Telling Stories in Land and Food Systems
Andrew RisemanKathryn GretsingerCyprien LomasDuncan McHugh
University of British ColumbiaVancouver, BC, Canada
OpenEd 2009August 14th, 2009
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License
・ How did this course come to be? ・ How did we do it? ・ What were challenges? ・ What were results? ・ How did openness benefit
this course?
Special Topics in Agriculture
・ Very passionate about their research ・ Somewhat isolated ・ Many have a lack
of awareness as to how to tell a story
LFS students
・ Engaging their research in a new way ・ Improving their
communication skills ・ Expressing
themselves using digital tools ・ Spreading their
message to a broader audience
LFS students
・ Mostly re-purposing lectures ・ Useful, not very dynamic
Academic podcasting
・ Cross-campus collaboration
The PEPI Group
・ Cross-campus collaboration ・ Putting the technology into students’ hands ・ Sought to create an open source, ‘academic iTunes’ ・ Evolved into a partnership between LFS & SoJ
The PEPI Group
・ 4th year seminar in issues related to the UBC Farm ・ Traditionally assignments were essays ・ UBC Farm is the only working farm in Vancouver ・ UBC Farm is threatened by development ・ Two-part assignment
AGRO 461 & UBC Farm
・ Sought to use journalism skills to teach to six LFS students to create engaging and rigorous audio documentaries ・ Four-member teaching
team: ・ Agriculture prof ・ Journalism prof ・ Tech instructor ・ Big thinker
This year’s course
・ Students didn't have a framework for this type of work
・ four rules of journalism ・ storytelling, not just
feeling ・ crafting a narrative out of an interview
This year’s course
・ Students were taught the difference between advocacy and journalism ・ As newspapers and other media
suffer cutbacks, room for citizen journalists to have a voice
What is citizen journalism?
・ Streeter: students were sent out to ask strangers a question ・ Voicer: simple story piece that
combines basic audio editing, sound recording, interviewing and narration
Early results
・ New skills for students to pick up “・ Copyright awareness” “・ How to get good recording” “・ The use of audio recorders” “・ Basic audio editing”
Technology workshops
・ Sakai ・ Audacity
Tools
・ Audio piece, ~10mins in length ・ Workshopped extensively ・ Sense of accountability to students
and the work ・ CBC competition ・ CC licensed
Final project
“・ The Soil Beneath Your Feet” “・ Dandelion” “・ The Farmhouse” “・ Where Are We
Growing” “・ Agricultural
Inspirations” “・ The Chicken Man”
Final project
・ new technology ・ lack of time ・ the need to change
culture ・ scarcity of resources
[pilot]
Challenges
Student Reflections
・ formalised course, restricted elective ・ 15 students cap ・ new assignments
Next year
・ One way to tell 50 stories ・ Better breed of podcasts
・ Student satisfaction ・ raised the bar and they stepped up ・ tangible product to share with those outside of the university ・ giving students the tools they need to be heard ・ epiphanies can't be planned
Conclusion
Questions?
Thanks!Andrew Riseman
Kathryn Gretsinger [email protected]
Cyprien Lomas [email protected]
Duncan [email protected]
Faculty of Land and Food SystemsThe University of British Columbia
www.landfood.ubc.ca/learningcentre
Top Related