Educators nominated for these awards demonstrate:  

• a proven commitment to student engagement and learning,  
• ongoing improvement of teaching through research, professional development and reflection, 
• and engagement with equity principles in teaching, including Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), Universal Design for Learning (UDL), anti-oppression, Indigenization and decolonization. 

This year’s recipients are Dr. Lolehawk (Laura) Buker, Dr. Bridgette Clarkston, Dr. Natasha Ramroop Singh, Dr. Leanne Roderick, and Anna Sterankova. 

Dr. Lolehawk (Laura) Buker

Dr. Lolehawk (Laura) Buker is an assistant professor in the University of the Fraser Valley’s (UFV) college of arts Indigenous studies program. Dr. Buker has decades of experience and a record of excellence in advancing a powerful vision for Indigenous education in post-secondary programs.

In her role at UFV, Dr. Buker models Indigenous Ways of Knowing in all aspects of her teaching, assessment, and curriculum designs through song, land-based learning, language revitalization, storytelling, and resilience-focused pedagogies. She “walks the talk” of reframing conventional models of teaching and learning into Indigenized and decolonized curriculum.

The committee noted Dr. Buker’s deeply relational and intentional approach to teaching, mentorship, and knowledge sharing. Her application demonstrated the care with which she supports students, builds relationships, and creates learning environments grounded in belonging, intercultural understanding, and connection to the land. The committee also recognized her important work in language preservation and her impact as a transformational educator and mentor whose influence extends beyond the classroom and contributes meaningfully to student learning, faculty development, and Truth and Reconciliation efforts across her institution.

Dr. Bridgette Clarkston 

Dr. Bridgette Clarkston is an associate professor of teaching in the department of botany at the University of British Columbia (UBC). The award recognizes her exceptional commitment to student engagement, evidence-based teaching, and ongoing instructional improvement. 

Among her many outstanding initiatives, Dr. Clarkston co-created the Haida Gwaii Field School in partnership with the Saahlinda Naay Savings Things House (Haida Gwaii Museum) at Kay Llnagaay and the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. A highly cited scholar in postsecondary science education, Dr. Clarkston co-leads a major renewal of UBC’s frst year biology program, advancing innovative, student-centered learning across the curriculum. 

The committee noted that Dr. Clarkston’s teaching has impact far beyond an individual course, program or institution: her experiential learning projects extend learning into community engagement and publicly relevant work, while her engagement with colleagues and community partners in curriculum development demonstrate influence beyond the classroom.

Dr. Natasha Ramroop Singh 

Dr. Natasha Ramroop Singh is an associate teaching professor in the department of biological sciences at Thompson Rivers University (TRU). Dr. Ramroop Singh is widely recognized at TRU for her innovative, evidence-informed teaching in biology and biochemistry, particularly in large, foundational courses critical to student success.

Her teaching emphasizes inclusive, student-centred design, supporting learners from diverse backgrounds. She is committed to reducing financial barriers to education through initiatives in open pedagogy and the creation and adoption of open educational resources: most recently, Dr. Ramroop Singh partnered with the Cayoose Creek Band of Sekw’el’was to co-create an open biochemistry resource on Indigenous medicines. 

The committee particularly noted Dr. Ramroop Singh’s explicit attention and commitment to reflective practice and evidence-informed teaching, redesigning courses, assignments, and learning activities based on student feedback, assessment trends, and grant-funded research. Her innovative partnership with the Cayoose Creek Band of Sekw’el’was also broadens the dossier beyond the classroom and demonstrates an effort to connect science education with community-engaged and culturally responsive practice. 

Dr. Leanne Roderick 

Dr. Roderick is a lecturer in the department of geography in Simon Fraser University’s faculty of environment. Her pedagogy has been shaped by her exceptional commitment to student engagement, inclusion, and experiential learning.

Teaching across large first-year online courses, blended upper-division offerings, and graduate seminars, Dr. Roderick’s teaching is grounded in care-based and evidence-informed practice, including internationally recognized scholarship of teaching and learning. She has led multiple teaching and learning grants focused on alternative grading, assessment in large courses, and Indigenizing pedagogy. 

The committee noted Dr. Roderick’s meaningful and substantial emphasis on place-based learning throughout the portfolio, including collaborations with Indigenous communities that have clearly been done with care. We appreciate the creativity in aligning Truth and Reconciliation points with learning activities and including students as partners in learning design. 

Anna Sterankova 

Anna Sterankova is an instructor in the business administration program program at Coast Mountain College. Ms. Sterankova’s teaching practice is grounded in place-based learning, entrepreneurial thinking, and inclusive business education. She enriches students’ in-class learning through partnerships with local organizations to develop community projects with real and lasting social impact.

She is committed to reconciliation by integrating local First Nations histories, culture, and land through field-based learning and novel immersive learning experiences, inviting students into complex and ongoing conversations about land, culture, and commerce in northern B.C.

It was manifestly clear to the committee that the foundation of Ms. Sterankova’s pedagogy is built on relationships: with students, colleagues, community partners, and local Indigenous communities. The relationship-rich culture she creates in her classrooms ripple out through her local and provincial contexts to positively impact communities throughout the region.

