Announcements

When:
March 6, 2019

Humber is currently updating the institutional inventory of OER use in courses across all programs and schools. This inventory served to identify courses and programs where the selection of course readings and other learning resources come with no additional cost to students. The inventory is a useful tool for helping to identify opportunities for increased adoption of OER in support of learning.

In 2018, Humber official joined the Open Educational Resource University (OERu). Coordinated by the OER Foundation, an independent, not-for-profit organization, the OERu network of institutions offers free online courses for students worldwide and provides affordable ways for learners to gain academic credit towards qualifications from recognized institutions.

Joining OERu formalizes Humber’s continued re-conceptualization of student access and program delivery frameworks and supports our aim to increase access to mobile and ubiquitous learning. A necessary step in making education more accessible - in a sustainable way - is the ongoing creation and curation of Open Educational Resources (OER). Partnering with OERu aligns with Humber’s digital learning strategic goal to innovate through a networked community within and beyond the College to respond to emerging trends and priorities in our local, national and global communities.  

Want to learn more? Contact Humber’s Director of Digital Curriculum, Theresa Steger (theresa.steger@humber.ca) and see the Humber College Council presentation slides.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s topic on Open Media Resources.

When:
March 5, 2019

Do you know that certain types of research require an ethical review? 

  • Has a Humber department recently asked you to complete a survey aimed at improving service to staff and students?
  • Do you want to study your students’ exam marks as part of a research project to strengthen the course assessment methods?
  • Do you know your rights as a research participant?
  • Do you know your rights as a researcher?
  • Do you know the College’s rights to conduct research involving its community?  
  • What about external organizations that want to access Humber members and their personal and professional information?

Humber’s Research Ethics Board (REB) is here to help.

Who are we?

We are a 10-member team of faculty and administrators from Humber and the external community with expertise in research. We derive our mandate from federal legislation and regulations governing the ethical conduct of research involving human participants. We are guided by the Panel on Research Ethics, which develops, interprets and implements the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS). 

Why do we exist?

We exist for one reason: to ensure all research carried out by Humber faculty, staff and students that involves human participants, no matter where the research takes place, is conducted ethically – adhering to the standards set by the federally mandated TCPS. Ultimately, our objective is to promote strong, ethically conducted research at Humber, to the benefit of our entire community.

What do we do?

We review research projects to protect the welfare of participants and researcher(s), in addition to Humber’s reputation. We also consider ethical concerns with research involving animals, plants and the environment.

What factors do we consider?

When assessing applications for ethical considerations, the REB focuses on key factors such as:

  • benefits of the research relative to risks (do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages)
  • types of risks (such as psychological, financial and reputational)
  • methodology (are the tools being used appropriate to the research question/hypothesis)
  • deception (why is this necessary, are there dangers) 
  • incentives (are they appropriate, will they influence response)
  • the language used to communicate the study purpose and parameters (will potential participants understand what they are being asked to consent to)
  • fairness and equity in participant selection and treatment
  • privacy and confidentiality
  • conflicts of interest between the researcher(s) and study sponsors (or between the researcher[s] and participants)
  • power relations between the researcher(s) and participants
  • data handling and disposal
  • dissemination of results

Who is on our team?

As Humber REB chair, I am honoured to work with a strong team, anchored by dedicated administrative support from Jaqueline Nicol, Operations and REB Coordinator, in cooperation with Gina Antonacci, Associate Vice-President, Academic, and Darren Lawless, Dean, Applied Research and Innovation.

Our REB members represent a wide range of disciplines and experience:

  • Jennifer Bazar, PhD (Curator, Lakeshore Grounds Interpretive Centre)
  • Nancy Birch, BEd, OCT, MISt (on leave) (Associate Librarian; Manager, Library Services, University of Guelph-Humber)
  • Dana Costin, PhD, CPsych (Professor, Child and Youth Care; registered Clinical and Forensic Psychologist)
  • Audel Cunningham, LLB, LLM (Essex), LLM (Pallas) (Professor, The Business School)
  • Rita Kohli, MA, MEd, Registered Psychotherapist (CRPO) (Tools-4-Change, Principal Consultant; external community member)
  • Jaime Lapeyre, RN, PhD (Registered Nurse; Professor, Bachelor of Nursing, School of Health Sciences)
  • Mojgan Rezvani, PhD, MSc, MSc (Edu), BSc (Spec. Hon.), OCT (Program Coordinator, Professor, Principal Investigator, Biotechnology, Clinical Research, Regulatory Affairs Programs, School of Health Sciences)
  • Jeffrey Semple, PhD (Bioscience Professor, School of Health Sciences)
  • Ann Wainwright, PhD (Psychology Professor, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences)

How are we connecting with the Humber community?

