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0:00 Olivia: CAMPPFire Stories is a documentation of the work of members of the Collective to Advance Multimodal Participatory Publishing, or CAMPP, at the end of a three year incubation period at the University of Colorado Boulder. CAMPP’s mission promotes faculty and student curation, cultivation, co-creation, and publication of knowledge. Under this umbrella, members developed and published various projects that meet academic standards and are open and accessible to the community at large. These audio recordings contain first hand accounts from CAMPP and community members about their projects and their experiences throughout this period of development.

0:38 Catherine: In this episode we hear from Amanda McAndrew and Caroline Sinkinson on Projects on open educational resources about Authentic and Alternative assessments, with emphasis on the concept of open pedagogy. Amanda McAndrew is the faculty services portfolio manager for ASSETT, Arts and Sciences Support of Education through Technology. Her approach to teaching and learning is firmly grounded in critical digital pedagogy, open education, and learner-centered theories and practices. She considers herself a teacher first and then a technologist. As an instructional designer and technologist at a large university, she has learned the importance of developing interdisciplinary faculty learning communities. Providing the right tools and building comfortable environments, both face-to-face and online, creates strong social learning opportunities and connections that allow true innovative thinking to happen. Associate Professor Caroline Sinkinson is the head of the Learning & Engagement Team at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries. She is responsible for leading the Learning & Engagement Team in the design and implementation of opportunities that invite student learning, literacies, and engagement. In collaboration with fellow teaching librarians and campus partners, the Learning & Engagement Team sparks exploration of pedagogy, information literacy, and learner agency to build a participatory and holistic community of learning.

2:14 Catherine: Alright, I wanted to thank you both for coming here. What we're doing is we are documenting the members of the CAMPP and their journey over the last three years. So what we're gonna start with is, how did CAMPP begin for each of you? What was that like?

2:28 Amanda: I can go first. For me because I'm in ASSETT it started probably a little bit earlier because I was on a team, on the team that was starting to try to group. We asked for letters of interest and so we started to try to find themes and connections among the different letters of interest that we got, so that's where it really started for me. I was super excited when some letters of interest came in, that I was able to see some connections that related to student produced artifacts and co created knowledge, but then if you want to go way back Caroline and I have been working together for years and I think we have always tried to find ways to seed ideas with faculty, to help them you know experiment with creating more relevancy to students' lives and finding a way to help faculty see a path to, for students to be able to contribute more of their work, to contribute more beyond the classroom, to open up the classroom a little bit more.

3:49 Caroline: Yeah I guess it's my turn. So I think for me, I was drawn to the idea of joining a group of innovative educators primarily through my work with open pedagogical practices and a deep interest in information literacies and critical digital practices. And as Amanda said we've been working together for years and I think one of the launching points was our work on BuffsCreate, which is the CU Boulder instance of the Domain of One's Own project. I think that was really the primary jumping off point, and I'll just say to give some background on BuffsCreate it gives learners the opportunity to take responsibility for a digital space where they can have a voice and a presence that is all their own, and that then through reflection and self expression learners get to practice essential digital and information literacies while experimenting with these web applications and web authoring tools. And so for me this initiative really calls us to critically consider the digital spaces that we inhabit, the identities we make there, and the information we create and share, and I think another essential component of the project is the opportunity for students to reclaim control, ownership, and choice about digital spaces, similar to what Amanda was saying that motivated a lot of our other work and collaboration together. It's really about providing learners with tools and technologies to construct their own online space and to independently make decisions about what's represented and shared there. Yeah so I think that's, I think that answers the question of how it began, it was really from a desire to invite learners into choices about their own learning whether that's a digital space or how they interact with professors and their learning environments and so on.

5:58 Catherine: Yeah so then, when you set off with your projects what were you expecting?