This blog post is part of a series that brings together reflections from the research study Navigating the Waters of Leadership Education in Indigenous Contexts, supported by the BCcampus Research Fellows Program. Across these posts, I explore three paths: River Journey Mapping, as an arts-based research approach; the Pedagogical Approaches Model; and the tensions that emerge when working within institutional structures. Whether we work with Indigenous communities or not, I hope that we can consider how teaching and learning can be more deeply connected to the land, relationships, and other ways of knowing.

Post-secondary education institutions increasingly offer training and professional development for Indigenous communities and organizations. These initiatives aim to strengthen skills to support employment, governance, and community development. Yet these efforts unfold within a system that continues to carry the legacy of colonial harm. This awareness raises an important question: can programs delivered by post-secondary education (PSE) institutions genuinely support Indigenous priorities, or are we inevitably reproducing the very structures that we seek to transform?

Across Canada, PSE institutions partner with Indigenous Nations and organizations to offer employment-focused programs, leadership development opportunities, professional training, or consulting (Colleges and Institutes Canada, 2024). Expanding access to higher education has been an important goal in these efforts, and PSE institutions are increasingly developing programming intended to support Indigenous participation in post-secondary learning. Reports such as the 2024 Indigenous Economic Progress Report emphasize the importance of mentorship, leadership development, and capacity-building initiatives that can lead Indigenous youth and adults to pursue higher education.

However, delivering generic or one-size-fits-all programs is not enough. Leadership development cannot be reduced to a set of transferable skills because it is shaped by each community’s context, cultural values, community-responsibilities, language, and place.

Toward Decolonial Indigenization

According to Gaudry and Lorenz (2018), within PSE, the work of reconciliation, Indigenization, and decolonization can be understood as different approaches on a spectrum. Indigenous inclusion exists on one end, with institutions presenting strategic plans, including holistic learning outcomes,readings from Indigenous authors, or hiring more Indigenous faculty. In other words, adding to the mainstream. Reconciliation indigenization is a middle-ground aimed at collaborative efforts where power and decision-making are shared. On the other end, decolonial Indigenization calls for rebalancing the power relations between dominant and Indigenous knowledges; it implies a structural and paradigmatic shift in academia.

Navigating Institutional Tensions

In my study, I set out to explore the following research questions: What curricular and pedagogical practices have educators in PSE institutions employed when delivering leadership courses in Indigenous contexts? What challenges do educators face in these contexts? What opportunities exist?

I had conversations with Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators across institutions in various provinces. In addition to talking about leadership pedagogy and practice, we visually mapped their professional journey using digital River Journey Mapping, an activity that I describe in a companion post. 

Across the journeys shared in the study, a common narrative emerged: educators delivering leadership education in Indigenous contexts frequently navigate significant institutional tensions. These challenges were consistent across institutions, pointing to broader conditions that hinder Indigenous ways of being and knowing as well as relational practices. These experiences suggest that the work is not simply adapting pedagogical approaches, but about continually negotiating and resisting the constraints that continue to exist in PSE institutions.

Together, these reflections reveal how educators often work within institutional environments that promote Indigenization, but provide limited support for faculty. These findings are nothing new; many scholars have written about issues of under representation, under funding, and exploitation of Indigenous educators (Povey et al., 2021;Wilson, 2021).

There are several considerations that emerged for educators and PSE departments seeking to support leadership education in Indigenous contexts. I present these in point form for ease of reference; however, it is important to emphasize they are not intended as a checklist. These considerations need to be approached relationally and adapted to the specific contexts, priorities, and relationships of the communities involved.

If you oversee programs offered in community by PSE institutions:

• Recruit, mentor, and support Indigenous facilitators, educators, and community members as co-designers and co-facilitators of learning.
• Provide meaningful institutional support for faculty engaged in Indigenous education, including ongoing professional development, time for relationship building with communities, and recognition of the work that often happens outside of the contracted time.
• Promote pedagogical innovation and curricular co-design with communities, and explore ways to recognize and credit learning activities already taking place within communities.

As this series comes to a close, I return to the river metaphor as a reminder that this work is ongoing, flowing, and always in movement. I hope that this work is seen as an invitation to engage with intention and care, and to be accountable to the people and communities we work with.

References

Colleges and Institutes Canada (2024, June 17). By the numbers: Indigenous post-secondary education in Canada.

Gaudry, A., & Lorenz, D. (2018). Indigenization as inclusion, reconciliation, and decolonization: Navigating the different visions for indigenizing the Canadian academy. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 14(3), 218-227.

Povey, R., Trudgett, M., Page, S., & Coates, S. K. (2022). Where we’re going, not where we’ve been: Indigenous leadership in Canadian higher education. Race Ethnicity and Education, 25(1), 38–54. 

Sousa, B. de S. (2014). Epistemologies of the south: Justice against epistemicide. Paradigm Publishers

Wilson, P. (2021). Barriers to Indigenous perspectives in education. BU Journal of Graduate Studies in Education, 13 (4), p. 11-16. 