We are embarking on a wide-ranging awareness program across the College to help our Humber community understand the REB and ethics in research generally. One key component of this awareness program will be a regular bulletin in the Humber Communiqué. Each bulletin will highlight ethical issues of the day, arising from actual Humber work and external news and events, which are all around us. Look for our first bulletin later this month. 

How can you contact us?

If you are not sure your research needs an ethical review, please contact the REB office at reb@humber.ca or lydia.boyko@humber.ca.
For more information about our REB, please visit humber.ca/research/reb.

Here are the answers to the questions above:

  • If a Humber College department wants to survey the Humber community to improve service and is publishing the results outside the College, REB review is required.
  • If a professor or an administrator wants to use student work as part of a research study, REB review is required.   
  • External organizations that want to access Humber community information must secure Humber REB and institutional approvals.

 

Lydia Boyko, APR, FLMI, BJ, MEd, PhD
Chair, Humber Research Ethics Board
Professor, School of Media Studies & Information Technology

When:
March 5, 2019

Want to have a say in what the future of sustainability at Humber College looks like?

Humber has made an institutional commitment in its Strategic Plan to be a national leader in campus sustainability. Currently, the Office of Sustainability is creating Humber's next five-year Campus Sustainability Plan (2019-2024). Share your vision for our campus' sustainability so we can work together and make our commitments a reality.

Please share your thoughts, opinions and sustainable commitments through our short 10-15 minute survey which will help inform our key decisions. Whether you want to talk about waste, energy, food or equity- we are here to listen and implement your thoughts into our plan for the next five years!

Complete the survey and enter to win a set of four tickets to Ripley's Aquarium. Survey is open until Tuesday, March 19, 2019.

Click here to take the survey and read the full contest rules.

Please contact Lindsay Walker at lindsay.walker@humber.ca (x5829) or Devon Fernandes at devon.fernandes@humber.ca (x4651) if you have any questions.

When:
March 5, 2019

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a global network, working to mainstream open education and create a world with universal access to effective open educational resources (see creativecommons.org/about/program-areas). 

Over one billion Creative Commons licensed works exist across millions of websites. The majority are hosted on content platforms that provide Creative Commons license options for their users. Creative Commons platforms make it easy for users to discover and collaborate on images, video, music, research and educational texts. Content on these platforms is searchable and shareable across the web thanks to Creative Commons licenses. 

Want to learn more? Go to creativecommons.org/about/platform for a highlight of the best known platforms for sharing Creative Commons licensed content. 

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post on Open Educational Resources at Humber.

When:
March 4, 2019
Contact:
Peter Seney

After weeks of campaigning and voting, the IGNITE Elections have come to a close and we are happy to announce the new executive team for the 2019/2020 school year. The student leaders that will be representing the organization and advocating for student rights next year across Humber and University of Guelph-Humber are as follows:

Executive Team

President – Monica Khosla 

Vice-President, North – Simran 

Vice-President, Lakeshore – Ryan Stafford

Vice-President, University of Guelph-Humber – Megan Roopnarine 

Board of Directors

Board of Directors, North:
Dishant Passi 
Eden Tavares 
Neto Naniwambote 
Shawayne Dunstan 

Board of Directors, Lakeshore:
Camila Ruiz Tacha 
Stephanie Fallico 
Asiya Bashir Awan 

Board of Directors, University of Guelph-Humber:
Erika Caldwell
Julia Ciampa

Board of Director, Orangeville:
Nav Sidhu 

7811 Humber and UofGH students voted using in-person and online polling stations. This represents 24.49% of the student population.

You can view the full election results on the IGNITE website by following this link.

When:
March 4, 2019
Contact:
Centre for Teaching & Learning
Tel:
416.675.5040
Posters/Attachments: Event Poster

Celebrate and recognize the great work that your colleagues are doing. Nominate them for the Innovation of the Year Award 2019. See attached flyer for criteria and nomination form.

PURPOSE OR GOAL:

The purpose of the Innovation of the Year Awards is to recognize College employees who have designed and implemented a significant innovation that positively impacts the learning of students in the College.

ELIGIBILITY:

All employee groups (full and part-time faculty, administrators and support staff) are eligible for nomination.