6:01 Caroline: So I think, I'm trying to think, I want to answer that in a couple of different ways. It’s like when I think when we set off, the primary intention was really about promoting libertatory and humanizing pedagogies that again invite the whole learner into their learning experiences and to move towards learning opportunities where learners are creators and contributors in ways that are individually negotiated and controlled. So like really a desire to bring students into their own learning and resisting the treatment of students as empty receptacles into which pre established knowledge is deposited by the all knowing teacher. So I'll go with the expectation that, was that we would experiment, explore, investigate ways of making that possible and doable. But I also went, I didn't have by joining CAMPP I think also something that I expected and that really did become true, was the value and the opportunity, in the opportunity to talk to and learn from other faculty who are doing similar things, who are really committed to that kind of work. It's that part of my job, and Amanda gives me so much of this I have to say, it's that part of my job that most restores me and fills me up. I like really thriving in spaces where we can pursue that, shared areas of interest, and really explore and play experiment and build relationships, yeah.

7:43 Amanda: Yeah I would definitely have to agree. I think I had planned to talk about this a little earlier, but, or a little later, but Caroline and I definitely have a shared value set I think and we really do try to find ways to, for our work to cross and how we can expand that work to other places on campus. And when I started in CAMPP I was participating somewhat as a an organizer or facilitator at in the beginning with this group, and so I wasn't really sure exactly what I was expecting, except to just really try to create more awareness and help faculty grow a little bit in the way that they approach the work that their students do in the classroom, much along the lines of what Caroline's been talking about with reimagining how digital spaces can be used, students reclaiming the way that they use them, you know just so many of those things I was hoping to just seed a little bit of inspiration for the faculty that were involved in this group. I didn't, you know, have a specific, you know, expectation other than to hopefully, you know, inspire them a little bit.

9:11 Catherine: So when both of you started, did you have a destination in mind, and if you did, has that changed at all?

9:21 Caroline: I think I would say the foundation is the same but the enactment and the actual artifacts are drastically different. I mean I think as we all know this is a much changed world to what we'd experienced, prior to the pandemic in particular. When I started I was primarily focused on creating reusable and remixable lesson plans and learning materials that accentuate the goals of Buffscreate for learners you know, for example we did one lesson plan that asks instead of relying on this like flat, blank, one dimensional transcript to tell a student's history what's possible if students craft their own story, their own educational journey, through a digital portfolio, for example. I started with creating lesson plans like that but as we saw the really huge strain that was placed on students through the pandemic it really underscored the need to care for students holistically with particular attentiveness to you know anxiety, trauma, and mental well being, and those factors really drove us directly towards notions of authentic assessment, which was another component of CAMPP that Amanda and I worked on together, creating an open text about authentic assessment strategies and priorities. So hopefully that answers the question, the foundation's the same, the goal is the same, but what we actually produced changed in response to the needs of the learners that we were witnessing, I think.

11:03 Amanda: Yeah I would definitely echo what Caroline is saying, and we talked a lot about this road trip analogy and and telling these stories about our experiences in CAMPP and I feel like yeah, we still have those same hopes and we still have the same, somewhat of the same destination, but we took a bit of a of a detour along the way that we know there was really not much any of us could do about it, we just had to you know step back and adjust to the pandemic and things that came our way. And I would say too that you know, I wouldn't say that we'll ever truly reach the destination because you know we always want to keep pushing and keep striving to make this the student learning experience better and that there can be more and more involvement in their empowerment and creation of the work that they do in the class. So you know, kind of like a cross country road trip, there's still things I wanna see, there's still things I wanna do.

12:20 Caroline: I love that Amanda, that's such a perfect analogy and it's like a detour, right? It doesn't necessarily mean we're off track, it means we're exploring sort of another pathway to get there so that's so lovely the way you said that.

Catherine: Yeah so, sort of using that, where right now is the, not destination, but where right now is the sort of endpoint for your work in CAMPP, and then where is your journey and your car gonna take you next?

12:53 Amanda: For me I think something that, where I would like to see us go next, whether it's with CAMPP or you know however this plays out, the I would love for us to be more intentional with the student involvement like we have you know faculty here at CU and within CAMPP and so forth we all really do have students at the heart and at the center of our work. I just think that we can be more explicit about including those voices and more intentional and finding ways to collaborate and partner and truly listen to students and find ways to show that we have by being direct in how our classes are designed and how the research that we do on learning all of those things. I would just love to see that student piece become a bit more front and center, I guess would be the way to say it.