This month, the BCcampus Award for Excellence in Open Education goes to Bowen Hui, Professor of Teaching, Computer Science, at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. 

Bowen has written open access modules for eight computer science and related courses and shared content across multiple post-secondary institutions in British Columbia and Ontario. She has worked closely with undergraduate research assistants to develop open-source educational technologies that help instructors form equitable teams and engage students in self-directed learning. Her work has reached over 20,000 students across three higher education institutions and 30 public schools, and has been presented internationally.

Bowen has contributed free resources and tools to the computer science community. She developed learning models to support students with diverse academic backgrounds in a computer science human–computer interaction course. These modules could be completed as part of the original intended course, as well as in other courses that teach overlapping topics (e.g., engineering, media studies, statistics). The modules were developed in 2020, piloted in 2021 and 2022, and published in 2023. 

In 2019, Bowen and a team of students developed a bank of over 2,000 questions. Half of these are parameterized so that different instances of the questions can be generated automatically. These questions supplement student learning in introductory programming courses, and many of them require students to provide programming solutions. As part of the question bank, Bowen’s team developed a new automatic grading framework that checks the accuracy of student solutions. This question bank is now embedded in Course Gamification, a learning platform that engages students with gamification techniques. Since May 2022, this openly licensed work has been used by over 1,000 students at two B.C. post-secondary institutions. 

Between 2018 and 2020, Bowen and her student team developed Teamable Analytics, a team-formation tool that helps instructors form student teams strategically and conduct peer evaluations in large classes. This tool was piloted in classrooms between 2020 and 2021, published at an international conference in 2022, and won the Best Demonstration Award. The software has been used by over 10,000 UBC students in 38 interdisciplinary courses. 

Bowen’s last major OER project started in 2018 with the development of a series of activities for young children called Computational Thinking for Kids. They were first used in a university outreach event in 2019, then submitted as a workshop for a STEM education conference in 2020 (postponed to 2021). Her work was used in an annual outreach event in 2022 and 2023, and adopted by iSTAND/WWEST for other events. These activities have benefited over 5,000 K–9 students across Okanagan and Vancouver Island. 

Bowen’s free sharing of educational resources and tools that can be used in a variety of disciplines is a positive example of open education philosophy in practice. For her generous contributions to open education, Bowen received an inaugural UBC Open Education Resources Excellence and Impact Award in 2024. For her commitment to supporting education and personal development inside and outside the classroom, Bowen received the 2025 Killam Teaching Prize [YouTube]. And now, she has earned a BCcampus Award for Excellence in Open Education. Congratulations to Bowen! 

“Dr. Bowen Hui created innovative Open Education Resources (OER) that have transformed CS learning in the classroom, specifically Course Gamification in 1st-yr Computer Science, Teamable Analytics, and the Peer Evaluation application that accompanies the tool. These OER are used at institutions across Canada, and increasingly across the world. What is exceptional about her approach is that she then involves her undergraduate students in research to measure and analyse the effectiveness of these approaches in student learning, to modify and improve the resources.” 
—Trudy Kavanagh, Associate Dean, Academic & Awards, Faculty of Science, UBC Okanagan 

“The Teamable Analytics OER application emerges as a game-changing tool for intricate team formation. It facilitates team creation and balancing and allows for the consideration of various factors, including technical requirements and individual preferences, needs, and self-assessed traits. As an instructor, the introduction of this tool has streamlined the team formation process, leading to considerable time savings, particularly during the summer session, where teams can now be assessed and formed within a few hours instead of days of effort to balance each constraint.” 
—Dr. Scott Fazackerley, Professor, Department of Electronic Engineering Technology, Okanagan College 

Relevant Links 

• Bowen Hui’s Teaching Website, with links to learning modules 
• Teamable Analytics 
• Course Gamification 
• Computational Thinking for Kids 
• New tool by UBC Okanagan faculty and students brings data-driven solutions to teamwork (2022 blog post about Teamable Analytics) 
• Encouraging little scientists: fostering computational thinking in pre-literate children to teach life skills (2021 blog post about Computational Thinking for Kids) 

This blog post is part of a series that brings together reflections from the research study Navigating the Waters of Leadership Education in Indigenous Contexts, supported by the BCcampus Research Fellows Program. Across these posts, I explore three paths: River Journey Mapping, as an arts-based research approach; the Pedagogical Approaches Model; and the tensions that emerge when working within institutional structures. Whether we work with Indigenous communities or not, I hope that we can consider how teaching and learning can be more deeply connected to the land, relationships, and other ways of knowing.

The BCcampus Indigenization series Pulling Together supported my early efforts to integrate Indigenous pedagogies into the curriculum. Over time, a variety of resources and learning about my own culture, as well as Epistemologies from the South (Escobar, 2020; Sousa, 2014), helped me reconsider how leadership education might be approached in ways that are more attentive to Indigenous ways of knowing, learning, and community responsibilities.

