Valerie Irvine’s research while affiliated with University of Victoria and other places

This project was conducted at Fort St. James Secondary School in the Nechako Lakes School District, which is in Northern British Columbia, Canada. Three high school teachers from different disciplines (Social Studies, Digital Media, and Carpentry) launched a cross-curricular inquiry-based project in partnership with local knowledge holders and School District 91, focusing on truth and reconciliation, which connected the learners in their high school with the broader community, including knowledge holders from the local Indigenous communities. Those engaged in the project examined questions around what truth and reconciliation meant to the learners and its significance. This project was completed in 2021 and resulting products included a legacy wall, installed as a permanent fixture in the school, containing individual learning represented in motifs, design of the feather using wood from around the world, and a video documentary containing interviews from school and community stakeholders.

As open course designs are being implemented in regular post-secondary credit courses (beyond massive open online courses), new issues and processes need to be considered that are fundamentally different from courses offered within the traditional learning management system. In this paper, we will review our approach to multi-section open course design and share our experiences working through emergent issues, such as content placement, intellectual property, attribution, etc. We will provide insights and recommendations for institutional leadership and administration, faculty area advisors, technical support staff, and sessional instructors.

In this paper, we review the literature on technology in assessment in higher education and compare how the literature aligns with the assessment in a digital world framework (Bearman et al., 2022). We found themes in the literature that were not present in the framework (e.g., academic integrity and faculty workload) and constructs in the framework not evident in the literature (e.g., future self and future activities). Additionally, we consider other gaps in both the framework and the literature evident in day-today practices and government legislation or mandates, such as considering legal or ethical aspects of duty of care and the integration of Indigenous worldviews. We then developed the technology-integrated assessment framework to help instructors and administrators consider a broader range of constructs when planning assessment strategies in technology-integrated learning environments and to serve as a basis for further investigation into how the different constructs within the framework contribute to how we design, implement, and teach about assessment in digital learning environments today. We present an introduction of this technology-integrated assessment framework and discuss future research goals and opportunities.

Educational institutions and training programs have faced an accelerated transformation toward the integration of technology. However, it is unclear whether the capacity to train qualified personnel to support this digital transformation in education. In this session, we review university websites across Canada looking at the availability of online PhD programs in Education Technology. Findings indicate only one is offered online only (5% or 1 out of 20) and two provide students with the possibility to study in a blended format for their PhD program, which is 10% (2 out of 20) of all Canadian universities that have PhD programs. Only 5% (1 out of 20) of Canadian institutions provide a PhD program in educational technology; however, this is offered on campus only. While this review excludes the EdD pathway, we did find two EdD programs in educational technology that could be accessed entirely online and one blended program. As technological and conceptual shifts of entire sectors that prioritize digital learning and digital literacy (e.g., B.C. Digital Learning Strategy), there is significant demand for PhD qualified individuals to lead or execute these initiatives. As such, there needs to be more discussion about how to make PhD study more accessible, specifically in educational technology.

While the COVID-19 pandemic significantly transformed post-secondary course delivery formats, little attention has been paid to post-pandemic learner preferences. To address this gap, we designed two scales to advance our understanding of learner preferences for online learning modalities: the Modalities of Digital Education – Learner Preference (MODE-LP) scale and the Perceptions of Online Learning Scale (POLS). In this proceeding, we describe the development and piloting of these scales, including how they can provide a nuanced understanding of learner preferences for online programs, courses, and course designs and the key underlying factors that impact them. We conclude with a snapshot of preliminary results and a discussion of future research.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a new framework for understanding technology-integrated assessment in higher education based on a review of the literature using the assessment design in a digital world framework (Bearman et al., 2022) as a lens. Our review (Madland et al., 2024) revealed both congruities and incongruities between the literature and the framework, leading to the need for further work to accurately conceptualize technology-integrated assessment. In this article, we contribute to the literature on technology-integrated assessment in higher education by proposing the technology-integrated assessment framework. This paper marks an important step in extending our understanding of the factors influencing instructors who integrate technology into their assessment practice and promoting ethical and equitable approaches to technology-integrated assessment in higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of the scholarly literature between 2016 and 2023 on the impact of classroom technology on higher education instructors’ assessment practices through the lens of the assessment design in a digital world framework (Bearman et al., 2022). Specifically, the paper focuses on (a) describing the assessment design in a digital world framework, (b) identifying the scope and breadth of the literature relating to technology-integrated assessment, and (c) highlighting any gaps between the Bearman et al. model and the literature. This paper marks an important step in extending our understanding of the factors influencing instructors who integrate technology into their assessment practice and promoting ethical and equitable approaches to technology-integrated assessment in higher education.

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using individual testimonies, which may also be taken as living narratives, to reveal the value of Openness in Education as a praxis. Such testimonies serve as rich, personal narratives, critical introspections, and experience-based accounts that function as sources of data. The data gleaned from these narratives points to the understanding of Openness in Education as a complex, multilayered concept intricately woven into an array of values. These range from aspects such as sharing, access, flexibility, affordability, enlightenment, barrier-removal, empowerment, care, individual agency, trust, innovation, sustainability, collaboration, co-creation, social justice, equity, transparency, inclusivity, decolonization, democratisation, participation, liberty, and respect for diversity. This editorial, as a product of collective endeavour, invites its readers to independently engage with individual narratives, fostering the creation of unique interpretations. This call stems from the distinctive character of each narrative as they voice individual researchers’ perspectives from around the globe, articulating their insights within their unique situational contexts.