14:05 Caroline: Yeah I completely agree Amanda, and I think when you first asked that question about the end point it made me think of, to me the craft of teaching and learning is something that's in a constant state of becoming. It's never kind of an absolute endpoint and part of what's important to me about that becoming is that attentiveness, responsiveness, and listening to the knowledge and experience of learners to shape where you're trying to go. So exactly what Amanda was saying is prioritizing the voices of learners and really responding in reciprocal ways to what we're hearing so that we can kind of pursue this mutual quest for learning alongside one another, yeah.

14:57 Amanda: Yep absolutely.

14:58 Catherine: So if we're talking about learning, and we're talking about the journey, and we're talking about the, perhaps the sidetrack that we had with the pandemic, how do you think your sort of goal of humanizing pedagogies differs between remote and in person learning? How did the pandemic change what you were up to?

15:25 Caroline: I guess for me the primary change again is what I mentioned a bit earlier, is recognizing, I think it forced so many people in education to recognize the whole learner. That the, you know it's not just the academic and the intellectual aspect of a learner that we need to attend to but the entirety of their being and their experience. So I think the pandemic drew out, you know, especially with the strain on students, that the well being piece and the importance of acknowledging that and giving attention and space to that in our learning design, even if that means slowing down on the content kind of delivered, giving space for a human connection, relationship building, listening and storytelling, and those sorts of aspects in our learning spaces. It's Friday and I don't know if I'm making any sense at all, I don't, but what I'm trying to say is that, that the care for learners just became I just think even more dire, even more important, yeah.

16:40 Amanda: You're making lots of sense and that's really exactly what I was thinking as far as for this question. We just, we just had to try harder in remote learning, and it just became so much more obvious that we needed to do things a little differently, that we really needed to acknowledge the emotions that we were all experiencing, and in some ways you know if there has to be a positive spin on any of this is that we've all kind of had this shared experience of being vulnerable and kind of going through this scary time. So I think it really did help us just to be more human and to be more real and a little vulnerable, and if something does continue on I hope that's it you know, that we are able to continue with this focus on being a little vulnerable, being a little bit more real in who we are as educators.

17:47 Catherine: I was gonna actually ask that as a followup question, do you guys think the changes that have been made, do you think they're gonna continue on into the future?

17:56 Caroline: I do and I hope so, and I yeah again exactly what Amanda said but also that I think it's made many educators much more aware and attuned to the social and emotional dimensions of learning in really positive ways that I hope will carry on, yeah.

18:15 Amanda: Yeah I do think it will carry on you know obviously I hope that piece does continue and I think that just being forced to to try new things made it a little bit, helped us realize, yeah we can try some new stuff, so.

18:32 Caroline: Yeah trying new stuff, and then watching and seeing and responding to how it's received, and how to revise and iterate and so on. Yeah I agree Amanda, that's a really positive outcome too.

18:44 Catherine: We haven't addressed them by name yet but a lot of what you guys have been working on is alternative assessments, so just different ways of learning and assessing obviously, but my question is what are some of the best alternative assessments that you have seen over your time working with them?

19:10 Amanda: For me when I started to think about this it was really hard to say you know what are the best, the best ones, like because everyone, I feel like everyone starts at a certain place and when they're able to just step out of their comfort zone and try something a little different that that's a really important and that's the best for them you know. So I really try to encourage everyone to just find what small change they can make or how they can step out of their comfort zone just a little bit with alternative assessments or authentic assessments and however they might be able to shift just a little bit is a big win. So that's kind of how I approach that but to give an example of something that I thought was really, really nice was one of our team members had her class present performance based activities as a way to open up the remote classroom. And so essentially it was a workshop, students gave a workshop to faculty on these performance based activities, and I found that to be a really nice way of sharing what students know and can do and how faculty could really listen and learn from our students. But at the same time I have learned a great deal from from Caroline and her project on how to reevaluate the way that we do assess students, to think about how we are grading students and how we can look at that differently, I just learned so much from what, from the work that she did in investigating all of the ways that grading can be really somewhat detrimental and it creates a demotivating aspect for students sometimes. So I think this could really be impactful if we are able to disseminate a bit more of this work and I think Caroline can share a little bit more about what I'm talking about.