Yet, I continue to grapple with an important question: how can educators design and facilitate learning experiences for Indigenous learners in community in ways that are meaningful and respectful, particularly when these efforts originate within post-secondary systems shaped by colonial histories?

Across Canada, many educators working in partnership with Indigenous communities navigate similar tensions as they attempt to balance institutional expectations with the need for relational, culturally grounded approaches to teaching and learning. While post-secondary institutions increasingly promote Indigenization and reconciliation initiatives, educators often find themselves working within structures that are not designed to support the kinds of relational, community-based learning that Indigenous leadership development requires.

Pedagogical Approaches for Leadership Education in Indigenous Contexts

Across the teaching journeys shared in the study, educators described relationships with their students as foundational for their pedagogical practice, often prioritizing relationality over content. As one educator shared, “We don’t treat a student just as a student. We also hold and carry the Nation and the community that they come from.” 

In discussing pedagogical approaches, educators shared a range of ways in which they design and deliver curriculum. Across their narratives, a common thread was the importance of building relationships with communities. For a few educators, this approach extended beyond engagement to actively involving community members in program design, co-creating learning experiences that reflect local priorities and ways of knowing.

As a way to illustrate the pedagogical orientations described in the study, I draw on the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures TRRACCK framework (Trust, Respect, Reciprocity, Accountability, Consent, Compassion, and Kindness) as a starting point because it offers an ethical and relational compass for meaningful engagement with Indigenous peoples and communities. 

The pedagogical approaches for leadership education in Indigenous contexts model aims to illustrate the different pedagogical approaches that I identified in the Navigating the Waters study. 

Awareness of Relational Knowledge

This pedagogical approach begins with an awareness of relational knowledge. At this stage, educators might recognize the importance of relational principles but engage with them at a theoretical level, perhaps integrating them into a standard curriculum. In this sense, educators might be aware of relational principles but may not yet know how to apply them effectively, might not feel confident, or may lack the institutional support needed to do so. 

Relational Engagement

This approach represents a deeper level of engagement. Here educators develop  the sensibilities required to adapt teaching practices to local contexts and priorities. This stage reflects the stage of adaptation in Bennett’s Intercultural Sensitivity Model (2015), where individuals learn to shift perspectives and respond to cultural contexts more effectively. Relationality becomes a lived experience.

Curricular Co-creation

This pedagogical approach involves collaborative practices between Indigenous community partners and institutions. These include co-designing and co-facilitating learning with community members, creating protocols for collaboration, or redesigning programming based on a community’s priorities.

Rather than linear or developmental approaches, I see these as cyclical and ever-changing as we engage with different communities and contexts. 

Ancestral Everyday Practices 

This pedagogical approach entails a structural shift toward decolonial Indigenization, where ancestral everyday practices shape the structure and delivery of educational programs, becoming the foundation for learning. Understanding how leadership is embedded in these practices and exploring opportunities for bridging worldviews is the focus of my doctoral dissertation.

The following considerations may help educators support more relational approaches to leadership education in Indigenous contexts.

If you are an instructor:

• Seek opportunities to co-facilitate courses with community members or Indigenous educators, recognizing that leadership knowledge is often grounded in lived experience and community relationships. 
• Pay attention to the everyday practices through which leadership learning already occurs in communities. Consider how course activities might connect with or support these existing forms of learning.
• Learn about socio-natural calendars and seasonal rhythms that shape community life, and consider how course design and scheduling might align with these rhythms rather than imposing rigid academic timelines. 

The pedagogical approaches described by participants illustrate how educators are focusing on prioritizing relationships, community engagement, and flexibility in course design. These approaches suggest that leadership education in Indigenous contexts is less about transferring skills and more about cultivating relationships, responsibilities, and forms of learning that emerge from community contexts. Recognizing and supporting these relational approaches may help post-secondary education institutions move beyond standardized program delivery toward forms of education that are more responsive to Indigenous priorities and ways of learning.

References

Bennett, M. J. (2017). Developmental model of intercultural sensitivity. In Y. Y. Kim (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication (1st ed., pp. 1–10). Wiley. 

Escobar, A. (2020). Sentipensar con la tierra. Trancisiones: puentes transatlánticos para diseñar redes entre Sures y Nortes. #Re-visiones, (10).

Sousa, B. de S. (2014). Epistemologies of the south: Justice against epistemicide. Paradigm Publishers

This blog post is part of a series that brings together reflections from the research study Navigating the Waters of Leadership Education in Indigenous Contexts, supported by the BCcampus Research Fellows Program. Across these posts, I explore three paths: River Journey Mapping, as an arts-based research approach; the Pedagogical Approaches Model; and the tensions that emerge when working within institutional structures. Whether we work with Indigenous communities or not, I hope that we can consider how teaching and learning can be more deeply connected to the land, relationships, and other ways of knowing.

How might creative expression and artistic practices enrich the way we conduct research?

