The Beginning of our Journey: 2021 OER

Our collaboration began when we redesigned Lindsey’s in-class Sociology debates to online debates during the transition to online course delivery during Covid-19 lockdowns. Comparing and experimenting with different modalities and variations, we questioned whether modality had any impact on improving critical thinking skills.  To help other educators with debate modality transitions, we created the following open templates (2021 OER), and posted them on TRU’s Cricket (Course Resource Kit).

PDF:

Debates Makerspace Template 5May2021 

Word:

Debates Makerspace Template 5May2021

2021 and 2022 also saw us discussing our experience with our peers at TRU, through presentations at TRU’s Teaching Practices Colloquium and Centre for Learning and Teaching workshops:

• McKay, L and Bartlett, M. 2022 TPC presentation “Multimodal Debates: Leveraging modes to support critical thinking” (February 22)
• McKay, L. 2021 “Pivoting Learning Activities: Creating Online Debates” In Progress: TRU Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, July 7
• Co-hosted, with Marie Bartlett (Learning Designer), a CELT CRICKET (Course Redesign Institution) Makerspace event, May 6, 2021

We then applied for a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning  (SoTL) grant and were granted a Research Ethics Board (REB) approval to compare two sections of first year Sociology student debates, examining the effectiveness of different modalities on promoting critical thinking.