21:32 Caroline: Yeah no I was kind of gonna go a similar direction in that I'd shy away from saying a best version, and I think like, as is true with many questions around pedagogy, I think the important questions about that listening piece we talked about with students about understanding the specifics of context, the learners we're working with and our own teaching and learning goals. That being said, I think what makes an alternative assessment powerful is through the underlying principles of them, so in the text that we co created there's a portion of reflective questions for educators to ask themselves as they embark on thinking about alternative assessments. I think that's a really good starting point, so an approach that asks what practices are causing harm and distress, and how might I shift those to prioritize care, how might I best promote a learning orientation rather than a grading orientation, or another way to think about that, to encourage intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations in our students, asking ourselves if we're offering enough flexibility that accommodates growth in all learners and how to really privilege student voice and choice in the ways that we do our assessments and the design of our assessments. Yeah so skirting your question a bit, not one single best but rather an orientation, I think an orientation that really shares choice and power with students to really service their needs and their learning.

23:25 Amanda: Yeah you said that so well Caroline, I really appreciate that and I do think that this group, our CAMPP group, was able to open up that possibility that the team members have embraced that, they are thinking about that, so I hope that that's a positive outcome that carries on.

23:49 Catherine: Okay I am gonna push on that a little bit. So clearly “best” was not the best way to word this, but are there any specific assessments or projects that have stood out to either of you?

24:02 Caroline: Well I think that the book that we co created together includes a lot of examples of contract grading specifications, grading reflective, and portfolio based assessments, and I think there are quite a few really great examples in there, and I think what's strong about each of those approaches is that it does acknowledge that each student is an individual and has particular needs, interests, and so on, and each of those models allows students to make choices about their own goals for what they're going to achieve in that classroom. And the portfolio approach in particular I'm quite fond of because it helps, or encourages rather, students to observe and kind of be students of their own learning, to see connections of their learning over time and to promote a kind of metacognitive orientation to how they make connections between you know, this learning experience in my first year versus this experience in my third, I can see the threads that wind through them both and what that's meant for me as an individual and as a as a student, yeah.

25:22 Amanda: And that does nicely bring it back to where we started, with Caroline and I with our work and how Buffscreate was somewhat of a probably quite a bit of a foundational project that we worked on before CAMPP, and it's such a nice way for students to be able to create and own their own portfolio or whatever they want to create within BuffsCreate, so I like that you brought it back to that, Caroline.

25:57 Catherine: Okay, has working on this at all changed the way that you approach your own work and your own self assessment?

26:04 Amanda: This is such a hard question, I'm gonna make you go first Caroline.

26:11 Caroline: I've always really loved, so I'm gonna name drop here, Maxine Greene and Paulo Freire, two of my favorite writers about teaching and learning, and they both talk a lot about, well Greene calls it wide awakeness and Freire calls it, conscien- I can't say it, it's in Portuguese, but like coming to full consciousness, and I think that during the pandemic right like we were all really forced to look and reflect on how we were living, how we were being, and so on, and I think that authentic assessment asks students to be reflective of their own learning. So I think it just, I think how it changed my approach to my own work and my own self assessment is just underscored again, how the ability to think about, reflect on, your own experiences is what gets you closer to that awareness and that consciousness of being really awake, being really curious, being really alive, yeah.

27:21 Amanda: This is, you're always so eloquent, but yeah I agree. I think that you know, I think I've been, I mean I feel like I'm somewhat self aware but within my work, work in faculty professional development I think I got a little bit more self aware of that I needed to listen more and that to kind of, what I was saying earlier to let people evolve as, that you just can't make it happen, that you have to let them evolve on their own time. And so by listening a little more and celebrating you know even small, small steps, small changes, and just to have a little different or maybe even slower approach to how I hope to see change in the way teaching and learning happens on our campus.

28:28 Caroline: I think that's the, especially what you said about slowing down, I think that's a huge part of it too, right, like the momentum and the tradition of grading with letters and that sort of thing, ranking and sorting students through these, it took us slowing down and examining that practice to see what it was and was not achieving. So I think that point Amanda is so important too, taking that time to look critically and interrogate our practices, yeah.

29:00 Amanda: Yeah absolutely and I think just you know the changes that we did have to go through gave us a little bit of, I don't know if permission is the right word, but we knew we were all suffering so there was a little bit of, yeah it's okay to you know, if we change the, we don't have to have a strict grading system you know we could do this one thing a little different this time, so.