Arts-based approaches invite participants to engage in sentipensar, a concept that represents a process where we think with the heart, feel with the mind, and explore the wholeness of nature (Escobar, 2024). The invitation to explore through our senses often reveals deeply held values, experiences, and ways of knowing that remain hidden otherwise.

The research design for the Navigating the Waters study was strongly influenced by the work of Cree scholar and educator Herman Michell (2012) who describes research through a Northern Cree metaphor. In his words, “doing community-based research is like going on a canoe trip to hunt for knowledge” (p.3). Although my time in Northern Cree communities has been brief, the metaphor resonated strongly. Michell’s Canoe Trip metaphor invited me to see this study as a journey shaped by many elements. At one point, I imagined conducting conversations with research participants by the water; an idea that, while romanticized and ultimately impractical, allowed me to think differently about what I wanted this study to be and to feel. Building on this idea of research as a journey, I began exploring visual metaphors to invite participants to reflect on their journey as educators working with Indigenous communities.

The River Journey is a well known arts-based activity that invites participants to reflect on an experience over time. Through drawing, they identify different moments in their journey—such as beginnings, challenges, milestones, decisions, etc.—and represent them along the journey using the river images.

In research contexts, the River Journey has been used in a variety of ways including exploring teacher identity and professional development (Stevenson, 2013), examining children’s musical experiences (Burnard, 2012), and supporting reflection in fields such as leadership education, or educational psychology (Hill et al., 2025; Stevenson, 2013).

Inspired by these approaches, I started experimenting with the idea of river “tiles”, like those in the Carcassonne board game . I adapted the River Journey activity to highlight the act of mapping and drafted a set of twelve digital visual river elements to serve as prompts during the research conversations. After the one-on-one- interviews, I invited participants to reflect on their journeys and arrange the images (digital tiles) in a way that represented their story. Some participants chose a single image, while others combined several tiles or created their own images. Since most of the interviews took place online, I shared my screen and displayed the images in Mural, a visual workspace, moving the tiles as participants directed me to build their river journey map.

The River Journey Mapping activity offered a visual way for educators to reflect on their professional journeys and pedagogical approaches, by asking–how would you describe/visualize your journey as an educator working with Indigenous communities? The activity surfaced values, beliefs, and moments of transformation that shaped educators’ journeys. Many of the maps created through this activity highlight the importance of nourishment, with water seen as flow of energy, amniotic fluid, and love.

Here are some excerpts of participants’ responses.

The number one thing that transformed me in my work, and it was Dr. John Borrows…he taught me that the Anishinaabe word for love is like the mouth of a river. How he explained it to me was that it’s the source from which all life comes from, and so the mouth of the river is the most ecologically variant, diverse, abundant…When you reframe love as the source from which all life comes from, it’s easy to show up in relationship to it. So that’s the type of river that I see: that huge alluvial fan, and that it just flows from there.

Other educators related the water flow as two separate flows or distinct watersheds, parallel rivers, or the Two Row Wampum.

…two rivers that kind of, like, sometimes they come together, and sometimes they fall apart… there’s a certain kind of, like, swampiness that’s emerging…and then it flows out separate.

There are images of letting go of control; for instance, allowing knowledge to swirl like a whirlpool so that learners have the agency to take what they need for their learning.

What I’ve come to understand is central to Indigenous knowledge transmission, where there’s knowledge flowing and swirling around. But it’s not up to us to try and control or dictate what people take from it…it’s about holding that space for that movement, or clearing and holding that space for that movement…Learners have agency, and ultimately for me the more important thing is not to get them to regurgitate content that I’ve introduced them to. It’s more about, through being put in these spaces of learning with knowledge flowing all around, what have they learned skill-wise to be able to take something away from that.

And there are some people who will go through that whirlpool or that water space and leave stronger and more curious, wanting to come back in and engage with it more. And then there are some people who are going to get out and be like, “I hate being wet,” and stay out. And that’s fine too. Again, it’s about letting go of that control, offering things, but then letting the context guide people to take away what they need.

The River Journey Mapping offers a way to surface deeper insights and a deeper understanding of how educators navigate their work. To further support this exploration, I developed a facilitator’s guide that can be adapted for use in different contexts. The activity uses river imagery and metaphor as a starting point; however, there are a variety of methods (drawing, mapping, storytelling, music, poetry, drama, or other creative forms) that can open space for reflection that is often difficult to access through words alone.

References

Burnard, P. (2012). Rethinking Creative Teaching and Teaching as Research: Mapping the Critical Phases That Mark Times of Change and Choosing as Learners and Teachers of Music. Theory Into Practice, 51(3), 167–178. 

Escobar, A. (2024). Feeling-Thinking with the Land. Transitions: Transatlantic bridges for designing networks between Souths and Norths. Re-visiones, 10. 

Hill, T., Wright, L. & Etmanski, C. (2025). Cultivating Relationality and an Ethics of Care through Arts-Based and Play-Based Research. The Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education / La revue canadienne pour l’étude de l’éducation des adultes, 37(1), 75–91. 

Lee, L., Currie, V., Saied, N., & Wright, L. H. V. (2020). Journey to hope, self-expression and community engagement: Youth-led arts-based participatory action research (PAR) for social change. Children and Youth Services Review, 109, 1–10.

