that I’m teaching full-time in Vancouver. We will be purchasing some iPads and computers and the Principal asked me to be a part of the team making this plan. I feel you helped prepare me to do this and I’d really like to stay in touch.”
As a K-12 classroom teacher for 25 years and as a mentor at UBC for the past five, I have had the pleasure of working with a wide range of individuals and teaching in so many different contexts and found this experience to be unique and one of my most memorable. As always, I learned a great deal from the students with whom I worked. In this project, what was unique for me was that the students — GAAs and co-op — were also my project partners. This afforded me opportunities to improve my own teaching and mentoring skills as I helped them work to their particular strengths and discover and address areas that would benefit from development. I was, overall, impressed by their collective willingness to learn, their work ethic and growth mindsets.
As to sustainability: I am pleased that the results of this project have helped to raise the profile of, and catalyze support for, the work I have tried to do over the past several years with our teacher candidates and faculty in the BEd Program. I recognize that, given the expectations of transformed teaching in the revised BC curriculum, our teacher candidates and faculty have an increasing need for resources to help them develop their digital competencies and their awareness of this need is heightened like never before. I am honoured to be able to continue this work but acknowledge that it is still only a part (40%) of a newly developed role in the faculty I will hold beginning January 2018, that of Faculty-wide Programs Instructional Specialist. The challenge for me, moving forward, will be to build on this momentum to continue to find ways to build capacity across the faculty without increasing the number of actual hours I am able to give. Given the large body of resources created for this project, the redesigned and improved Scarfe Digital Sandbox, the ongoing support of the leadership in the faculty and potential future grants and project opportunities, I feel confident we can continue to move forward with helping teacher candidates build their digital competencies.