29:30 Catherine: How do you think your position on faculty affected your approach to this open pedagogy and humanizing pedagogies as opposed to other members of CAMPP? So maybe this is more of a question for you Amanda, how do you think your experience as somebody who doesn't necessarily teach in a classroom has affected the way you look at the work that you do?

29:57 Amanda: Yeah I often do crave getting in the classroom, so if I'm able to get opportunities to teach that really does, that's when I'm reminded of things, so I did get, but also I kind of approach a lot of what I do with teaching teachers. So in that way I think of myself as a teacher and so, I don't know I'm struggling a little bit here.

30:26 Caroline: No I think I would agree, you are a teacher Amanda and I think that like much of what we're talking about though, it's we're talking about students and learners on campus, I think you bring the same kind of approach and orientation to your work with faculty on campus. And like you were just mentioning a moment ago about letting them move at their own pace, I think that's a wonderful example of listening to what learners' needs are in your instance, that being faculty, so yeah.

30:59 Amanda: Yeah thank you Caroline that does help me think again a little bit about how I do approach working with faculty from the perspective of not always being in the typical classroom, I usually try to find a little way around so if faculty come to me with a specific question I try to really approach it from an inquiry perspective of, well why do you want to do that, and why do you want to have, why do you want to use discussions in your classroom, discussion boards in your classroom, or you know try to get a little bit more at the heart of the pedagogy as opposed to just like, well what's the quick fix.

31:51 Caroline: And if I could just add to that, I think the other advantage that Amanda and I have, what, I am faculty but you know I'm in the library sort of outside of a discipline, but I think we're both positioned in a way to look at teaching and learning practices outside of a specific discipline. So we're looking more at the core of the approach, and at the core of the relationship between students and teachers, and students and students, and so I think our focus is more on that than disciplinary content delivery. Which I'm not saying that's better or worse but it just provides a slightly different perspective that allows us to I think see differently than others might, yeah.

32:40 Catherine: Yeah thank you for humoring me, that was exactly what I was looking for. Let's go to the nice question, what do you most admire about each other's contributions?

32:51 Caroline: I mean Amanda is fabulous, just she's just all around fabulous, she's tireless, she's inventive, she's fun, she's knowledgeable. Like I just admire so much, everything really about her contributions and you know she's being so modest when she's talking about earlier, she's so great at connecting with educators and inviting them to explore, you know, new strategies and approaches to teaching and learning, and she's constantly advocating for learners. She brings so much knowledge and skill and background and just has taught me like more, so much, so much, over the years.

33:36 Amanda: I know this is a podcast but I feel like you can probably, you might be able to feel my blushing radiating through. No, thank you Caroline, that's so sweet, but what I just admire so much, how thoughtful Caroline is. She, I will try to articulate something or express something and it just never comes out quite right, and then Caroline comes with this just most eloquent, and I think faculty just really listen to you, they really hear what you're saying. I can kind of sort of open the door or something, but you come in and just like bring it home, and you're just so mindful in the way that you explain things to faculty, and I appreciate that so much, and you are always introducing me to new ways to think about openness and education and I just love how we can work together on that. But usually, I feel like I just draw inspiration from you, so I really appreciate that about our working relationship.

34:53 Caroline: Yeah me too, it's really great I mean, I feel so lucky, like how many people find that kind of partner in their workplace? I'm just fairly grateful, yeah.

35:08 Amanda: Yeah absolutely, me too.

35:10 Catherine: Okay so that's all the questions that I have, do either of you have any finishing statements you want to put out there?

35:18 Amanda: I think that's pretty good, did you wanna say any more about any of the projects Caroline?

35:26 Caroline: Well I'll just say that like the open textbook or openly licensed book that we co created was really an attempt to introduce kind of like a handbook, kind of introduce these different approaches to alternative assessments, so that it includes kind of the core foundations of each approach and then provides more specific examples as well as testimonials from educators who have implemented that. So I think our hope is that that will serve as inspiration for other folks at CU.

36:08 Catherine: No I think we're good, if you guys are good I'm good.

36:14 Amanda: Cool, well that was really fun.

36:17 Caroline: It was fun, like yeah.

36:19 Catherine: Thank you Amanda, thank you Caroline.