Michell, H. (2012). The Canoe Trip: A Northern Cree Metaphor for Conducting Research. In Education, 18(1). 

Stevenson, K. (2013). The river in a landscape of creative practice: Creative River Journeys. Landscapes: The Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language, 5(2).

1. Web Accessibility
2. Supporting Post-Secondary Students with ADHD
3. Learning Disabilities
4. Dyslexia
5. Access Friction
6. UDL 3.0 in Practice
7. An Indigenous Lens on Disability Rights

Each 30-minute session was designed to offer busy educators bite-sized learning they could immediately apply. The hope is that these resources are used as a starting point, prompting participants to dive deeper and have conversations with their colleagues about creating more accessible learning experiences.  

We were thrilled to see viewing parties organized on some campuses, where participants gathered in-person to join the virtual session, and continued the discussion afterwards, sometimes with an accessibility advisor present.  

All session slides are openly licensed, making it easy to adapt and share the series with new audiences. You can find the recordings and resources of all three seasons in this one book.

If you are interested in presenting a session for the Accessibility Bites 4.0 series, please reach out to Helena Prins (hprins@bccampus.ca).

The video was produced as part of UFV’s Open Education In-Action Initiative, supported by an Open Education Institutional Grant from BCcampus. With this yearlong grant spanning 2025–2026, UFV expanded institutional capacity for open educational practices in several ways, such as by formalizing an open education strategy for the university. Another aspect of UFV’s grant activities was launching their ZTC program.

In fall 2025, UFV added ZTC indicators to their course registration system. ZTC courses remove the requirement for students to purchase traditional textbooks by instead using open educational resources, library materials, and other no-cost learning resources. These approaches help reduce financial barriers while ensuring students have access to course materials from the first day of class.

ZTC indicators help students to better manage their finances by letting them know ahead of time which course sections will not ask them to pay for textbooks. Instead of the shock of learning on day one of a course that the required reading is a $200 textbook, students can be confident that they know what they are financially signing up for when they register.

Gurpreet Singh, UFV Student Union Society VP External, was featured in UFV’s video on ZTC indicators. In the video, he says, “I definitely feel I’m more inclined towards taking a course which is ZTC and doesn’t come with the textbook costs associated with it.”

The video also features Arianna Cheveldave, BCcampus Open Education Coordinator, who highlights the role of students in putting pressure on their institutions to provide more ZTC options.

“We hope that students will notice these symbols in course registration systems, then wonder why they don’t have more courses in their program that are zero or low-textbook cost and become more involved in OER advocacy.”–Arianna Cheveldave

Through funding programs and partnerships with post-secondary institutions, BCcampus supports projects that expand the use of open educational resources and help reduce costs for students across British Columbia. The BCcampus Cost Indicators project will soon release a call for proposals from institutions looking to start or expand a cost indicators initiative such as the one at UFV. For more information, keep an eye on the project page.

Watch the video

The Roadshow celebrates teaching and learning throughout the province, and creates opportunities to connect, explore, and engage with current themes in education.

BCcampus is Back on the Road

This year, from June 1–10, 2026, we are visiting four locations:

• Vancouver Island University – Nanaimo Campus, June 1, 2026
• North Island College – Comox Valley Campus, June 3–4, 2026
• Coast Mountain College – Prince Rupert Campus, June 8, 2026
• Coast Mountain College – Terrace Campus, June 9–10, 2026

All sessions are free and open to all educators and learners. Join us at one or more of our stops and become part of our growing community!

Check out the Roadshow website for the schedule at each location, and registration details.

Connecting Communities

A key goal of the Roadshow is to ensure educators in regional areas have an opportunity to connect with colleagues in fun and engaging ways.

“With gratitude and the excitement to meet many of you in person, I hope that you will make this an annual event, as colleagues who did not sign up are excited to attend in the future, after I bragged about this Roadshow. What an apt name for the event!”–2025 Roadshow Participant

Each stop on the Roadshow is developed in close collaboration with the host institution. We work with local teams to design a program drawing from a wide range of offerings to create an experience tailored to each community. These include workshops, sessions, facilitated discussions, and a catered off-site social event – all designed to foster connection and the exchange of ideas.

“The sessions I attend were informative and well taught. Sometimes you go to workshops or sessions and leave wanting more, like they didn’t give practical tools or tips. But I found the Roadshow well-focused and you actually walked away with ways to implement. I really appreciated that.”–2025 Roadshow Participant

If you’re interested in learning more or bringing the Roadshow to your institution, please get in touch to start the conversation.

On March 11, 2026, as part of the BCcampus EdTech Sandbox series, I introduced participants to the generative artificial intelligence tools Research Rabbit and Consensus. In particular, we looked at how these tools can bolster academic literature searching for post-secondary students and researchers. Workshop participants explored how AI can support literature reviews in practical ways, while also examining the ethical issues related to GenAI tools, such as plagiarism, privacy, and research integrity. Participants gained a foundational understanding of key AI-powered literature searching tools and learned how to evaluate their outputs for accuracy, relevance, and bias through hands-on activities.