CRITERIA:

Criteria to be used for judging the merit of an innovation and its impact on students’ learning are:

Creativity: The selected innovation will be as original as possible or be a unique adaptation of an existing program, process or concept.

Effectiveness: There is evidence that the innovation leads to a better process for accomplishing a task(s).

Replication: The significant components of the innovation selected can be replicated in other institutions with a minimum of difficulty. The description of the program will include any conditions necessary for replication. Timeliness: Innovation will not be more than five years old in the institution, but it must have been in existence long enough to have been tested.

Currency: There is evidence that the innovation is current in content and adaptive to technological applications as appropriate.

Collaboration: The innovation may demonstrate that a considerable collaboration effort has occurred between school/ or college teams.

Quality: Students and/or staff agree that the innovation increases quality in the course program, office or institution. Evidence of quality may include student ratings or letters of support for colleagues.

The Innovation must have a positive impact on students’s learning.

NOMINATIONS:

Nomination forms must be signed by two members of the College community and accompanied by:

  1. A 200-word description of the innovation.
  2. Rationale for nominating the innovation.
  3. Objective/purpose of the innovation.
  4. Impact of the innovation.
  5. The role/contribution of the innovation to Humber and other community colleges.
  6. Endorsement by division director/dean, associate dean/manager.
When:
March 4, 2019
Contact:
Maggie Hobbs
Tel:
x4321
Posters/Attachments: Event Poster
2019 Student Appreciation Awards

Nominate an outstanding member of the Humber and Guelph-Humber community for a 2019 Student Appreciation Award.

Nominations open February 25 to March 18.

The Student Appreciation Awards recognizes students, faculty, staff and administrators who exemplify selfless dedication and excellence. Current students in good academic standing, faculty, support staff and administrators are eligible to participate.  

For nomination forms and more information please visit studentappreciationawards.com.

When:
March 4, 2019

Welcome to the Centre for Teaching and Learning and Humber Libraries’ celebration of Open Education Week (March 4-8, 2019).

What is Open Education?

In the spirit of open, the definition below is a remix of the definition authored by the Open Education Consortium (2018, CC BY 4.0):

Open Education seeks to scale up educational opportunities by taking advantage of the power of the internet, allowing rapid and essentially free dissemination, and enabling people around the world to access knowledge, connect and collaborate.

Open allows not just access, but the freedom to modify and use materials, information and networks so education can be personalized to individual users or woven together in new ways for diverse audiences, large and small.

This sharing is probably the most basic characteristic of education: education is sharing knowledge, insights and information with others, upon which new knowledge, skills, ideas and understanding can be built. 

People can connect with others they wouldn’t otherwise meet to share ideas and information. Materials can be translated, mixed together, broken apart and openly shared again, increasing access and inviting fresh approaches.

Anyone can access educational materials, scholarly articles, and supportive learning communities anytime they want to. Education is available, accessible, modifiable and free.

Want to learn more? Go to openeducationweek.org/page/what-is-open-education and ecampusontario.ca/oeweek2019.

In practice, Open Education involves creating and sharing educational content under an open license such as the Creative Commons license. Stay tuned to learn more about Creative Commons in tomorrow’s post.

When:
March 1, 2019

Please note that 2018 T4s and T4As were mailed on Thursday, February 28, 2019. T4s and T4As have also been uploaded to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) website. If you have a personal CRA account, you will be able to securely view your tax form details when you login to your account.

If you have any questions, please contact your HR/Payroll Coordinator (see HR Services - Payroll for contact details).

When:
March 1, 2019

On the latest episode of the NEXTcast podcast, available free on Soundcloud and iTunes, we speak with Geoff Lachapelle, eSports coordinator and Game Programming lecturer, about the educational value of competitive gaming.

Nestled in the LB building at Humber’s North Campus is a competitive gaming space, designed for closed private practice sessions and competition in an effort to create an efficient and effect training space for competitive student gamers.

“What video games can do, at their core, is show you how to create better practice tools, better improvement tools, how to look at your performance in whatever you’re doing, and be constructive and critical with yourself on how to improve.” – Geoff Lachapelle

Listen to the episode or read the transcript here.

NEXTcast is a podcast about teaching and learning at Humber College, created by Humber Press and The Centre for Teaching & Learning. New episodes go up on Soundcloud and iTunes every second week.

To suggest a future guest or topic, email Humber Press at humberpress@humber.ca.

Kristin Valois
Humber Press

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