The session was bookended with a mix of introductory and contextual slides about the artificial intelligence landscape, and ethical considerations for academic researchers. In the middle section of the workshop, I presented an overview of each of the tools, placing them within a larger context of other GenAI tools, followed by substantial, experiential, hands-on time for learners to work through directed activities designed to enable the familiarity, utility, and use cases of both tools.

Outline of the Tools and Their Main Features

Both tools were presented as providing support to expand the literature searching process, within the context of the challenges of both finding enough key sources on our research topics, as well as identifying the most relevant sources among a sea of results.

Research Rabbit works semantically to search the metadata of existing literature, providing visual connections between related papers based on citation connections. When searching by topic, researchers can ‘seed’ a map with one or more references to find connections to other articles.

Research Rabbit is citation-based, linking source metadata, including abstracts and references, to other sources that cite or are cited by the others. Given that this tool is not searching the full text of sources, no summary or chat feature common to some other tools is available.

Consensus also surfaces papers for literature searches, and provides a key takeaway for each paper, which is essentially a generated summary. Also, Consensus has a chatbot feature enabling the user to query one or more papers more deeply for additional commonalities, differences, themes, etc.

Strengths of the Tools for Researching

The corpuses of both tools consist solely of existing scholarly articles and outputs so researchers can be safe in the knowledge that all references surfaced in these tools are authentic. While both tools are free to use, both also have a paid tier to access additional features and/or number of searches. These tools are safe and reliable ones to introduce to students for use, along with library databases, in their literature review needs.

Research Rabbit’s main feature is its intuitive visual mapping of citation relationships. As such, the researcher can easily see clusters of authors or papers citing one another, providing leads for further references, as well as identifying sources by currency and/or higher citation counts. Additionally, Research Rabbit can find similar articles to ones you’ve identified by using its semantic search to infer related topics and sources.

Consensus searches semantically as well as across the full-text of articles, using your search terms to retrieve references. The platform provides a textual overview of results, identifying the key themes within the results and linking to the related sources of information. In the free tier, Consensus generates summaries (called snapshots in the platform) for up to 10 articles a month, which provide additional attributes of the top article results, such methods, population, and results.

Weaknesses and/or Considerations Before Implementing the Tool

While both tools rely on Semantic Scholar (which has agreements with many academic publishers) as part of their corpuses, users should understand that both rely heavily on open access content. While it is encouraging that open sources are, as such, likely finding a larger audience in these tools, users should be mindful that a typical B.C. university library provides access to a far greater number of sources, including ones behind subscription paywalls that are not available to these platforms. Consensus does, however, provide for institutional linking to facilitate access to your library’s available online subscriptions from within their (more limited) set of results. Hence, these tools are best thought of as supplements to our library database searching rather than replacements.

Research Rabbit defaults to mapping only 20 sources at a time (in the free tier), requiring the user to move forward to the following page of results to get a map of the next 20 sources. This feature prevents the user from enjoying the overall map of related sources at a glance, and somewhat undercuts the main feature of the platform. Consensus does suggest more features available in their paid Pro tier, but being made aware of these features may cause some frustration for the researcher. As such, users may find the free tiers somewhat limiting as they potentially prevent us from accessing the full potential of the tools.

Recommended Activities

Directed activities for learning about these two tools, as well as two additional tools Elicit and Undermind, are available on the workshop LibGuide.

Reflections on the Webinar

Overall, workshop attendees definitely preferred the much broader tool of Consensus to the more focused Research Rabbit. Learners valued the additional contextual information Consensus provided about the overall search topic, as well as the individual attributes available in the study snapshots of articles. The learners had many great questions and comments, and I would like to thank them for their engaged and supportive participation.

Webinar Resources and Transcript

If you missed the webinar, or want a quick refresher, you can access the webinar recordings and transcript here:
EdTech Sandbox Series: Literature Searching with Artificial Intelligence

Background

Alyssa: Since 2021, British Columbia’s annual death rate has exceeded that of the birth rate, so it may surprise you to learn that many nurses receive very little education regarding death, dying, and grief.¹ ² ³ As someone who has recently gone through a nursing program, I received almost no death education, with the exception of what I asked my instructors to cover. Recognizing this gap in education, one of my professors decided that we could make a positive change within our institution. Dr. DiFrancesco designed a study to explore whether graphic memoirs, autobiographical comics told through image and text, could be used as educational tools for learning about the socio-cultural dimensions of death, dying, and terminal illness.

Darryn: In 2025, my father was hospitalized with complications from stage four cancer. He spent almost a month in the in-patient unit before passing away in April. I was fortunate to be able to spend many days with him during his final weeks. During this time, I witnessed examples of end-of-life care that ranged from spectacular to poor. It was my sense that some of the junior nurses were uncomfortable with the dying process and lacked skills to connect with my dad and our family.

Reflecting on the concerns raised by Alyssa and my other students, I wondered how we could support nursing students in gaining more confidence around end-of-life care. Research supports this concern: although Canadian nursing schools report incorporating death into the curriculum, students consistently report feeling unprepared to deal with death in clinical environments, suggesting that more ought to be done.² ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ The current literature suggests that even the slightest attention to the topic of death in a safe setting, such as class discussion, has tremendous results on nursing students’ perception of death.⁷ Studies show that when students have the opportunity to reflect upon death and examine the impacts and complications experienced by families, their attitude towards dying patients and their families improves.⁸

As an avid reader, it struck me that graphic memoirs could generate exactly the kind of reflection and discussion nursing students need. In conversation with my class, I raised the idea of using comics as a non-intimidating way to learn about death and dying. They were supportive of the idea, so I pitched it in my application to the 2025–2027 BCcampus Research Fellows program.

Research Methods

Our study attempts to measure the impacts of an educational module (incorporating a graphic memoir and reflective discussion) on nursing students’ self-perceived confidence around death and dying. Students first complete a survey incorporating questions about demographic information, prior experiences with death, and questions from the Self-Competency in Death Work Scale (SC-DWS), a validated scale that explores professional self-competency in dealing with death.⁹ Next, they read a graphic memoir from a pre-selected list and participate in a structured, reflective class discussion about the story and takeaways for nursing practice. After this, they complete a second survey in which they complete the SC-DWS again and answer open-ended (qualitative) questions about their experience participating in the educational module. The research will measure changes in students’ self-perceived confidence in handling death in clinical settings while also exploring their comments about the learning experience.

In addition to the student component, we are also soliciting feedback from instructors about the feasibility and value of integrating the graphic memoir module into their classes. Once the study is complete, we hope to develop an open educational resource (OER) to support other instructors wishing to incorporate graphic memoirs and comics into their courses.

What We Hope to Accomplish

Through this study we hope to understand whether and how comics can be used to help nursing students (and other students in caring professions and programs) learn about death, dying, and empathetic care. Death is a difficult topic for many people, often exacerbated by a culture that frequently denies or is fearful of death.¹⁰ As accessible, interesting, and unique media, comics present an excellent opportunity for students to learn about death, dying, and patient and family experiences in a low-stakes, non-intimidating way. Discussing death openly in a structured classroom setting can help nursing students think about how they can better support dying patients and their families, ultimately enhancing those difficult final moments while also improving their own abilities to cope with this challenging experience.

Who Benefits From This Research

This research has the potential to benefit multiple groups. Nursing students stand to gain confidence and a greater sense of preparedness around end-of-life care,¹¹ and better-prepared nurses mean better experiences for dying patients and their families during one of life’s most difficult moments. Creative, low-stakes death education may also reduce the risk of nurse stress and burnout, supporting both individual well-being and high-quality care.¹² Finally, instructors in nursing and other caring professions will be able to draw on our findings and our OER guide, should they wish to bring a similar approach into their own courses.

Ultimately, death is something that affects us all. The end-of-life is a period worthy of our time, attention, and ongoing reflection.

References

1. Government of British Columbia. Fertility Trends in British Columbia: 1991–2023. 2025.
2. Parry ME. Student nurses’ experience of their first death in clinical practice. Int J Palliat Nurs. 2011;17(9):446–51.
3. Vogel L. Nursing schools to teach new ways to cope with death. CMAJ. 2011;183(4):418.
4. Edo-Gual M, Tomás-Sábado J, Bardallo-Porras D, Monforte-Royo C. The impact of death and dying on nursing students: an explanatory model. J Clin Nurs. 2014;23(23–24):3501–12.
5. Wilson DM, Goodwin BL, Hewitt JA. An examination of palliative or end-of-life care education in introductory nursing programs across Canada. Nurs Res Pract. 2011;2011:907172.
6. Murnane S, Purcell G, Reidy M. Death, dying and caring: Exploring the student nurse experience of palliative and end-of-life education. Br J Nurs. 2023;32(11):526–531.
7. Alt-Gehrman P. Education provided to undergraduate nursing students about end-of-life care. J Hosp Palliat Nurs. 2017;19(6):571–579.
8. Chu E, Jang S. The effects of a death preparation education program on death anxiety, death attitudes, and attitudes toward end-of-life care among nurses in convalescent hospitals. J Hosp Palliat Care. 2021;24:154–164.
9. Chan WCH, Tin AF, Wong KLY. Coping with existential and emotional challenges: Development and validation of the self-competence in death work scale. J Pain Symptom Manage. 2015;50(1):99–107.
10. Frommelt KHM. The effects of death education on nurses’ attitudes toward caring for terminally ill persons and their families. Am J Hosp Palliat Med. 1991;8(5):37–43.
11. Testoni I, Ronconi L, Orkibi H, et al. Death education for palliative care: a European project for university students. BMC Palliat Care. 2023;22:47.
12. Pfaff K, Markaki A. Compassionate collaborative care: an integrative review of quality indicators in end-of-life care. BMC Palliat Care. 2017;16:65.